CharityBuzz is auctioning off a 30-60 minute coffee break with Tim Cook, and after 85 competitive bids, the current highest offer is $605,000. The amount is now so high that prospective bidders need to personally phone and verify their banking details and ability to pay in order to place a new bid.

“It’s truly amazing,” CharityBuzz’ representative Glenda Felden told me this morning. “We’re really excited.”

The current CharityBuzz record-holder is a March auction of a 2013 Lamborghini Aventador, Felden told me. The 700-horsepower car boasts a 6.5-liter V-12 engine that propels the car from 0-60 mph in under three seconds, and it reaches speeds in excess of 215 mph.

Source: Dean Takahashi

Tim Cook, last October at an Apple event.

But that sweet Italian supercar may not be worth more than a quick cuppa with Cook.

Cook’s auction started almost a month ago at $50,000, and quickly shot up to $160,000 in a single day. And with one day left, it seems likely to become the highest-value auction ever held on CharityBuzz, Felden said.

Bids close tomorrow at 4:08 p.m., and a potentially winning new bid will have to be at least $610,000, as bid increments are $5,000 each.

That’s $610,000 for a 30-60 minute meeting, travel and accommodations not included. Or over $10,000 for each minute, if it goes the full 60.

Proceeds benefit the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights.

“Charitybuzz is blown away by the incredible support we’ve seen for the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights through our coffee with Tim Cook online auction,” CharityBuzz CEO Coppy Holzman said. “With 140 experiences on the auction block closing this Tuesday to benefit the RFK Center, including exclusive access to Robert DeNiro, Alec Baldwin, Peyton Manning and more, we expect to raise well over one million dollars for human rights.”

Image credit: Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat

The traditional auction house calls up visions of designer-clad older women, raising white paddles to bid on antique chairs as coiffed poodles sit in their lap. Auctionata is redefining this notion with its online live auctions.

Today, the company announced investors are throwing down $3 million to support global expansion, recruiting, and product development, bringing Auctionata’s total to $20.2 million.

Auctionata claims to be the first patented online producer of live auctions. Its community of 250 specialists find, curate, authenticate, and appraise valuable objects, and make it easier for millions of private sellers, collectors, and dealers to sell their objects in an auction with an international reach, instead of in the “regional and highly fragmented, old-style auction houses.” In a statement issued this morning, Auctionta said it is offered a painting, book, or antique cabinet for sale every five minutes and has processed over 21,000 requests for professional appraisal services.  

Auctions are held on the site at 6 p.m. Central time every Friday, and buyers can look at what will be sold ahead of time. Objects range from a collection of fine wines to collectors railroads to jewelry, and this Friday, it will auction off an original watercolor “Reclining Woman” by famed Austrian artist Egon Schiele, with a starting price of $1.5 million.

“Unlike traditional auction houses, where the excitement naturally falls off after each auction, the combination of online auctions and online shop generates a high experience factor for potential buyers and sellers alike,” said Alexander Zacke, the CEO of Auctionata, in the statement.

As it is wont to do, the online model opens up the opportunities for distribution and access to people on both sides of the marketplace once a level of trust, security, and authenticity is established. The company assures customers that their appraisal process is exhaustive. Objects can also be bought and sold in the online store.

Auctionata was founded in Berlin last year and has since met with interest and growth from buyers, sellers, and investors. Earlybird, Bright Capital, Kite Ventues, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, eVenture Capital Partners, and the Raffay Group all contributed. Auctionata has 100 employees and offices in Berlin and New York.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock/Auctionata screenshot

“The raffle structure is the best way to fundraise and collect consumer data,” said founder Bryan Baum on stage at Y Combinator’s demo day.  ”Auctions only get money from highest bidder, but raffles open this up to masses and get money from everyone.”

Rather than buying a paper ticket and dropping it in a glass jar, people enter a Prizeo raffle by making a small donation to a celebrity’s chosen cause and choosing friends to include in the experience. A winner is then chosen at random to embark upon their adventure. Runners up win prizes too, and anyone who makes a donation can see where their money went.

