Multiplayer Network Innovations, LLC has added Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Tecmo Koei Games Co., Ltd., Iron Galaxy Studios, LLC, Tencent Holdings Limited, and Tencent America to its growing list of court room combatants in multiple lawsuits claiming that these companies violate an abstract patent for "Interactive Multiple Player Game System and Method of Playing a Game Between at Least Two Players," or "MNI."

At least three analysts who follow the video game industry say that Blizzard's cancelation of Titan this week may have cost the company tens of millions of dollars.

After seven years of hush hush development, Blizzard has revealed that its super secret MMO project Titan is officially canceled.

"We didn't find the fun," Blizzard co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime told Polygon in an interview. "We didn't find the passion. We talked about how we put it through a reevaluation period, and actually, what we reevaluated is whether that's the game we really wanted to be making. The answer is no."

Blizzard will do a major Heroes of the Storm account wipe prior to its multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game entering the final phase of "technical alpha," according to Eurogamer.

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.

While details on the exact nature of a new Diablo III exploit (thanks Blue's News) uncovered by players and already being investigated by the developer is unknown at this time, there are some concerns within the community that the problem will receive a hotfix without offering any kind of punitive action against players who are gleefully exploiting it.

Tabytha and David Armstrong, long-time World of Warcraft players (who play on the Eldre’Thalas server), recently found out just how wonderful Blizzard and the vast community that plays its long-running MMO truly is. Of course, the couple already knew that. Last week David Armstrong posted a heartfelt thank you in the World of Warcraft forums to the game’s developers for the game, which has impacted he and his wife's life so dramatically over the years.

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.

WoWHead has located several NPCS in the World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor beta that pay homage to the late Robin Williams. You may recall that Blizzard said last month that it would add the late comedian - who was a big fan of World of Warcraft - into the game to pay tribute to him.

Back in August, Elie Bursztein, the man in charge of Google's anti-abuse research team, detailed how he developed a tool to exploit Blizzard's popular collectible trading card game, Hearthstone. Bursztein gave a lengthy presentation on how he accomplished the hack during the Defcon 22 hacking conference in Las Vegas, but broke from convention by refusing to release his work online.

Sony announced via the PlayStation Blog that the online service for its game consoles, PlayStation Network, is back online after a day-long outage caused by a targeted distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. PSN and Sony Entertainment Network returned to service at 3 a.m. ET. A statement on the PlayStation Blog from Sony explained that the system was taken offline because of the DDoS attack.

Blizzard has revealed that when the next expansion for World of Warcraft is released later this year, subscribers in the UK will have to pay a slightly larger amount for their monthly subscriptions. When the Warlords of Draenor expansion for World of Warcraft releases this November, the game's monthly subscription fee will increase to £9.99.

Blizzard saw 800,000 players walk away from its popular MMO World of Warcraft during the April-June quarter. The subscriber numbers were revealed yesterday as part of a conference call to discuss the company's latest financial results. As of June 30, the game had 6.8 million paying subscribers, down from the 7.6 million paying subscribers it had as of March 31.

Blizzard president and a co-founder Mike Morhaime says that his studio is making a concerted effort going forward to create more diverse and inclusive game characters and content. Morhaime made his comments in response to an open letter aimed at him and Blizzard complaining about under-representation of females and ethnic minorities in the company's games.

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:

Blizzard Entertainment is suing the makers of the Starcraft II "ValiantChaos MapHack" cheat, according to this TorrentFreak report. Blizzard is suing the makers of the cheat program for copyright infringement, and for ruining the Starcraft II gaming experience for legitimate online players. In the complaint filed at a federal court in California, Blizzard said in its complaint that the cheat ruins the fun for other players.

French media conglomerate Vivendi announced this morning its plans to sell half of its stake in video game publisher Activision Blizzard. This latest sale of holdings in the company will likely be used to pay down debts and focus its business on its music and media properties. Last month the company agreed to sell its SFR mobile phone unit in France to Altice and a controlling stake in African telecommunications company Maroc Telecom to Etisalat last year.

Blizzard has made its classic Super Nintendo adventure game, The Lost Vikings, available as a free download (thanks Joystiq). It was one of the first games the company made (which was published by Interplay, long before it was known for creating Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, and World of Warcraft. In the game players take control of three Vikings and alternate between them to use their special skills to solve environmental puzzles.

Key staff members at Blizzard say that the free-to-play model used in Blizzard's popular trading card game Hearthstone was "validated" as the right decision during its beta phase, with Twitch playing a major role in the decision. Speaking to Eurogamer, the game's production editor Jason Chayes said that watching players stream the beta version on Twitch and do well without spending any money convinced the team that it wasn't being exploitative.

Blizzard Entertainment announced that its two-day fan event, BlizzCon, will take place Nov 7 - 8 in Anaheim, Calif. Tickets for the two-day event dedicated to fans of World of Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft, and Warcraft will will go on sale May 7 for $199 at 7 p.m. PT and again on Saturday, May 10 at 10 a.m. PT.

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. and NetEase have inked an agreement to license Blizzard Entertainment's Heroes of the Storm to a NetEase-affiliate in mainland China for a term of three years. Heroes of the Storm is Blizzard's upcoming free-to-play, online team brawler featuring heroes from more than 20 years of Blizzard gaming history. Gamers will be able to play some of their favorite characters from the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo universes, and team up with friends to battle other teams online.

Activision Blizzard announced today that its first expansion for Diablo 3 is selling like hotcakes. Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls topped 2.7 million units in the expansion's first week of availability, according to Activision Blizzard.

The data is based on internal company sales tracking and reports from key distribution partners. We assume that these numbers also include digital direct-to-consumer sales by Blizzard.

Diablo 3's first expansion pack launched on PC and Mac on March 25.

The European servers for several of Blizzard's most popular games suffered from a distributed denial of service on March 30 and 31. According to a post on Battle.net and the European user forums for Diablo III. Blizzard confirmed that performance issues related to several of its games in Europe were affected by attacks and that they are "investigating" the situation.

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."

Blizzard Entertainment announced that World of Warcraft level 90 character boosts are now available to purchase from inside the MMO's store, along with pre-orders for its next expansion Warlords of Draenor.

Last week WOW Insider uncovered a level 90 boost on the World of Warcraft store selling for $60 and took a picture before it was removed by Blizzard.

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."

Sales of Blizzard's popular online-only action-RPG Diablo 3 have reached 15 million to date worldwide, according to Activision Blizzard. The new milestone was revealed as part of the company's latest financial report. Those 15 million in sales include versions of the game across all platforms. Activision Blizzard chief Bobby Kotick said that these numbers also bode well for the upcoming launch of the expansion pack Reaper of Souls in March.

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.

Blizzard has changed the default settings in the parental account controls for Battle.net, that sets it to "not allowed to buy stuff." This change applies to all games offered by Blizzard that offer some sort of micro-transaction services or auction houses including WOW, Hearthstone, and the Auction House in Diablo 3.