It looks like that clandestine photo of a Gamestop computer replete with entries for Android devices has proven to be accurate, at least as far as tablets are concerned. Rather than stocking Samsung products exclusively, however, 1,600 Gamestops now carry Android tablets from Acer, Asus and Samsung; specifically the Asus Transformer and Transformer Prime, the Acer Iconia (both 7 and 10.1 versions), and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Each tablet comes pre-loaded with "a hand-picked selection of free games, like Sonic CD and Riptide, the Kongregate Arcade gaming app and a free issue of Game Informer Digital," according to the PR available after the break. Naturally, trade-in credit can be applied towards the purchase of one of these devices. Find out if one of your several dozen local Gamestops is a member of that 1,600-store collective by entering your zip-code here, and don't forget to do your research before plopping down several hundred clams on an iPad alternative.

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Minecraft's ability to churn through the bank accounts of all the cosmos continues unabated, having sold six million copies on PC to date, according to a tweet from Mojang mogul Markus Persson. Factoring in XBLA, Android and iOS sales, the figure is "around nine million," according to Persson, a number that Mojang's Daniel Kaplan puts a tiny bit more specifically as "maybe 9.2" million.

If you've been affected by Minecraft's unwavering grasp on the gaming universe, make sure to listed to the Mailbag portion of this week's Super Joystiq Podcast, wherein Joystiq's feature content director Xav de Matos, managing editor JC Fletcher and editor in chief Ludwig Kietzmann discuss various methods for breaking Minecraft addictions.

Google Play (formerly Android Market) now supports in-app subscriptions, so developers can optionally accept recurring payments for their apps. Subscriptions can be monthly or annual, and ... are all auto-renewing by default. Good news, developers! You'll get at least one accidental payment from a user.

First out of the gate to support this is Glu Mobile, which appears to be using it for recurring conversions of money to in-game credits in games like Frontline Commando. There's even API functionality allowing developers to use in-app subscriptions to determine access to non-Android-based properties, like websites – allowing an Android app to serve as the subscription system.

GameFly is moving forward with its plan to "help good games get made" by not only publishing said games on both iOS and Android platforms, but by opening its own "expertly curated" marketplace on Google's mobile operating system.

GameFly's "GameStore" for Android is set to debut sometime this holiday season and will cater to both smartphone and tablet Android users, supplying games for both formats. The app will also support social discovery mechanisms such as friend recommendations and ratings/reviews from other users. Whether GameStore will exclusively stock GameFly-published titles is still unknown, but considering that the app will reportedly house "thousands of the best games," we expect content from other publishers to be present.

As far as GameFly's in-house publishing prospects are concerned, the company expects to release its first game sometime this summer. Mobile developers interested in being published by GameFly should send an email to GameDev at GameFly dawt com.

Mass Effect: Infiltrator – developed by the same team responsible for the mobile version of Dead Space – is now available for download in the Google Play store for $6.99.

In Mass Effect: Infiltrator, players take on the role of Cerberus defector Randall Ezno as he attempts to flee from a Cerberus base with intel for the Alliance. Progress in Mass Effect: Infiltrator affects your Galactic Readiness level in Mass Effect 3. And if you've been meaning to go back to the portable game, the latest update (version 1.0.3) added a new character and mission.

The Game Bakers' mobile, PC and Mac RPG title Squids is getting a rough 'n rowdy update this summer with a new chapter: the Wild West.

To prepare players for the Wild West, Game Bakers launched a free update on the App Store today, featuring three western-ized levels in Seawood, a new Squid hero named Cleef and a new enemy, the Buffalo Shrimp. The update also brings a higher level cap, a new Game Center achievement and improved social media functionality.

We hope it also demonstrates how tumbleweeds blow across a dry dirt street in a fully underwater environment.

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Those dying to play Diablo 3 online don't need to sit by their PCs to see if the servers are up and running anymore. A Diablo 3 server-checking app, aptly named "Diablo 3 Server Checker," is now available for free (ad-supported) on Google Play for Android devices.

Developed by Eluamous, creator of other server-checking apps for games like World of Warcraft, the app pulls status messages from US.Battle.net to view updates from Diablo 3 servers in the US, Europe, and Asia. The app also includes a widget for use on the home screen of Android devices.

The app is in obvious response to the recent server issues Blizzard has been dealing with.