Celebrity charity auctions have been around for decades, but are usually reserved for a wealthy elite. Prizeo expands these opportunities to average people, but also capitalizes on the powerful reach of celebrities and influencers to raise money for good causes. To make this work, Prizeo needs a strong network of celebrities. The startup has thus partnered with talent agency WME which works with more than 1500 of the top celebrities and brands in the world. During beta testing, the platform raised over $100K and found that brands are willing to pay more than $50,000 a campaign.

In addition to collecting donations, Prizeo also collects data. The site has access to users credit card information, as well as demographic data, interests, affinities, and their social media influence. Baum said no-one has been able to collect data this way before, and it will be a valuable way for influencers to monetize and understand their followers, and connect with them over a charitable cause.

Prizeo combines the glamour of celebrity auctions with the fundraising power of charity raffles, puts it online, and gives everyone the opportunity to spend a day with a boy band. “Squeel!”

A phony auction on eBay soared to nearly $16,000 for a pair of these hard-to-get glasses. The listing went up on Tuesday evening, and the  bids quickly climbed. eBay removed the listing about an hour ago because it was in violation of its presale policy, as reported by Business Insider. 

The seller, named “bla7kcat,” claimed to be one of the few early adopters slated for access to a pair. The advanced version costs $1,500 and is currently only available to developers, the winners of the #ifihadglass contest, and a small group of testers. Google announced last week that it plans to release a version for consumers before the end of the year, but people are so desperate to get their hands on the headset, they are willing to pay up to 10 times the price.

Project Glass debuted in 2012. These sci-fi looking ‘smart’ glasses allow people to do many of the things they do with their smartphone, such as taking pictures and videos, communicating, and viewing augmented reality interfaces, without the need of a separate device. Spotting a pair around San Francisco is like spotting a celebrity. It rarely happens, but it’s exciting when it goes.

Here’s the auction’s description, courtesy of The Atlantic Wire:

“i am selling a pair of Google Glasses (Project Glass glasses). I’ve been selected as an early adapter for Google’s upcoming release. you are buying a brand new unopened pair of Google’s Project Glass glasses. i will be personally attending and picking up my pair in either Los Angeles, or New York at Google’s Project Glass launch event, which will take place some time after Feburary 27th.  as for what colors will actually be available, will vary, if i am offered a choice, I will choose the color of your choice (see listing picture for variants). my cost to buy my glasses is $1,500 (USD), so obviously thats where ive started the auction at. Project Glass will be shipped with Insurance at my expence, and signature upon delivery, so please use an address you can accept delivery in person.” 

THQ bid farewell to the video game industry tonight as it announced court approval for the sale of its assets. The company was one of the largest publicly traded video game publishers in the U.S., but it was brought down by a load of debt, a dearth of hit titles, a shift in gamer tastes, and a bad bet on a drawing tablet.

THQ said tonight that its asset sales raised $72 million, making the total value of its estate worth $100 million when you count certain assets that weren’t up for sale. Lenders and creditors are expected to divvy up the proceeds, and then the company will be no more.

The Agoura Hills, Calif.-based company expects the U.S. Bankruptcy court to enter a formal order on Thursday.

The auction process lasted an exhausting 22 hours, as 10 companies submitted bids. The sales are expected to close on Thursday. As previously reported, the court approved the sale of THQ’s game studios.

Sega bought Relic Studios for $26.6 million; Koch Media bought Saints Row maker Volition for $22.3 million and Metro: Last Light for $5.9 million; Take-Two Interactive bought Evolve for $10.9 million; and Ubisoft bought THQ Montreal for $2.5 million and South Park: The Stick of Truth for $3.3 million. Crytek bought Homefront 2 for $500,000. Nobody bid for Vigil Games, the maker of Darksiders, and that studio will now be shut down. THQ will continue to try selling its remaining assets. A small staff will maintain THQ to assist with the transition.

In many ways, it’s the end of an era. On Twitter and Facebook, many game industry observers lamented the long-expected demise of THQ. The company’s top management team were also sentimental about the end of THQ, but they said they were happy most of their employees will have jobs. It appears that the company’s two top executives are out of jobs.

In a statement, Brian Farrell (pictured right), the chairman and chief executive officer of THQ, said, “While we had hoped that the restructuring process would allow the company to remain intact, I am heartened that the majority of our studios and games will continue under new ownership. It has been my pleasure to work alongside this great group of people, and I am proud of the imaginative and artistic games that our team has created. Although we will no longer be able to work together with a unified mission, I am confident that the talent we have assembled will continue to make an impression on the video game industry. For those whose positions are not likely to continue, I sincerely regret this outcome, and we will be meeting with you over the next few days to discuss the transition.”

