Last week, Kotaku reported strong evidence that at least one of the eight finalists in the million-dollar MLB 2K12 Perfect Game Challenge had used an exploit to substitute weaker batters into the opposing team's lineup and have an easier time tossing a perfect game during the contest's qualifying round.

If the allegations are true, the contest is tainted. The alleged cheater himself cast doubt on the legitimacy of other finalists' qualifying performances.

But the people who run this contest won't say a thing. When I spoke to Jason Argent, the 2K Sports vice president of marketing, at the contest's final round pairing in New York this afternoon, he refused to answer questions about the allegations.

He wouldn't deny them. He wouldn't confirm them. But he wouldn't even voice his side of the story, either.

"All I will comment on is that the contest was run fairly and consistently with the rules," he told me.

Technically, this is true. The substitution exploit was not specifically prohibited in the official rules thanks to a loophole, but other communications from 2K Sports to gamers said that they could not make any substitutions to any lineup, either CPU or user-controlled teams.

And what of the allegations? What of the MLB 2K12 fans who may have missed a shot at winning $1 million because they chose to play fair? More than 900,000 perfect games were attempted and more than 900 were thrown in a month.

"If you look around today, upstairs, everyone here is really happy and there's excitement in the air," Argent said.

As I continued to press him, the PR representative sitting with us interjected.

"I think if you keep asking the same question I think your answer is going to be the same," she said.

In other words, they have no interest in defending the integrity of the million-dollar contest they run. Maybe their silence speaks for itself.

The International Dota 2 Championships will be held during this year's Penny Arcade Expo, Aug 31 to Sept. 2, the organizer and Dota 2 publisher Valve just announced.

The International launched last year in Cologne, Germany during Gamescom. On the Dota 2 blog Valve confirmed that the teams DK and Na'Vi (the defending champion) are the first teams to receive invitations. Last year's format featured 16 of the world's most elite Dota teams, progressing from a group stage to a double-elimination playoff. A $1 million prize was awarded.

The tournament will be broadcast free of charge in multiple languages, Valve said. For more information, visit the link.

The International Dota 2 Championships [Official Site]

After shaking off a line drive to the face, I finished out my rookie minor league year in MLB 12 The Show's Road to the Show with an unblemished record, 10-0 in about 16 starts at two classifications. The team still lost games I started but, somehow, they managed to at least get me out of the decision before doing so. My player was given the ball to pitch an elimination game in the first round of the International League playoffs.

One thing The Show does that drives me crazy is, frankly, there are a lot of foul balls in this game. It's something I'm going to be looking into in greater detail once I get some data back from actual major league games. But it could simply be that it's easy to throw pitches inside the strike zone, and foul balls are therefore more common because the pitch is in reach.

But it's built up to the point that, when I do strike out a batter, especially looking, I feel as much satisfaction as I do relief that the guy simply didn't swing. After thinking on it, I took that thought to Curt Schilling over Twitter. Schilling is the founder of 38 Studios, which recently released Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. He's also a six-time Major League Baseball all-star pitcher, and three-time world champion. Schilling has really aspired to transparency and response in his new role, so it wasn't too surprising when he replied.

For some reason, it struck me as a little profound. And I think it may point to the fact that, in your early years, you don't know the hitters in the minor leagues because they're all bot characters. I may be leaving things in areas where they can foul them off or drive them and just not know it.

So I look forward to getting myself to the major leagues, where I do know more of the hitters, and working 0-2 or 1-2 counts on them. With any luck, I'll be the only one participating in the at-bat.

Career modes in sports video games do a superb job of helping you create the story of a single team or a player. Where even the best ones fall short is in making you feel part of something larger. Players are forced to hunt through menus for results and standings, and even then, it's hard to tell who is overachieving and who is having a disappointing year.

