CBS Cleveland News is reporting that 15-year-old Tyler Rigby has been hospitalized after a 4-day gaming marathon left him severely dehydrated.  Reportedly, the Columbus teen locked himself in his room to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.  According to his mother, he emerged for the occasional potty and snack break.

Treyarch is diving headfirst into politics with the new villain from Call of Duty Black Ops 2. According to Gameranx the new villain will be Raul Menendez, a man described as a "champion of the 99 percent," who is a lot like Wikileaks front man Julian Assange. In the game Menendez hopes to start a "global insurrection against the status quo."

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick admitted in a recent interview with CNBC Asia’s Squawk Box that bringing Call of Duty Online to market in China is a risky proposition. While Kotick expresses confidence in Tencent Holdings in making the game based on its popular first-person shooter series successful in Mainland China, Kotick also knows that there is a risk when bringing a Western game into a new market with different business models and player tastes.

Activision Blizzard has inked a deal with Chinese online games giant Tencent Holdings Limited to bring Call of Duty Online to Chinese players. In its announcement this morning Activision said that Call of Duty Online has been in development by Activision Publishing for approximately two years. Under the multi-year agreement with Activision Publishing, Tencent gains the exclusive licensing rights to operate Call of Duty Online in mainland China. The game is described as free-to-play and uses a monetized in-game store to sell virtual items.

Update: Polygon is reporting that, after a few days of closed door negotiations, Activision has settled its lawsuit with former Infinity Ward creative leads Jason West and Vincent Zampella, and 40 former Infinity Ward developers. Attorneys involved in the case told Polygon that the case won't be going to trial. A jury trial was scheduled for tomorrow.

Documents from the legal battle between Activision and former Infinity Ward studio leads Jason West and Vincent Zampella have been unsealed revealing a bunch of details on the contract between Bungie and Activision. According to the LA Times, the documents are part of the case because the duo's lawyer Robert M. Schwartz is using the details of that deal to demand compensation for his clients.

LA Times reporter Ben Fritz, who is in close proximity of the Activision v. West and Zampella court case happening in Los Angeles today has been furiously tweeting various scoops via his Twitter account. Among the revelations are that Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle has denied Activision's motion to postpone the case for an additional thirty days. The trail will begin as scheduled on May 29.

According to a report from Polygon citing a source "familiar with the case," Activision has delivered a check for $47 million to lawyers representing the so-called "Infinity Ward Employee Group." This group made up of ex-employees of the studio that created the popular Call of Duty series claimed that Activision failed to pay to pay them royalties owed on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Analyst Colin Sebastian of Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated sent out a note this morning to investors of Activision stock saying that they are maintaining a rating of outperform. This rating is based on Activision's latest financial results which were fairly solid thanks to sales of its Skylanders line of toy-game hybrid products for various platforms and continued sales growth in its Call of Duty Elite membership program.

A new petition is online to protest the release of DLC for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. More specifically protest organizers are urging the CoD community not to download and buy any DLC for the game until Infinity Ward and Activsion fix a number of problems with the core game. So far the petition has 240 signatures, the Twitter feed dedicated to it has 1183 followers and a YouTube video explaining what the protest is all about has been viewed 2400 times.

Fox News commentator Oliver North has been signed to help Activision sell its next big Call of Duty game, Call of Duty Black Ops 2. North appears on-screen in an infomercial for the game talking about war. We'll leave the characterizations to Fox News (from his bio there as a contributor to the network) and this Wikipedia entry on him, but the short story is that North's past is marked with scandal.

PiperJaffray analyst Michael Olson says that Call of Duty's "shortened tail" and a general lack of hits are the reasons for lower retail games sales recently. Olson says that the latest game in the series - Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 - isn't maintaining the same long tail sales that 2010's Call of Duty: Black Ops enjoyed. He projects that the game will be the eighth largest selling game in March 2012, comparing it to Blacks Ops - which was the fifth best selling game in the same period a year ago.

A company called Worlds Inc. has filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard for infringing a patent the company holds related to virtual worlds. Let the trolling begin anew. Worlds Inc. claims that the company is violating a patent it holds related to "systems and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space." The company alleges in its claim that Activision's World of Warcraft and Call of Duty games violate its patents and that it is due compensation for it.

Activision Blizzard had some luck this week in court when one of the claims of fraud brought against it in the ongoing legal battle against former Infinity Ward heads (Jason West and Vincent Zampella) and Electronic Arts was dismissed by the presiding judge. California State Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle (Los Angeles) today sided with Activision in their assertion that a fraudulent-inducement claim made by West and Zampella was without merit and shouldn't be allowed to move forward. Judge Berle let the duo's claim of promissory fraud move forward.

