Mojang will deliver a keynote address at the Brand Licensing Europe 2014 on Wednesday October 8th, event organizer Advanstar announced today. The presentation, "Minecraft: the rise of a world-class game and brand," will be presented by Mojang COO Vu Bu. The keynote is part of the Licensing Academy program of talks and seminars which are held during BLE 2014. They are free to attend and the full program can be found at www.brandlicensing.eu as well.

id Software and Bethesda Softworks announced today that QuakeCon 2015 is tentatively scheduled to take place July 23 - 26, 2015. Next year's event will mark the 20th anniversary of the event. QuakeCon 2015 will be at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas.

The free convention will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a busy lineup of parties, panels, competitions, exhibitions of upcoming games and hardware from Bethesda and partners, as well as what "North America's largest bring-your-own-computer LAN party," according to organizers.

Organizers of the Southern Interactive Entertainment & Game Expo (SIEGE) announced that Depression Quest developer Zoe Quinn will deliver a keynote on developing "gameplay mechanics for everyday systems" Oct. 3. On Saturday, Oct. 4, Whyville creator Dr. James Bower will also deliver a keynote on what "traditional entertainment games can learn from educational games."

Professional eSports league ESL announced that it will host the BlizzCon 2014’s World Championship Opening Weekend at its studios in Burbank, California. ESL will be working with Blizzard Entertainment on BlizzCon 2014’s World Championship Opening Weekend (October 31st – November 2nd), which will be housed in the ESL TV Studios in Burbank, CA.

The event will be played out over two weekends for the first time in the its history and will feature qualification rounds for BlizzCon’s World of Warcraft, StarCraft II and Hearthstone World Championships.

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.

IndieCade, an annual international festival that celebrates independently developed games, has revealed the more than 35 games that have been named nominees for awards at IndieCade Festival 2014. This year's event will be held in Culver City, California October 9-12, 2014. This year's event will showcase almost 150 independent games and highlight the importance of "promotion, cultivation, and community of independent games development."

King.com's Catharina Lavers Mallet and Marie-Claire Isaaman from the Norwich University of the Arts are the latest inductees in the European Women in Games Hall of Fame. Created in 2011 and sponsored by EA, the Hall of Game is part of the European Women In Games conference which took place yesterday. Other nominees considered for this year's honor were Roberta Lucca and Debbie Bestwick.

Organizers of GamesBeat 2014 announced today that four additional speakers have been added to this year's event. Those speakers are Matt Higby - creative director of Sony Online Entertainment’s PlanetSide 2, Oliver Miao of Pixelberry, Janis Zech of Fyber, and Dan Brody, vice president of business development at Tencent.

Blizzard has opened up sales for virtual tickets to BlizzCon. Those who can't attend this year's two-day celebration of all things Blizzard - World of Warcraft, Warcraft, Starcraft, Hearthstone,  Diablo, and more - can be a part of the event from the comfort of their homes.

The second annual LA Cosplay Con returns to the Hyatt Century City Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles on June 13, 2015, event organizer the Crest Group announced today. Tickets are on sale now. LA Cosplay Con is a one-day event for cosplayers and the gaming community to celebrate the art and culture of cosplay through competitions, panels on cosplaying and other interesting topics (like the pros and cons of becoming a "YouTube personality"), gaming events, contests, exhibitor booths, and much, much more.

Video game streaming service Twitch will be hosting a number of streams and original programming from PAX 2014 in Seattle, Washington beginning today and running until the shows end on Sunday. The Twitch booth at PAX 2014 will broadcast a variety of content including game reveals, exclusive gameplay, developer interviews, and "mini" eSports events, such as the TeSPA Collegiate Hearthstone Open, and Capcom Pro Tour.

Video games retailer GameStop announced details on this year's GameStop EXPO, set to take place at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, CA Sept. 9-10.

Organizers of GamesBeat 2014 announced today that Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson will be a key speaker at this year's event Sept. 15 and Sept. 16 (at the Parc 55 Wyndham Hotel) in San Francisco. Wilson will take part in a fireside chat hosted by Mike Vorhaus, the president of Magid Advisors. The fireside chat will open the event and focus on how EA is pivoting from a traditional publisher to a more digitally focused company in the constantly evolving business of making and selling games.

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.

There will be no Minecon fan gathering this year, according to Mojang. Mojang COO Vu Bui announced on the company blog that it will skip its 2014 event of the Minecraft-themed convention, with the next Minecon tentatively scheduled for sometime in 2015.