Jason Rubin (pictured left), the president of THQ, added, “I was brought in eight months ago to help turn this ship around, and while I’m disappointed that we could not effect a sale for the entire operating business, I am pleased that the new buyers will be providing jobs to many of our very talented personnel. When we first announced the sale process, I said I would be happy if the company’s games and people had a bright future even if it meant I did not have a job at the end of it. And I still feel that way.”

In a more heartfelt tweet, Rubin said, “I am truly sorry for the employees and fans of @vigilgames. It is a travesty that the team and its potential were not recognized.” He also said, “I am truly sorry for the @THQ employees that have lost their jobs. Please know that I did everything I could and understand your pain.”

The U.S. entities of THQ filed for bankruptcy protection on Dec. 19. Clearlake Capital Group intended to buy the company as a whole, but the court listened to objections and ordered a broader bidding process whereby the assets could be sold separately. Clearlake will get a breakup fee of $1 million.

Danny Bilson, the former president of THQ, tweeted, “Thinking of all the great people who I had the honor of working with at #THQ and wishing them all better days.”

Some tweeters wondered about the fate of unmentioned properties, such as the WWE franchise and the Homeworld property.

The sale of THQ Montreal to Ubisoft has raised questions about the fate of THQ Montreal leader Patrice Desilets, who defected from Ubisoft. Ubisoft told Joystiq that it was too soon to say if Desilets would stay.

Alex Peters, the former head of Relic, has taken a job at Activision.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you have ever wanted to own one of Lady Gaga’s costumes, play golf with President Bill Clinton, or be participate in a private Papal audience at the Vatican, Charitybuzz.com can make that happen. Assuming you are willing to pay, that is.

The company holds online charity auctions to make money for non-profits, and for itself. Many celebrities are willing to sell their possessions and time for causes they believe in, and Charitybuzz provides a platform that brings them together with charitable organizations to do this. It generates revenue by retaining 20% of the sales from the auction.

In order to launch a mobile presence, expand its market share, and grow the team, it has raised $3 million in a second round of angel funding.

Charitybuzz was founded in 2005 by CEO Coppy Holzman, a successful businessman who made his career building e-commerce company Webvan.com. Since then, Charitybuzz has partnered with more than 1,300 nonprofits and raised more than $60 million for social good, leveraging the power of celebrities, influencers, and major brands.

The star-studded list of participants is comprised of famous figures from across music, film, politics, sports and the business world. Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, George Clooney, Lance Armstrong, Richard Branson, Donald Trump, Oprah and Bill Clinton have all auctioned something off on Charitybuzz.

Causes include UNICEF, Breast Cancer Research Foundation, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, the Children’s Health Fund, Boys and Girls Clubs, and the Humane Society. Major brands like Ralph Lauren, People Magazine, Chevrolet, and Mattel have also participated.

This brings its total funding to $5 million. The team is based in New York.

While discussing which dream experiences we would select, if either of us had a few thousand dollars to donate to charity, VentureBeat writer Meaghan Kelly and I differed. She would opt for a set visit to The Office, while I would buy tickets to a Diane Von Furstenberg fashion show.

The project is an innovative new model of collaboration between industry and academia: eBay staff are spending a day a week with the class, and the UCSC students are getting to work directly with industry-leading designers and executives.

“Our first goal is impact,” says Jane Pinckard, UCSC professor and associate director of the Center for Games and Playable Media. “We want to build things in an academic setting that can go out there and win in the world and change things.”

For eBay, the goal is actually pretty well aligned: to observe how game design and design in general is colliding and build the next great interfaces for buying and selling. I spoke to Matt MacLaurin, the eBay executive who’s running the program.

“We already have point systems and reputation,” MacLaurin says, “But we’re exploring playful new dimensions in buyer reputation as well as seller reputation. And we’re experimenting around how to put prettier faces on it.”

The company is looking to build micro-communities on eBay around niche products, and it is exploring new large touchscreen interfaces for retail or shopping areas. In both they’re looking for fresh insights into both old and new user experience and user interface problems.

