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jones_supa writes: With some high-profile releases on the horizon, ZeniMax Media is expanding with a new studio in Frankfurt, Germany. Posted via Bethesda blog, reads the official ZeniMax statement: "As part of our continued global expansion, ZeniMax Media has opened (and is actively hiring for) a new technology development studio in Frankfurt – home to our German publishing operations. This team, an extension of id Software, will focus their efforts on idTech for DOOM and other titles under development at ZeniMax-owned studios." New positions are expected to pop up at ZeniMax's job listings.

westlake writes: Valve has abandoned its attempt to introduce paid mods to Skyrim on Steamworks, following furious and unrelenting complaints by the gaming community that did not spare Gabe Newell. Valve said, "[O]ur main goals were to allow mod makers the opportunity to work on their mods full time if they wanted to, and to encourage developers to provide better support to their mod communities. We thought this would result in better mods for everyone, both free & paid." Bethesda had similar goals, saying, "There are certainly other ways of supporting modders, through donations and other options. We are in favor of all of them. One doesn't replace another, and we want the choice to be the community’s. Yet, in just one day, a popular mod developer made more on the Skyrim paid workshop than he made in all the years he asked for donations."

jjp9999 writes "Bethesda announced they're bringing Kinect support to Skyrim. It doesn't sound like this will include motion detection. Rather, it will be around voice commands — tons of voice commands. It supports dragon shouts, trading, navigation, switching weapons, and a whole lot of other features that usually require you to assign hotkeys or to sort through menus. They also gave a brief hint at new content, stating they've 'been hard at work on creating the first set of game add-ons that will be exclusive to the Xbox 360. This additional content will add new quests, locations, features, and much more to the world of Skyrim.'"

Andrew Smith writes "John Carmack has an article up on the Bethesda blog discussing the iPhone/iPad version of RAGE, which is said to run at an impressive 60fps. 'Managing over a gig of media made dealing with flash memory IO and process memory management very important, and I did a lot of performance investigations to figure things out. Critically, almost all of the data is static, and can be freely discarded. iOS does not have a swapfile, so if you use too much dynamic memory, the OS gives you a warning or two, then kills your process. The bane of iOS developers is that "too much" is not defined, and in fact varies based on what other apps (Safari, Mail, iPod, etc) that are in memory have done. If you read all your game data into memory, the OS can’t do anything with it, and you are in danger. However, if all of your data is in a read-only memory mapped file, the OS can throw it out at will.' And a tweet by Carmack yesterday suggests that an Android version of RAGE is on the way too."

An anonymous reader sends news that the beta tag has come off of id's Quake Live, and they've added two subscription plans to monetize the game. The announcement asserts early and often that the game's current "Standard" play options will remain free-to-play. The lower subscription tier gets extra maps, a new Freeze Tag game mode, and clan creation abilities, among other things, for $2 per month. The higher plan, which is twice as expensive, grants players those benefits plus the capability to create their own private servers.

On Thursday, Bethesda announced that for the 15th anniversary of the Elder Scrolls series, they were releasing The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall for free. They aren't providing support for the game anymore, but they posted a detailed description of how to get the game running in DOSBox. Fans of the series can now easily relive the experience of getting completely lost in those enormous dungeons. Save often.

Earlier this week, Bethesda released Fallout 3 after a long campaign of defending and protecting the game's reputation from claims that it contained inappropriate content. Ads for the game in Washington DC's subway system were pulled after they upset some touchy travelers over the depiction of post-apocalyptic Washington landmarks. Shortly before the game's release, early trailers were removed as well. Earlier this year, the game was banned in Australia for its in-game use of morphine, causing the drug's name to be changed to Med-X. On the issue of sensitive content, Bethesda's Emil Pagliarulo wrote in Edge Magazine about the design decision to disallow the killing of children in the game. Gamasutra ran an opinion piece on the same subject, and the Washington Post discusses the role of Washington DC in Fallout 3. On the DRM front, the game does come with SecuROM, but Bethesda says it's only used for a disc check. Reviews for the game have been overwhelmingly positive so far, despite reports of bugs with the save system and occasional lock-ups.

Closing out an era, Bethesda Softworks will be bringing the final piece of downloadable content out for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Rogues and mages both have their lairs, and this newest addition is for the melee-types: The Fighter's Stronghold. Starting this coming Monday it will be available on the 360 and for PC, and for one week only it will be free for the taking. They're also hoping to bring this content to the PS3 version of the game. "Since we're talking about DLC, I thought I'd update you with what's going on with the PS3 version of Oblivion. We are close, very close to working something out to bring Shivering Isles to PS3 owners. That may be in downloadable form via PSN, or as a standalone retail disc, or both. I can't say definitively yet that it will happen, and I definitely can't say when. But it's looking good, and hopefully we'll have good news soon. Don't have anything I can tell you about any other DLC, but Shivering Isles is the one we get asked about all the time, so I at least wanted to update folks on that."

This past weekend Bethesda released a few new tidbits of information about Fallout 3. Game journalists were invited to an event with the production team, and came away with a much better sense of what the title is like. "Fortunately, you never had to experience the horrors of a nuclear holocaust. Unfortunately, your mother died during childbirth, and you were raised by your father (in a very scientific fashion). Your early, developmental years play an important part of the character creation process and double as a basic game play tutorial. The G.O.A.T. (Generalized Occupational Aptitude TEST) determines what some of your starting skills and skills will be. Physical, artistic attributes can be customized as well. Much like the first level of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, you can manually alter your starting stats and skills before you venture forth." For an epic amount of coverage on the game, Bethesda's new blog has two posts with copious links to previews and hands-on pieces.

This past weekend Bethesda released a few new tidbits of information about Fallout 3. Game journalists were invited to an event with the production team, and came away with a much better sense of what the title is like. "Fortunately, you never had to experience the horrors of a nuclear holocaust. Unfortunately, your mother died during childbirth, and you were raised by your father (in a very scientific fashion). Your early, developmental years play an important part of the character creation process and double as a basic game play tutorial. The G.O.A.T. (Generalized Occupational Aptitude TEST) determines what some of your starting skills and skills will be. Physical, artistic attributes can be customized as well. Much like the first level of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, you can manually alter your starting stats and skills before you venture forth." For an epic amount of coverage on the game, Bethesda's new blog has two posts with copious links to previews and hands-on pieces.