Now this is good news, GameShadow is now free! GameShadow is an automated game patching service that allows you to find and get patches automatically from one place for over 1500 games as well as graphics cards. No more hunting around publishers sites looking for your patches or wondering if you have the latest drivers for your graphics cards. Read more below.

GameShadow Ltd, the company behind the games industry's most innovative automatic update and patch technology today announces that it is to offer its highly popular service to gamers for free.

The success of enhanced technology coupled with enlisting the support of some of the world's leading publishers including Konami, Eidos, Atari and Ubisoft, has seen the GameShadow user base grow rapidly and it has recently reached a critical milestone of 300,000 registered users. This growth has paved the way for the company to do away with the subscription fee for the service entirely.

By signing up to the now FREE service, users will be able to: find out what updates are available for over 1,500 games and graphics cards; download as many patches and drivers as they need; download up to 1Gb of the best demos, movies, trailers and other content available on the web each month and personalise the service to include automatic alerts for when their favourite games issue updates and additional content.

Nicholas Lovell, CEO, GameShadow, comments: "We've been waiting to hit critical mass before offering the service for free. We know the technology is 100% sound, we know that publishers are impressed about what it can do to increase their levels of customer service, and feedback from subscribers has indicated that gamers find it hugely useful. We are delighted we can now offer the service free."

Whilst the core service is absolutely free, users will also be able to pay for premium content, including exclusive competitions, an increased download capacity of 30Gb per month, the ability to turn off ads and a free boxed game chosen from a range including Crashday, King Kong, the Prince of Persia Trilogy and the Splinter Cell Trilogy.

The industry's reaction to the news has been very positive.

Terry Makedon, Group Manager - Software and Video Marketing, ATI Technologies, commented "Updates and patches fix bugs and breathe life into old games. The GameShadow tools make it so easy for casual gamers and the gaming enthusiast alike to find the latest updates for their titles. Now that GameShadow is free, we hope that even more users will discover the benefits of keeping their games and Catalyst drivers up to date."