T-Mobile looks to keep customers satisfied with test drives, free music streaming

John Legere and T-Mobile want to make buying a smartphone more like shopping for a used car. And they mean that in the best possible way.

On Wednesday, the company announced a new "test drive" program in which would-be T-Mobile customers can try out an iPhone 5s for seven days to decide whether they want to the carrier to provide their wireless service. And if they do sign up with T-Mobile, they can take advantage of another new program introduced Wednesday: Subscribers to T-Mobile's Simple Choice plan will be able to stream music from popular streaming services without it counting against their data plan. In addition, T-Mobile plans to launch a subscription-based radio service with Rhapsody next week.

The three moves are part of T-Mobile's ongoing Uncarrier program in which it tries to unsettle rivals like AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint—and spirit away some of their customers—by taking on some of the standard practices of the wireless industry. This year alone, T-Mobile has offered to pay users' early termination fees for jumping ship from other carriers and it's dropped overage fees. The moves have helped T-Mobile attract 17 million switchers since the company launched its Uncarrier campaign by doing away with two-year contracts last spring.

"Customers in the wireless industry are experience wireless like never before," Legere said before an appreciative crowd of T-Mobile customers and employees Wednesday night, as he pointed out that rival companies had responded to T-Mobile's moves by adopting many of the same practices he's championed.

T-Mobile has been busy strengthening its own networking, noting that it now offers Wideband LTE in 16 markets and plans to cover 100 million people with Voice over LTE by the end of 2014. But that networking news won't be what people talk about when discussing the latest steps in T-Mobile's Uncarrier campaign.

Test drive an iPhone

Instead, people will likely focus on programs like the T-Mobile Test Drive. Starting you'll be able to sign up with T-Mobile to receive a fully functioning iPhone 5s for a week. (True to its boundary-pushing reputation, T-Mobile is calling this a "seven-night stand" with all the double entendres that phrase can inspire.) The phone will arrive in the mail, and you'll get a chance to see how it performs on T-Mobile's network in the areas where you spend the most time. When the seven days are up, you return the phone to a nearby T-Mobile store; the company will helpfully point out where the nearest locations are when you get your test phone.

Image: Susie Ochs

T-Mobile's Mike Sievert outlines the company's new T-Mobile Test Drive program, in which you can put the carrier's network through its paces for a week with an iPhone 5s.

"The buying process [for smartphones] is worse than for used cars," said Mike Sievert, T-Mobile's chief marketing officer. "And yet, we don't question that this is how the wireless market operates."

The test drive program is likely to be embraced by anyone who's ever fretted about whether a carrier's coverage truly extends to where they work and play. (As someone who moved to a new house only to discover that his wireless carrier had a dead zone that started on the front porch and extended straight to the backyard, I can assure you this is a very legitimate concern.) And while the test hardware is limited to T-Mobile's partnership with Apple, even Android users can get a sense of the relative strengths and weaknesses of T-Mobile's network in their area after a week-long test drive.

There are caveats, of course. Households are limited to one test drive per year, so don't count on pulling off that caper where you spend a year getting wireless service on T-Mobile's dime. Still, don't fear that T-Mobile is going to pounce if that test drive iPhone 5s isn't back in its possession right as those seven days expire: there will be "a little bit of a grace period," Sievert said.

"We want to make this a great experience for our customers," he added.

T-Mobile is planning for at least 1 million people to take a test drive this year. And if it turns out there's even more of a demand, Legere says the company will expand the program.

Let the music play

T-Mobile's decision to stop counting music streaming against its users' data plans should resonate as well, especially among its current customers who tend to use more data than subscribers to other wireless networks. Legere, who peppered Wednesday night's talk with stats almost as much as with his usual profanities, says that T-Mobile customers use 69 percent more data than the average Verizon customer and double the data that AT&T customers consume. Still, according to Legere's figures, people are worried about running into the upper limits of their data plan: around 40 percent of mobile users limit their streaming due to concerns about blowing past their limit.

Image: Susie Ochs

You'll be able to stream music from eight top services without running into any data plan problems under Music Freedom.

T-Mobile's Music Freedom program figures to alleviate that concern. Users with a Simple Choice plan from T-Mobile will be able to access Pandora, Rhapsody, iHeartRadio, iTunes Radio, Slacker Radio, Spotify, Samsung's Milk Music, and a forthcoming Beatport music app from SFX without it counting against their data plans.

T-Mobile is soliciting feedback from users on what services it should support under Music Freedom. Just flip the switch to on to make your favorites known.

Eagle-eyed music lovers will spot some noteworthy omissions from that list, including Beats Music, Rdio, and Google Play Music All Access. Legere counters that the supported services account for 85 percent of music streaming. Even so, T-Mobile says it's open to adding more streaming services to Music Freedom. On the Music Freedom website, the company has set up an area where you can give feedback on the services you want added to program. If there's enough of a groundswell of support, presumably T-Mobile will add it to the ranks of streaming services that won't count against your allotted data.

In addition to launching Music Freedom, which begins immediately, T-Mobile is teaming up with Rhapsody to launch unRadio. The streaming service offers ad-free music, lets users skip all the songs they want, choose their own music, and replay songs. unRadio, which launches Monday, boasts a catalog of more than 20 million songs.

Image: Susie Ochs

UnRadio is a joint partnership between T-Mobile and Rhapsody. Simple Choice customers with 4G LTE data service will get to listen for free.

Simple Choice customers paying for 4G LTE data service will be able to access unRadio for free. Other T-Mobile customers can pay $4 a month for a subscription; everyone else will have to pay $5. unRadio will be available for both iOS and Android and on the web.

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As iPhone thefts drop, Google and Microsoft plan kill switches on smartphones

Responding to more than a year of pressure, Google and Microsoft will follow Apple in adding an anti-theft "kill switch" to their smartphone operating systems, U.S. law enforcement officials will announce later Thursday.

The commitment will be disclosed alongside new data that shows a dramatic drop in theft of Apple iPhones and iPads after the September 2013 introduction of iOS 7, which included a kill-switch function that allows stolen devices to be remotely locked and deleted so they become useless.

Law enforcement officials credit iOS 7's Activation Lock feature for a drop in iPhone thefts.

In New York, iPhone theft was down 19 percent in the first five months of this year, which is almost double the 10 percent drop in overall robberies seen in the city. Over the same period, thefts of Samsung devices—which did not include a kill switch until one was introduced on Verizon-only models in April—rose by over 40 percent.

In San Francisco, robberies of iPhones were 38 percent lower in the six months after the iOS 7 introduction versus the six months before, while in London thefts over the same period were down by 24 percent. In both cities, robberies of Samsung devices increased.

"These statistics validate what we always knew to be true, that a technological solution has the potential to end the victimization of wireless consumers everywhere," San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon told IDG News Service.

Gascon and New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman have been leading a push to get smartphone vendors and telecom carriers to include kill switches in their products as a way to curb phone theft.

The joint work had early success with Apple, but other carriers and phone makers dragged their feet. However, resistance to the idea appears to be dropping as several bills that mandate kill switches make their way through state legislatures and the U.S. Congress.

The bills demand a function that would enable a phone owner to remotely delete and disable a phone if stolen. The function could be disabled by consumers before a theft takes place if desired, but crucially new handsets would be supplied with it switched on by default.

Gascon and Schneiderman believe that if most phones had a kill switch, thefts would drop because the probability of a stolen phone remaining useful and thus having value would greatly diminish.

"These statistics validate what we always knew to be true, that a technological solution has the potential to end the victimization of wireless consumers everywhere."—George Gascon, San Francisco District Attorney

The two said the data being released on Thursday appears to "validate the kill switch as an effective part of a multi-layered approach to combatting smartphone crimes." Although it's worth remembering that crime is a complex subject and other factors could have contributed to the fall in Apple-related thefts or the rise in those of Samsung phones.

"We must ensure these solutions are deployed in a more effective manner that does not rely on consumers to seek them out an turn them on, but the fact that virtually the entire industry has responded to our call to action is an indication that we are well on our way to ending this public safety crisis," Gascon said.

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The real 'fire' in Amazon's smartphone? A shopping spree

You'd be forgiven for thinking Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wants to compete with other phone makers with his company's new Fire smartphone. But forget the multiple cameras and pretty 3-D-like effects, the device is really about selling more stuff.

The Fire comes with close ties to Amazon's online retail store, relies on the company's cloud storage and is a platform for Amazon's digital content in the areas of music, video, books and apps.

"The goal is to drive traffic and spending within Amazon's core services," said Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies, who studies the consumer technology industry.

One of its key features is an image recognition technology called Firefly, which recognizes images, text and audio to quickly identify product bar codes, movies, songs, TV episodes and other products for instant purchasing through Amazon.

The company clearly hopes it will be huge. There's a dedicated button for it on the phone, which could make impulse shopping easier. Amazon is offering support to developers so they can build third-party apps around Firefly. Walk into a shoe store, open a running app on Fire, and perhaps you could earn a deal on some sneakers.

The phone could also spur adoption of its cloud services. As a start, Amazon is offering unlimited photo storage with Amazon Cloud Drive.

"It's a service-oriented device," said Tuong Nguyen, an industry analyst with Gartner.

But the company's first smartphone could be a tough sell to iOS and Android loyalists. The unit's operating system is a forked version of Android focused on Amazon's own native apps, which is likely to turn off people who aren't already Amazon die-hards.

To help attract users, Bezos said Wednesday that Fire purchasers would get one free year of Amazon Prime for a limited time. The $99 service provides free two-day shipping and exclusive access to movies, music and Kindle books.

Even if the phone is just a moderate success, Amazon also stands to build an even stronger set of data around people's shopping habits, especially based on their location.

"This is an attempt to do something innovative around shopping and e-commerce," said Creative's Bajarin. Even if Amazon just sells a couple million phones, Fire could give the company better data about people's shopping habits that could later be used to evolve Amazon's service, on mobile or the desktop, he said.

But with Apple and Google collecting their own data, the competition is fierce.

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Russian forensic firm's tool snags iCloud backups without an Apple ID

Moscow-based Elcomsoft has developed a tool to collect iCloud backup files without knowing a person's Apple ID, a development intended to help law enforcement analyze seized computers.

The company, which specializes in forensic tools, said the feature has been incorporated into the forensics edition of Phone Password Breaker, which can crack password-protected backups for Apple and BlackBerry devices.

Elcomsoft previously figured out how to access iOS mobile backups remotely without having a person's actual device. But to do that, law enforcement did need to have a person's Apple account credentials.

The latest development allows investigators to access an iCloud backup without those credentials. It does have limitations, however, as investigators need to have a suspect's device in hand.

Also, when the computer is seized, the suspect has to be logged into the iCloud Control Panel, which is used to manage what data is backed up on a device, Elcomsoft wrote on its website. The iCloud Control Panel, which is part of iTunes, is automatically installed on OS X devices but has to be separately installed on Windows computers.

Phone Password Breaker grabs an authentication token that is created when a person logs into iCloud. Once a person is logged into iCloud, they're usually always logged in, as iCloud regularly backs up selected data from a machine.

"In other words, you have a high chance of obtaining authentication tokens from a computer that has iCloud Control Panel installed," Elcomsoft wrote. "The ability to use authentication tokens acquired from the suspect's computer in place of plain-text logon credentials is of major importance to forensic investigators."

Phone Password Breaker has a command-line tool that searches for authentication tokens. When prompted, investigators copy and paste the token into Phone Password Breaker, which then uses it to access the iCloud account without login credentials.

Elcomsoft discovered some interesting tendencies of the iCloud authentication tokens. The tokens can't be reverse-engineered to recover an original password. The tokens are deleted if a person logs out of the iCloud Control Panel and then can't be obtained. The tokens may expire after a while, but it isn't clear when, the company said.

For North American customers, the forensic edition of Phone Password Breaker costs US$399.

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Twitter unblocks controversial content in Pakistan after review

Twitter has restored access to content that was last month blocked in Pakistan at the request of the government, in a review of its controversial decision.

The content, including tweets and accounts, had been blocked last month using a Country Withheld Content tool that Twitter announced in 2012. The tool gives it the ability to withhold content from users in a specific country, while keeping it available in the rest of the world.

"We have reexamined the requests and, in the absence of additional clarifying information from Pakistani authorities, have determined that restoration of the previously withheld content is warranted. The content is now available again in Pakistan," Twitter said in an emailed statement.

Twitter was ordered by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to withhold the content as it was considered blasphemous or unethical, according to Chilling Effects, which maintains a record of takedown notices and how companies handle them. Some of the content PTA had objected to referred to Prophet Muhammad.

The social networking company made an "initial decision" on May 18 to withhold the content, drawing criticism from civil rights groups both in Pakistan and abroad.

Twitter's Country Withheld Content tool "is worrisome for citizens in countries where no transparent and legal processes exist for access and content on the Internet," wrote Bolo Bhi, a civil rights group in Pakistan.

