Downloading ROMs isn’t exactly the most legal way to spend your time. There are some ROMs available that are safe to download, but the most popular ROMs do not have the approval of videogame companies. That’s where the Retrode 2 comes in. The Retrode 2 also plays ROMs, but you need to own the original more »

Rocksmith will be released as planned in the United States on October 18, but Europe is going to have to wait until sometime in 2012 for their opportunity to own the game. Ubisoft is in a trademark dispute with a band that claims they own the rights to the name “Rocksmith.” Rocksmith’s (the band) percussionist Kris Ford told Eurogamer he tried to work something out with Ubisoft, but the publisher ignored his communications. As a result, Ford was forced to engage in litigation.

Bethesda Softworks is going after Mojang. To be specific, it’s suing Mojang over an indie game that doesn’t even exist yet. Prepare yourself, because things are about to get just a little ridiculous.

Apparently, Bethesda thinks Mojang’s Scrolls is too similar to The Elder Scrolls. Not because Scrolls, which is going to be a video game with card game, board game and stategic game elements, is going to have a storyline similar to or gameplay identical to The Elder Scrolls series. No, it’s all because of the word “scrolls…”

The internet was shocked to hear that the infamous PS3 hacker George Hotz went to South America in the middle of his litigation with Sony. To be fair, Hotz technically wasn’t fleeing the country to escape his legal troubles. His actions however, tend to work against him more than anything. Since the story was first reported, Hotz has confirmed through his blog that he is currently in South America on spring break.

George Hotz really doesn’t appear to be taking his legal troubles with Sony very seriously. This was evidenced in his freestyle rap that made its rounds throughout the internet last month. Sony is currently trying to convince the court that California is the proper state to hold its trial instead of Hotz’s state of New Jersey. Lawyers on both sides have been trying to get an argumentative advantage over the other, but it’ll be hard to defend why Hotz recently decided to pick up and head to South America.

Ashley Mitchell, the man who stole Zynga Poker chips carrying a value of $12 million has been sentenced to serve two years in jail. We initially wrote about this story in the beginning of February. Mitchell admitted to stealing 400 billion poker chips in 2009. Mitchell then sold those chips for around $700 per one billion chips. Mitchell managed to sell one-third of the 400 billion of the chips before getting caught. He made approximately $87,000 on the stolen chips.

The latest round in the battle between LG and Sony has resulted in a win for team Sony. In late February, LG was granted a preliminary injunction by the court. Thousands of PS3s that were shipped into Europe were seized by customs due to a patent dispute between the two companies. Today (March 10, 2011), Sony successfully petitioned the court to lift the injunction, resulting in the release of 300,000 PS3s.

Not too long after GameStop was hit with a lawsuit accusing the company of illegally gathering and storing customer data, another lawsuit has been filed accusing GameStop of deceptive practices. The suit was filed in Northern California on March 1, 2011. In it, GameStop is being accused of “unfair, unlawful, deceptive and misleading practices conducted in violation of California state law and common law.” To be specific, the plaintiffs claim GameStop leads customers to believe that used games will come with free downloadable content. In reality, most games these days only provide free DLC if it is purchased new.

Sony has been granted a subpoena in its fight against George Hotz and PS3 piracy in general. This subpoena allows Sony to obtain the IP addresses of anyone who visited George Hotz’s website within the last 26 months. It doesn’t matter if you visited the site out of curiosity, by accident or with the intention of learning how to hack the PS3. Sony wants the identities of everyone involved.

We didn’t think it would happen, but it did. The Guardian reports that PS3 shipments coming into Europe have been snatched up by customs. A court order states that every PS3 coming into the country will be withheld for ten days at the least. This is the result of an ongoing legal dispute between Sony and LG.