Common sense dictates that you can't scream "fire!" in a crowded movie theater and that doing so isn't considered protected speech. In the wake of the recent Ohio school shootings, making public jokes about shooting up your local high school also falls under the purview of widely held common sense doctrine.

Yesterday, we reported that French gaming site Gameblog had apparently been blacklisted by Activision for reporting that Amazon’s French portal had briefly posted a listing for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

Gameblog editor Grégory Szriftgiser spoke to Kotaku about what happened:

Activision is not a happy camper today as the name of its next Call of Duty title is leaked by Amazon's French portal, then quickly taken offline. According to the Amazon France page, the name of the next game is "Call of Duty Black Ops 2." The news was first reported by Gameblog.

Normally when you imagine someone getting in the Guinness Book of World Records, you correlate the entry to some kind of effort being involved. Someone eats 1,000 eggs, or juggles for 24 hours, etc. But with the new Gamer’s Edition of the book they have added a new category called "the Best Game Ending" and allowed about 13,000 fans to vote.

Zack Bastian, contributor the lovely Law of the Game Blog, talks about what to expect in the Call of Duty lawsuit between EA, Activision and former Infinity Ward front men Jason West and Vince Zampella. Besides offering a look back at the case as it has progressed so far and what caused it to happen in the first place, Bastian explains why this case is so fascinating to legal eagles. Here's a sample (I encourage you to go and read the whole thing):

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. According to an Ad Age report, Activision publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg said that the Modern Warfare 3 leak onto the Internet was his "first real crisis on the job” and forced the company to employ some unorthodox methods to soften the blow. He said that when the news broke the marketing department was called into a half-day meeting with risk management to discuss their options.

As part of his Top Five 2012 predictions feature on IndustryGamers, EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich predicted that Grand Theft Auto V will be the top selling game of the year. He even goes so far as to say that it will beat out the next Call of Duty game.

"It goes without saying that GTA V will be one of the year's biggest releases, but I will take it one step farther and say GTA V will be 2012's biggest release," said Divnich.

A California Superior Court judge has told EA that it must defend itself in the $400 million contract-interference suit brought by Activision over Infinity Ward founders Jason West and Vince Zampella.

Sony President of worldwide studios, Shuhei Yoshida, said that Japanese consumers have become more open to Western games. Of course, anyone following the sales and ratings of Skyrim in Japan already knows this. Speaking to the European PlayStation Blog, Yoshida said that Everybody's Golf and Uncharted: Golden Abyss were the most pre-ordered games in the Vita's Japanese line-up. The system launched last week. Yoshida added that the prominence of the US-developed Uncharted in a line-up dominated almost entirely by Japanese games is an indication of a larger trend in the region.

If you've been banned from Modern Warfare 3 for being a jerk or cheating, you can start playing again in another 5,000 days. If you're a 13-year-old and you catch such a serious ban, you'll be 26.5 years old when you can play again. A serious ban is 5,000 days, or 13.5 years, according to MP1st. But don't worry - these bans are dubbed "temporary" by Infinity Ward.

Xbox 360 Modern Warfare 3 online matchmaking won't work properly in countries that are not supported by Xbox Live, according to a report in Eurogamer. Some customers in countries where the service isn't official are having trouble playing Modern Warfare 3 and there's nothing that can be done about it, according to tweets from Activision and Microsoft to users complaining about problems.

Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has hit the $ 1 billion sales mark - and it did so just 16 days after its November 8 release. As this IndustryGamers report points out, it hit that milestone faster the top grossing movie in history - James Cameron’s Avatar. Activision also said that it has 30 million players in its worldwide Call of Duty player community.

According to EA's Peter Moore Battlefield has either taken market share from Modern Warfare 3, has added millions of new customers into the mix, or both. The COO of EA insists that Battlefield 3 has successfully taken a slice of Modern Warfare 3’s market share, even though the latest title in Activision's top franchise has become the fastest selling entertainment product of all time.

As with most holiday seasons, games and electronics are becoming hot in December.

The Chicago Tribune and mobile shopping app firm ShopSavvy are tracking the scans of the 10 million active subscribers of ShopSavvy, which allows people to scan barcodes, compare prices and make purchases from their smart phones.

Psychiatrists who Norwegian courts assigned to assess accused mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik have come to the not-so-shocking conclusion that he is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. After interviewing him 13 times, they say he was in a "psychotic state" during and after the two separate attacks in late July that led to the deaths of 77 people and injured 151. The report is preliminary and still needs to be reviewed by a panel of forensic psychiatrists.

Infinity Ward, the developers of Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, announced via Twitter that it has banned more than 1,600 players online for cheating. Infinity Ward Creative Strategist, Robert Bowling explained via Twitter what was going on.

"Any attempt to cheat, hack, or glitch in #MW3 will not be tolerated. 1600+ bans issued. Updates in works."

He went on to answer questions from followers about how to report cheaters from within the game: