As for the actual content for this week’s podcast, we cover all sorts of crazy stuff including the idea of whether pricing for downloadable games should drive the price of games downwards, the new Sony Play event and yes, how Fourhman wishes to be swaddled in a comfortable baby bjorn nested on Haygood’s chest.

Wait, that may not have come out as well as it could have, but that is the Aeropause crew for you.  Always making your day more uncomfortable for an hour at a time.

The podcast was mixed, by Stephen “Needing some Baby Bjorn Swaddling” Munn, and features “Droid Girl”, performed by Lazyitis.

Download the podcast from here or subscribe to the podcast using one of the services below. Also make sure to review us on iTunes and now, the Zune Marketplace. If you have not yet, make sure to visit our Facebook Fan Page.

Firefly Studios announced a new pre-order bonus initiative for those that are buying their copy of Stronghold 3 on Steam and it is a pretty decent bonus.  If you pick up Stronghold 3 on Steam, you will get a copy of the first Stronghold completely free.  Not content to stop there, Firefly has also included an exclusive single player mission for Steam, called Tower of London.

Stronghold 3 is the third entry in the Stronghold series and it focuses on building and fortifying your castle against intruders.  The franchise started in 2001 to wide acclaim, and Stronghold 3 looks to continue that tradition.

Look for Stronghold 3 in Summer 2011 on PC, and pre-order on Steam to get your extra bonuses.

So this week on the Aeropodcast, besides being on time for a change, we have a decent discussion about the recent spat between Origin and Steam and what it means to gamers in the long run.  But before we even got to that point, Fourhman and Haygood also dropped into the hatred surrounding the announcement of the newest entry into the Burnout franchise, Burnout CRASH.  Yeah, it does not end well for Criterion on that one.

The podcast was mixed, by Stephen “Podcast?  I’m Watching the X-Men Cartoons!” Munn, and features “Droid Girl”, performed by Lazyitis.

Download the podcast from here or subscribe to the podcast using one of the services below. Also make sure to review us on iTunes and now, the Zune Marketplace. If you have not yet, make sure to visit our Facebook Fan Page.

Ubisoft’s world building title, From Dust was officially given a PC release date of July 27th, 2011, on Steam, the UbiShop, Direct2Drive and other digital retailers for the low price of $14.99.  We also have a new developer diary that shows off some of the gameplay elements that will be used in From Dust, which to me, has a vibe that reminds me of the old school PC title, Populous.

Gamers will use the environment to help guide the indiginous people around the world, as well as using them to stave off natural disasters like floods, fire and more.  Check out the full developer diary after the jump.

With summer now here in full swing, Steam has decided that it is also time to empty our bank accounts of any spare cash, as they have launched the Summer Camp Sale.  Starting today and continuing through July 10th, there will be all kinds of discounts, bundle packs and more that you can pick up.  And as with the Perils of Summer, there are tickets that you can win by unlocking tasks each day.  The more tasks you complete, the more prizes you can obtain, which includes DLC, games and more.

Today’s special deals include:

• Medal of Honor – $10.19
• Recettear: An Item Shop Tale – $5.00
• Oblivion GOTY – $6.80
• Back to the Future The Game – $12.49
• Blood Bowl Legendary Edition – $13.99
• Test Drive Unlimited 2 – $9.99
• Operation Flashpoint – Red River – $29.24
• Lead and Gold – $1.50
• The Witcher 2 – $33.49
• Dawn of War II: Retribution – $14.99
• Bit Trip Runner – $2.50
• Borderlands GOTY – $7.50

Look for daily updates on the sale right here on Aeropause Games.  Oh, and prepare to be broke as hell in a week and a half.

Last week we learned that Star Wars Galaxies will be closing down in December thanks to the end of their license with LucasArts, the end of an 8-year saga that had its ups and downs.

Sony Online Entertainment has announced that their Station Pass, a one-price ticket to all of their PC MMO offerings (except SWG) and one PS2 offering is getting a price cut and prepayment bonuses. Instead of $30/month, $20/month will get you into Everquest, Everquest II, the venerable PS2 Everquest Online Adventures, the quite new DC Universe Online, and member benefits on Free Realms, among other games. Prepay for a year and the price drops down to $15/month, the current premium price of a single MMO.