One example was how to enter user credentials in a public space. Big interactive kiosks in cafes or libraries could be great for engaging new eBay users, but how can people privately enter their passwords?

The students’ answer? Face recognition.

From the academic side, the program has been a huge success. After a small pilot program over the summer, a larger class of 30 students will be participating in the fall.

Pinckard said she was surprised at first to get the call from eBay and wondered where games fit into the company’s strategy. But then she realized that “everyone wants more engagement,” and that’s exactly what games, well-conceived and executed, can do.

And for eBay, the benefits are beyond just new insights on today’s business challenges. They include new employees for tomorrow’s needs, because, as MacLaurin says, each class is a bit of of a recruiting pipeline.

“We’re trying to hire our next generation of employees right from university. It’s very personal, and we can see emerging leaders.”

One of the creative ideas that the students thought up?

A new Dungeons & Dragons-style game in which characters fight and search for treasure. The gold and jewels of the game, of course, are objects for sale on eBay, and each character’s power was driven by the value of the goods.

That’s precisely the kind of treasure eBay wants to hire.

photo credit: JD Hancock via photo pin cc

Blizzard Entertainment is known for taking its time before releasing a game. So far, the strategy has worked — while some of its games face delays, it has yet to deliver a game that has not been a smash hit. Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty is expected to generate around $350 million and World of Warcraft has more than 11 million subscribers paying $15 each month to play the game. Diablo 3 was originally slated for a late 2011 release, but Morhaime said on the company’s most recent earnings call that the company wouldn’t commit to that release date.

“We commonly use the term “soon” when referring to Blizzard releases, because we know that no matter how hard we’re working to reach a target, we’re not going to compromise and launch a game before it’s ready,” Morhaime said. “While this news might not be a complete surprise, I know that many of you were hopeful that Diablo III would ship this year. We were too.”

Diablo 2, the last game in the series, was immensely popular when it came out more than a decade ago in 2000. Blizzard Entertainment only released one expansion pack for the game, but it came to define a lot of tropes that now commonly appear in online games — such as reliance on loot-seeking behavior and frictionless communication between friends and players. Diablo’s hack-and-slash and loot-seeking formula proved to be popular for more than a decade. It even inspired a number of dungeon crawler copycats like Torchlight.

Today’s announcement could put Diablo 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic, Electronic Arts’ Hail Mary pass in the online gaming space, in a similar release window. Star Wars: The Old Republic is a subscription-based online role-playing game set in the Star Wars universe that is more like World of Warcraft than Diablo 3. But it might have to compete with Diablo 3 because it’s still a free-to-play online game that has an equally large fan base.

Blizzard Entertainment started the beta for the game, which takes place in the first level of the game, on Tuesday. Morhaime said the company would expand the beta and issue additional beta keys after it decided to delay the release of the game.

The Diablo games allow anywhere from two to eight players to jump into discrete games in randomly generated dungeons. The goal is to prevent the forces of hell from taking over the world by defeating Diablo, the lord of terror, and his cohorts. Players chase after powerful items and weapons to use against other enemies and players or for trade.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Diablo 2, the last game in the series, was immensely popular when it came out more than a decade ago in 2000. Blizzard Entertainment only released one expansion pack for the game, but it came to define a lot of tropes that now commonly appear in online games — such as reliance on loot-seeking behavior and frictionless communication between friends and players. Diablo 3 has been in the works for some time, and expectations are high for a repeat performance by Blizzard Entertainment.

The Diablo 3 beta includes the first “act” of the game, one of several large chunks of the game, that consists of part of the game’s main storyline. The game will consist of several of these acts, though Blizzard Entertainment hasn’t made it clear just how many there will be. Diablo 2, the game’s predecessor, had five acts altogether. The whole act takes around an hour and a half to complete, so if there are five acts, like in Diablo 2, the game will be somewhere between 7 and 8 hours long to complete a main quest. But that’s not really the heart of the Diablo ethos.

The Diablo games allow anywhere from two to eight players to jump into discrete games in randomly-generated dungeons. The goal is to prevent the forces of hell from taking over the world by defeating Diablo, the lord of terror, and his cohorts. Players chase after powerful items and weapons to use against other enemies and players or for trade.