This problem is especially keen in NCAA Football, whose Dynasty Mode, because of its intensive player management, requires players to spend a lot of time in menus as it is. To better deliver the story of the season you're in, NCAA Football 13's designers have decided to take a risk on interrupting your game with from-the-studio announcements of other results or games in progress. Not only are the designers hoping gamers won't mind the intrusion, they're hoping they'll enjoy it.

"The information was all sort of reactive and hidden," in previous versions, said designer Christian McLeod. "What we wanted to do was bring that to the surface, because the story of college football is much more than the story of a single team."

To tell the story, EA Sports brought in Rece Davis of ESPN, a widely liked studio host at a network where everyone gets nitpicked by the public. Davis will not appear on-screen, but his voice will play over a scoreboard fully rendered in ESPN's visual style. He'll introduce the result, comment on the outcome and hand the broadcast back to play-by-play man Brad Nessler, who has also recorded new audio so that he can react to what Davis is saying.

These studio updates will occur at natural points in the game. In a game I was playing, a Stanford-Notre Dame matchup that started at 4 p.m. Eastern, right after I kicked the extra point on my first touchdown Nessler turned it over to Davis, who informed us that Virginia Tech had survived an upset scare from Duke to stay on top of the ACC's Coastal Division.

"We wanted people to have the feeling that they were watching a day of college football," said McLeod. And that is indeed one of my favorite activities. But this design choice also appears to be a shrewd one because it serves you the story of the larger season when you're basically a captive audience. The game doesn't require you to find it for yourself after a game, solely reading through the standings, polls and story blurbs—which typically dealt first with the game you already played.

Each game played in Dynasty mode can have up to 10 studio updates, McLeod said. They will not break in at critical moments of the game—if you're in the hurry-up offense, for example. They'll typically come as they do in real life. On changes of possession, clock stoppages or other pauses in the on-field action. The studio updates will be supported by another ESPN staple, the Bottom Line score crawl. This will be more than just the scores of completed games. You'll get the notorious "Upset Alert" when the network wants to call your attention to shocker in progress that it's not televising. The notice flashes, the linescore comes up, and then numbers roll over showing that a top 10 team is in trouble against a cupcake or conference doormat.

"I took a delay of game penalty on the first upset alert I saw," joked producer Ben Haumiller. And it's amusing, but it does show the hazard of this particular design choice. As has been written before, when gamers wonder why a sports developer doesn't add in more cut scenes or other visual components, their own habits are usually the reason why. We're not just watching a game, we're playing it, and truth be told, I button through a lot of stuff without giving it a second thought. Developers know this and they have a disc space budget, too.

While the studio updates can be dismissed by a button press, McLeod said a short delay before recognizing that command will cut down on inadvertent dismissals. The design team is confident most college football fans will want to stay with them, as it adds to the feel of immersion, and because Davis will bring his recognizable style to the update.

Davis, who used to work in Flint, Mich., will always make a reference to "the banks of the Red Cedar," a line from Michigan State's fight song, whenever updating folks on the action there. Rival Michigan always gets pronounced with a caricatured Upper Peninsula accent—"Meeshegan." One thing we're unlikely to hear, however, is Davis calling a high-scoring Alamo Bowl the "Tecmo Bowl," as he did (hilariously and on purpose) in a broadcast this past December.

"He said his kid is a hardcore player of [NCAA Football], so he understands it, and its appeal." said McLeod, who wrote some of Davis' dialogue, with a lot of the recording improvised. "He totally got it, right away."

What I saw and heard looked very polished, but again, this was in a conference room in Florida, not on my couch. The key will be in thwarting repetitive dialogue. McLeod said the game's commentary engine will feature multiple introduction points that can branch to different details of the game and then on to the context surrounding the result.

There seemed to be about six different groupings of phrases, from Nessler's throw to getting the broadcast back from Davis, forming each update. Details like BCS or poll positioning, rivalries and upcoming games, and individual performances are all part of the mix.

