GamesBeat weekly roundup: Whales of social gaming, Starcraft II guide, Saints Row IV, and family Minecraft servers

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, EA admits it handled SimCity problems poorly and offers players a free game, Angry Birds gets its own arcade machine, and Mojang ventures into family-oriented Minecraft world rentals.

You’ll also find reviews for Lego City: Undercover, MLB 13: The Show, and SimCity as well as previews for Guacamelee and Payday 2.

News

• The DeanBeat: It’s the community, stupid. Again.
• Fight aliens as the President of the United States in Saints Row 4 this August
• New Zealand’s Path of Exile online game scores 2M players in two months
• February NPD: Dead Space 3 takes top spot — Crysis 3 can’t outpace Call of Duty
• Action video games improve your ability to search through complex visual scenes
• Assassin’s Creed creative director officially returns to Ubisoft after stint with THQ
• Disney delays Infinity interactive-toy game to August
• Sega teams up with Huddle so game developers can, uh, huddle on cross-Atlantic projects
• Modder reveals SimCity works offline
• Arkadium raises $5M for multiplatform casual games, leading with Windows 8 (exclusive)
• StarCraft II Heart of the Swarm guide: Abilities, mutations, and evolutions
• Twitch hits 28M viewers a month as livestreaming games hits its stride
• It’s happening: Nintendo using Skylander-like toys in its next Pokémon game
• Bethesda opens webstore to sell $300 Skyrim statue and other franchise merchandise
• Widening its net, Kabam launches third-party publishing business
• Minecraft Realms: Mojang ventures into services with world rental aimed at families
• Pixowl aims to extend its indie success with Greedy Grub
• Xi3 tries to dispel wrong assumptions about whether its Piston is Valve’s ‘Steam Box’
• Are Kickstarter crowdfundings slowing down? Uh huh
• Check the status of SimCity’s servers anytime on the web
• Nintendo held ‘deep discussions’ before allowing Mario to punch people in Smash Bros.
• Smarts before brain farts: Sony modifies ‘Bros Before Hos’ trophy in God of War: Ascension
• Mashup artist 2 Mello magically combines Jay-Z and Chrono Trigger in full 12-track album
• World of Tanks sets new Guinness world record
• How ‘The Industry’ digital gaming magazine plans to float above the noise
• Activision adding microtransactions to Call of Duty: Black Ops II with Personalization Packs
• Fanhood launches March Madness as lines blur for fantasy sports and gambling
• The Princeton Review ranks the best schools for game design
• Blizzard launches StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm at midnight openings
• Veteran adventure game designer Ron Gilbert leaves Double Fine Productions
• No need to install StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm if you already have Wings of Liberty
• Electronic Arts’ umpteen millionth SimCity update
• Old meets new as Angry Birds debuts on arcade machines
• Raptr’s rewards improve Rift’s daily users by 470%
• Howard Stringer retires after overseeing rocky period for Sony and PlayStation
• Star Wars: First Assault is reportedly a first-person predecessor to Battlefront III
• Zynga exec: Debate over clones is a ‘distraction’ — everyone copies
• EA says SimCity core server problems are ‘almost behind us’
• What to do when kids spend $1,000 on iTunes and other mucky legal issues
• EA improves SimCity online access with 40 times better server response times
• Admitting it was ‘dumb,’ EA adds SimCity servers and offers players a free game
• MLG, Twitch, and Blizzard execs talk the business, growth, and popularity of e-sports

Mobile News

• 3DS’s Fire Emblem: Awakening sells 180K in February — more than a third of that through eShop
• Rise of the Triad reboot developer bringing Duke Nukem II to iOS
• Pikachu 3DS XL coming to the U.S. on March 24
• Nintendo hit with $30M judgment in patent case on 3DS screen
• Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition dev: You choose what Android device you want it on
• Pocket Gems clears 100M game downloads and 150 employees (exclusive)

Reviews

• Lego City: Undercover is Grand Theft Auto for kids (review)
• Threeview: SimCity reviewed by a critic, an analyst, and an academic
• MLB 13 The Show is an entertaining rerun (review)

Previews

• Guacamelee! is a gorgeous brawler that proudly shows its roots (preview)
• Payday 2 turns a dumb crook into a smooth criminal (preview)

Interviews

• New Yorker cartoonist Shannon Wheeler & Comixology explain SXSW panels (exclusive)
• Richard Garriott tells how Lord British and Ultima were born (video)

Pieces of Flair

• What it means to be a ‘whale’ — and why social gamers are just gamers
• Inside Bungie: A walk through a top-secret headquarters where Halo gave way to Destiny (photo gallery)