A fan of the upcoming Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was so impressed with developer DICE’s efforts to include dedicated server support in the title he sent the company a check for $60.00.

The $60.00 was sent in lieu of Eddie from New Jersey (the letter writer) using the funds to purchase Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which is opting to use a matchmaking service in place of dedicated servers for PC users. Eddie suggested to DICE that they use the funds to aid development on the upcoming game.

DICE posted a copy of the letter and check on their Battlefield website (thanks Joystiq), thanking Eddie and writing, “It's moments like this that make all the late nights and weekends of crunching to make the best game possible all worth it.”

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is due out March 2, 2010 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

A Swedish youth advocate, who earlier this year likened World of Warcraft addictiveness to crack cocaine, is the recipient of a profile piece in an online news site in which he claims game addiction is a problem of “pandemic proportions.”

The article goes on to note that, in light of its WOW/cocaine correlation, the Youth Care Foundation and Sven Rollenhagen have been “flooded with inquires from across the globe looking for more information about how to address the problem.” The requests prompted the group to translate their materials into English and to create the Centre of Computer Game Addiction.

Rollenhagen added:

These are smart guys, highly intelligent, capable of being anything – doctors, engineers, whatever. But they find themselves tempted by computer games and end up just wasting time in front of a screen.

New anti-piracy regulations implemented by the Swedish government triggered a 30% drop in web traffic on the day they came into effect, reports AFP.

Some Swedish experts maintain that illegal downloading accounts for 50-75% of all web traffic and the slump indicates that would-be file-sharers were deterred by the tougher laws, which became effective on April 1st.

Under the new regulations, copyright holders may forces ISPs to give up user data on file-sharers. This information could then form the basis for legal action against individual Swedes.

Swedish Games Industry Association spokesman Per Stroemback praised the new law:

[It is] a historic example of effective legislation... No one could predict such a dramatic decrease in illegal traffic and not only that there's also been a huge increase in the legal [download] services.

However, Christian Engstroem (left), who serves as deputy leader of Sweden's Pirate Party as well as a member of the European Parliament, argued that Internet users will be unjustly punished by the new regulations:

This is a completely unequal law, where ordinary people will become scapegoats and will be asked for hundreds of thousands or millions of (Swedish) crowns by the industry. I don't think it will be efficient in the long run. I believe the traffic is going to climb up again after some months.

-Doug Buffone, ECA Intern

If you're a Swede who has unloaded an unwanted MMO account for a few extra Kronas, the taxman would like a word.

On the other hand, if you're an American who has sold your account to a Swede, the taxman would still like a word.

GameCulture points out a Stockholm News report detailing efforts by Swedish tax officials to come to grips with e-commerce. To that end, the Skatteverket is even taking a look at small fish like gamers:

The Swedish Tax Agency hold that you have to pay tax for selling an avatar from a computer game. The agency has investigated the trading in avatars during a 14 month period and found the advertised sum of avatars for sale by Swedes to be 662 million SEK. But no one has ever declared any income for trading in avatars to the Tax Agency.

But even U.S. citizens could be subject to Swedish taxation on such virtual transactions, according to the Economics of Virtual Worlds blog:

[Note that] a sale has taken place in Sweden if the seller is a Swedish trader who sells [to]... a private person in Sweden or another EC [European Community] country. A sale from a foreign trader to a Swedish trader has also [legally] taken place in Sweden. The same applies if a trader from outside the EC sells services to Swedish private persons.

Thus, even U.S. citizens are subject to Swedish taxes in virtual worlds, as long as one of the participants is Swedish. The implication is that if similar tax rules are adopted around the globe, U.S. citizens could end up owing taxes to Sweden, Japan, South Korea, and other nations (depending on which and how many worlds they are part of) – all because they played some games...

Skatteverket states that gamers should send invoices to each other. It’s unreasonable stuff they’re talking about. The [game] users [typically] don’t know who they’re interacting with...

Although the operators of popular BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay were convicted in a Swedish court last week, their lawyer is demanding a retrial.

As reported by the Associated Press, Attorney Peter Althin said that new information shows that the judge in the trial, Tomas Norstrom (left), is a member of several anti-piracy groups. Of his plan to seek a new trial, Althin said:

I will point that out in my appeal, then the Court of Appeal will decide if the district court decision should be set aside and the case revisited.

While Judge Norstrom denied any improper influences, Pirate Bay defendant Peter Sunde said that the case had become a "farce."

Meanwhile, ZeroPaid names three pro-copyright organization which Judge Norstrom belongs to and cites a comment by Eric Bylander, Associate Professor of Procedural Law at the School of Gothenburg:

It is very clear that [Judge Norstrom] never should have taken the case.

A youth advocate in Sweden has likened World of Warcraft to crack cocaine in terms of its supposed addictiveness and the Swedish National Institute of Public Health has endorsed that view.

As reported by the UK's Daily Mail, Sven Rollenhagen of Sweden's Youth Care Foundation has authored a report describing WoW in ominous terms:

The most dangerous game on the market... There is not a single case of game addiction that we have worked with in which World of Warcraft has not played a part...

It is the crack cocaine of the computer game world. Some will play it till they drop.

Four Swedish men who founded the popular torrent site The Pirate Bay face criminal accusations today in a Stockholm courtroom.

As reported by afterdawn, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstroem are charged with "promoting violations by other people of laws protecting royalties." The quartet is also being sued for US$17.6 million by the video game, movie and music industries.

Meanwhile the Guardian reports that The Pirate Bay crew has worked to create a festive air around the court case:

The Pirate Bay team held a press conference on Sunday complete with a small brass band, which they have posted on mobile video site Bambuser. In fact, there is a 'spectrial' channel on Bambuser to follow breaking developments...

While the hashtag is useful, some of the best Twitter coverage is coming from Sofia, a Swede in San Francisco. Due to the 140-character limit on Twitter, she is using a abbreviations, which she explains on her blog. Blogger Zondron also has a good list of links for live audio feeds and blogger coverage of the trial.

However, a lawyer for the film biz isn't buying into the fun. Monique Wadsted said:

It's not a political trial, it's not the trial that has as its purpose to shut down some kind of people's library or to prohibit any file-sharing technique. It's a trial that regards four persons that have conducted the commercial activity, earning a lot of money in providing the possibility for others to make pirate copies of big commercial productions, movies, music and popular computer games.

The operators of The Pirate Bay face up to two years in prison as well as large fines if convicted.