It really places a premium on keeping things fresh. But in concept, it's a good start. Bringing in a familiar voice, a guy who'll wait until I score that touchdown to tap me on the shoulder and tell me what else is going on in this sports fantasy I'm living out is a simple way to deepen the experience.

Allgamesbeta has posted three more shots from Beyond Good & Evil 2, which match the look of the image that turned up yesterday.

Not the sexiest screens, though I do like the mountain in that first one. In the world of Beyond Good & Evil, it sure seems like people eat a lot of fish! Hope we get it sooner rather than later.

Beyond Good & Evil 2 [AllgamesBeta]

Commenter President-Magikarp has already purchased a copy of Street Fighter X Tekken on Steam, so he feels no qualms about downloading a pirated pre-release version of the game. How's that sit with you?

Okay, I have a question to ask. One that people are going to be very polarized on.

Is it wrong to download a cracked copy of a game you've already legally purchased?

I ask because I've been playing Street Fighter X Tekken on my PC for the last few days, one which I've already bought a pre-order for on Steam, as shown in the image. By all means, I already own this game and a license to download the files. Granted, not until tomorrow, but I've still supported the developer and publisher by giving them my money. I even pre-ordered the game for two friends too.

I've gotten messages from people I know saying that I'm "killing the PC gaming industry" and "adding to the number of reasons why Capcom doesn't want to port games to the PC." I do tell them that I've already purchased the game, and even show proof, but it does little to sway the rhetoric. The gameplay videos I've uploaded and forum posts I've made detailing possible bugs in the game are down rated. I'm still treated like the scum of the Earth because I wanted to get a few days' head start on learning a new game I've already proven I've bought.

To me, it's no different than breaking the street date on a physical copy.

Sometimes, store clerks slip up and give paying customers copies of games ahead of their release date. What I've done here is essentially no different. I downloaded the game's files and played it ahead of its scheduled release, but no matter how much I remind people I've spent money on the product several times over, they bash me because I downloaded it from a torrent instead of a Steam content server. It's still the game I paid for. Why does it matter?

Move over, Sunday service collection plate. You're being replaced this coming Sunday by ThatGameCompany's Flower, as the brightly colored PlayStation 3 title becomes possibly the first video game to be incorporated in a religious service.

The idea for bringing Flower to church started with Andy Robertson, a writer who runs the GamePeople website and writes about video games for Wired.com. Roberston gave a TEDx talk focused on expanding the way people think about and engage with video games, at one point calling for a "priesthood of game critics" spread gaming's gospel. When I interviewed Robertson this morning, he elaborated on that turn-of-phrase by explaining that "a good priest wants to create a space where people can discover something meaningful."

It turns out someone connected to actual clergy saw Robertson's talk and latched onto the ideas there. Anna Norman-Walker, Cannon Minister for the Exeter Cathedral, struck up a conversation with Robertson about figuring out how to use video games in one of the cathedral' bi-weekly Holy Ground services. Those special events use music and other creative disciplines to explore various themes, like the pagan roots of Christianity.

At first, games like Jason Rohrer's Passage were tossed out as Robertson and Norman-Walker discussed the kind of poignant, accessible experiences that spoke to deeper ideas. But, when sustainability and man's relationship to the planet came up as the organizing principle of an upcoming Holy Ground, Roberston remembered seeing a live play demonstration of Flower at the U.K.'s GameCity festival.

Norman-Walker says that she's had very little exposure to video games other than her teenagers playing FIFA and Call Of Duty. "When you say the words ‘video game', people immediately think of shooting," Robertson offered. "But the minute I showed [cathedral officials] Flower, their perceptions—and the possibilities of what they could do with it—opened up." Norman-Walker adds that "No convincing was necessary. Creativity is something that we welcome and Holy Ground is the ideal platform for this sort of thing. People were rather shocked several hundred years ago when churches introduced the organ, so who knows if gaming could become part of everyday worship one day!"

