The first batch of Dead Island DLC, titled 'Bloodbath Arena', will arrive on the 22nd of November. The DLC adds a survival mode, pitting you and your friends against waves of zombies in four different arenas. Leaderboards are promised, as is the ability to carry experience earned in survival over to the campaign. There's also a new weapon, dubbed the 'brain wave bomb'. We don't know what it does, but it certainly sounds cool.

The DLC is priced at a steep £7.99, but will be free to anyone who pre-ordered the original game. If you haven't bought Dead Island yet, check out our Dead Island review to help you make up your mind. Alternatively if you prefer your content free and user created, take a look at our Dead Island mods post.

Check inside for some screenshots of the Bloodbath Arena DLC.

UPDATE - It turns out Saints Row is available in the rest of Europe, only the UK has to wait till Friday. Apologies to those of you on the continent for assuming we were in the same boat.

Saints Row: The Third has been released! For North Americans at least, those of us in Europe the UK must instead wait and silently curse until Friday. They'll also get their hands on the Saints Row 3 Team Fortress items, while UK citizens must once again suffer the indignity of seeing a game go missing from our Steam store.

What's that? You'd like to know how good the game is? Why it's 83 good! As scientifically determined by Tom Senior in our Saints Row: The Third review. Go read it! It's a tale of tigers, naked Russian men and autotuned pimps.

We didn't like Black Ops as much as Modern Warfare 3 but didn't hate it either, awarding Treyarch's game with a solid 64% Not that it mattered though. Black Ops sold more copies in its first week than the superior Modern Warfare 3, which we liked a whole 15% more. Graham even described Infinity Ward's game as "fun."

David Vonderhaar, game design director at Treyarch has admitted that he regrets some of Black Ops features. In particular, he doesn't like the Second Chance Perk that let's downed players pull out a pistol and take a few pot shots before respawning. A more advanced version of the perk even let friendlies revive each other. It looked cool but broke the game for competitive play.

Last night, Sticktwiddlers spotted this tweet from Vonderhaar: "See that gun to my head in my pic? That's how I feel about 2nd Chance. We meant well. I fucked up. Enough spam. Goodnight.

Bioshock’s fathomless setting of Rapture is the stuff Hollywood studio execs dream of: an established IP, a chance to splash out on visual effects, and a Byzantine plot. But the BioShock movie - once attached to Pirates of the Caribbean helmer Gore Verbinski - hasn’t surfaced yet.

Talking to Industry Gamers, Bioshock’s creator Ken Levine stated that the movie is “definitely something that’s still in the conversation”, so it’s not quite dead in the water. “We’d like to have a movie made,” said Levine. “But it would have to be the right one, and we’ve had the opportunity to get it made and unless all the right pieces are in place – it’s hard enough to get a movie made when all the right pieces are in place.”

The potential movie has been put on the back burner while Levine concentrates on the latest BioShock adventure, BioShock Infinite. “I think mostly about the game,” said Levine. “And when it’s done, and I have the story worked out completely - every single detail of it, I’ll probably be more comfortable thinking about that. But right now I’m really just focused on BioShock Infinite as a game.”

Although we’d love to see BioShock on the big screen, we do have doubts. In terms of content, BioShock was an adult game, with plenty of visceral gore and some challenging thematic elements. For Hollywood to green-light what would undoubtedly be a vastly-budgeted adaptation, the gore and horror would have to be toned down for a PG-13 audience. Surely BioShock’s essence is in its relentlessly horrific vision of a utopia gone wrong?

The other problem is that Gore Verbinski couldn’t direct you to a sofa in Ikea.

More than 3.4 million copies of Skyrim were sold at retail in the first two days of the game's release, according to VGCharts. Those numbers are on a par with Battlefield 3 and exceed perennial best seller FIFA, with only Modern Warfare 3 outselling Bethesda's RPG. It's a 600% increase in sales on Oblivion's modest 490k opening.

While only 14% of those copies sold were on PC, those figures don't include digital download numbers, which are sure to be substantial considering the enormous numbers of people playing Skyrim on Steam.

Among other things, Minecraft's won countless awards, moved four million copies, and invented a whole new gaming genre. Pretty good for a game that's not even finished, huh? In a few short (or - depending on the potency of your Minecraft addiction - unbearably long) days, however, the "beta" tag's going into permanent retirement.

Today, Notch tweeted the modern classic's latest milestone: "So, yes, Minecraft has gone gold. :D," he said. That, of course, doesn't mean he'll suddenly stop building new bits onto his block-based masterpiece when the "final" version is released on Friday. There's 1.1 to look forward to, after all. But everyone deserves a chance to pop some champagne and celebrate the fact that their twisted mind gave birth to the most frequent star of my nightmares. So then, next stop? Vegas.

A number of Battlefield 3 users have reached out to Rock, Paper, Shotgun to report that they had been banned from playing the game for alleged behavior violations on EA's forums.

RPS cites three users' experiences who have been banned from their Origin accounts for misconduct on EA forums. The offenses themselves sound questionable (one user claims he was banned for linking to his blog, something EA apparently decided was a "commercial"), but what's striking is the totality of the response. One user received a 72-hour ban, RPS reports, "as well as a permanent “strike” on EA’s 'three strikes' system. Something it’s not possible for him to dispute."

Another user was supposedly handed a lifetime ban for using the phrase "e-peen". To be clear, this is a ban from all EA accounts, including Origin, and therefore all the games he kept on this account. He was also told that EA would not discuss the matter any further, closing the door to attempts to resolve the problem.

