Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

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Eurogamer.net Podcast #24

Singularity! Tax breaks! PR stunts! New guy!

It's been a mostly quiet seven days for the games industry. E3 is over, and developers and publishers are just now stumbling, bleary-eyed and hungover, into the kitchen of equilibrium to pour themselves a glass of normal.

But nobody, it turns out, told George Osbourne, the Tory chancellor announcing this past week that UK tax relief for the games industry was "poorly targeted" and is now off the table as part of a drive to reduce the budget deficit.

It's against this exciting backdrop - and of course more traditional news that you can shoot Russians on an entertaining new secret military island full of zombies and time travel - that the Eurogamer.net Podcast hits instalment 24.

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This week we've assembled a crack team of contributors - host Tom Champion is joined by Tom Bramwell along with Eurogamer's newly appointed news editor Wesley Yin-Poole.

We also welcome Gareth Williams from PR agency Barrington Harvey, whose clients past and present include 2K Games, Codemasters, Square Enix and many others. Gareth takes your questions about games PR and regales us with exciting stories about upside-down cars, flash mobs and baby blood.

Plus there's discussion of Raven's silly and excellent first-person shooter Singularity, chatter about PlayStation Plus and Square Enix's explanation for not doing Final Fantasy XIV on Xbox Live, and we even have time for a competition.

Yes, thanks to our friends at Bethesda Softworks, we have a few copies of something fairly cool to give away. If you're an Elder Scrolls fan, have a listen.

Background reading!