You drop into a game and fly through an act. Or if you like the entire game, you can select a specific difficulty and go in search of the best loot. Each game can last anywhere from 5 minutes to several hours, depending on how well the group meshes together. I saw my share of groups where no one said a single thing throughout the quest. I also played with groups that instantly turned into friends, where we talked about how the game looked or how the Philadelphia Eagles completely ruined our fantasy football leagues.

The whole experience felt like a throwback to Diablo 2 — which will be great for veterans from the predecessor. At the same time, Diablo 3 enjoys a decade of experience and sophistication in video game development that Blizzard Entertainment has picked up by working on World of Warcraft and real-time strategy game Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty. If the final version is anything like what we’ve seen in the beta, gamers are in for a treat when Diablo 3 comes out sometime early next year.

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The start of a beta for an online game usually indicates that the game will come out relatively soon. Diablo 3, one of the holiday gaming season’s most anticipated titles, was originally slated for release later this year. But the company is still not committing to a 2011 release date for the game, said Blizzard Entertainment chief executive Mike Morhaime in the company’s most recent conference call discussing its second quarter earnings.

The Diablo 3 beta includes the first “act” of the game, one of several large chunks of the game, that consists of part of the game’s main storyline. All five classes are playable in the beta. The beta of the game is around 3 gigabytes in size, which is considerably smaller than Blizzard Entertainment’s other online game, World of Warcraft. That game is around 26.6 gigabytes, including all recent patches and content.

The last Diablo game came out in 2000 and still boasts a large player base. It’s nothing compared to Blizzard Entertainment’s most popular online role-playing game, World of Warcraft, which has around 11.4 million subscribers. But Diablo’s hack-and-slash and loot-seeking formula proved to be popular for more than a decade. It even inspired a number of dungeon crawler copycats like Torchlight.

The Diablo games allow anywhere from two to eight players to jump into discrete games in randomly generated dungeons. The goal is to prevent the forces of hell from taking over the world by defeating Diablo, the lord of terror, and his cohorts. Players chase after powerful items and weapons to use against other enemies and players or for trade.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The premium streaming video service’s owners don’t want it anymore and are trying to sell it. And while all the possible buyers (like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon and DirecTV) agree that its highly valuable, it looks like none of them will end up following through with an acquisition.

The Hulu auction, which began taking its first round of bids last month, could now be completely derailed due to recent developments, reports Reuters.

Citing a person familiar with the situation, the report indicates that a Hulu sale is stalling for several reasons, including content streaming rights, the service’s sale price, potential buyers getting sidelined and Hulu’s owner’s lack of commitment to a sale.

First, the issue regarding the streaming rights and sale price go hand in hand, because the final sale will be affected by how many devices and mediums Hulu’s content is permitted to play on. And since most of the new content deals from Fox, NBC and Comcast (three of the four major owners of Hulu) all have clauses allowing them to create their own branded content services, many of the potential buyers are questioning the asking price. Initial bids have ranged from $500 million to $2 billion, according to the report.

Also, the line of potential buyers is thinning out. Yahoo, which was rumored as the strongest candidate, is now out of the running due to chaos with its leadership. The most likely buyers at this point are Google, Amazon, DirecTV and DISH Network, the report states.

Another round of Hulu bids is expected to take place next week, but the auction might not move forward if the offers aren’t high enough.

Hulu has been on sale since June with bids fluxuating between $1.5 and $2 billion. Hulu’s owners — Disney, News Corp., Comcast and Providence Equity — indicated they wanted to auction off the company because of disagreements over the direction Hulu’s streaming service should take.

Now that DirecTV has reportedly dropped out of the bidding, that leaves just Amazon, Yahoo and Dish Network bidding on Hulu. Amazon is the current favorite for winning the auction because Hulu CEO Jason Kilar is a former Amazon executive with close ties Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Amazon already offers streaming movies and TV, so Hulu could bolster those offerings and make Amazon an even bigger media presence. Hulu could also be integrated into Amazon’s upcoming 7-inch Android tablet.

Yahoo has a strong interest in picking up Hulu, as well. The company has struggled in the past few years on several fronts, so owning a strong player in the streaming media space could be one way to jumpstart the company’s prospects for a successful future. Yahoo could also use Hulu to help sell lots of advertising while still generating revenue from subscribers.

