Just a round-up of the past weeks news in multiplayer San Andreas. I had a rather busy week just gone so haven't been able to update much.

First of all Multi Theft Auto. The team recently celebrated their 3rd birthday, not long after ours. On foot synchronisation is coming along well, they say swimming, shooting and getting in and out of cars is now all synced too. In the highly anticipated Deathmatch mode we should see a similar kind of maps system as we currently have in Race mode. A new feature to Deathmatch will be player respawning, so you no longer have to wait for everyone else to finish before you can play again. Passengers in cars will be available as it was in MTAVC.

You can read in more detail about any of these improvements on the MTA Blog.

There's not as much news about SA-MP but they did release some video footage of what they have so far, you can watch these over at the SA-MP website.

Just had an email from Rockstar about a cool Liberty City Stories contest where you can win a nice lot of goodies. Here's the excerpt from that email.

For all PSP™ owners currently reveling in the expansive, open-ended handheld action feast that is Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories,

the Fully Equipped Giveaway offers a way to win all the trimmings needed to properly deck out your system LC style. 10 lucky sweepstakes winners will receive limited-edition front and back skins, a branded hard shell case and a lanyard.

Bigger than that though - one especially lucky grand prize winner will win an actual Sony PSP (PlayStation®Portable) system itself, already fully outfitted with all the above.

All winners will also receive a high-quality Liberty City Stories t-shirt.

Check out http://www.rockstargames.com/libertycitystories/contest to get into it - and for all info and official rules.

The contest is unfortunately only open to US residents aged 18 or older, the competition ends February 28th.

Good luck everyone who is eligible to enter!

The British Broadcasting Corporation (better known as the BBC) have selected the Grand Theft Auto series to appear on their shortlist of 25 British-designed things.

Grand Theft Auto video games have been selected by the Design Museum and BBC Two's The Culture Show to appear in a shortlist of 25 items for the Great British Design Quest, a nationwide vote to find the public's favourite example of design in Britain since 1900.

Grand Theft Auto is certainly my favourite, unlike Lara Croft - The world's most poorly designed videogame female protagonist, don't vote for that all-action penis magnet, God knows how she got on the shortlist, vote for GTA. Vote here by clicking the GTA option and pressing "vote" at the bottom, for GTA's page on the site go here to see what the BBC said about it.

Hopefully with enough support from the fans we will make it go through to the next stage of voting.

Also on a sidenote whilst the subject is British design. We should be unveiling our new layout this month. Stay tuned for more updates!