I've avoided the "Peggle" phenomenon -- that is, until PopCap Games released "Peggle Nights" for Macs this week, providing no good reason to avoid the pachinko-meets-acid trip of a game, but it's done a serious number on productivity. Read more...

The game "Peggie" is no more; just hours after we reported on the clone of PopCap Games' popular pachinko riff, "Peggle," developer JSeuss Software changed the name to "Pegs in Space," a change prompted by a cease-and-desist order from PopCap, the developer told us in a statement. Read more...

Knock offs are common on the iPhone application store, though it usually happens after a popular game's been released, but demand for still-in-development "Peggle" on the iPhone has prompted someone to take the situation into their own hands, producing the brazenly named "Peggie." Read more...

You've either played "Peggle" or someone you know has. I'm sure of this. The game was a monstrous hit last year, a 2007 PC puzzle-game release that was downloaded more than 10 million times. It's a so-called casual game, popular with moms, but with that many downloads it's surely relevant to all gamers.

If you wanted to know if "Peggle" was any good, you could download it. But maybe you'd like to read a review. There isn't one on GameSpot. There isn't one on IGN's PC site. I didn't recall seeing one in Game Informer or … anywhere.

And when I checked Metacritic, that review aggregation service showed me why: almost no major gaming site has reviewed the heavily-downloaded "Peggle." (Until the iPod release a year later, that is.)

I asked some major reviewers and one of the people behind "Peggle" what they thought of this turn of events. Was this an indictment of the reviews system? Or the system serving its audience appropriately?

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