Jagex, makers of the long-running fantasy MMORPG RuneScape, are highlighting what it calls "the continued success of RuneScape Bonds." Since their launch, Bonds have enabled players to access premium membership content, exchange them with other community members for in-game items and wealth, and gift them to friends around the world.

Delaware has become the first state in the US to enact a law that ensures families’ rights to access the digital assets of loved ones during incapacitation or after death. Last week, Delaware Gov. Jack Markell signed House Bill (HB) 345, "Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets and Digital Accounts Act," which gives "heirs and executors" legal authority to take control of a digital account or device, according to Ars Technica.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron's chief adviser on intellectual property and Member of Parliament Mike Weatherley is pushing for penalties related to theft in virtual worlds and online. According to several reports, Weatherley, an avid World of Warcraft player, has asked members of Parliament to consider new laws that would make it so that “people who steal online items in video games with a real-world monetary value receive the same sentences as criminals who steal real-world items of the same monetary value."

Riot Games has decided to remove the ability to use League of Legends skin codes in-game as an attempt to stop third-party resellers and scammers from ripping players off. The company made the announcement via an official forum post detailing the changes.

Real-money in gaming technology company Gamblit Gaming has announced partnerships with Shanda Games International Europe, Gamiker and Flexball. All three companies will eventually utilize Gamblit Gaming’s mobile platform technology to let companies to add real money gaming mechanics to any mobile or PC game.

Blizzard warned players back in March that the auction houses for Diablo III on PC would be shutting down today - June 24. The company warned Diablo III players again on June 18 that if they didn't claim items in the virtual game auction by the end of the day today those items or cash would be gone forever.

More details on the final and irrevocable shutdown of the auction house can be found here. To reiterate what Blizzard said back in March concerning the whole ordeal:

If you loathe credit cards and think PayPal is the best digital payment solution since the penny was minted then you'll be happy to hear that you can now use it to buy things on Sony's newest PlayStation console. Sony announced today that PayPal is available on PS4 for people who live in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Chile and Argentina. Console owners still have the option to add funds using a credit card or PSN card as well.

Sony Online Entertainment has released a short video highlighting some of the things that players have been building and discovering in Landmark. Also, today SOE officially opened submissions for its "Landmarks of Landmark" competition, a challenge that offers the chance for some builders to have their creations prominently featured as permanent additions to the online game world. More details on that can be found here.

According to a Reddit thread, an exploit in The Elder Scrolls Online allows players to farm unlimited sums of gold. Developer ZeniMax Online Studios has already stepped in to prevent further use of the bug, it's unclear just how much the exploit has thrown off the in-game economy and what can be done to roll back the damage. A similar situation happened with the Diablo III Auction House, which caused trillions in virtual currency to flood the in-game economy.

Sony Online entertainment claims that one player has already made over $100,000 creating in-game items for Sony Online Entertainment titles. The revelation came from SOE boss John Smedley during an interview with Game Talk Live. SOE's John Smedley revealed the news during a preview of the upcoming survival horror MMO H1Z1.

Sony Online Entertainment announced that Player Studio support will begin for Landmark "on or before May 1." As part of the rollout, Player Studio creators in select regions outside of the United States will be able to submit in-game items across all Player Studio-supported games.

As expected, Blizzard has disabled the Diablo III auction houses today, locking down all current pending auctions and preventing new items from being sold going forward. Blizzard announced its intention to shut down both the real-money and virtual in game auction houses late last year.

If you visit the Auction House now, you'll see that it is no longer functional and is accompanied by the following message: "The Auction House is shutting down. You must claim your items from the Completed tab by 6/24. Existing auctions will complete based on the time remaining."

Bigfish announced that it is now accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment for purchasing its online games and to make in-app purchases within its line-up of free-to-play game offerings.

"Being able to offer bitcoin payments to our consumers through Coinbase is just one more way Big Fish is meeting demand and setting the pace for the mainstream consumer and for the mainstream industry," said company CEO Paul Thelen.

Blizzard put up a reminder on Battle.net today that it will be shutting down the Diablo 3 Auction Houses on Tuesday, March 18. The company announced its plans to shut down both the real money and gold auction houses back in September of last year.

Blizzard said that it would release "additional technical details regarding the shutdown including how this will affect active auctions, items in the Completed Tab, your existing Battle.net Balance, and more next week."

According to information coming out of Valve's Steam Dev Days event from Steamdb, Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 content creators were paid a collective $400,000 in the first week of 2014.

