Futuremark Games Studio has released the Firepower weapons pack for Shattered Horizon on Steam. Firepower, which is free for all players, adds eight new weapons and three new grenades. To celebrate the release, Futuremark is offering Shattered Horizon for just $14.99 until Wednesday May 12.

"We believe players should be rewarded for supporting a game and that’s why we have released all our DLC packs for free," said Jaakko Haapasalo, Head of Futuremark Games Studio. "In fact for $14.99, the same price as 'that other map pack' released this week, PC gamers can now get the complete Shattered Horizon game, including both the Moonrise map pack and the brand new Firepower weapons pack, from a developer that puts players first." (more...)

This weekend, Futuremark's space shooter Shattered Horizon will be free to play. Not only that, you can get it for half off this weekend, then it will be free to play forever! The game's normally $20, so it's not a bad deal. Just make sure you've got Windows Vista or Windows 7 because the game requires DirectX 10. There's no XP/DX9 support whatsoever.

If you're wondering how the game is, check out our review.

Futuremark Games has released a major update for Shattered Horizon, which includes voice-chat, new ranks, improved MPR grenade and more.

• Added in game voice chat support offering talk to team, talk to all, player muting and global disable.
• Improved ranking system adds 50 new experience ranks better tailored to both new and existing players.
• Rank promotions now appear on the in-game HUD.
• As a player ranks up cosmetic changes are added to the space suit to distinguish between new and experienced players in game.
• Tutorial screens added to main menu.
• MPR grenades have been made more effective against flying targets.
• HUD targeting brackets no longer appear on spawning astronauts.
• No longer possible to hit tankshots from the front, or visor shots from behind.
• Main menu, level loading, team selection and match results screens have been redesigned.
• All game audio has been re-mastered to improve dynamic range.
• Added sound effects for when a round has 2 minutes left and 10 seconds left.
• In game chat now supports special characters such as ä, ö , é …
• Server browser list now refreshes every few seconds. Dead servers are removed from list.
• Added Rules Info page to server browser screen.
• Added support for 5:4 monitor resolutions such as 1280x1024. (more...)

The first screenshots of Shattered Horizon's upcoming Moonrise DLC pack have released today. Moonrise adds four new maps to the game, which are pictured in the screenshots below. Futuremark isn't giving a release date for the pack just yet, but they did note "the work is almost complete and we will have more details for you soon."

[View with PicLens]

Shattered Horizon: Moonrise

Earlier this week, we reported that two Futuremark Games employees were getting laid off. We emailed the company for comment on the matter, and they pointed us to this forum post made today. It appears that support for Shattered Horizon will continue despite the studio's losses.

"We want to let everyone know that our plans for supporting Shattered Horizon and its community are unaffected by recent changes at Futuremark," he wrote. "It is fairly common in the games industry after finishing a major project for a studio to reduce staffing a bit from the large team required to launch a game.

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What an awesome Christmas season this is turning out to be.  Two Futuremark employees, Petri Jarvinen (Level Designer) and Nick Renqvist (Audio Designer) have posted on the official Futuremark forums that they are no longer working for the company.  As you might know, Futuremark recently released Shattered Horizon, a multiplayer-only FPS-Z for just $20 on the PC (digital download only).

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It's Friday, not only does that mean it's almost the weekend, but it's also another day to give out free stuff! Today is the last day of our Holiday giveaway, and to round out the giveaway, we're handing out four copies of Futuremark Games' Shattered Horizon for PC! To be eligible for this giveaway, you need to follow us @bravenewgamer and send us a direct message. If we're not following you (meaning you can't DM us), give us a shout and we'll add you.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the giveaway and congratulations to everyone who won! We hope you enjoy your free games as much as we enjoyed handing them out. Also a big shoutout to our contest sponsors EA, Futuremark Games, TellTale Games, NinjaBee, and Frozenbyte. Thanks guys!

It's Thursday, day four of our Holiday Giveaway. We've already given out two copies of it, but today we're giving away three more codes for the complete season of Tales of Monkey Island, courtesy of TellTale Games. The rules of the game are the same. Listen up for our announcements via Twitter and retweet us. You'll then be thrown into a hat and three lucky winners will be selected, each one throughout the day.

Tomorrow, Friday, marks the last day of our giveaway, and we'll be handing out four copies of Futuremark Games' Shattered Horizon!

It's 12:55 AM, meaning it's technically Wednesday, which marks the third day of our giveaway. Today we're giving away two codes for the complete season of Tales of Monkey Island and one copy of Shattered Horizon, both games on Steam. As per usual, we'll be giving out the codes throughout the day, so remember to retweet us when we make the announcements!

So far we've given away three copies of Madden NFL Arcade, two copies of A Kingdom for Keflings and one copy of Trine. After today, we'll still have seven game codes to give out, three for tomorrow and four to round out the week on Friday.