An Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign to create an ad blitz (some are calling it a harassment campaign, and in incredibly poor taste given the current climate on social media) for the sole purpose of pressuring Valve Software to get Half-Life 3 into the hands of its fans, has launched. While the game has long been rumored to be in development at Valve, the company has never confirmed its existence.

Mantis Digital Arts has just launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund an educational game about bees, with plans to launch it shortly thereafter. The game, Buzz Whizz Bees, is being developed for web browsers, Android, Ouya, and iOS - and will sell for $2.99.

The game is being designed to help teachers and parents introduce children ages four to eight to the interesting world of bees by letting them play "as a varying range of different bee species, enabling them to comprehend bee behavior by gathering food, scouting for new food sources and defending the hive."

According to ICO Partners analyst Thomas Bidaux, game-related Kickstarter campaigns are set to generate half as much money in 2014 as they did in 2013. Last year video game-related campaigns generated an impressive $58 million in pledged funding. But in the first half of 2014 only $13.5 million has been pledged. Bidaux expects about $27 million will be pledged by the time 2014 is over.

In the wake of the Yogscast-backed and Kickstarter-funded game Yogventures giving up the ghost and being canceled by developer Winterkewl Games, another Yogscast -backed developer was put forward to provide gamers who backed that other project some recompense. While the company still plans to do that, it looks like it is going through some short-term problems with funding that will in turn force it to lay off half of its staff.

On Sept. 20 of last year the developers of the Kickstarter-backed sword fighting game Clang announced that the project had run through all of its funding and was looking for an additional source. The Kickstarter campaign for the game raised $526,125 in 2012.

Cleve Blakemore, the man behind Grimoire: Heralds of the Dark Exemplar (a game that has been in development since 1997, by some accounts) is threatening to file a trademark dispute with Kickstarter if developer OmniConnection does not shut down its crowdfunding campaign for its similarly named game, Grimoire.

With a little under 60 hours to go, the Kickstarter campaign for "GX3: Everyone Games" has managed to surpass its funding goal of $80,000. As of this writing, the LGBTQ gaming event has managed to raise $82,971 from 814 backers. Formerly known as "GaymerX," GX3 will take place in the San Francisco/Bay Area in November or December of 2015.

Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter announced today that its service is now available in Scandinavia and Ireland. Campaign creators who want to fund a game, movie, board game, card game, a new type of underwear -- whatever, can get started today. While users in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Ireland can start creating projects on Kickstarter today, the bad news is that they'll have to wait until October 21 for them to be made publicly available.

The Tornado Twins, the alter egos for Ruben and Efraim Meulenberg, are working on an episodic game series about the Bible called "The Game Bible Series," and have launched a Kickstarter to pay for the first three episodes.

Another day, another cautionary tale for consumers eager to plunk down their hard-earned money for early access games on Steam and for Kickstarter funding. Today Valve has pulled the action survival game The Stomping Land from Steam Early Access.

Puppy Games has launched a Patreon to fund the ongoing development of its free MMO Battledroid. While the small indie studio continues to work on it, it has come to the conclusion that the MMO needs at least another year of development time and it does not have enough money to fund that effort. So they decided to turn to Patreon instead of other crowdfunding methods like Indiegogo or Kickstarter to raise some funds.

GX3: Everyone Games has raised over $42,000 of its $80,000 goal on Kickstarter in its first three days, with 22 more days to go. GX3 is the new name for the GaymerX convention - tentatively set for sometime in November or December of 2015 in the Bay Area. The event is an all-inclusive two-day fan gathering offering a safe space for gamers of all creeds and sexual orientations and generally celebrates the culture of gaming.

Gaymer X has launched the Kickstarter for Gaymer X3, though the next event is a long ways off and will not bear the "Gaymer X" name. The name of the event has been changed to "GX3: Everyone Games," in an effort to offer a fan gathering that was more inclusive to all including those who do identify with the "gaymer" label and those who don't but want to hang out with their friends in a safe and welcoming space. While the venue has yet to be determined, co-founder of the event Matt Conn notes that it will take place in the Bay area due to popular demand.

Hey, remember those Senate hearings back in the 90s that bemoaned violent games like DOOM and Mortal Kombat that ultimately resulted in the establishment of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board?

With only 38 hours to go, the developers of Ninja Pizza Girl managed to raise the cash it was seeking from its Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. Australia-based Disparity Games managed to raise $35,816 AUD - a little over the $35,000 AUD it was initially seeking.