"In the first week of 2014, $400k was paid out to content creators", noted Valve during the second Steam Day. The content in question is made by ordinary players in the community who then resell it to fellow players.

Virtual currency Bitcoin jumped to over $1,000 once again after social games maker Zynga said that it would use the currency as a payment option for its various games.

The virtual currency's value has been highly volatile in recent weeks; in November it peaked at $1,250, but fell sharply to $421 in December after China restricted trade. As of this morning a single Bitcoin was trading at $1,030 on MTGox, one of the virtual currency's major exchanges.

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.

Update: Microsoft tells Kotaku that UK dashboard beta testers will receive refunds for any money lost related to the exchange of MS Points into real cash. Microsoft calls the pricing changes an "error."

Blizzard seems to be having a hell of a time with its online auction houses lately.

Last month, a Diablo III patch introduced a gold-duplicating bug that forced the developer to take the game's auction house offline until it could fix the bug and audit players' accounts.

The Verge is reporting that Microsoft may kill off its point system used on its Xbox Live Marketplace. Citing sources "familiar with Microsoft's Xbox plans," The Verge says that Microsoft will replace the MS Points system with a gift card system for retail and will support straight transactions of money using credit and debit cards. The gift cards will be similar to what Apple offers for iTunes - in other words they will have a real cash value.

Swedish MMO developer MindArk announced today that a recently discovered moon in its long running MMO Entropia Universe was auctioned off for $150,000, or 1.5 million PED in the game's virtual currency. The winner (?) of that bid was Jan Terje Egeland (whose Entropia Universe alter-ego is "Modified Akoz Power"), who MindArk claims will be able to share revenue with the company from all activity on the moon.

Blizzard announced that it will keep the Diablo III auction houses offline for awhile longer as it deals with the aftermath of a gold duping bug that was introduced in a patch released earlier this week. While the nasty little bug that saw a handful of users take advantage and create trillions of in-game gold has been squashed, Blizzard tells the community that it needs a little more time to audit players who may have used the exploit and made transactions in the auction houses.

GamesBeat has a partial edited transcript of a discussion that happened during the Social Casino Summit in San Francisco last week. The event was hosted by GamesBeat and Dean Takahashi. In the lead-up to the discussion Takahashi, who moderated it, notes that the social casino games sector may be small, but there are already more than 100 startups and big companies fighting with each other in the space.

Like a few other game developers who have crowdsourced a project or made a lot of money through PayPal transactions, Skullgirls developer Lab Zero Games found themselves unable to pay employees during the weekend because the online money transfer service froze the developer's account.

Apparently consumers just love microtransactions so much that EA has decided to put them in every game it makes going forward. Those ideas sprang forth from the mouth of CFO Blake Jorgensen today during the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference - as reported by GameSpot.

The PBS Idea Channel has launched its latest episode on YouTube which focuses on virtual currency and the future. The latest episode is called "Are Bitcoins and Unusual Hats the Future of Currency?" and focuses on the popular virtual currency and the commerce that occurs in virtual spaces like Team Fortress 2.

It also explores some of the problems that can occur when your currency might be one tick away from a clever hacker figuring out how to put those virtual coins in a virtual bag with dollar signs on it..

En Masse Entertainment and Bluehole Studios announced that their massively multiplayer online role-playing game Tera soon be switching from a monthly subscription plan to free-to-play. While the exact date for this switch from paid subscription to free has not been revealed, the companies say it will happen sometime in February.

Valve Software has launched the Steam Community Market in open beta, allowing Steam users to buy and sell in-game items using Steam Wallet funds. Sale items can be listed on the Community Market page or in players' personal inventories. Currently only Team Fortress 2 is supported and only consumables and tools can be sold at this time.

As the beta goes on, Valve plans to allow other items to be sold in Team Fortress 2 and to add the Steam Community Market functionality to other games. That will start to happen early next year.

A new report from research firm Newzoo, the "2012 US Country Report," comes to the conclusion that the U.S video games market spending grew one percent, or $21.9 Billion, in 2012. The report also notes that, of the 157 million gamers in the U.S., 86 million spend money on games. Time spent on games in the US is also up significantly: 26 percent versus 18 percent for Europe.

A federal antitrust complaint filed by virtual-currency and payment-processing provider Kickflip (doing business as Gambit) claims that Facebook destroyed its business when it took over the virtual currency used in games on its social network. Prior to that move, Kickflip claims that it was a "leading virtual-currency and payment-processing provider to software developers that published games on Facebook and other social networks."