Bolo Bhi asked that the process by which requests from governments are entertained by Twitter should be made public, including what is considered a valid complaint, and through what process and policy.

Twitter's initial decision to give in to government demands sets a trend that could start with requests for blocking blasphemous content and then go on to other content that the government does not like, Shahzad Ahmad, country director of Bytes for All, Pakistan, a human rights organization focused on Internet freedom, said Wednesday. "We believe that all Internet platforms with a global presence should develop their policies and principals to have human rights at the core," he added.

Demands for removal or blocking of content considered religiously objectionable is quite common in countries in the region. YouTube, for example, is blocked in Pakistan as the government claims it cannot selectively block on the video-sharing site a controversial movie trailer called 'Innocence of Muslims,' which triggered off unrest in many countries in 2012. In some countries like India, where it had operations, Google blocked the video following the protests, citing its compliance with local laws. Facebook was also under fire recently for temporarily blocking access to the pages of a local rock band, at the request of the government.

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Report: Neither iOS nor Android inherently more secure than the other

Apple's tight vetting of mobile applications gives it a security edge over Android, but there are still several ways for attackers to steal data from iOS devices, a mobile security company warned in a report Tuesday.

The report looked at the risk factors facing users of the platforms, concluding that enterprises still face data breach risks regardless of the platform used.

"Neither iOS nor Android is inherently more secure than the other," according to Marble Security. "The risks to enterprises allowing employees to bring in their own devices, whether iOS or Android-based, are not that dissimilar."

For iOS users who haven't jailbroken their devices, the only source of applications is the App Store, which Apple closely monitors for potentially malicious applications. But Android users have a choice of many marketplaces outside of Google's Play store which may not analyze applications for bad behavior, the report said.

Apple has another small advantage in that iOS has much less "fragmentation," or a multitude of versions and configurations of its operating system. In contrast, Android is heavily fragmented: Marble Security counted 11,868 types of devices that run myriad versions of Android.

Those Android versions "may have security vulnerabilities, old patch levels, insecure configurations or unsecured apps installed from the factory," the report said.

Still, there are a couple of avenues into the "walled garden" of iOS, it said. For example, an application not from the App Store can be installed on a non-jailbroken device using TestFlight, which is a platform for distributing beta apps to select user groups.

"While Android devices can more easily obtain apps from non-vetted sites, there are many ways for iOS apps to also get onto devices, which spells trouble for the enterprise," Marble said.

iOS faces risks from mobile device management configurations, which can be delivered via a website. That kind of attack would require using social engineering to lure someone to a website and convincing the person to install a malicious configuration, the report said.

But "if that user installs a hostile configuration profile, then the enterprise is at risk for intercepted traffic, fake app installation, sophisticated phishing and APTs (advanced persistent threats)," Marble said. "We have seen many tactics used to deceive users to install these profiles."

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Apple settles e-book antitrust dispute with U.S. states, consumer group

Apple has reached an out-of-court settlement in the ebooks price-fixing lawsuit with U.S. states and a consumer group ahead of a trial for damages scheduled for July 14, according to records in a New York federal court.

The iPhone maker will, however, continue its appeal of a verdict in July last year, in which U.S. District Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that Apple and five major U.S. publishers had conspired to raise prices in the ebook market to counter Amazon.com.((

Until the appeal is finally disposed, "a bona fide justiciable dispute remains as to the District Court's findings and conclusions on liability and injunctive relief," wrote Steve W. Berman, counsel for the plaintiffs, in a letter on Monday to the judge. Any payment to be made by Apple under the settlement agreement will also depend on the outcome of the appeal, he added.

Judge Cote has put in abeyance motions from Apple and the class group, which will be considered withdrawn if the court approves the settlement. The judge set July 16 for filing a motion for preliminary approval of settlement along with a copy of the settlement agreement.

The U.S. Department of Justice, 33 states and U.S. territories and a group of consumers claiming class status brought lawsuits charging that Apple and the publishers had conspired to raise ebook prices in 2010.

The book publishers settled before a trial on liability that was held in June 2013. In March this year, Judge Cote granted class certification to the group of consumers.

Apple has argued that it had no knowledge that publishers were engaged in a conspiracy in December 2009 or at any other point, and had offered a retail business model to the publishers that was in the company's independent business interests and was attractive to the publishers, who were frustrated with Amazon.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit last month refused to stay the trial for damages pending Apple's appeal of proceedings in the New York court.

