2010's been an interesting year for gaming news. Legal battles, slagging matches and broken promises have been par for the course, but there have been plenty of pleasant surprises along the way as well. So, in case you decided on a media black-out for 2010, here's the year's news in short.

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January

The year's gaming got off to a cracking start with the release of 2. Gaining wildly enthusiastic reviews around the world, it prompted many to feel that 2010's 'game of the year' had arrived within weeks of its opening.

But people were less happy with Ubisoft, who introduced their controversial new system. It required players to be connected to the internet at all times, even while playing single-player games. Lose connection, and the game would cut out, revealed.

February

The release of game split opinion rather wildly. Innovative interactive movie, or sub-par storytelling that wasn't suited to a videogame? The ambitious title had as many critics as it did fans, meaning it stuck in the headlines for rather a while.

March

Legal battles commenced in March former types Jason West and Vince Zampella filed a against for unpaid 2 royalties. Activision had previously given the chop to the pair for apparent breach of contract, but West and Zampella weren't happy.

And the government pledged to bring tax relief to the country's games industry. But with an election - and potentially a new government - around the corner, many remained concerned that the tax breaks may never come to light.

What did finally come to light, however, was digital distribution platform Steam's arrival on computers, opening up new doors for Mac gamers. Not a huge number of games are available for Mac, but Valve's own games are among the few that are.

Ubisoft stayed in the bad books, though. 2 was released... and the version's servers promptly crashed. Thanks to Ubi's new DRM, this left thousands of legitimate buyers unable to play their legitimately bought single-player game, while the pirates ploughed through the campaign in their cracked versions without hassle.

April

The Activision/Infinity Ward saga continued, with half the remaining Infinity Ward employees resigning over the situation, 38 of them filing another lawsuit against Activision on similar claims. Acti hit back with a countersuit, saying their actions were justified. The trial's scheduled for 2011.

May

The UK General Election /eventually/ resulted in a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. Rumours began to circulate that the planned tax relief wouldn't be coming into play as a result.

June

June was E3 month, and saw a number of interesting announcements. revealed that it would be bringing to the PlayStation 3, despite having previously expressed concerns about developing for Sony's console. Meanwhile, the was unveiled following an announcement a couple of months previously, and wowed attendees with its glasses-free technology.

Meanwhile, the UK Budget confirmed that games tax relief would not be introduced after all. Trade body got quite angry, and mounted a lengthy campaign to change the Coalition's mind. So far, no luck.

July

Acclaimed developer Irrational announced that it was working on a new game, codenamed 'Project Icarus'. A teaser site appeared online, and it was revealed that the game would be unveiled in August.

Meanwhile, at the Develop Conference in Brighton, Gratuitous Space Battles' solo developer Cliff Harris got rather irritated by interruptions from Epic's Mark Rein during a panel on indie development. Rein suggested that Harris was missing an opportunity by not mounting major PR campaigns. Harris called Rein a few naughty words on his blog. In the end Rein issued a public apology, they had a man-hug and made up, and everything was well with the world.