Just 
a few short years ago, massively-multiplayer online games (MMOs) were considered the future of gaming.
Virtually every publisher was running one, building one, or contemplating one. A lot of those failed. A few struggled along with small but loyal audiences. And all of them acknowledged that they lived under the shadow of perennial champ World of Warcraft.
Add 
Blizzard Entertainment to the long list of video game companies that have been hacked in the past 18 months.
Mike Morhaime, president of the company behind titles such as World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, and Diablo III, announced the breach of the company’s Battle.net servers in a note to users late Thursday afternoon, urging them to change their passwords.
Another 
month, another batch of bad news for the game industry.
July continued the industry’s ugly retail decline, with sales of video game software falling 23 percent compared to last year, according to The NPD Group.
Curt 
Schilling’s video game dreams are now the property of the state of Rhode Island.
A U.S. Bankruptcy judge has given The Rhode Island Economic Development Corp. and Bank of New York Mellon Trust Co. the go-ahead to take 38 Studios’ assets — specifically, the IP for its games.
A 
15-year old from Columbus, Ohio was rushed to an area hospital Tuesday after collapsing during a marathon session of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 that lasted between four and five days.
Tyler Rigsby was admitted to the Ohio State University Medical Center, suffering from dehydration. Hospital officials say he was released later in the day.
For 
years, Amazon has been a looming figure in the video game industry. On Monday, it finally pulled the trigger.
The retail giant has launched a new division, called Amazon Game Studios, which will focus (initially, at least) on social games, though expect it to branch into other areas in the months and years to come.
Virtual 
reality got a bad reputation in the early 1990s. Proponents overpromised and underdelivered, with crappy graphics and headache-inducing headgear — not to mention prices that were so stratospheric, there was no way anyone could afford to buy a system.
It was a technology that became an afterthought — until game design guru John Carmack took an interest, at least. During the E3 conference in June, Carmack showed off the Oculus Rift headset, a virtual reality device he helped to create using (no joke) Oakley ski goggles, duct tape, and spare miniaturized rocket parts he had lying around his shop.
Azeroth 
is a lot emptier these days.
World of Warcraft saw more than 1 million people cancel their subscriptions over the past three months, the game’s publisher revealed in its quarterly earnings statement. That’s one of the most dramatic drops in the game’s long history.
Tom 
Curtin didn’t get what he was asking for one of the rarest video games ever found, but you won’t hear him complaining too much about that.
Earlier this week, Curtin launched an eBay auction for an exceptionally hard-to-find The Legend of Zelda prototype cartridge. The price? A whopping $150,000. That proved too steep, but a buyer quickly stepped forward and offered $55,000 — and just like that, there was a new record for the most expensive video game in the world.
The 
length of this console life cycle continues to haunt Sony. The company saw a wider loss in its fiscal first quarter with poor PlayStation sales dragging the numbers down.
The games unit saw a notable decline in sales last quarter (from April 1 to June 30), selling 800,000 fewer hardware units and coming in at an operating loss of $45 million. Software sales were down as well. It was a discouraging performance for the division Sony is hoping will help guide the company out of its financial woes.
Chris Morris: Journalist 