Above: Blizzard's Hearthstone card game running on an iPad.
Image Credit: Blizzard Entertainment
Happy Fourth of July! Before you celebrate with explosives, why don’t you catch up on a week’s worth of GamesBeat’s news and stories?
Below, you’ll read about Cliff Bleszinski’s return to the industry, see a wrong righted when a Hearthstone tournament reversed a sexist policy, and peek at Link’s dating site profile.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair
- The DeanBeat: What happens to a game's story when it gets stretched too long?
- Celebrate America's Independence Day with the games actually set during the revolution
- Game makers are loading you up for the Fourth of July
- Why the 3DS is Nintendo's portable nostalgia machine
- If Link had a dating-site profile
Above: Watch Dogs is a big hit.
Image Credit: Nintendo
News
- Riot Games explores shift to player-run chat communities in League of Legends
- Analyst: Watch Dogs likely sold more than 5M copies by end of June
- Blizzard Entertainment creative director Rob Pardo calls it quits after 17 years
- Civilization: Beyond Earth rockets into stores on Oct. 24
- Russia and Eastern Europe have emerged as one of the world's major game markets (exclusive report)
- Fox News appropriates BioShock Infinite logo — which was kind of a parody of Fox News
- Cross-buy won't work for 3DS and Wii U game Squids Odyssey in North America
- PopCap's Plants vs. Zombies 2 producer leaves for the siren song of Oculus VR (exclusive)
- The goofy arcade game Q*bert finally returns as a PC game
- E-sports league that prohibited women Hearthstone players reverses policy after talking with Blizzard
- Dota 2 helps e-sports league attract millions of online viewers to its main event
- Major League Gaming: 'All players, regardless of gender' should have right to compete in e-sports
- Just warming up: Oculus Rift sells over 100,000 developer kits
- Ubisoft expands its Quebec City studio to lead the future of Assassin's Creed
- Violent video games can actually increase a player's moral awareness
- Riot Games shuts League of Legends public chat to quell scammers
- Airtight Games shuts its doors one month after Murdered: Soul Suspect's release
- Update makes your PS4 controller work on your PS3 — without wires
- Many studios still favor Epic's Unreal development engine over Unity or CryEngine
- UIEvolution taps computer vision for its augmented reality game Shatter Isle
- 72 million kids in the world want smart toys, right now, please!
- Triple Town's makers share how indies don't have to make compromises on PlayStation 4 & Xbox One
- Surprise Steam hit Spintires overcomes the mud, trees, and rocks to reach 100,000 copies sold
- Evolve takes four honors from the Game Critics Awards for E3
- Unable to escape zombie dollars, Deep Silver reveals Escape Dead Island game
- Drakerz-Confrontation augmented-reality card game launches in the U.S.
- Paul Neurath's OtherSide Entertainment game studio revives the Underworld franchise — without the Ultima name
- Running League of Legends tournaments is about to get simpler thanks to Battlefy
- Ouya's $60 All-Access Pass gives you every game on the system
- Google's Android TV controller looks like an Xbox One gamepad with PlayStation-style sticks
- Steam's new milestone: More than 8M gamers were signed in at once yesterday — and it's still growing fast
- Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski says he's 'coming out of retirement to make video games'
- 3DS and Wii U get cross-buy … for one game in Europe
Above: Let It Goat, Let It Goat, can’t hold it back anymore.
Image Credit: SkyVu
Mobile and social
- HappyGiant's Ninja Time Pirates takes you back to Independence Day
- SkyVu's 'Let It Goat' mobile game might be the next Flappy Bird
- Freeway app lets you discover new games and win free stuff
- AppFlood teams with Bidstalk to monetize mobile apps in China
- U.K. regulator: Ad that calls Dungeon Keeper 'free' is 'misleading'
- Google launches weirdly fun 'Smarty Pins' trivia map game
- Grand Cru's ambitious Supernauts mobile game hits 1M downloads in six days
- iDreamSky creates a big mobile game publishing platform in China
- The Witcher is a huge blockbuster franchise — so here's its free-to-play mobile game
- Kabam to make Lord of the Rings and Mad Max mobile games with Warner Bros.
- Amazon gives 30 Android apps away for free
- What's Atari up to these days? Oh, just making Hashteroids — an advertising game for Denny's
- Sleepy Giant and Ninja Metrics team up on game analytics and mobile backend services
- Disney takes one of Japan's top puzzle games into the global market with a new toy line
- Study reveals that video ads can pump up revenues without hurting in-app purchases
Previews and interviews
- Side-by-side comparisons of FIFA 14′s and FIFA 15′s World Cup stars
- Activision shows off animation and art direction for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
- Ken Levine opens up on the violence in BioShock Infinite
- Kablam! How Wargaming tuned World of Tanks Blitz for mobile gamers (interview)
Reviews
GamesBeat 2014 — VentureBeat's sixth annual event on disruption in the video game market — is coming up on Sept 15-16 in San Francisco. Purchase one of the first 50 tickets and save $400! 