Facebook went public yesterday, and its unexpectedly less-than-stellar performance on the trading floor has had powerful ramifications for its social soul sister Zynga, which finished the day's trading at a record low of $7.16 a share.

It's possible that Facebook's unimpressive IPO, closing out Friday at $38.23 a share – four dollars less than its $42.05 opening price – caused Zynga's value to drop in tandem, as the two platforms are inexorably intertwined in the public mindset. It's also possible that Zynga share holders jumped ship in favor of that new Facebook hotness, no longer having to settle for social second best.

Regardless, the severe downturn in value lead to two trading halts on Zynga shares over the course of the day; once after reaching $7.17 a share, and once again after a slight increase in market value. Despite this, share values eventually dropped to as little as $6.93 before finally settling at $7.16.

Electronic Arts and BioWare's social soiree in Ferelden will be coming to an end on June 18, 2012, according to the official Dragon Age Legends website. E-commerce for the title ended yesterday, meaning that while the game it still active for the time being, it's no longer possible to convert your real-life dollars into fake Dragon Dollars crowns for use in Ferelden's many shops.

BioWare has also initiated a "massive fire sale" on all in-game items until the servers go down, so anyone with stockpiles of fake internet money can get their fake internet money's worth, at least for a few weeks. If the thought of living without a weird Facebook adaptation of the Dragon Age world is too much to handle, take heart: A single-player version of the game will be made available on the official site "shortly after the current version of the game shuts down."

In celebration of stores like Steam and the App Store that allow developers to price their games at whatever they feel like, a group of indies are putting their games on sale next week for ... whatever they feel like.

The "Because We May" sale will run from May 24 through June 1, and will feature sales on the iOS and Mac App Stores, Steam, Google Play, direct downloads from developers, and assorted other venues. The participating games include World of Goo, Osmos, Eets, Bit.Trip Beat and Runner, Canabalt, Waking Mars, Super Meat Boy, Cave Story, the Double Fine Bundle ... basically, you'll find something to buy. As for the prices, it would appear nobody has decided yet.

After seeing success, both Leisure Suit Larry and his creator Al Lowe fell upon dark times. Lowe and his polyester-clad protagonist have lived through the rise and fall of Sierra On-Line, multiple intellectual property changes, and two very poor attempts at bringing Larry to a new generation of gamers.

"It was like seeing a video from your son's kidnappers!" Lowe told Joystiq. "On one hand he's still alive but it's like, 'Oh God, what are they doing to him!' And it just pained me to watch it happen. You know I put ten years of my life into that guy and he was very good to me."

Leisure Suit Larry starred in seven titles under the Sierra banner, turning it into a billion dollar business for founders Ken and Roberta Williams. But success would be bittersweet for both Lowe and the Williams family, as Sierra On-Line found itself ensnared in the middle of a hostile takeover that would evolve into one of most infamous scams in video game business history.

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The Angry Birds franchise has hurtled past a billion downloads. The number covers free and paid downloads of Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio and Angry Birds Space. The news comes a couple days after Rovio revealed revenues of $106.3 million in 2011, with approximately $67.6 million in pre-tax profit.

There's one curiosity in today's video announcing the milestone: the closing moments highlight physics-based Rube Goldberg puzzler Casey's Contraptions. As Gamasutra notes, Rovio has not officially purchased Snappy Touch or Mystery Coconut, the developers of the game. The connection between Rovio and the Casey's Contraptions team is currently unclear.

Causing mass destruction is easily the best part of Prototype 2, and a new batch of DLC should help you do that with a little more panache. The "Colossal Mayhem" pack adds a number of new goodies, including a "Thermobaric Boom-Stick" weapon and a number of new powers and skins for Heller, the game's protagonist. The pack is available now for $5 on PSN and Xbox Live.

The next round of DLC, available May 29, has already been announced as well. The "Excessive Force" pack will include a "Viral Infector" grenade launcher and yet more powers and skins. It will also sell for $5.

In other Prototype 2 news, a companion app has been released for Android and iOS. The app allows users to keep track of achievements and in-game collectible thanks to some handy maps that have all collectibles marked. The app itself is free, though it only includes one map, the Yellow Zone. The remaining two maps can be purchased for $2.

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When the "Two Guys from Andromeda," designers of the Space Quest series, announced their plans to reunite for a new sci-fi adventure game, we noted the surprising lack of a Kickstarter drive. Well, surprise! There's a Kickstarter drive now.

