News Blips: Minecraft creator offered Bethesda Scrolls rights, Battlefield 3 beta stats, Gears of War 3 DLC, and more

My roommate's Microsoft green Snuggie blanket combats the San Francisco chill quite effectively. It also makes me look like a walking booger. But hey, News Blips!

News Blips:

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Minecraft creator Markus Persson clarifies why Bethesda danced the litigation tango over the Scrolls trademark. "We realized we should apply for the Minecraft trademark to protect our brand," he wrote on his personal blog. "When doing so, we also sent in an application for Scrolls. When Bethesda contacted us, we offered both to change the name to "Scrolls: some subtitle" and to give up the trademark. It refused on both counts." A proposed trial by Quake 3 combat didn't work either. Might I suggest a sporting hot air balloon race, my good chaps?

That's a lot of heads to snipe: Battlefield 3's multiplayer beta hosts six times the number of testers for Battlefield: Bad Company 2. DICE General Manager Karl Magnus Troedsson wrote on the Battlefield Blog that the bolstered army provides higher amounts of vital feedback for increasing performance and fixing bugs — like this seemingly Dead Space-inspired nightmare fuel of a glitch. Battlefield 3 releases on October 25 for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

Gears of War 3's first DLC pack steps off the Cole train into your Xbox 360 on November 1. The Horde Command Pack will command $10 from your wallet in exchange for three new Horde mode maps, three new playable characters, extra fortification upgrades, and a couple of snazzy weapon skins. And remember: It isn't fleecing if no one knows the content was already on the disc!

Free Portal 2 DLC available now. Portal 2: Peer Review — besides sounding like the name for a hipster-bait indie album — continues robot duo Atlas and P-Body's co-op testing venture for you and a buddy. A Challenge mode is also available for both single-player and co-op. Now get in there and start blowing each other up…er, I mean, solving puzzles!

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