Yacht Club Games, the makers of the ultra popular Shovel Knight, have revealed some interesting details about crowdfunding the game, the rough patch of living they had to endure while making the game, and the most recent sales figures. First the sales numbers: Shovel Knight has sold 180,000 copies in its first month, with around 15,000 going to Kickstarter backers and the press. The company expected to sell a total of 150,000 units. The Wii U version of the game is not available outside the U.S. yet either.

The makers of "The Power of Glove," an independent documentary about the infamous Nintendo Entertainment peripheral, have run out of money and have taken to Kickstarter in an attempt to raise $15,000 to finish the film.

Noah Dyer, who calls himself an "anti-privacy" activist, is seeking $300,000 in a Kickstarter campaign to fund a year-long live stream of his life. And when we say his life, we mean _everything_ you could possibly imagine. He calls the project "A Year Without Privacy."

We asked Noah, who also calls himself a political theorist, what he means when he says that he is an anti-privacy activist. He told us that he believes that nothing should be kept private.

Developer Facepunch Studios has agitated the Rust community simply by announcing that it is working on several other game ideas. It all started when it announced a prototype for a new game called "Riftlight," an arcade space shooter with action-RPG elements. Fans of Rust, the popular action survival game that was released on Steam Early Access, are angry because Rust is still in development and unfinished. Fans see it as Facepunch taking focus away from that game to work on this new game.

A cautionary tale about renting your home out to strangers for some quick, short-term cash on CNN has ties to video games. According to this CNN report, Cory Tschogl rented out her 600-square-foot condo in Palm Springs, California to two brothers, which CNN describes as video game developers - more on that later. The two brothers, Maksym and Denys Pashanin from Austin, Texas, rented the Palm Springs condo for 44 days, paying for 30 days of their stay in advance.

The latest version of Oculus Rift for developers (DK2) has begun shipping to buyers, but there's some question as to whether those who purchased a DK2 will get one in this first batch of shipments. In early June Oculus VR community manager Andres Hernandez indicated that the company was unlikely to be able to fulfill all deliveries on schedule in July after receiving over 45,000 DK2 pre-orders.

Yesterday, Kickstarter suspended West Games' crowd-funding campaign for Areal, a first-person sci-fi themed shooter billed as a spiritual successor to GSC Gameworld's S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. The crowd-funding campaign has been mired in controversy since it launched, with former employees of the original and now dissolved S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

While we do not know specifically why it happened as of this writing, Kickstarter has apparently suspended the crowd-funding campaign for West Game's "spiritual successor" to STALKER. The Arreal Kickstarter page currently list the campaign as "suspended" even thought the project has been fully funded by the community.

Winterkewl Games tells in this lengthy article that it will disband. Winterkewl was the developer behind the Yogscast-backed Kickstarter project Yogventures, which raised over a half a million dollars from over 13,000 backers. Last week Yogscast announced that the game had been effectively canceled but promised to give backers a copy of a similar game being developed by Nerd Kingdom called TUG, an open-world sandbox which it is now partnering with instead.

Last week popular gaming-related YouTube group Yogscast announced that Yogventures was no longer in development. Kickstarter backers were told they would receive a Steam key for TUG, a similar game whose developer Yogscast had now partnered with instead.

Despite some controversy associated with Areal, a spiritual successor of sorts to the STALKER series, the Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign from West Games is a success, raising $64,291 with three days to go. West Games was asking for $50,000 initially and there was some doubt that it would raise it.

Popular YouTube group Yogscast told Yogventures Kickstarter backers that developer Winterkewl Games "have stopped work on Yogventures - but this is actually a good thing." The Kickstarter, heavily promoted by Yogscast, raised $567,665 from over 13,000 backers.

A new Kickstarter has been launched for a game called Ninja Pizza Girl.  Indie developer Disparity Games describes it as "a serious game about bullying, emotional resilience – and pizza delivering ninjas!"

Occasional GamePolitics contributor and co-host of Super Podcast Action Committee E. Zachary Knight has launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for his RPG-flavored collectible token game, Demon's Hex. EZK and his brother Willis Knight are developing the game through their tiny indie game studio Divine Knight Gaming.

A Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign is underway for GamesCon, a dedicated PC & video game expo for the city of Toronto. Organizers who hope to answer the question (assuming they hit their goal by the campaign's end) "where Canada's version of the E3 Expo?" with the answer, "GamesCon."

Here's more on what GamesCon will be if everything goes according to plan: