As is the case every year, the Steam Summer Sale’s starting date has been leaked by PayPal. The official Twitter account for PayPal UK noted that it would begin on June 22nd, 10 AM PST/6 PM BST and that it was “official”.

The sale will apparently run till July 5th. Valve has done away with deals that rotate after a period of time and will likely offer more straightforward sales. That’s barring any major changes of course.

Though Valve has yet to make an official announcement about the same, it does seem concurrent with previous rumours that stated the same. Furthermore, PayPal has usually nailed the starting date. We’ll see if that’s the case this year.

What are you looking forward to picking up from this year’s Steam Summer Sale? Let us know in the comments below and stay tuned for more information in the next 24 hours if it does go live.

You won’t have to wait much longer for Steam’s Winter Sale. PayPal recently tweeted that the sale would begin on December 22nd. How long it lasts hasn’t been outright confirmed but given how previous years’ ended on January 2nd, this could be the case for this year as well.

The Steam Winter Sale is, much like the Summer and Autumn sales, an opportunity to grab a ton of games at great discounts. The discounts can vary depending on the games in question but it’s not weird to pick up titles like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt or Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain at dirt cheap prices.

What do you hope to pick up (and hopefully not relegate to your library of unplayed games) in this year’s Winter Sale? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and stay tuned for more information on when the sale actually goes live.

The announcement came through the Ask Playstation Twitter account just a few hours before the maintenance began. Normally this would be rather annoying for users looking to play their favorite games throughout the night, but this was strictly a backend improvement that Sony didn’t believe would adversely affect a great deal of users. On the main forums, the company made it clear that as long as someone was already logged on using either this PS4, PS3 or Vita, before the maintenance got underway they likely wouldn’t see any issues.

The update started getting rolled out at 9:00pm Pacific time and the company had said they expected the full maintenance window to last about two hours. If you were one of those who didn’t see this announcement and couldn’t get logged into the network, now you know the answer why. The PlayStation store and account management functions were taken offline during this maintenance period though it appears the annoyances were kept to a minimum.

It should be pointed out that Sony has been working hard to add a number of new features and tweaks since the PS4 first launched. This was an update that was a great deal smaller than some of their most recent firmware updates. The better payment options and PayPal integration should make shopping on the PlayStation store a better experience overall.

The hugely anticipated Project Phoenix, which began as a Kickstarter effort from the former developers of such household game names as Final Fantasy, Crysis, Diablo, and Halo, though it has been successfully funded via Kickstarter for some time now, has opened up its crowd-funding doors anew—this time via PayPal. Creative Intelligence Arts, the name of the team behind Project Phoenix, is offering up all new tiers of rewards and possible additional content should finding reach certain levels.

There are many different levels of support one can give, each granting a number of benefits. The top tier, valued at $5,000, will grant the donor every reward offered at the lower tiers combined. Here’s that full list:

• Artbook
• Closed Alpha Access
• Closed Beta Access
• Collector’s Edition Box
• Death’s Mantle
• Death’s Scythe
• Developer Card
• Developer Credits
• Developer Forum Access
• Developer Unlockables
• Digital Artbook
• Forum Access
• Making-of-Project Phoenix
• Making-of-Project Phoenix DVD
• Map of Azuregard
• Musical Score
• Project Phoenix Digital Download
• Project Phoenix DVD
• Project Phoenix Soundtrack
• Shadow Phoenix Egg
• Shadow Phoenix Mount
• Signed CE Box
• Soundtrack DVD
• Town Artwork
• Town Background
• Town Creation
• Town NPC
• Wings of the Fallen

If any of the above items tickle your fancy, make your way over to their PayPal support page now.

Source: Project Phoenix

We’ll let his tweets tell the whole story.

Police raided me.

— Dan (@superDaE) February 19, 2013

@supermtw I have no phone, nothing.

— Dan (@superDaE) February 19, 2013

I find it hilarious how the warrant only really mentions “Microsoft”, “eBay”, “Paypal”.

— Dan (@superDaE) February 19, 2013

@benpeace91 Because its a laughing matter to have an FBI agent and 7-8 POLICE in your house.

— Dan (@superDaE) February 19, 2013

SuperDAE, for those who remember, leaked more than 100 pages of information to Kotaku concerning the next Xbox, codenamed Durango. He was also quite aware of having violated an NDA, which is a pretty big boo-boo in today’s corporate world.

As of now, there aren’t enough details to go by – not even any pictures of warrants or anything due to the guy not even having his phone – but the major charge could be for trying to sell the developer kit for Durango on eBay.

Even though it was “mostly for publicity” and “no one thought the eBay auctions would ever sell, and they never did”, it’s still pretty much a crime when you open up an auction. Let’s see how this plays out in the days to come.

Source: GameChup

According to a leaked memo by Paypal, Xbox 360 dash update will be here by November 15th. Microsoft had earlier mentioned that Paypal will be added to Xbox Live, to facilitate easier payments.

November 15th is also the 10th anniversary of the Xbox launch, which should be enough clue as to when this big feature will be available in Xbox Live. Paypal is the biggest way to transfer and receive funds online, and has the potential to increase Xbox Live sales.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Thanks, Kotaku.