Worshippers will see Flower played during the service, controlled by Robertson, who will then pass a controller around so each churchgoer gets a turn to swoop through the leaves and branches of the game's first level. Norman-Walker also said that Robertson will be back in August to talk further about integrating games into future services.

Asked if she could see playing games in church services expanding beyond this one night, Norman-Walker says she could definitely see that evolution. "Worship is not a ‘spectator sport' and anything that helps people to make connections with God and express something of a response to God is worth exploring. Gaming could be a really creative way of engaging with people in a fresh way and could potentially transcend age and culture gaps." Imagine if the next big Xbox 360, mobile or PC game could get people praise God on Sunday morning instead of taking His name in vain on Saturday night. That'd be a miraculous achievement.

Today, I got a package from Double Fine promising details on the legendary Ron Gilbert's new adventure game. But… I can't figure out what it is! It just looks like a jumble of cardboard pieces. Maybe this was supposed to be packaging for the USB key they forgot to send? I don't…. understand…

Is it a metaphor of some sort? Does this mean that the game is going to be released in a bunch of tiny little pieces? God, who knows.

Maybe I'll just turn to the internet. Hey, it looks like Game Informer got a way better-looking image than I did!

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What the crap, Double Fine? Why do the other sites get a cool piece of artwork and I get a bunch of useless junk!

What am I missing here?

Well, they did invite me to the studio to learn more, so I guess I'll have to head over there to get to the bottom of this.

If you watch Game of Thrones or, particularly, have read George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books, you know that the characters really have a penchant for drinking beer in the morning. So much beer! Wine is for the afternoon and evening, but the early hours get beer.

I've always wondered what brand Tyrion was drinking every morning to wash down his black bread, boiled eggs and crisp bacon. Now I know: "Lannister Gold!"

Check out these beer logos, created by an artist who goes by SatansBrand. Even better, each one is available on a T-Shirt. I totally want like three of these. I'll order them, telling myself that I'll give the other two to my loyal bannermen, but I think we all know that I'm just going to keep them for myself.

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Game of Thrones Beer Brands [Redbubble via The Huffington Post]

Microsoft press release today: "Microsoft today announced that Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, the console adaptation of the hugely popular PC game developed by Mojang, has broken all previous digital sales records, selling more than any other title in the first 24 hours on Xbox LIVE Arcade." [That's an excerpt.]

Kotaku e-mail to Xbox public relations: "How many copies did Minecraft sell? Without a number, it's hard to tell if this is actually impressive."

Xbox PR response: "We aren't disclosing sales numbers, but can confirm 'Minecraft' sold very well."

Presumably un-related Tweet from Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Person, minutes later : "...the number of sales I got is based on leaderboard participation, so might be off.. But it seems it sold over 400k copies in 24h."

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Earlier in the day, the folks at Polytron who made recent Xbox 360 downloadable darling Fez had noticed Notch say on Twitter that Minecraft on Xbox 360 had turned a profit in 24 hours and wondered how he could know that. Polytron's Tweet: "how did you get those stats from MS? we still dont know exactly how much fez sold almost a month later. you get stats in 24 hours?" Notch's partial reply: " so the sales numbers were based on leaderboard participation."... which may have crossed wires with Polytron saying they'd tried the leaderboard-counting trick: "we did that. but that's a really inaccurate way to track sales. it's insane that we have to hack it like that."

Add it all up, people. Xbox 360 PR didn't come up with this strategy. Microsoft isn't the only video game publisher that wants to brag about sales without offering any real numbers. Perhaps they don't want their competition to know, even, strangely, when they're bragging. But they don't even seem to give the people making their games the best numbers.

Indie developers like Notch will often tell you how well their game has sold, when they have access to the numbers (5.2 million as of last March for the computer version of Minecraft). Big gaming publishers? Generally, they'd rather not.

UPDATE: Here's one more wrinkle. Official Microsoft Xbox Live booster Major Nelson noted on his blog that the game has at least 400,000 people on its leaderboards So some people at Microsoft do want us to know something!