Apple could not be immediately reached for comment on the settlement.

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Dropbox learns Dutch, Swedish, Danish and Thai in international expansion

Dropbox launched Dutch, Swedish, Danish and Thai versions of its application and clients, as the company seeks to grow the international usage of its cloud storage and file sharing service.

The Dropbox service, now available in 19 languages and 200 countries, has about 70 percent of its 300 million users outside of the U.S., said Johann Butting, Dropbox's head of EMEA.

The company hopes these new versions will not only help the service grow its usage among consumers abroad but also help boost its Dropbox for Business service that came out of beta in November.

Dropbox is used in over 4 million businesses, although most of that use is still through free personal accounts, Butting said. Dropbox's enterprise version offers a variety of IT administration features to give companies more control over their own data.

For example, people can have both a personal account and a separate business account provisioned by their employer, and to be logged into both at the same time on the devices they use. This helps to keep work and private files separate and allows administrators, for instance, to ban access to the work folder when somebody leaves the company, Butting said.

Dropbox also chose to make its service available in the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden because penetration of Internet users is relatively high there.

In 2012, 94 percent of Swedes were using the Internet, one percent more than in the Netherlands and Denmark, according to figures from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

Sweden and Denmark also rank high in wireless broadband use: both have a penetration of over 100 percent while the Netherlands had a penetration of over 60 percent, according to OECD figures released in January.

In comparison with the European countries, Thai Internet adoption is low, reaching 26.5 percent in 2012, but that level of usage is rising and still justifies having a Thai version of the service, he said.

In the Netherlands, the company noticed that Dutch users of Dropbox for Business who call the technical support line usually start by asking the support person if they speak their language, according to Butting. A Dutch version and Dutch support staff should ease these language difficulties, he said.

However, not every company that uses Dropbox for Business in the Netherlands is going to switch to the Dutch version.

That's the case of Unitid, a Dutch company that designs digital interfaces and has been using Dropbox for six years and recently started using Dropbox for Business.

"Dropbox regularly introduces great new features, but we will not make much use of the Dutch version," said Matthijs Collard, an interaction designer at Unitid.

The English version is understandable and easier to use with non-Dutch employees and international clients, he said. However, Collard acknowledged there would probably be many other companies and individuals who would like a Dutch version of Dropbox.

Other language versions of Dropbox are likely to follow. The company is still looking for an "internationalization engineer" who will help to make sure that every person, regardless of language or location, receives a first-class experience when using Dropbox, according to a job posting on its website that also said Dropbox' internationalization process is "just getting started."

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Better messaging means security can grow with IoT

The brake pedal in your car probably isn't attached to the brakes. But don't worry, the pedal knows how to tell the brakes that you've pressed it. And now there's a new way to secure the messages they send each other.

New software from Real-Time Innovations, which supplies messaging software for embedded systems used in cars, factories and other settings, implements a recently approved specification called DDS Security. With it, critical behind-the-scenes communication among machines can be safer from hacking and still happen as fast as it needs to, according to David Barnett, RTI's vice president of products. A preview release of RTI's software, Connext DDS Secure, is available immediately.

The Internet of Things encompasses a vast number of components and systems that rely on the ability to talk to one another. Some, like the sensor in a brake pedal that sends signals to the brakes, are electronic replacements for what were once mechanical systems. So-called drive-by-wire airplanes work the same way: The controls in the cockpit send digital commands to the wing flaps and rudders. And increasingly, IoT extends beyond individual systems, so cars talk to other cars and to auto shops, and machines on an assembly line chat amongst themselves to keep things running smoothly.

The Object Management Group's Data Distribution Service standard, which is about 10 years old, controls a lot of that communication. Manufacturing, medical devices, aerospace and defense are some of the industries where DDS is most widely used, according to Barnett. But until now, making DDS messages secure has required add-ons such as proprietary software and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), a protocol borrowed from the Web, Barnett said.

DDS Security is a formal extension to the DDS standard, approved by the OMG in March. It gives software developers like RTI a common way to keep systems that use DDS safe from hacks that could take them over or shut them down.

As IoT grows, it'll become a wider and a more attractive target for hackers who want to disrupt industrial systems, said VDC Research analyst Chris Rommel. Some systems, such as aircraft, are better equipped to contain hacking attempts than are others. "Messaging security is becoming more and more important," Rommel said.