LEGO Universe has announced a free to play “lite” mode is coming soon, giving players a limited area of the full game to try things out.

Also jumping into the Free to Play pool will be City of Heroes with their Episode 21 release. A new Paragon Market will debut, and subscribers will be dubbed VIP members and receive 400 Paragon Points a month to spend in the marketplace.

While Champions Online went free to play in January, they only recently showed up on Steam with a handful of other Free to Play games.

Any way you look at it there’s something for almost anyone to choose from. Except maybe a sci-fi MMO, hmm.

If you have not found a reason to own Team Fortress 2, and I cannot think of a reason why you wouldn’t, the last impediment seems to have been removed by Valve, as Team Fortress 2 has now gone free 2 play on Steam.  Yep, the popular first person, team based shooter is now available for the low price of free on Steam, and will now solely be supported by microtransactions.

More imporantly is that anyone that creates items for Team Fortress 2 and sells them via the marketplace will get 100% of the revenue, with Steam taking no cut whatsoever.  This is a big deal, as it puts the money in the hands of those that are actually creating content, and not taking one single dime away from them for the fruits of their labor.

Head over to www.steampowered.com and drop Team Fortress 2 into your Steam account today, available on both the PC and Mac clients.  It is well worth it for the endless hours of entertainment you will receive from the game.

Steam does not seem content to rest on their laurels when it comes to the weekend and midweek madness deals.  Starting today, Steam is going to have daily deals that run for 24 hours only, every day from this point forward.  So if you thought you were broke because of Steam before, it is only going to get worse now.  To start things off, the first deal is Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising for $5.00.  Okay, not the best title to start off with, but hey, we all love deals at the end of the day.

This week, Fourhman and Haygood decided that it was time to discuss the big release of April, by disecting the ins and outs of Portal 2.  We talk about plot points, what we thought of the puzzles, the voice acting and the weird stuff that started to come about midway through the game.  Also, find out if we towed the line that most reviewers have taken with the game, or if we felt it was a bit overrated.

We also had our weekly, “What the Hell’s Up with PSN?” segment, with the missed deadline as of Tuesday and if it is affecting the userbase.  NOTE: PSN did come up over the weekend after this discussion.

The podcast was mixed, by Stephen “PSN IS BACK ON BITCHEZ” Munn, and features “Droid Girl”, performed by Lazyitis.

Download the podcast from here or subscribe to the podcast using one of the services below. Also make sure to review us on iTunes and now, the Zune Marketplace. If you have not yet, make sure to visit our Facebook Fan Page.

It is always nice to see developers use creative means to catch pirates in the act, rather than using some form of obstructive DRM that happers access to the game you have purchased.  The Godfather did it years ago, where you could not exit a car once you had entered it if you were using a pirated version of the game.  Batman: Arkham Asylum publisher Eidos actually caught pirates posting for support in their forums, wanting to know why they could not use the glide function to stay out of the poison gas at the beginning of the game.    Garry Newman, creator of the very popular Garry’s Mod on Steam has decided to add some creativity of his own in regards to sniffing out pirates who have downloaded his game rather than pay the $10 price tag for the program on Steam.

Garry added a new error message that only pops up on pirated versions of the game, and it produces an error log that just happens to capture the user’s SteamID.  Of course, emboldened pirates have gone to the Internet posting these logs, complete with their SteamID, which Garry is more than happy to turn over to Steam, which will result in a permaban for that Steam account, including all the other games that might be attached to it.

I love this approach, as it is really sad that someone would pirate a $10 game, rather than pay the small price tag.  I mean the game has gone on sale on Steam several times for $2.50 (which is when I picked it up), so I have a hard time sympathizing with someone that feels they are being robbed by Garry Newman.  Pirates – you decided to use the program illegally, so shame on you.  Pay the freaking $10 already!

via Garry Newman’s Twitter Feed