Blizzard launched the beta test of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft this week, even as it prepared to sue a copycat game running on iOS and Android being served to gamers in China.

According to MMO Culture, Blizzard and its partner in the region NetEase have filed a lawsuit in China's courts alleging that the iOS and Android game Legend of Crouching Dragon seems to have borrowed core elements from Hearthstone including its card designs, values and game mechanics.

The anti-porn filtering law takes effect the United Kingdom this month, but according to a forum post over at the official League of Legends community site, the new system may also stop you from updating your favorite MOBA game in the region.

According to sales numbers in a report from SuperData, Riots Games' popular MOBA game League of Legends generated $624 million in 2013, beating out such big brand name games as Dungeon Fighter Online, World of Tanks, Maplestory, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike Online and World of Warcraft - just to name a few.

A documentary about the ill effects of online game addiction in South Korea made its debut this weekend at the Sundance Film Festival. According to the festival's official website (as reported on by GameSpot), the documentary explores South Korea's online gaming culture as it follows the story of a couple whose three-month-old daughter died of malnutrition while they were allegedly playing the massively multiplayer online game, Prius Online.

Rockstar Games said that those individuals who are using money cheats in Grand Theft Auto Online can expect a swift and unmerciful ban. In a new blog post the company said that those who have used exploits and cheats to secure mountains of illegally-gained funds better watch out. They called the large influx of cash from cheating "game-breaking" and "disruptive to the overall experience."

Turbine Entertainment announced via a forum post that it has renewed the license for Lord of the Rings, allowing its long-running MMO Lord of the Rings Online to continue operations.

Community Manager Rick Heaton confirmed that his company had renewed the license for the game set in the universe created in Tolkien's popular books in a forum post.

On this week's show hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about Sony's PlayStation Now streaming service, Sony Online Entertainment's all access MMO pass, Ultimate Gay Fighter, and South Australia's government being pressured into getting rid of anti-game billboards. Download Episode 83 now: SuperPAC Episode 83 (1 hour, 8 minutes) 78.5 MB.

Ars Technica offers some interesting insights into why the recent distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that took out EA's Origin service, Blizzard's Battle.net, and League of Legends were particularly potent. According to the report the DDoS attacks used an unheard of method to amplify the amount of data being sent in order to grind many popular online games to a halt.

New research published in the journal Behaviour & Information Technology explores what drives players of online games to engage in bad behavior such as cheating. A study of the habits of people who play online games shows that anonymous users are more likely to cheat, but their behavior is (usually) significantly tempered by the culture and dynamics of the group of players they associate with, suggesting that other forms of online ‘bad behavior’ – such as flaming and trolling – can be modified by the attitudes and behaviors of other group members.

Speaking via a thread on Reddit, Riot Games president and co-founder Marc Merrill defended his company against accusations of greed related to its ultra popular free-to-play MOBA game League of Legends. Responding to a Reddit thread where users complained about the lack of a new client for League of Legends Season 4, Merrill denied that his company was being "money hungry."

Sony has announced that it will be pulling the plug on online support for several PlayStation 3 games in early 2014. Online multiplayer for Gran Turismo 5 will end on May 20, 2014. Online multiplayer for the Resistance franchise (Resistance: Fall of Man, Resistance 2, and Resistance 3) on PlayStation 3 will be shut down on March 28. On January 28, 2014, online play for MAG, SOCOM: Special Forces and SOCOM: Confrontation will also be discontinued, effectively making these games cease to exist (because they are online-only titles).

Rockstar is calming Grand Theft Auto players down who are concerned that they may get their accounts banned through no fault of their own. The fear stems from GTA Online money hackers who are giving away large sums of (we assume ill-gotten) in-game currency to strangers, making them vulnerable to a ban by Rockstar.

Rockstar's position is that honest players do not need to be worried about getting banned.

Here's more from Rockstar's support page for the game:

Backers of Richard Garriott's and Portalarium's online-focused RPG Shroud of the Avatar, will get a taste of the game beginning today with the launch of Shroud of the Avatar Release 1. The early version of the game's client will allow players to log in to their accounts, download the client, create a character and begin to explore the streets of Owl's Head, the game's first town open for business. The release comes nine months after the project was announced by Portalarium in early March.

Sony Online Entertainment announced that its next annual fan gathering, SOE Live 2014, will be held at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas from Aug. 14 - Aug. 17, 2014. The 2014 event will celebrate 15 years of SOE's games, with activities and events that revolve around its line-up of games including DC Universe Online, Dragon's Prophet, EverQuest, EverQuest II, PlanetSide 2, Vanguard Saga of Heroes and the upcoming EverQuest Next Landmark and EverQuest Next.