There was an incident like this in the spring regarding a Dragon Age 2 user, who was locked out of his game after violating the rules on the Bioware forum. EA later restored access to his account.

Were these just forum bans, the accountability process and the proportionality of the response might be questionable. Some of these seem like minor forum violations, at best. To revoke users' access to their games seems seems needlessly draconian, and the lack of a working appeals process is irresponsible.

Hopefully EA will clarify this situation, and explain how it will handle bans better.

Just as I was writing this post everyone in the office suddenly disappeared. Usually the PC Gamer staff is happy to mill around after work, now they're leaving at 5.30 the dot. What could it be? Is it somehow related to this new Bethesda game I've been hearing so much about? Is this also why Tom Senior has booked the entire week off? Probably coincidence.

One can only hope they're using the few extra minutes to install some of our Skyrim mods, or film hilarious Skyrim glitches. After all, the game can't be that good, right? It's not like Tom gave it 94% in our Skyrim review.

Check inside for a selection of spider bear ridden PC gaming news.


Reddit discovers a 'Notched pickaxe' in Skyrim. A minecraft homage perhaps?
RockPaperShotgun say Dungeon Defenders has released a developer kit.
BluesNews looks at Kingdoms of Amulur's unorthodox class system.
Massively has a hilarious live action trailer for APB Reloaded.
BluesNews reports that IndieRoyale's difficult second bundle has added Bullet Candy and Irukandji

 
Regale me with tales of Skyrim oh readers! Tell me tales of badass horses and dragon magic!

As reported on CVG, Battlefield 3 cheaters are feeling the full force of EA’s banhammer, with “hundreds” of people kicked out for exploiting glitches in the game. A post on the Battlefield’s official Twitter read: “This week we’ve banned hundreds of offending accounts and have stats-wiped accounts for exploiting (such as boosting).”

One glitch apparently allows a player to hide inside an upturned truck and then repair it for a massive amount of points. Players exploiting such glitches will have their stats completely wiped and even face a ban - but it does make you wonder why DICE allowed such a glitch to enter the game in the first place.

A new patch to solve such issues is in the works - but according to the Battlefield Twitter: “There is no ETA. Stay tuned to Batlelog news and http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com”. It's also said to fix the issue of the flashlights being as bright as the opening of Akira.

Skyrim is a wonderful game. It's so good that Tom gave it 94% in our Skyrim review, but as good as Bethesda games are, they're always a little bit better once they're modded. Amazingly, despite the fact that the game has only been out for a few days, there are already over a hundred mods on Skyrim Nexus. We've rounded up the best of the first wave - they're not game-changers, but some of these are worth taking a look at.

We're planning to regularly update this page as more mods come out. New mods will be added and old ones will either be updated or fall by the wayside.
1. Detailed Faces and No More Blocky Faces



A pair of mods by Xenius that make small improvements to the faces of Skyrim's NPCs. No More Blocky Faces decompresses face textures to create smoother noses and chins for the previously slightly square character models, while Detailed Faces slightly improves the face textures for most races.

2. ENBSeries patch

The ENBSeries mods are famous for adding improved post processing and lighting effects to make games like GTA4 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution look amazing. Sadly this patch doesn't do that, but merely fixes some graphical artifacts. Don't worry though, ENB creator Boris Vorontsov is already working on a full graphical overhaul.

3. Large Address Aware patch

Like previous Bethesda games, Skyrim doesn't use more than 2gb of RAM, regardless of how much you actually have. Using a large address aware patch will fix that, allowing Skyrim to make full use of your system's abilities. Simply follow the tutorial here. It won't automatically make your screenshots look as good as Dead End Thrills, but it's a start.

4. Simple Borderless Window



Simple borderless window does what it says, it makes Skyrim run in a false fullscreen mode, allowing for the easy alt tabbing of windowed mode but while still keeping your screen full of wonderful landscapes.

5. Enhanced Night Sky


 
A nice little mod I enjoyed in Fallout. Enhanced Night Sky replaces the Skyrim stars with a high resolution texture taken from starfield photography. This version is so seamless it doesn't even effect the in game constellations.

6. No Spider Mod


 
Arachnophobes like PC Gamer contributor Richard Cobbett have a hard time with games like Skyrim. Which is why No Spiders patches are so useful. This first attempt at a spider free Skyrim is particularly hilarious, as it replaces the models of the spiders with hilariously out of place bears.

7. Interface Hard Coded key tweaks

Skyrim's interface can be really awkward, Hard Coded key tweaks aims to improve that. Now you can (for instance) turn lockpicks with whatever direction keys you chose, not just WASD, and many other simple improvements.

8. TESV savegame manager

An update of the popular Fallout 3 savegame manager, TESV savegame manager mod helps save and organise your games far more efficiently than the game does by default.

9. Vurt's Skyrim Flora Overhaul



This is going to be one to keep an eye on. Vurt's Skyrim flora overhaul is dedicated to improving the quality of the vegetation in Skyrim, starting with trees. It even offers several different colour schemes to let you tailor your foliage to your own desires.

10. Enhanced Blood Textures



Enhanced Blood Textures does exactly what it says, it improves the resolution of the blood textures in the game, but does it so well that it's one of the most noticeable improved texture mods available.

11. Map in Full 3D

 
Not so much a mod as a set of tweaks, Map in full 3D shows you how to modify the game's ini file to make it possible to zoom the in game map right down to the ground. The result is essentially a free camera mode that lets you roam anywhere in the world. It's like the google street view team was let loose in the frozen north.

Remember, we're going to keep updating this list with new and interesting mods, so if you know of any good ones we've missed please let us know in the comments.