Activision is gearing up to sell Call of Duty dog tags at select retailers throughout North America, with the proceeds going to its non-profit charitable organization, the Call of Duty Endowment. The Call of Duty dog tags will carry a suggested retail price of $4.99 and will be for sale beginning today at retailers GameStop, Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, Best Buy and Target.

While it is only a minor thing compared to some of the tragic losses (55 people have died so far in the United States, millions are without power and thousands have had their property severely damaged or destroyed) caused by Hurricane Sandy, Activision community manager Dan Amrich points out on his blog that the storm has affected online functionality for all Guitar Hero games and several Call of Duty titles.

Activision has confirmed that it has eliminated 30 full-time positions at its Minneapolis office. The Minneapolis Minnesota office was mostly recently responsible for licensed titles such as the Cabela hunting games. The reduction in staff is due to Activision's new strategy for 2013 which will offer substantially fewer licensed titles in 2013.

Earlier this month some Muslims in the Call of Duty community complained that the Favela multiplayer map in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was offensive because a painting placed above a toilet had holy teachings written around its frame "Allah is beautiful and He loves beauty."

While many have been keen to point out the continued decline of Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft subscriber numbers, there's some good news for the company today: the latest expansion has given the game a boost past the 10 million subscriber mark. Back in August Blizzard revealed that its paid subscriber numbers had fallen to 9.1 million.

"It’s been gratifying to see the results of all of the work we put into this expansion and to hear all of the positive feedback from players so far," Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said.

The Associated Press reports this morning that the lawsuit between Activision and ska rockers No Doubt has been quietly settled out of court. The lawsuit was related to Activision's game Band Hero allowing the likenesses of the band to sing other songs in the game. Similar lawsuits were filed against Activision for the same issue related to virtual avatars in its Band Hero and Guitar Hero games being used as virtual karaoke singers.

An analyst at Lazard Capital is telling VentureBeat that early sales indicators on the newest World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, are below expectations. The firm estimates 600-700k copies of the expansion sold at retail since its launch on Tuesday, down a whopping 60 percent from the previous expansion. VentureBeat notes that this estimate probably doesn't take into account digital downloads of the expansion.

This story on Slashdot Games reveals that screenshots taken in World of Warcraft have secret watermarks that can be used by Blizzard to track users - particularly when they are engaged in behavior considered to be illegal or that violates World of Warcraft's terms of service.

The story began a few days ago when a World of Warcraft players noticed that there was an odd mark on a screenshot he had taken in-game:

According to a report on C&VG, Vivendi has not ruled out a sale of its majority stake in Activision Blizzard.

Blizzard Entertainment has been forced to cut off access to its popular MMO World of Warcraft to subscribers in Iran, due to ongoing (in an earlier version of the story we used the term "new" to describe the trade sanctions, which was not accurate.) U.S. trade sanctions against the country. The company issued the following statement to a thread complaining about World of Warcraft not being available in the region:

If you thought the makers of World of Warcraft were sitting around wringing their hands over the trend to rush towards full free-to-play models, think again. Blizzard Entertainment's John Lagrave, the producer for World of Warcraft, tells Computer & Video Games that the company has no plans to raise the level cap for free players above level 20. The company introduced the free Starter Edition of the game in June, which lets players fool around within the virtual world - without too many restrictions - up to level 20.

A hearing was held on Tuesday in a Los Angeles courtroom for the Axl Rose Guitar Hero lawsuit against Activision Blizzard. The Guns N' Roses lead singer was featured in Guitar Hero III alongside band member Slash, which agitated Rose to no end. The court hearing delivered mixed results for Rose as he tried to move forward with his $20 million lawsuit against the publisher of the game.

CBS Cleveland News is reporting that 15-year-old Tyler Rigby has been hospitalized after a 4-day gaming marathon left him severely dehydrated.  Reportedly, the Columbus teen locked himself in his room to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.  According to his mother, he emerged for the occasional potty and snack break.

According to this thread on Reddit (by way of CVG), one poster who remains anonymous claims that he (or she) has managed to make $10,000 from Diablo III virtual item trading using the game's Real Money Auction House.

Blizzard President Mike Morhaime posted a rather lengthy open letter on Battle.net to talk about the launch of Diablo III, the problems associated with that launch, the need for the "always-on" requirement, and what the company has planned for the game in the future.

Morhaime starts by talking about how the launch was a smashing success, but noted that it is hard to predict how the number of players they would have to deal with at launch in advance.

