Bohemia Interactive has acknowledged that servers for its popular open-world multiplayer survival game, DayZ have been stolen, but insists that these attacks will not affect the game in the long-term. The game is available via Steam Early Access and still in alpha development. Early reports suggested that the game's source code had been compromised or stolen, but Bohemia did not confirm or deny those reports.

One of the games that will not be affected when GameSpy's multiplayer services goes dark is Halo, its demo, and multiplayer-focused Halo: Custom Edition. Thanks to the hard work of matchmaking server software maker GameRanger, all the multiplayer functionality in Halo will be intact. Additional features including friends lists and messaging will also remain functional in the games. Bungie will be releasing a 1.0.10 of Halo PC and Halo CE update soon that will provide a workaround for the game's lobby as well.

Electronic Arts has announced its plans to shut down online services for 50 titles by July. Included in the list (full rundown below) are five older Battlefield games, Bulletstorm, three ageing Command & Conquer games, three Crysis titles, five FIFA games, multiple MySims titles, and some NASCAR and Need For Speed Games.

Earlier this week we reported on CCP's efforts to catch the individuals that vandalized a real-world monument dedicated to its game EVE Online in Reykjavik, Iceland.

The last time we checked games journalist Andrew Groen's Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign for his book, A History of the Great Empires of Eve Online, it had almost tripled its initial goal of $12,500. As of this writing the project sits at $40,899, with 19 more days to go. With the project fully funded and earning way above its initial goal, Groen (pictured, left) continues to kick around ideas to make the project more interesting.

Companies that provide the tools to cheat in the most popular online games are raking in millions of dollars a year, according to this extensive PC Gamer report. Companies that make and sell hacks for cheaters in online multiplayer games like Counter Strike and Battlefield are making millions of dollars annually from paying customers.

Eurogamer has an interesting story on a pro League of Legends player who is so committed to the MOBA hit that he played it in the hospital while recovering from a collapsed lung - and then streamed his session for four hours on Twitch.

Mojang has launched the Minecraft Realms subscription service in North America today. In case you didn't know, Minecraft Realms offers hosting and setup for multiplayer Minecraft worlds starting at around $13 a month.

Games journalist Andrew Groen launched a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign for his book project, "A History of the Great Empires of Eve Online." Within hours of its launch, the crowd-funding campaign for the book, which will explain in plain English the in-game history of CCP's popular space MMO universe, has already garnered well over half of its goal.

It looks like those who were keen on playing Sony Online Entertainment's catalog of online games for a flat monthly fee will have to wait just a little bit longer. SOE announced today that it has delayed its "All-Access Pass" subscription plan to April 29. The company previously delayed its launch from April 6 to April 23, but this week it delayed it one more time. Why another delay? To ensure that the transfer to the "All Access Pass" subscription system is seamless, says SOE.

Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley is not afraid to give frank answers on the company's upcoming online zombie apocalypse game, H1Z1. When asked the tough questions on Reddit about the game's similarities to DayZ, Smedley tackled the question head on with the following answer:

2K Games says that the upcoming shutdown of online-service provider GameSpy Technology (owned by Glu) will "temporarily" take Borderlands and several Civilization games offline. The publishing label of Take-Two plans to transition some of the affected games from GameSpy to Steamworks, while nearly 20 other titles will lose online support.

In what can only be described as an ill-conceived plan to garner attention and to earn an entire group of people a trip to the emergency room, members of EVE Online developer CCP Games plan to challenge (MMA) fighter Gunnar "Gunni" Nelson (who has a record of 12-0-1) in actual physical combat during the EVE Fanfest on May 2. The battle, which is appropriately billed as EVE OF DESTRUCTION, will happen on the night of Friday, May 2 and will be streamed live on www.twitch.tv/ccp.

China-based MMO developer and publisher Perfect World Entertainment announced this morning that it has entered into an agreement to purchase more than 30 million shares of Chinese MMO outfit Shanda Games Limited for $100 million in cash.

Online game maker NCsoft has invested an estimated $4.8 million in South Korean web comics firm Lezhin Entertainment, according to GII.

NCsoft said that the ₩5 billion ($4.8 million USD) investment in Lezhin will offer opportunities to leverage its IP in new ways, and that it will also allow Lezhin to leverage its portfolio of intellectual property for creating interactive entertainment.

Glu's GameSpy Technology announced earlier this month that it planned to shut down its multiplayer services on May 31, leaving games like Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142 without a multiplayer solution for players.

More than 800 developers and publishers made use of GameSpy's services over more than a decade online, including Capcom, Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Epic, Ubisoft, and Konami. Nintendo previously announced plans to cease online services for Wii and Nintendo DS, which made use of GameSpy Technology, on May 20. of last year.

