Zynga gets its mojo back with higher-than-expected sales and a small Q4 profit

While Zynga is still technically losing money in the fourth quarter, its earnings report is cheering up the stock market.

Koolbit expands into real-money casino games on mobile

Koolbit has flipped the switch on its mobile casino games, and they are now available as real-money online and mobile-gambling titles in the United Kingdom.

GamesBeat weekly roundup: Disney shuts down Junction Point, GTA V delayed

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.

Gaming consumes a great share of dollars spent on the Google and Apple app stores

December saw an astounding increase in revenues and downloads for mobile games.

Newzoo warns of a gap between investor thinking and game-market opportunities

Investors are worried about the U.S. retail game market. But overall game-industry sales are at $68 billion, growing 7 percent a year.

The DeanBeat: Game acquisitions rise 23 percent to $3.4B in 2012

The game industry set a new record for the money spent on acquisitions, but the number of deals dropped.

How Rick Thompson became the über investor for gaming (interview)

The co-founder of Playdom is funding game companies; he thinks Zynga's chief executive ought to give up his supervoting rights.

King.com’s Candy Crush Saga beats Zynga with top social-mobile game

For the first time in years, Zynga does not have the top game in daily users on Facebook.

FarmVille 2 has 17 players in the Vatican and other ‘big data’ trivia

About 350M crops are harvested every day in Zynga's most popular social game.

GamesBeat weekly roundup: THQ is bankrupt, Zynga shuts down 11 games

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.

The end is near: 11 Zynga games are victims of cost-cutting

Zynga is shutting down 11 games soon as part of a cost-cutting measure, according to TechCrunch. The free-to-play games are either unpopular or are older titles that stopped monetizing well. Still, some of those, like PetVille (pictured above), had millions …

Here’s the scorecard on our 2012 predictions for the game industry

Before you read our forecast for 2013, take a look at how we did on last year's predictions.

The DeanBeat: Game industry predictions for 2013

Predictions are always embarrasing in hindsight, but we love going out on a limb.