The Guys (Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy) are seeking the increasingly industry-standard $500,000 for their PC, Mac, Linux, iPad, and Android Tablet game. They've already gathered an impressive array of voice actors they'd like to be able to pay, including narrator Gary Owens, Rob Paulsen ("NARF!") and Ellen "GLaDOS" McLain.

Rewards for the drive include phyical "special edition" boxes, your name in the credits, t-shirts, collectible Buckazoid coins, and, in the highest tiers, your likeness in alien form on the box and/or in the game. You can even vote on hilarious death sequences.

[Thanks, Jess]

Before there was, uh, that other game called Alien Hominid (and Castle Crashers), there was the original Alien Hominid, a free browser run-and-gun game that debuted on Newgrounds. And that original game has now surpassed 20 million play sessions, The Behemoth has announced.

The brain child of Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin, Alien Hominid was built in Flash and released on Newgrounds way back in 2002. It would eventually be ported to the GameCube and PS2 in 2004 (and Europe would see Xbox and GameBoy Advance ports), then to Xbox Live Arcade in 2007. Currently, The Behemoth is working on Battleblock Theater.

Despite their occasional protests to the contrary, both Nintendo and Sony have seen the pervasive mobile market take chunks of the portable gaming industry. The mobile app space burgeoned as game developers undercut each other constantly, in a race toward 99 cents that set a buck as the de facto price point for the new marketplace. This, in turn, made a massive price disparity between mobile games and their handheld competition, which tends to retail for much more. Why buy a $30 DS game, when you can buy 30 games for the same price?

However, we're now seeing yet another race all the way to the bottom: free. Even as the PC space is largely adopting a free-to-play, microtransaction-driven business model, the shift is similarly occurring in the mobile market. Recent F2P hits have started a run of similar titles, with some paid apps adopting a free-to-play option.

The change began subtly. Rovio's breakout hit Angry Birds may have stuck near the top of the Top Paid Apps charts, but the Top Grossing arena was ruled by little blue men early last year. Smurfs Village spent months as the Top Grossing app, no doubt bolstered by co-marketing for the then-upcoming film. Still, the free app had an inviting price point, and even a few 99 cent purchases per user would easily push it above the revenue for a one-time dollar fee. Then, Tiny Tower became the talk of the iOS App Store blogosphere, using a similar model inspired by social gaming on Facebook, even garnering recognition as Apple's official Game of the Year.

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Google Play, the download service formerly known as Android Market, crossed 15 billion downloads "a few weeks ago," Google told TechCrunch.

There's no information about what percentage of that 15 billion is games, but we can at least look at this as a handy comparison to the nearest competitor: Google has served up 15 billion since October 2008, while iOS apps have been downloaded (as of March) 25 billion times since July 2008.

There's also no information on how many of those downloads have been since the rebranding – we hope the name change hasn't been too confusing for Android users, leaving them desperately searching for the Android Market.

A new update for Skylanders Cloud Patrol, the arcade shooting gallery tie-in for iOS, is available for download right now. The biggest feature of this new update is Retina Display support for the latest iPad.

The other major feature of this update is allowing more Skylanders. Activision specifically calls out "Warnado, Wham-Shell, Camo and all of the Legendary Skylanders collection" in the update notes, though the full list of now-supported Skylanders is something we're trying to track down right now.

Out of the variety of numbers included in this morning's Rovio 2011 financial report, one line stuck out to us as particularly insane: the employee count. Rovio wasn't a very large company before Angry Birds exploded in late 2009, having only produced a couple dozen under-the-radar mobile titles. But by 2011, the need for expansion was clearly there.

Resultantly, employee numbers similarly exploded – from just 28 employees in early 2011 to a whopping 224 at year's end. In case that isn't a dramatic enough statement unto itself, Valve Software employs 293 people, and Valve has quite a few more things to manage. Our biggest fear – a fear that many Rovio employees likely echo – is that the massive upscaling of jobs will result in a massive downscaling should the Angry Birds franchise lose its foothold as king of mobile distractions. Not exactly a new business model in the game industry, unfortunately.

For now at least, Rovio's employing a ton of Finnish devs to craft its bird flingers and related products. Someone's gotta think of these clever marketing vices, you know!

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