Dish Network is interested in Hulu as a chance to improve its digital media offerings. The company acquired Blockbuster in early April and has expressed interest in creating a Netflix alternative.

Despite the impending sale, Hulu looks healthy and doesn’t appear to be slowing down any time soon. The company announced it had reached one million subscribers for its premium Hulu Plus service in early July.

Mirroring Netflix, Hulu has also expressed interest in moving its service to countries outside of the United States. The company just launched a premium-only version of its service in Japan for $19 a month. The Japanese service claims to offer “hundreds of premium feature films and thousands of episodes of popular TV shows.” Most of the content comes from American studios rather than Japanese entities.

“Diablo 3 is still on track to go into external beta testing this quarter. We’re working hard to ship the game by the end of the year,” Morhaime said on the company’s quarterly earnings call. “But we can’t commit to a release date for the game yet.”

Blizzard Entertainment is letting Battle.net account holders opt in to a limited beta for the game. We earlier reported that the company was just about ready to pull the trigger for a beta program.

The last Diablo game came out in 2000 and still boasts a big player base. It’s nothing compared to Blizzard Entertainment’s most popular online role-playing game, World of Warcraft, which has around 11.4 million subscribers. But the game’s hack-and-slash and loot-seeking formula proved to be popular for more than a decade. It even inspired a number of dungeon crawler copycats like Torchlight.

The Diablo games allow anywhere from two to eight players to jump into discrete games with randomly generated dungeons. The goal is to prevent the forces of Hell from taking over the world by defeating Diablo, the lord of terror, and his cohorts. Players chase after powerful items and weapons to use against other enemies and players or for trade.

The company has unveiled a new player class for Diablo 3 at its annual gaming convention Blizzcon, including the final class at last year’s convention. Diablo has taken somewhat of a backseat to Blizzard Entertainment’s larger game, World of Warcraft, and its newest release Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Players can sell the equipment they get from monsters they kill in the game — like swords and armor — either for in-game currency or for real-world currencies like U.S. dollars. The whole process is automated and happens through an in-game interface rather than a third-party marketplace. Blizzard Entertainment will take a small transaction fee from the seller, similar to how Facebook and Apple handle transactions through apps or Facebook Credits.

Blizzard Entertainment frequently spars with companies that try to sell World of Warcraft weapons and in-game currency. It hunts down and bans “gold-farming” accounts that can give some players a competitive edge over other players who earn gold through traditional means in the game. Diablo 2 also faces a similar problem with in-game equipment, which is what likely prompted Blizzard Entertainment to make the move, Wedbush Securities managing director Michael Pachter told VentureBeat.

“It’s an acknowledgement that people will sell items (as gold farmers), and an attempt to control the process and collect a fee for providing an auction,” he said. “I think it’s a smart idea.”

Unlike social gaming company Zynga, which makes most of its revenue from selling virtual goods in its games, Blizzard Entertainment said it does not plan to sell items. The auction house is only there to facilitate transactions between players and give them a way to earn money by playing games, the company said.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Bing Gordon, an investor in Zynga, said in June that gamers should generate around $3 each hour in value if an online game is going to be successful. While he was speaking figuratively, the new system in Diablo 3 will let gamers actually achieve that golden value.

Blizzard Entertainment is also now letting Battle.net account holders opt in to a limited beta for the game. We earlier reported that a beta was likely near after a number of signs indicated that the company was just about ready to pull the trigger for a beta program.

Diablo 3 is one of the most anticipated titles of the year. The last Diablo game came out in 2000 and still boasts a big player base. It’s nothing compared to Blizzard Entertainment’s most popular online role-playing game, World of Warcraft, which has around 11.4 million subscribers. But the game’s hack-and-slash and loot-seeking formula proved to be incredibly popular and the game has persisted for more than a decade. It even inspired a number of dungeon crawler copycats like Torchlight.

The Diablo games allow anywhere from two to eight players to jump into discrete games with randomly generated dungeons. The goal is to prevent the forces of Hell from taking over the world by defeating Diablo, the lord of terror, and his cohorts. Players chase after powerful items and weapons to use against other enemies and players or for trade.