Wargaming CEO Victor Kisyli has pledged that his company will invest $10 million into improving and developing features that support eSports in 2014. At a press conference in Warsaw, Poland, Wargaming CEO Victor Kisyli said that there has been a huge upswing of interest in World of Tanks for eSports in the last two years. In 2012, 30,000 pro players took part in 120 World of Tanks tournaments, while in 2013 that number climbed to 200,000 players across more than 1,000 World of Tanks tournaments, according to Wargaming's calculations.

Respawn's website for Titanfall introduces a new section explaining what happens to players who are flagged as cheaters. According to the information on the site, if you are flagged as a cheater, you will be banned from normal servers and corralled into a special "cheater's only" category that limits your online play to matchmaking with your own kind.

On the question of "what happens" when you get banned, Respawn offers the following answer:

At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco today, Google announced a new version of the Google Play Games Services that enables cross-platform multiplayer support for iOS and Android games. Play Games Services is a backend API for developers of Android, iOS, and even Web games that gives developers the ability to set up achievements, leaderboards, multiplayer and cloud saves using Google's cloud infrastructure and development APIs.

EA has released a Titanfall release schedule for the digital versions of the game on Xbox One and PC through its Origin digital distribution service.

While the Xbox One version of the game launches in the U.S. Canada, Mexico and Brazil today, it won't be available in other regions around the globe until March 14. You can check out the big list below. The Xbox 360 version of the game launches March 25 in the U.S. and March 28 in Europe (list via CVG).

Respawn Entertainment co-founder Vince Zampella said that neither his company or Microsoft will punish legitimate players who have bought the game early and decide to play it online. He does warn that those who do decide to play the game should expect some technical issues online prior to the launch of the game's servers in an official capacity.

Sony Online Entertainment says that it will delay its plans to launch its "All Access" pricing scheme to the middle of April. The announcement was made by SOE President John Smedley. The All Access pricing plan, which gives subscribers to all of SOE's games for one monthly subscription fee, was set for launch on April 2. Smedley said that there was just too much stuff left to finish to hit the April 2 deadline.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says that the launch of Grand Theft Auto Online gives Rockstar the breathing room to take its time with the next Grand Theft Auto game. Speaking to MCV, Zelnick told the publication that there are no plans to launch another GTA title this year.

Nexon's newly appointed CEO Owen Mahoney tells Reuters that his company is keen on acquiring North American IP to gain a better footing in Western markets. Nexon runs the still-popular MOO Maple Story and plenty of other online free-to-play titles.

Electronic Arts has finally canceled its Ultima-branded social online strategy building game Lord of Ultima. The game will officially shut down in May. The news isn't all that shocking for a number of reasons; the game - which is an Ultima game mostly in name only - never really captured the number of players EA had hoped for; and the development team working on the game, EA Phenomic, shut down last summer.

According to an OnGamers report, World Cyber Games is finished holding eSports tournaments this year and may cease operations beyond being just a "brand." The World Cyber Games is one of the world's most popular and recognized e-sports tournament organizations operating competitions in Asia, North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Oceania.

If you think it's cute to disconnect from Killer Instinct on Xbox Live when you are playing an online match, then you may not be happy to hear that game developer Double Helix wants to put you in jail. Not "you" in the literal sense, but your account.

The next update to Killer Instinct on Xbox One will institute a jail system for players who frequently disconnect in the middle of online matches. Here's how the whole system will work, according to Double Helix:

A U.S. District Court in California has dismissed a class action lawsuit that tried to take Take-Two Interactive and its subsidiary Rockstar Games to task for the delayed launch of the multiplayer component for Grand Theft Auto V - Grand Theft Auto Online.

The lawsuit (McMahon v. Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. et al., C.D. Cal. Case No. 5:13-cv-02032-VAP-SP) was filed on October 4 by Bruce McMahon and Christopher Bengtson, but later moved to the federal court in mid-November.

Norwegian MMO developer and publisher Funcom is under investigation for insider trading, according to this Eurogamer report. According to the report, staff were sent home today as Norwegian authorities collected documents related to an investigation into insider trading, though specific details about the investigation remain unknown as of this writing. Funcom's stock has also been temporarily frozen on the Oslo stock market.

This won't come as a shock to anyone, but it's an interesting milestone nonetheless: Riot Games claims that its popular MOBA game League of Legends is enjoyed by 27 million players on a daily basis. That number represents more than twice the 12 million daily players it reported way back in 2012.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Riot Games also confirmed that up to 7.5 million users are playing League of Legends concurrently during peak hours, up from a high of around 5 million concurrent users reported in March of 2013.