"While we don't have a set date for the next MINECON just yet, I wanted to let everyone know that it won't be until some time in 2015. I'm shooting to have it in the spring in London," Bui wrote before cautioning that even the 2015 event was not set in stone or a guarantee at this point.

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.

Firaxis Games will hold its first-ever fan event called "Firaxicon" at the Embassy Suites Baltimore (Hunt Valley, Maryland) on September 27 and September 28. Tickets for attending the two-day event will cost you $40. Tickets are described as "extremely limited," so get them while you still can.

Attendees will be able to meet members of the Firaxis Games team, enjoy a special "Evening with Sid Meier" presentation, get some hands-on time with the upcoming PC game Civilization: Beyond Earth and get a tour of the Firaxis Games office.

Gamescom organizer Koelnmesse revealed that Gamescom 2014 drew an estimated 335,000 people from 88 countries to its annual event in Cologne, Germany last week. The attendance number is slightly less than last year's attendance number: 340,000 people. This year's attendance number included 31,500 regular people and 6,000 members of the press.

Koelnmesse also said that 700 exhibitors from 47 countries showcased their gaming products this year, up from 635 exhibitors in 2013.

VentureBeat today announced its "big speakers" for its annual games industry focused GamesBeat event. GamesBeat 2014 takes place Sept. 15 and Sept. 16 (at the Parc 55 Wyndham Hotel) in San Francisco.

In July we reported on MineORama, a Minecraft fan gathering in New York City that was canceled at the last minute. While organizers insisted that the event was not a scam and that it would be rescheduled, organizers are showing their true colors by shutting down their Twitter account and their official website at www.mineorama.com. And while their Facebook page is still live, organizers have not made an update since early July.

Sony held its Gamescom PlayStation press briefing in Cologne, Germany today, detailing some of the games and new features coming to the PlayStation 4 this year and beyond into 2015.

Sony opened its Gamescom press briefing by revealing that the install base for PS4 has exceeded 10 million globally.

Microsoft held its Gamescom Xbox press conference in Cologne, Germany today, laying out a roadmap for the games, entertainment and services that are in the pipeline. We have the cliff notes below:

If you aren't at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany this week (because you live in North America or because you aren't independently wealthy enough to attend) then you can check out a lot of the show on Twitch.

All week the folks at Twitch will be hosting content directly from the show including demos from the show floor, press conferences, and whatever cool stuff is going on at Europe's biggest annual gaming event for fans and the media.

You can find Twitch's Gamescom portal at www.twitch.tv/event/gamescom.

CVG reports that an unofficial Minecraft convention is being called a scam after the organizer canceled the New York City-based event at the last minute on Twitter and promised to reschedule the multi-day event at a later time. In a tweet (not via email to ticket holders, curiously enough) from its official Twitter account MineOrama organizers said:

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) Europe today released results from its second annual European State of the Industry Survey, which reveals trends around regional development hubs, tax incentives and more. The survey is conducted annually prior to the launch of GDC Europe in August.

GDC Europe 2014 is organized by UBM Tech Game Network and runs from August 11-13 at the Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany. It takes place in tandem with Europe's biggest video game trade and public show gamescom.

Bethesda announced today that it has teamed up with the American Red Cross to host a blood drive during its annual QuakeCon event. QuakeCon takes place this year at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas.

The blood drive is inspired by Tango Gameworks' upcoming horror game, The Evil Within - which is set for launch on October 21 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PS4, and PC.

The blood drive event is being called "The Good Within Blood Drive," and will take place July 18 and 19 at QuakeCon.

Oculus VR, the creators of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, announced today that its very first game development conference will take place in September. The event, Oculus Connect, will run from September 19-20 at the Los Angeles' Loews Hotel. Oculus says that the event will "bring together engineers, designers, and creatives from around the world to share and collaborate in the interest of creating the best virtual reality experiences possible."

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:

The Boston Festival of Indie Games announced today that over 200 independently-developed games have been submitted for this year's Tabletop and Video Game Showcases. The Boston Festival of Indie Games is an annual event celebrating indie games. It is open to the public and will take place at the Johnson Athletic Center at MIT in Cambridge, MA on Sept. 13.

Valve's international prize pool for the Dota 2 International competition has surpassed $10 million today, according to the company. As Gamasutra points out in its reporting, this prize pool is larger than many familiar professional sporting competitions like the U.S.