Chillingo founders Joe Wee and Chris Byatte announced jointly on EA's blog the launch of a new indie developer program that highlights quality independently developed mobile titles through the company's third party mobile publishing services. The program is called 100% Indie and its core is located at www.100percentindie.com.

This week's show focuses on indie developers and an excellent editorial on various bills aimed at video game violence. This week hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about an indie game that got a Canadian gentleman fired from his day job, another indie developer calling Kickstarter stretch goals "bullsh*t," and a discussion on this Popcults.com editorial. All this and the latest GamePolitics poll results await in Episode 39.

According to data from IT24.se, Mojang generated revenue of nearly $240 million in 2012, with $100 million of that cash coming from license fees. Mojang's only product is the ultra popular Minecraft, though it is available on Xbox Live, PC, and mobile devices (iOS, Android). The information comes from Thomas Arnroth, a Swedish author who is writing a book about Mojang called "A Year With Mojang: Minecraft Behind The Scenes."

It looks like those indie and professional game developers that like Microsoft's cross-platform XNA development platform will no longer be supported. An internal Microsoft email reveals that XNA Game Studio is basically dead. The email reveals that Microsoft plans to "retire" XNA and DirectX from its 'MVP Award Program' - a reward initiative for developers who wish to become evangelists for various technologies.

A Canadian tax department worker who developed and released a game that made fun of his day job as a customer service representative now finds himself out of work. Apparently his bosses at the Canada Revenue Agency didn't find his game all that amusing. That game is called I Get This Call Every Day and, as anyone who handles a phone support role (or any other profession where you have to directly deal with people) can attest, people aren't always that fun to deal with...

Indie game developer Andy Schatz thinks that stretch goals for all these Kickstarter crowd funding campaigns are "bullshit." Speaking recently to Penny Arcade Report, Schatz said that Kickstarter stretch goals are total bullshit and can lead to unnecessary new game features, the developer of the upcoming indie game Monaco said that the use of "stretch goals" - the promise of more game features if a certain amount of money is generated

Brighton, England-based publisher Lace Mamba Global has responded to recent accusations by developer CBE Software that it broke its publishing agreements for J.U.L.I.A. and J.U.L.I.A. Untold when it failed to deliver money the two companies "mutually agreed upon" or royalty payments. The developer claimed that it tried to resolve the issue with the publisher amicably but gave up on that after it received no response from the publisher.

Eurogamer reports that indie developer teamPixel has launched a crowdfunding appeal on Indiegogo to purchase the rights to THQ's cult classic space strategy series Homeworld. While Sega now owns the studio that originally made the game, team Pixel hopes that it can raise some funds to secure the original game and re-release it on Steam and Good Old Games.

Organizers of the Global Game Jam say that this year's event is expected to break previous participation records, with over 300 locations in 60 countries with "tens of thousands of people" planning on participating over the coming weekend in the fifth annual GGJ event. The 48-hour long game creation marathon is taking place January 25−27, 2013 beginning in New Zealand on Friday, Jan 25th at 5pm local time. One the Jam starts other time zones will join in as they hit the 5 P.M. starting point.

The organizers of the Boston Festival of Indie Games have announced that September 14 will be the magical date for this year's event to be held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge, Ma. The event, which is free and open to the general public, is a celebration of the very best indie games. The second annual event is presented and facilitated by MIT Game Lab and Boston Indies.

Last month, DayZ creator Dean Hall said he was very depressed by all the bad press surrounding competing zombie game The War Z.

As part of an update to reveal what they have been up to since the release of the Legend of Grimrock (including a release of an editor that allowed players to make mods for the game - 450 are available as part of Steam Workshop as of this writing), developer Almost Human revealed that its game has sold over 600,000 copies since its release. Of course much of the success of the old-school first-person RPG had to do with being included in the pay-what-you-want DRM-free Humble Indie Bundle 7.

Thatgamecompany's popular PS3 title Journey has been nominated for 11 Dice Summit Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) announced today. Nerdist founder Chris Hardwick will host the video game award show at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas on Feb. 7, while Machinima will live stream the awards show. A total of 63 games were nominated for various awards across various platforms including console, mobile, web, portable and PC platforms received nominations this year.

Are the various pay-what-you-want bundles too rich for your blood?  Well how does "free" sound?

Javier and Carlos Cabrera, the indie developers behind the cyberpunk text adventure CYPHER (yes, text adventure) have spotlighted a handful of their peers' free games and are making them available for free in a completely free bundle.

Did I mention they are free?

Why, you may ask?  Who cares?  Free games!  But if you really want to know:

According to indie UK game developer Mat Dickie, World Wrestling Entertainment has managed to get his wresting game, Wrestling Revolution, pulled from the Google Play Store. While the details on how the WWE accomplished this remain unknown, Dickie claims that the world's biggest professional wrestling organization had it pulled because it was doing better than their game, WWE WrestleFest.

Indie Royale has announced the Replay Bundle Vol. 1 today, offering a variety of games such games as Nuclear Dawn, Gemini Rue, Defense Grid: The Awakening, Soulcaster and Soulcaster 2 for a very low price. The bundle also includes the soundtracks for Soulcaster 1 and 2, a remixed soundtrack for Soulcaster 2, and six DLC goodies for Defense Grid (the Borderlands DLC, Resurgence map packs 1 - 4, and You Monster DLC). The extra stuff is only available on Steam.

A game that explores the Syrian civil war, Endgame: Syria, has been rejected by Apple for distribution on its App Store.  A press release from the game's developer reveals that Apple's App Store guidelines forbid games that "solely target a specific race, culture, a real government or corporation, or any other real entity."

The Independent Games Festival (IGF) juries have announced the Main Competition finalists for the 15th annual awards - nominating nearly 30 independent game titles from around the world. This year's finalists were picked by expert juries, following "playthroughs and recommendations" of 580+ IGF entries from over 200 top independent game experts, according to organizers.

Melbourne Australia-based indie game developer Endgame Studios is tired of the high prices that gamers in the region have to pay for video games (compared to Europe and other regions) and has decided to voice their opinion about how much they think it sucks. In a post entitled "A stand against exorbitant Aussie game prices!," the studio says that Australian gamers are asked to pay 50 - 100 percent more than American consumers due to - according to publishers and distributors - currency exchange rates.

And just like that, Humble Indie Bundle 7 comes to a close with 395,917 bundles sold for a grand total of $2,650,204.55.

The pot will be divvied up among Humble Bundle, the games' developers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Child's Play charity according to the whims of the individual buyers.

The bundles sold at an average purchase price of $6.69 and break down by platform as follows:

Mutant Mudds and Dementium developer Jools Watsham is concerned about the potential of rampant software piracy on the Nintendo 3DS after a hacker claimed that he (or she?) was able to take full control of the hand-held system, according to Eurogamer.

Runic Games has hit a milestone with its PC isometric action RPG, Torchlight II: one million sales. A tweet from the official Runic Games Twitter account revealed the milestone.

"We had an amazing 2012, and proud to say that Torchlight2 has sold over one million units! Thank you! Happy New Year's Eve everyone :)," Runic Games confirmed.

The Kickstarter for Barkley 2, the follow-up to the 2008 hit indie RPG Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, closed its crowd funding campaign just over the amount it needed to get fully funded, reports Polygon.

Humble Indie Bundle 7 has broken another milestone this week - surpassing the $2 million sales mark. As of this writing, the pay-what-you-want DRM-free bundle has made $2,174,171.12 from the sale of 332,411 bundles. Yesterday organizers of the bundle added three new games: The Basement Collection, Cave Story+, and Offspring Fling - for those willing to pay more than the average price.

Mojang's popular world building game franchise Minecraft had a wonderful Christmas / holiday season, according to tweets from company co-founder and Minecraft creator Markus 'Notch' Persson. According to Notch, the company sold 453,000 copies of the game across all platforms during the Christmas season.

"Across all platforms, Minecraft sold 453k copies on dec 24! Wowzers! <3," he tweeted.

He corrected himself in a follow-up tweet shortly thereafter:

Yesterday we highlight the Twitter-based RPG called Tweeria in the ECA Newsletter. Described as a "lazy Twitter role-playing game" by its creators, Tweeria uses replies, retweets and activity to create Tweeria weapons, movements and attacks. Basically all you have to do to play the game is to be social on Twitter.

In a short amount of time, the Humble Indie Bundle 7 has already generated well over a million dollars in sales since its launch earlier in the week. The latest pay-what-you-want bundle includes The Binding of Isaac (plus Wrath of the Lamb DLC), Closure, Shank 2, Snapshot, and documentary film Indie Game: The Movie. Paying more than the average price will get you the old-school RPG Legend of Grimrock and the strategy-RPG-tower defense hybrid, Dungeon Defenders.

DayZ creator Dean Hall says that all the bad press surrounding the release of rival title The War Z is so depressing that he considered quitting the industry because of it. Speaking to the Reddit community, Hall said the whole ordeal made him "pretty depressed" and made him "seriously question" his desire to be a part of the industry. He also said that the media inquiries and interview requests have caused him to retreat slightly.

Update: The Humble Indie Bundle 7 has already generated $583,036.16 on the sale of 93,430 bundles. Pretty impressive if you consider that when we wrote the original story it was just over $50,000!

Indie Royale has launched its Xmas Bundle 2.0, offering a pay-what-you-want bundle just in time for the holidays.