Way back in 2010, Square Enix realized Final Fantasy XIV was a complete bomb. Square Enix restructured the development team, apologized constantly for the game’s quality and made it free to play until it could churn out a quality product that was actually worth the money. In October of this year, Square Enix announced it was nearly done with FFXIV version 2.0 and would begin charging for the game by December. Well, that’s not going to happen. FFXIV will remain free for one more month. On January 6, 2012, paid subscriptions for FFXIV will return.

EA’s decided to tack a subscription fee onto Tetris. Yes, you read that right. Subscription and Tetris just appeared together in the same sentence.

EA has decided to update it’s iOS Tetris app. That’s fine. Cool. We know how things go. For 99¢, you can get the game on your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and play the classic Marathon mode, the line-clearing Galaxy mode, a Tetris Log mode that offers specific challenges and ranks players and maybe even join the T-Club. Wait, T-Club?

That T-Club is where pay-to-play part appears…

Yesterday, it was revealed that Big Fish Games earned Apple’s approval to release an app that would require users to pay $4.99 a month to stream dozens of the companies games. It would have been the first time a videogame company moved away from the a la carte business model in the Apple App Store. Unfortunately for Big Fish Games, Apple has had a change of heart. Without explanation, the subscription app was pulled from the App Store.

Big Fish Games is about to introduce a new way to purchase and play its games on iOS. Bloomberg reported Apple has allowed Big Fish Games to start a subscription service for its games on the iPad. Instead of paying for each game individually, Big Fish Games will offer unlimited access to several of its games for $4.99 a month. The price will increase to $6.99 a month once more games become available next year.

Final Fantasy XIV has not been a high point for Square Enix. After the game was released, critics and fans slammed it for having numerous problems. Square Enix knew the game was seriously flawed and decided to restructure the development team to create the true version of FFXIV. For the past several months, Square Enix has not charged players a subscription fee for FFXIV while the team continued to make improvements through updates. In a letter to fans, Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada detailed the future of FFXIV including the end of the free period, and an update on its PS3 release.

Facebook announced some pretty big changes last week regarding new user Timelines and changes to its Open Graph. The Open Graph changes affect gamers because it will remove those intrusive pop-ups that ask you to share recent accomplishments with friends. Gamers will also know exactly what information will post to their News Feed and how it will look before accepting the app’s permissions. These changes have led to spam on Facebook that says the social network will begin charging users to supplement these changes. Don’t believe it.

Gears of War 3 is less than one week away from being released. This game carries a high profile and retailers are going to be coming up with all kinds of ways to get you through the door. We knew Kmart had something special in store for us. Should you be pondering about picking up Gears 3 next week, you may want to plan out a route to Kmart because these deals are pretty darn good.

What’s that you say? Video content from Netflix, Hulu Plus, ESPN, NHL GameCenter, Vudu, Xbox Live Marketplace and the PlayStation Network isn’t enough for you? We’ll you’re in luck today my friend. During an earnings call that took place earlier today, Time Warner chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes announced HBO Go is coming to gaming consoles.

By now we know that Call of Duty Elite will be a subscription service that will accompany CoD Modern Warfare 3 and every CoD game afterwards. A big part of CoD Elite is social networking. We’ll be able to compare all kinds of stats, team up with players of similar interests and jump into events that are constantly updating. Another feature that wasn’t talked about as much is a new web series that will only be available to CoD Elite subscribers.

Activision has remained silent about the details surrounding its premium Call of Duty service. Before today, the only details we knew about what is now called Call of Duty Elite was that it would be included in Modern Warfare 3, and would be an optional service. The in-game content is created by a studio named Beachhead, a studio that seemed to be created specifically for this purpose.