Blizzard Entertainment announced Diablo III at its yearly convention, Blizzcon, in 2008. The company unveiled a new player class at each subsequent Blizzcon, including the final class at last year’s convention. Diablo has taken somewhat of a backseat to Blizzard Entertainment’s larger game, World of Warcraft, and its newest release Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The deal will help eBay grow up into a broader e-commerce company, setting the stage for a brawl with rivals such as Amazon.com.

eBay said it offered GSI shareholders $1.96 billion in cash, or $29.25 a share. That’s 51 percent higher than GSI’s closing share price on Friday. After the deal was announced, GSI shares rose to level of eBay’s offer, while eBay’s own shares fell 3 percent. eBay is also lending $467 million to a holding company run by GSI chief executive Michael Rubin.

GSI runs web sites such as Rue La La, which offers one-day-only deals to its members, and ShopRunner, a members-only shopping site that gives customers free shipping. GSI also has technology, payment processing and customer care services for a bunch of e-commerce sites.

Brian Walker, an analyst at Forrester Research, said, “For eBay this is a good move, even if the value is not immediately evident. GSI ultimately serves a small segment of larger retailers and consumer brands in a very diverse solutions market, but the acquisition of GSI, and their marketing services, gives eBay and PayPal access to many key brands that can support the growth of PayPal’s multichannel payments solutions and eBay’s marketplace recovery.”

The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2011. It is expected to add little to the fiscal 2011 earnings forecast and would add to 2012 earnings. eBay would sell off GSI’s licensed sports merchandise business. It would also be selling 70 percent of Shop Runner and Rue La La to a holding company run by Rubin.

eBay said those properties aren’t as important for it in the long term. GSI has until May 6 to solicit bids from other parties. The deal is a big one for eBay, amounting for more than it paid for its PayPal digital transaction company but less than it paid for Skype, which has been sold off.

“We intend to lead the next generation of commerce innovation. The acquisition of GSI, which offers the most comprehensive integrated suite of online commerce and interactive marketing services available, will significantly strengthen our ability to connect buyers and sellers worldwide,” eBay CEO John Donahoe said in a release.

GSI partners with brands such as Ralph Lauren and provides them with e-commerce technology, fulfillment, customer care and marketing services. GSI was founded in 1995 as Global Sports Inc.

Alibaba.com acquired its second small-scale e-commerce tool in six weeks on Wednesday — Auctiva, a popular service for smaller eBay sellers that helps manage sales and marketing on an individual scale. Alibaba.com acquired a similar service, Vendio, in June.

Alibaba.com offers a wholesale platform on the global site that is geared toward small sellers seeking fast shipment of small quantities of goods. Across all its marketplaces, the company has a community of more than 53 million registered users in more than 240 countries and regions, according to the website.

Now armed with a force of about 250,000 loyal and well-maintained smaller sellers after the acquisitions, Alibaba.com stands to challenge eBay for dominance of the auction marketplace. This comes at a time when eBay begins a shift in its strategy that focuses on its money-transfer service, PayPal.

eBay earlier had problems gaining a strong foothold in the Chinese market when it attempted to enter under the leadership of Meg Whitman in 2005 — and was competing directly with Alibaba.com.

After the spat with eBay, Alibaba.com had few options to enter the U.S. market, leading it to focus on smaller sellers and multiple sales outlets like online retailer Amazon.com and even eBay’s service.

With the turnaround in eBay’s strategy began when John Donahoe took the reigns in 2008, a lot of pressure has fallen on smaller sellers, as the company has focused more on a fixed pricing model with its Buy It Now option and its PayPal platform, said Ina Steiner, founder and editor of auction news site Auctionbytes.com.

The acquisitions also come at a time when eBay has seen decreased traffic, falling soundly behind Amazon.com in the second half of 2009.

Coupled with Alibaba.com’s recent decision to set aside $100 million for e-commerce acquisitions as part of its expansion of AliExpress.com and eBay’s waning support for small sellers, the acquisitions of Vendio and Auctiva shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

“Auctiva and Vendio’s clients have been having problems selling on eBay, so they were more open to being acquired than in previous years when things were going better,” Steiner said.

Technology Investment Banking Group of Morgan Joseph organized the acquisition, though no payment details were disclosed.

[Image credit: Jan Ramroth]