Maybe the best thing about DDS Security is that it scales better, Barnett said. With SSL, each time a device communicates with another device or application, it has to set up one secure channel with one private encryption key. That can become a problem when there are many different apps and machines to talk to.

For example, a sensor on an assembly line may have to send its readings to the next machine down the line, as well as to an analytics application, a dashboard for a human administrator, and hundreds of other destinations across the whole manufacturing system. And unlike Web pages, IoT data often has to move under strict time constraints. Add the fact that most IoT processors are designed for power savings instead of performance, and SSL can become a burden, Barnett said.

DDS Security has a multicast function that lets the sending device encrypt a message once and send it to multiple destinations at the same time, Barnett said.

RTI expects DDS Security to be adopted broadly across industries where DDS is used today, but it won't be an overnight change. In health care, energy and some manufacturing sectors, that might happen in less than five years, Barnett said. Other industries, such as automotive, may take longer because they're more fragmented. RTI's focus is on industrial IoT, not connected consumer devices.

There are other standard IoT messaging protocols, including MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) and AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol), but at least a handful of these can and will coexist, VDC's Rommel said. IoT as a whole will have to grow even as it remains fragmented, because many industrial embedded systems stay in the field for 10 to 20 years without updates, he said. Meanwhile, peripherals and gateways can make disparate systems talk to each other. In fact, RTI itself makes such adapters.

"There can be a partial move toward standard technology, but it certainly won't be a complete one," Rommel said. "There'll be different bridges and Band-Aids to help make it happen."

Pricing for Connext DDS Secure starts at US$9,495 per developer for new customers and $2,000 per developer for current Connext DDS customers, with discounts for larger projects.

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GOG.com, GamersGate kick off the PC game deals season with massive Summer Sales

Originally published June 13 2014, updated June 14 to Include GamersGate's Summer Sale.

E3 and all of its shiny new game launches may be winding down, but the gaming goodness is just getting started. Friday morning, games site GOG.com launched its summer games sale, unloading a slew of games at dirt-cheap prices, with deals being swapped out day-by-day and even hour-by-hour.

GOG's dubbed it the "2014 DRM-Free Summer Sale," as the service's claim to fame is that its titles come without any of the potentially irksome digital rights management systems found in competing platforms like Steam, Origin, and Ubisoft's Uplay.

"Almost all of our catalog has been discounted by 50 percent," GOG explained in its kick-off announcement. "Each day we'll present you with at least two special Bundle Deals with a selection of great classics and indies available up to 90 percent off."

Today's bundles feature the entire Roller Coaster Tycoon series for just under $9—a 75 percent discount off the normal price—and a massive pack of classic Dungeons & Dragons games of yesteryear, including legendary games like Baldur's Gate and its sequel, Planescape Torment, Neverwinter Nights, Icewind Dale, and more.

The current GOG flash sales. (Click to enlarge.)

That selection plays to the strengths of GOG's vast classic gaming catalog, but the Summer Sale's flash sales are rife with all sort of more recent indie gems. GOG's also running flash sales the entire duration of the event, with games being swapped in and out by the hour. Some of the current highlights include Papers Please —PCWorld's game of the year in 2013—for just $3, along with SimCity 2000, Hotline Miami, Outlast, the classic Beyond Good and Evil, Leisure Suit Larry, and several other titles all selling for under $5, with some games going as cheaply as $1.49. Shadow Warrior, a game we loved when it hit the streets late last year, is currently available for $8, down from its $40 MSRP.

If you miss out on a flash deal on a game you're looking for, be sure to tune back in over the course of the multi-day sale—GOG is known for giving gamers a second chance at especially deep discounts as its big sales wind on. The site also offers Mac versions of its games when available, with Linux support coming this fall.

But GOG isn't the only gaming store running a summer sale. GamersGate's Summer Sale started June 12 and continues through June 19, offering deep discounts on a wide range of games from Ubisoft, Square Enix, Capcom, Sega, and Kalypso. GamersGate has more recent and high-profile titles than GOG, and you can find games from big series like Deus Ex, Splinter Cell, The Witcher, and Resident Evil on sale from 50 to 75 percent off.

Steam's massive annual Summer Sale is also expected to kick off this month. While Valve is notoriously tight-lipped about the timing of its big sales, mysterious cards—they're called just that, "Mysterious Cards"—have begun to creep into the Steam Marketplace, and an alleged leak suggests Steam's deal-dishing may begin on June 19.

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