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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.
This week, John Riccitiello steps down as Electronic Art’s CEO, Pixar employees start their own game studio on the side, and Valve opens an early-access game portal on Steam.
You’ll also find reviews for Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, and Gears of War: Judgment as well as a preview for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.
News:
- The DeanBeat: Previewing the madness at next week’s GDC
- In battle for talent, Warner Bros. opens digital game studio in San Francisco
- Nvidia’s Jeff Herbst says ‘we get it’ and ‘we’re here to help’ startups with visual computing
- OpenKit launches its closed beta for open-source social-mobile platform
- Raptr integrates Twitch streaming into its PC desktop app
- Blizzard unveils its new game: Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
- First screens from Final Fantasy X | X-2 HD Remaster
- Blizzard reports StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm sold 1.1M units in first two days
- AMD launches new midrange Radeon graphics chips for budget gamers
- Tencent paid $330M for 40% of Epic Games
- After great success on mobile, Kabam launches new Hobbit game on the web
- Zynga will no longer require Facebook sign-in on Zynga.com
- Study claims over 100 million Americans prefer free-to-play games
- Report: ‘Digital omnivore’ population grew 160 percent last year
- Relic moving original Company of Heroes servers to Steamworks
- Fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss could write for Torment — that scares creative lead Colin McComb
- Valve opens Early Games portal on Steam
- Major League Gaming had a massive, engaged audience for its first event of 2013
- Why Pixar staffers decided to start their own gaming company on the side
- OnLive’s new chairman has ‘buyer’s elation’ as he announces engineering leader
- The crowd’s not enough: Carmageddon: Reincarnation raises $3.5M in private funding
- W3i rebrands as NativeX and launches native advertising
- When free makes money: How the MMO Tera gains subscribers by dropping subscriptions
- Playnomics uses deep analytics to help game publishers pitch ads to the right players (exclusive)
- Logitech launches eight new gaming peripherals under G brand name
- Otoy’s cloud rendering tools to be used in indie games and the Fantastic Four movie
- EA up for Consumerist’s Worst Company in America (again)
- John Riccitiello’s legacy: EA survives, but its hit points are dangerously low
- Bastion studio announces follow-up game: Transistor
- Nvidia extends its chip roadmap through 2015, with 100X faster processing
- Research team claims EA’s Origin has security flaw that exposes millions of users
- Crossing the ‘uncanny valley’: Nvidia’s Faceworks renders realistic human faces
- Sega claims to improve Aliens: Colonial Marines’ visuals on PC with 3.8GB update
- EA shares down between 8% and 9% in early trading
- BioShock Infinite’s combat teaser reveals the violent action you can expect in Columbia
- Internet publishing platform for gamers raises $2M in latest funding round
- Kamcord announces trial with Zynga to record video in Scramble with Friends
- John Riccitiello steps down as EA CEO
- Current Pixar employees band together to form game studio
- Here’s the first commercial for BioShock Infinite
- EA says SimCity sells a 1.1M copies in series’ biggest launch ever despite server issues
- Mayday, mayday: Polytron dates Fez for Steam
- Electronic Arts lists the games SimCity owners can choose as a gift
- Gaming lobby Video Game Voters Network surpasses 500K members
- Chumba World bounces back from Kickstarter suspension with $2.6M in investor funding (exclusive)
- Gamer hacks The Legend of Zelda to star Zelda instead of Link (video)
- FriendsLearn wrapping up its Kickstarter for food-fight game with push into India
- Kizzang will give away $7.7M in a free March Madness sweepstakes bracket game
- Fuseboxx 2.0 provides developers with a one-stop solution to gaining and retaining users
- Maxis: ‘Yes’ — we could ‘have built a subset offline mode’ in SimCity
- Valve and Capcom announce Resident Evil 6 and Left 4 Dead 2 crossover content
- 4tiitoo’s Nuia EyeCharm uses Microsoft’s Kinect to do eye-tracking for $60
Mobile News:
- OpenKit launches its closed beta for open-source social-mobile platform
- Agawi launches platform to make PC games work on Android devices
- Kiip relaunches $100K Build Fund to recruit more developers into its mobile-rewards network
- Endgame: Syria back on iOS App Store: Has new name, no real places
- PlayHaven on fired sex-joke developer: It wasn’t just one issue
- Warhammer 40K smartphone game coming from MechWarrior: Tactics developer
- Breaking: Adria Richards fired by SendGrid for calling out developers on Twitter
- Apple drops ‘uncomfortable’ Sweatshop HD game from App Store
- MediaSpike expands effort to place product ads inside social and mobile games
- Tapjoy starts fund to invest in Australian developers
- After a year in development and $1M spent, Big Fish Games launches Fetch mobile game (exclusive)
- Playhaven developer fired for sexual jokes after SendGrid marketer outs him on Twitter
- Hack attack: Microsoft confirms bigwigs’ Xbox Live accounts compromised
- Nonstop Games raises $2.9M to target iOS and Android with core titles
- App Annie launches Amazon Appstore analytics: Amazon is all about fun, Google is all about utilities
- Digital Capital invests $5M in Dream Weddings game apps (exclusive)
- Ukraine’s Room 8 launches Cyto to break into Western mobile-game markets
- National Geographic’s Animal Jam reaches 10 million players — iOS spin-off in the works
Reviews:
- Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon rebels against portability (review)
- Heart of the Swarm brings lack of imagination to a well-designed StarCraft II (review)
- Gears of War: Judgment takes a step toward the small-time (Review)
Previews:
Pieces of Flair: