GameStop is building its digital distribution business, having seen a 158 percent growth year-over-year in the third quarter, with strong returns thanks to customers who don't use credit cards.

"70 percent of our sales for DLC is non credit card. So that's a customer either paying with cash, GameStop gift card or trade credit," Steve Nix, manager of PC digital distribution for GameStop told us at DICE 2012. "Think about all those Call of Duty Elite subscriptions and all those customers who aren't using a credit card to purchase them."

"We're actually growing [the downloadable content] market, because about half our DLC customers never purchased DLC previously. So, for game developers that want to sell more DLC, we're introducing gamers to DLC for the first time in our stores."

Nix recognized that it may seem odd the retail chain's brick and mortar stores are so successful selling digital content. It's clearly servicing customers who don't have credit cards or don't want to use credit cards, but still wish to extend their favorite games. He "absolutely" feels this same situation is what's pushing their in-store PC full game sales, despite PC gamers having so many online purchasing options.

Since Gamestop purchased Stardock's Impulse digital distribution store, we wanted to know if it would continue to pursue Goo, which would have essentially created a "used PC games market."

Nixing the idea, he said "We don't see a lot of interest in that model from our publishing partners." He recognizes customers would be interested, but is not really seeing publisher support for such a model.

Game Rating Board, South Korea's premiere games rating board, has listed another entry in the Magic: The Gathering series of games, presumably for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 again. As things look, Stainless Games and Wizards of the Coast have no plans of stopping the annual installments.

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise: both the original Duels of the Planeswalkers and Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 performed well, the former having sold over 500,000 copies, while the latter was one of PSN's top performers last year. Considering both previous installments launched in the summer, we're betting we'll be hearing about Duels 2013 soon.

You remember Warhorse, right? The studio from Prague that's making that unannounced RPG for those unannounced next-gen consoles? Well it turns out the studio is employing Crytek's third CryEngine iteration for said unnamed project, according to a press release issued by Crytek earlier today.

Warhorse exec producer Martin Klima explained his studio's logic behind employing CryEngine 3 by saying, "We looked at every major technology out there and CryEngine 3 suits our needs perfectly." The Warhorse folks didn't offer any more information about the RPG in production, unfortunately, and we're betting it'll be some time before we hear anything more solid on the seemingly very early in production game. Thankfully we've got these infinite dragons and quests to deal with in Skyrim in the meantime!

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Much like Prince becoming the "Love Symbol" back in better times (the mid-'90s), Namco Bandai Holdings announced plans to spin off its existing internal development teams into a separate company (that is also still totally part of Namco, by the way). The new company will be named "Namco Bandai Studio" and will comprise the the approximately 1,000 employees who are already part of Namco.

The organizational change was spurred by Namco's interest in speedier dev times and tighter cohesion between disparate dev teams. The changeover won't go into effect until April 2, so you've still got at least a month to snag some classic Namco Bandai Holdings collectibles* while you still can!

(*Note: Those don't actually exist. Unless you're a crazy person, of course.)

The Steam forums and database was hacked in November, and Valve is still investigating the breach. In a new note to Steam users, Valve head Gabe Newell announced that "it is probable that the intruders obtained a copy of a backup file with information about Steam transactions between 2004 and 2008." The file contained user names and email addresses, and encrypted billing addresses and credit-card information, but it did not include passwords, Newell said.

So far there has been no evidence that credit cards or billing addresses have been compromised from the attack, but Steam users should pay close attention to their accounts and keep Steam Guard on, Newell said. Read Gabe's full update below, which has been sent to all Steam gamers as well.

Update: The headline previously included the phrases "credit card info" and "at risk," which seemed alarmist to some readers. It has been updated and glasses of warm milk passed around to everyone. Enjoy.

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Vodafone's got a quite a deal for UK customers looking to pick up a 3G PlayStation Vita. The store is currently offering a free 4GB Vita memory card with the £280 purchase of a 3G Vita. Furthermore, if customers "top off" their 3G sim card for £5, Vodafone will throw in a copy of Wipeout 2048 and 250MB of mobile data for a month.

The memory card is bound to come in handy, given that the proprietary cards are required for all PSN downloads and many Vita titles -- like Wipeout 2048, for example.

The co-op-centric Star Trek title unveiled at last year's E3 has found itself a publisher. Namco Bandai will be "co-publishing" and distributing the Digital Extremes-developed space romp alongside Paramount Digital Entertainment sometime during the first quarter of 2013.

The Q1 2013 window puts this immediately before the May 17 theatrical release of the next Abrams Trek film -- marketing synergy that may explain the game's quiet delay from its original 2012 release window. We like Abrams' take on the Trek universe just fine, but we can't help but wish for someone to throw this much money at remaking Star Trek 25th Anniversary for the NES.

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After our special DICE episode yesterday--which you should totally go listen to right now--the regular show is back. Richard, JC and Ben discuss the week's news in the first segment, and some big things are afoot. Good news: Tim Schafer and the crew at Double Fine have crowd-sourced more than $1 million for a new adventure game. Bad news: Those looking for a way to play their PSP UMD titles on PS Vita will have to repurchase them.

In the second segment, Richard is joined by GameSpot's Kevin VanOrd and Game Informer's Philip Kollar to discuss Big Huge Games's sprawling role-playing game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Spoiler: It's pretty good.