CCP Games announced that EVE Online players have donated US$190,890 to the Icelandic Red Cross to help the citizens of the Philippines recover from Typhoon Haiyan. The money was raised through the game's PLEX for GOOD program, which allows players of the popular game to collectively donate in-game currency to worthy charities, as well as other associated donations.

Riot Games, makers of the popular MOBA game League of Legends, requires a lot from players who want to sign up with them to play professionally.

According to new research (as reported by the Independant), over half of Irish teenagers play multiplayer video games regularly, and while almost a third interact with other gamers online, 29 percent of those teens say they have "made friends" with others through online gaming.

Wargaming sent out an interesting announcement this afternoon about seven men who climbed Mount Everest and "sort of" claimed it in the name of their favorite online game... Seven World of Warplanes players have tackled the treacherous slopes of the Himalayas and celebrated by planting a very special flag on its highest peak.

EA DICE has published an update to the Battlelog detailing its work to improve Battlefield 4 across multiple platforms.

In a post on Battlelog today DICE said it hoped to get an update for the PS4 version out early next week and that it was dealing with a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) that made the PC version of the game unplayable for most of the weekend.

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) has partnership with South Korean publisher Daum Communications to bring the massively multiplayer online first-person shooter (MMOFPS) PlanetSide 2 to the region. SOE and Daum will showcase PlanetSide 2 at the G-STAR Global Game Exhibition in Busan, South Korea on November 14-16, 2013.

Daum has secured the exclusive publishing rights to the game, including dedicated servers, local customer support and payment gateways for South Korea. PlanetSide 2 will launch in the region as a free-to-play game.

Trion Worlds announced that last week's participation in the Extra Life charity marathon and a promotion related to it helped give its MMORPGs RIFT Online and Defiance a record-breaking week last week. The company said that over a quarter of a million new players joined their online games, RIFT and Defiance. Bookended by the relaunch of RIFT as a free-to-play game on Steam and the charity marathon for Extra Life, Trion’s celebration week included promotions, in-game special events, and giveaways across both games to celebrate both new and veteran players.

Call of Duty: Ghost, the latest in Activision's best-selling military-themed shooter series, releases today, but current generation versions of the game have been hacked, according to this Polygon report.

Battlefield 4 developer DICE says that it is aware of reports that the PC version of the latest game in the popular first-person shooter series is freezing and locking up for some players and that a fix is on the way. The company listed all the bugs and glitches it is aware of with the game, which problems it has fixed, and which issues are still being investigated.

Rockstar Games announced that the "stimulus package," two payouts of in-game cash at $250,000 each, will be rolled out as part of a patch next week. The stimulus is part of an apology on the part of Rockstar for consumers who tried to play Grand Theft Auto Online in October and found that they couldn't due to bugs, connectivity issues, and other problems that plagued the game at launch.

Rockstar had planned on dolling out the cash to play a week ago, but found that there were still a lot of issues with the game that needed to be addressed first.

Battlefield 4 launches today, and along with it a launch-day patch. The Day One Update isn't mandatory but its developer DICE is "strongly" recommending that Battlefield 4 owners download it. If you bought Battlefield 4 for its multiplayer then you'll definitely want to download it or you might experience some less-than-stellar multiplayer action. According to DICE:

"This Battlefield 4 update contains improvements to the multiplayer portions of the game. We strongly advise you download it."

Several new reports from research firm Niko Partners reveals that China's gaming population is mostly made up of PC gamers and mobile players. According to data from two reports, the "Chinese Gamers Report 2013," and the "Quarterly Home Gamer Survey and Monthly I-café Games Usage Data," China has 208 million PC gamers and 288 million mobile game players this year.

Grand Theft Auto Online players antsy to get their in-game stimulus cash will have to wait a little bit longer. Rockstar said it would not release any of the free money until it had fixed a majority of the bugs still plaguing the game. The company said this in response to questions about the delay of the first $250,000 stimulus give out which was supposed to occur sometime this week.

A Rockstar Newswire update notes:

Jagex announced today that one million users have joined its retro MMO RuneScape Old School since it launched in January of this year. As the name would imply RuneScape Old School lets players jump in the popular online game world that put Jagex on the map.

If you have lost characters in Grand Theft Auto Online and were hoping for some magic bullet to fix the problem, then you are out of luck, according to Rockstar Games. The company has confirmed, much to the chagrin of those affected by the glitch that made characters and online rankings disappear last week, that there's no fix for it. Instead they hope that the $500,000 in-game credit stimulus will be enough to satisfy players who have had trouble with the game since it launched on October 1.

Riot Games president Marc Merrill's Twitter account was hacked and the hacker has leaked images of a League of Legends spin-off title that was being fooled around with, but ultimately shelved. Merrill confirmed this via his Twitter account which he has managed to regain control of:

"Yup, someone got onto my Twitter account," Merrill Tweeted on October 13. "Yup, someone shared some old screens from one of the many prototypes we've experimented with."