According to several rumors, the fact that their website and forums are currently offline and their dismal IRC channel topic (” Andrew Waterman broke CAL….blame him and Angel Munoz”), there is reason to believe that the Cyberathlete Amateur League is no more. In November of last year, CAL & CPL were purchased by a United Emirates Firm under the name “CPL Holdings Group, LTD.”  Kevin Delaney, a staff member of CAL states:

All CAL staff have been locked out of the site by the new owner and CAL and its leagues sit in limbo. Please feel free to leave your feedback with the new owner at scott.valencia@gmail.com. All matches MUST NOT BE PLAYED. They are on hold until further notice. We have no idea if/when it will return.

It is unsure whether this may be the end of CAL as we know it, or just a restructuring of CAL by its new owners. Either way, this has raised many concerns amongst the competitive and esports gaming community. While CAL is often criticized for being unprofessional and unorganized, it has introduced tens of thousands of players into competitive online gaming.

The Cyberathlete Amateur League first started back in 2001 with a single Counter-Strike division. Since then it has attracted hundreds of thousands of users and clans to tout their online gaming prowess in clan matches. Today (well, earlier today), CAL is a host to dozens of divisions for different games and formats: from Counter-Strike, to DotA, to Left 4 Dead. There has not been an official statement from CPL Holdings Group, LLC., or NewWorld.com, Inc., the previous owners of CALeague and the Cyberathlete Professional League.

Update: CPL Holdings Group’s CAL site states that the CALeague site is just being moved to a new data center in the United Kingdom (although most of their members reside in the US..). Although much relief comes from this news — our minds are boggled of how careless it was of the new owners to not notify any of CAL volunteers or members of the situation.

Well, we can’t say we didn’t see it coming but Tabula Rasa, Richard Garriott’s MMORPG, will be coming to an end in February of next year according to Edge Online . This news comes in just days after Garriott announced he will be quitting his job at NCSoft. Which he, incidentally, announced when he had arrived from his trip to the International Space Station — everything must seem insignificant when you’ve just come back from space.

The majority of Tabula Rasa’s team will be laid off as the date approaches. NCSoft has claimed that Tabula Rasa will be completely dismantled — there is absolutely no chance of the game coming back - the decision has been made. The game will be free for its last month, from January to February. Loyal players of Tabula Rasa (i.e. the people who didn’t cancel before today’s date) will be receiving some extra perks from NCSoft including two three month subscriptions to Lineage II and City of Heroes, among other things. Users who prepaid for subscriptions will get their money back, of course.

Back in August, the Tabula Rasa crew just missed getting the axe during that around of layoffs at NCSoft. Since then rumors of Tabula Rasa getting shut down have been rampant - whilst NCSoft negated all of them at every point. According to NCSoft it was a recent decision — at the time they were trying to keep the game up as long as possible.

RIP Tabula Rasa, 2007-2008.

According to Ars Technica, EA will be releasing two expansions for Spore. The first one, currently labeled as Creepy & Cute Parts Pack will provide over 100 new parts to the Creature Creator. Said expansion will be available to both people with the full game and those who only have the creature creator.

The second, still unnamed, will expand upon the Space stage of Spore. The expansion will allow you to beam yourself down to alien planets to interact with and explore the planet to complete missions. The second expansion will also include the Adventure Creator which allows users to create and share custom missions with other players. Current, the space stage in Spore is often criticized for being repetitive and boring, hopefully this should mix it up amongst players.

Today, Variety reported that EA has contracted Zack Snyder, creator of the the 300 movie, for three new IPs in upcoming games. Under the agreement Electronic Arts will hold all rights to the intellectual property, but Zack Snyder’s studio, Cruel & Unusual Films, will have the exclusive rights to any movies that arise from the IP, if warranted.

This comes from Electronic Arts, who is looking to expand their IP and to appeal more to their core consituency (youg males), in which case Zack Snyder would be the perfect match. In addition to directing “300,” Snyder also has the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead and the upcoming Watchmen (March 2009) under his belt.

PlayOn, brought to you buy MediaMall Technologies, allows you to stream Hulu, Youtube, and Netflix videos over your own home network straight to your XBOX 360 and Playstation 3. PlayOn also supports HP MediaSmart TV, as well as a few other video publishers including CBS, CNN and ESPN.

You can download this software for free if you sign up to be an official beta tester. Installing is easy as downloading the software to your pc, and then by going to your console and connecting to the PlayOn Media Server under your consoles respective settings.

PlayOn is powered by DNLA/UPnP technology. It pulls content from the providers via RSS feeds and then presents them to the connected device, converting it to a compatible format if necessary. MediaMall is also working on a version of their software for the Wii.

Learn more about PlayOn

Steam and Rockstar are currently running a 50% off promotion for all Rockstar Games available on Steam. This promotion will only last this weekend (9/27-2/28). With this deal, you could snag Grand Theft Auto 3: San Andreas for only $9.99. You could also get the original Max Payne for only $4.99.

You can also get all 10 Rockstar Games available on Steam for only $30.

Via Steam and Joystiq.

Today Valve’s Doug Lambardi released the official PC system requirements in response to some incorrect rumors floating around on the internets. These are the actual requirements, straight from the box:

• OS: Windows Vista, XP or 2000
• CPU: 3.0 GHz P4, Dual Core 2.0 or AMD64X2 (or higher)
• RAM: 1 GB for XP / 2GB for Vista
• DISC DRIVE: DVD-ROM Drive
• HARD DRIVE: At least 7.5 GB of free space
• VIDEO: Direct X 9 compatible video card (Video card must be 256 MB or more and should be a DirectX 9-compatible with support for pixel shader 2.0)
• SOUND: Direct X9.0c compatible sound card