Part 1 (1:03) - The news
Part 2 (24:24) - Review Roundtable: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

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Host: Richard Mitchell (@SenseiRAM)
Guests: Kevin VanOrd (@fiddlecub) and Philip Kollar (@pkollar)
Producer: Jonathan Downin (@jonathandownin - Game Thing Daily)
Production Coordinator: Richard Mitchell
Music: Trash80 and Broke for Free

View the full guest list, news topics, and stream the show after the break.

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We've had assurances of The Last Guardian's continued existence, but in the absence of empirical proof we could always use one more. 1UP received a rather authoritative one from Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida at DICE, who said he's "been seeing it."

Yoshida reports that, after leaving Sony and becoming a contractor, producer Fumito Ueda continues working on the game as normal. His departure was "an arrangement so he could focus on the creative side," Yoshida said. "But his work and his presence on that team never changed, so it was just more a contractual rearrangement, and that was taken [by many] as 'he left.'"

Ueda is still in the office, "probably one of the people who works the longest hours," Yoshida said. Progress is still taking place on The Last Guardian, "but slow progress."

Like the sun rising in the East or our daily tribute to the almighty caffeine deity, we've come to expect writing a post at least once a week announcing yet another award for Skyrim. This week is no different, with Skyrim taking top honors at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences 15th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards in Las Vegas last evening.

The studio took home five awards in total for the dragon-infested, open-world RPG, alongside fellow multiple award winners Uncharted 3 and Portal 2. We've dropped a full list of winners after the break, but before you head there allow us to be outraged for you that Skyward Sword didn't win any awards. Outrage! How could they? Etc.

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Sony has confirmed development of LittleBigPlanet Karting. The news comes via a tweet from Sony's PlayStation account, which states quite simply the game is in development and that the publisher hopes to share more information "soon."

Reports were circulating earlier this week -- though they have since been pulled -- that the game would feature PlayStation Move support and a Move racing wheel peripheral, perhaps in the style of Nintendo's massively successful Mario Kart Wii.

Whatever becomes of the final product, the existence of LittleBigPlanet Karting is an interesting development considering that Sony already has a flagship kart racer, Modnation Racers (pictured).

PlayStation Blog Europe reintroduces us to two Vita games/apps that you might have forgotten about: Frobisher Says and t@g. Frobisher Says is an absurd microgame collection in which up to 8 players pass a Vita around and take on weird tasks assigned by the title character. Examples include "poke an otter with a stick", "deliver my pudding on a toy train", and "smile at some ladies (but not at the badgers!)" As all minigame collections do, this uses all of the Vita's control features.

T@g is an AR app that lets you leave graffiti in real-world locations, which other Vita users can view through the app. Doing so earns you -- we can't believe we're about to type this -- currency called "t@ggits."

Frobisher will be a free download for European pre-orderers this month, and be available for everyone else (in Europe) in May. T@g will be on PSN in Europe in May and can only be used with the 3G Vita (because of its GPS use).

Which giant company has the rights to the fan-created, community-promoted word "Dota?" That's up to the courts now. Blizzard has filed a Notice of Opposition with the US Patent and Trademark Office, seeking to block Valve's registration of the word. The word has been used exclusively in reference to a (mod of a) Blizzard game, the document explains. "By virtue of that use, the DOTA mark has become firmly associated in the mind of consumers with Blizzard, including to signify a highly popular scenario or variant of one of Blizzard's best-selling computer games, Warcraft III."

Valve, the document goes on to claim, hasn't used the word for anything yet. There's also a lot of history of Warcraft III, which is a really strange thing to read in a legal document. The case is in discovery now, with pretrial procedures taking place throughout this year and into next. We hope this court proceeding doesn't delay either of the games, as those companies are quite capable of delaying their games on their own.

You might think that Ghost Recon Online's three classes are Ghost, Recon, and Online, but you'd be wrong! They're actually the more commonly named Assault, Specialist, and Recon, and the video above will walk you through the different weapons, abilities, and upgrades that each class has available. You actually earn experience for each class as you play, so if you really want to master the game, you'll need to choose and play all three.

Ubisoft has also shared that the free-to-play game is getting a closed beta, starting on March 5, which you can sign up for by applying over on the official website.

Rocksteady Studios co-founder and game director Sefton Hill shared his recipe for making Arkham games at DICE 2012. Beyond the basic ingredients listed, all you'll need is a major license, a supportive publisher and millions to fund the project.

Sefton's Arkham recipe:

• Make the game instantly fun and accessible. "We believe it's our job to entertain," Hill said, adding that the free-flow combat of Arkham was meant to instantly convey the feeling of being Batman.
• Deep core mechanics, with a contant, incremental challenge to maintain engagement. "We developed combat by introducing new enemy types ... it keeps giving you more, it keeps challenging you."
• Complementary Orthogonal Design. Boiled down, it's that systems like navigation, combat and story "all have their own distinct and strong uses." Essentially, he encouraged designing complementary design elements that don't step on each other.
• Authenticity. "The restraints of the character define the character." Hill said certain elements may seem like a pain the ass, but that one must embrace those constraints. The fact that Batman can't kill anyone was something the team had to maintain at all times. "It stops us from falling back on a lot of game cliches." Takeway: Celebrate and explore the limitations of characters and what makes them unique.

So, there you go. Oh, you'll also need an engine. We're sure if you write a really nice letter to the guys at Epic, they'll let you license the Unreal Engine at a good price.