According to a Wall Street Journal report Vivendi has tapped two investment banks to help it sell off the assets of Activision Blizzard. Vivendi wants to unload its majority stake in the company responsible for Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, which WSJ estimates is worth $8.1 billion.

According to a post on the Battle.net forums, Blizzard plans to limit the number of games a player can create within a given timeframe to combat the use of bots. The company did not detail the number of games, nor the time frame in which players would be limited - that roast is still in the proverbial oven. Whatever the parameters are, this change will happen in the "near future."

World of Warcraft players helped Blizzard raise $330,000 for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The funds are the result of a charity auction that saw the sale of some retired WOW server hardware put up by Blizzard on eBay earlier this year.

Treyarch is diving headfirst into politics with the new villain from Call of Duty Black Ops 2. According to Gameranx the new villain will be Raul Menendez, a man described as a "champion of the 99 percent," who is a lot like Wikileaks front man Julian Assange. In the game Menendez hopes to start a "global insurrection against the status quo."

Blizzard did not attend the Electronic Entertainment Expo in June and it announced that it wouldn't be hosting a BlizzCon event this year, but the company seems to be ramping up its attendance at events that allow actual fans (as opposed to just industry professionals and games journalists) to experience its games and culture first-hand. Recently it announced that it would be in full force at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany later this year, and today it revealed its plans for Comic-Con 2012 in San Diego at the end of this week (July 12 - 15).

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick admitted in a recent interview with CNBC Asia’s Squawk Box that bringing Call of Duty Online to market in China is a risky proposition. While Kotick expresses confidence in Tencent Holdings in making the game based on its popular first-person shooter series successful in Mainland China, Kotick also knows that there is a risk when bringing a Western game into a new market with different business models and player tastes.

Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter has said in a note to investors (PDF) that it is unlikely that Vivendi would sell off Activision Blizzard.

Activision Blizzard has inked a deal with Chinese online games giant Tencent Holdings Limited to bring Call of Duty Online to Chinese players. In its announcement this morning Activision said that Call of Duty Online has been in development by Activision Publishing for approximately two years. Under the multi-year agreement with Activision Publishing, Tencent gains the exclusive licensing rights to operate Call of Duty Online in mainland China. The game is described as free-to-play and uses a monetized in-game store to sell virtual items.

It looks like Prototype series makers Radical Entertainment may be closing. The Canadian-based studio has fallen victim to lackluster Prototype 2 sales, according to Activision officials.

Activision has announced the winners of its Independent Games Competition. Christopher Hui's Iron Dragon won first place in the developer competition, and the $175,000 cash prize. Iron Dragon is an action flight adventure game designed for touch-screen devices. Second place and a $75,000 prize went to Michael Stanton's Planet Smashers, a multiplayer action game built from scratch.

The contest entries were judged by IndieCade. All winners retain the intellectual property rights to their games.

Blizzard announced today that those who buy a digital version of Diablo III through its online store will have to wait 72 hours before they can play the unrestricted full version of the game. During that time period players will have access to Act I up to the Skeleton King, a level 13 cap, and matchmaking only with other Starter Edition players. Global play will also be off limits and anyone attempting to play the Starter Edition in an outside region will get an "error 12." The auction houses will also be off limits.

Cisco Systems, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), Activision Blizzard, Intel, and IBM, are the latest entities to send letters to the International Trade Commission asking them not to institute a ban on the Xbox 360 or various Apple products. Florian Mueller of Foss Patents has the breakdown of why Cisco and the ESA have sided with Microsoft in this particular dispute between the company behind Xbox 360 and Windows and Google-owned Motorola Mobility.

According to a Bloomberg report, Vivendi SA plans to host a senior executive meeting later this month to discuss the possibility of unloading its 61 percent stake in Activision Blizzard. The report comes from several anonymous sources close to the situation, according to Bloomberg. The point of the meeting is to find ways to stop the stock from the continued state it has been in over the last year.

If you think Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 made the most money for Activision in the first quarter, then you would be wrong. According to the company the biggest money maker for them in 2012 so far is Skylanders. Because the game encourages players to buy action figures that unlock additional characters and levels, it makes a ton of money they say.

In the continuing saga between the Korean government and Blizzard over Diablo III's launch in the region, the Korean Federal Trade Commission raided Blizzard's Seoul office on Monday. The raid was part of an ongoing investigation into consumer complaints that Blizzard refused to give them refunds for Diablo III. Under Korean law, companies must give a refund to a customer within seven days of purchase if they ask for it. Blizzard's position is that it does not give refunds for products that are in use.