The next DLC for Mass Effect 3 won't be the "Extended Cut" DLC planned for this summer, if a pulled listing on Sony's Hong Kong site is to be believed. The next piece of content will apparently be focused on multiplayer.

The Rebellion Multiplayer Expansion is a series of multiplayer maps and other goodies. "The Rebellion Multiplayer Expansion opens two new fronts against the Reapers: Firebase Jade's jungle reservoir and Firebase Goddess on Thessia," Kotaku reports. "In-game reinforcement packs now include three new weapons as well as equipment, consumables, and six new classes: Quarian Engineer and Infiltrator, Vorcha Soldier and Sentinel, Phoenix Adept and Vanguard." The listing has since been pulled from Sony's site, so we're unable to confirm the contents of the listing.

We've contacted EA and BioWare for comment and will update as they respond.

This fall, Xbox Live Arcade doubles down on Serious Sam. Serious Sam 3: BFE – which launched on the PC late last year and was ported over to the Mac last month – will ditch the disc for an Xbox Live Arcade release this fall. Serious Sam 3: BFE on XBLA will be the full game, losing nothing in the transition over to console.

Serious Sam Double D XXL is the new version of Mommy's Best Games' PC release. The XXL brings with it "new campaign missions, new challenges, new enemies, Gunstacker upgrades and a hot new two-player local cooperative mode." Serious Sam Double D XXL is priced at 800 MS Points ($10).

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EA and Activision have reached a settlement in a lawsuit that began two years ago, pertaining to the profit rights of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

No details about the settlement are currently available, but both companies said today that they will file a settlement agreement in Los Angeles' California state court.

Former Infinity Ward developers Jason West and Vince Zampella sued Activision in 2010 after being fired, claiming damages of $36 million from unpaid royalties associated with Modern Warfare 2, which launched in 2009. After leaving Activision, the pair began their own studio, Respawn Entertainment, and inked a publishing deal with EA. Since then, West and Zampella's claim rose to $1 billion and Activision countersued with EA as a defendant.

Activision recently paid out $42 million to the Infinity Ward Employee Group, though not as a settlement; at the time, IWEG said it would pursue litigation.

The settlement news comes the same day as a report on Activision's "dirt"-digging tactics has surfaced, stating that Activision launched an information-gathering IT spree on West and Zampella just before the launch of Modern Warefare 2, intended to see them both fired. Activision called it "Project Icebreaker."

No joke.

In Project Icebreaker, Activision's George Rose asked the IT department to access West and Zampella's email, voicemail and computer without anyone's knowledge, a court filing given to Giantbomb by West and Zampella's attorneys shows. The orders reportedly came from Activision CEO Bobby Kotick. Activision attempted to use third-party security specialists and threw around the idea of staging a fake fumagation to get into West and Zampella's offices, the report says.

But now the case is settled -- any verdict on the level of sanity of gaming companies is, however, still out.

Sony is boldly experimenting with the idea of a brain training game on a handheld. "Smart As," coming to Vita this fall, is a "social brain training experience" that calculates players' Brain Power through daily exercises based on 20 different puzzle games – and then encourages them to compete with their friends with online leaderboards and Facebook integration.

The 20 brain games fall into the categories of "Logic, Arithmetic, Language, and Observation," and use all of the Vita's input methods, including cameras, AR, and both touchscreens. Regional challenges will give you more to do based on where you are when you play it.

What part of the brain makes you able to understand Near? Because we don't have that.

Despite being a huge bummer for everyone involved, the end of the world can at least be counted on as a magnanimous source of drama and spectacle. Naughty Dog's latest game, The Last of Us, aims to leverage the studio's sophisticated technology and credible presentation to forge a more intense connection between players and their on-screen avatars. If it succeeds, your actions will stem from the same paranoia, hesitation and fierce bravery coming from Joel and Ellie, two survivors of modern civilization's mysterious closure.

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Square Enix's eventual announcement of Mini Ninjas: Hiro's Adventure will soon end up being less "reveal" and more like the complete opposite of any ninja's stealth training ever. The barely unannounced sequel has most recently been spotted on the Australian Classification Board site by Siliconera.

This latest failure of ninjadom comes two months after a European trademark filing mentioned Mini Ninjas: Hiro's Adventure... oh yeah, and then there was the web domain under the same name, as well. At the very least, we expect the game to come in clanking pots and pans like a two-year-old on parade at E3.

Add a fourth company to the group contributing to Project X Zone – Nintendo. At least, it's a Nintendo-owned developer creating the 3DS Capcom/Namco/Sega crossover SRPG. Monolith Soft, most recently known for Xenoblade Chronicles, is developing the new game, Famitsu has revealed (via Andriasang).

It makes sense given Monolith's history – it developed Namco X Capcom, a similar crossover game for PS2. What doesn't make sense, at least at face value, is a Nintendo-owned company making a game about three other companies' characters.

Screaming at monitors while attempting to make just one more crushingly difficult checkpoint is apparently a pastime shared by many, many gamers. This week, Ubisoft revealed that the latest Trials franchise entry – Trials Evolution – sold approximately 500,000 units since its launch in mid-April.

Sure, it's no Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, but half a million sales in less than a month is quite impressive for a title on Xbox Live Arcade. How impressive, you ask? Well, we'd love to tell you, but Microsoft doesn't release sales numbers for XBLA games. Those rascals! For context's sake, though, we'd point out that it took just over a year for the first Trials game on XBLA to hit 1 million units sold. We get the feeling it'll take a bit less time with Evolution.

In the same slide, RedLynx is called out as having many brands with "great multiplatform potential." A quick glance at RedLynx's catalog confirms our suspicion that Trials is indeed the Finnish studio's biggest "brand." How about that!

We assume while everyone was waiting for the Diablo 3 servers to boot back up yesterday, they played as much Max Payne 3 as the downtime allowed. So, since everyone has finished the entire Max Payne 3 campaign, Rockstar is mixing up multiplayer gameplay with a free DLC pack for Xbox Live and PSN, titled "Gorilla Warfare."

The Gorilla Warfare pack contains a gorilla mask, which gives players extra adrenaline for melee kills from behind; the lucky coin, giving players extra booty for looting bodies; and the booby trap item, which has players' corpses explode when they're looted.

The Rockstar Pass is also now available for download on Xbox Live and PSN. The Rockstar Pass gives players all of the Max Payne 3 DLC for a one-time price of $30. These offers will hit PC on launch day, May 29.

If 38 Studios does shutter, beyond Rhode Island taxpayers having to pay off the $75 million bond (plus interest) through 2020, it appears the state will also own the intellectual property of the developer as a parting gift. Reviewing updated documentation released by the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation (RIEDC) today, it appears 38 Studios put up all present and future IP by the company as collateral.

According to the documentation, 38 Studios' intellectual property rights and other collateral were pledged to the RIEDC and assigned to a trustee, which we've confirmed by pulling Uniform Commercial Code documentation. Any proceeds made from the sale of the collateral would go back to the bondholders. This covers "all rights, title and interest in any projects, including video game projects," such as Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and "Project Copernicus" – the title currently in development at 38 Studios.

"Based on what information I've been able to review on the 38 Studios situation, it appears that the funds they received from the RIEDC were secured by collateral that amounts to all of 38 Studios assets, including all of their intellectual property," attorney and Law of the Game editor Mark Methenitis told Joystiq this afternoon. "That would include all the rights to Kingdoms of Amalur and any other games they may have in development, even if no information about those titles has ever reached the light of day."

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It's now even easier to buy too many games from Steam. Valve has implemented remote downloading, allowing you to manage your PC's Steam collection remotely, from anywhere you can access the website or mobile app.

Remote downloading lets you start a download on your computer from any of these other sources, and have them "installed and ready to play on your arrival." In other words, you can buy a game from the mobile app and have it download automatically to your home PC, or reinstall something else from your Steam collection remotely.

The Store will even ask you upon purchase if you'd like to remotely install your new game, if it notices you're shopping from away from your computer.

There's no better way to flaunt your mastery of the art of having $55 than with the Kingdom Hearts 3D "Mark of Mastery" edition. The newly announced special edition comes with a clear 3DS case and a set of art cards that look like they can be slipped into said case, and five AR cards to unlock in-game Dream Eaters. All of this comes in a big box with a magnetic clasp.

This edition shows one of the advantages of portable games: the limited edition boxes don't cost quite as much as those for console games.

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This is an editorial based on Dave Hinkle's personal experiences with 2000's Diablo 2. Joystiq's review of Diablo 3 is still forthcoming.

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It's not because I lack the requisite memory blocks and quantum computers to run Blizzard's latest, Diablo 3 – it's personal. You see, I'm genetically predisposed to Diablo. It's something I think about each and every day.

Diablo is a proper addiction to me. Diablo 2 is something I associate with the darkest moments of my life, when I skipped showers and seriously lived on Pop Tarts. My only comfort back then was the dim glow of the monitor and the random piece of treasure the game would occasionally drop for me as I toiled away hours doing nightmare-level Meph runs.

I have an addictive personality, as many of those who have met me in real life can attest. I eat horribly, can't seem to quit smoking cigarettes and have drunk to excess on occasion. The Diablo experience is like some kind of magical talisman created by the wizards of southern California that is meant to poke and prod that dark place inside me I actively ignore and deny every day of my life. Diablo brings out my greed and disdain for everything other than myself in the worst way.

But again, these are just words. They don't mean anything without examples, so I'm going to take you back to when I was in college and Diablo 2 ruined my life.

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Respawn Entertainment employees will attend this year's E3, but no, the studio won't be showing any new project at the big show. "Some of us will be present at E3, but we won't be showing anything or doing any press related to the game," Respawn community manager Abbie Heppe told Joystiq.

Thus far, little information exists on Respawn's first project. Aside from a single, extremely blurry screen and news that it's an EA Partners title, Respawn has kept the game out of the public eye. But with a team comprising many ex-Infinty Ward folks – the same folks who helped launch Call of Duty into the world of sports playoff trailer debuts – it's hard to imagine Respawn working on anything small.

Respawn wouldn't tell us whether the mystery project will be revealed this year, nor if the studio would attend the various gaming events scattered across the next several months. We're hoping for a surprise reveal during Tokyo Game Show, just to mess with the Japanese market.

Today's emergency meeting by Rhode Island officials to determine what they are going to do about Curt Schilling's 38 Studios has concluded with officials freezing like deer in headlights. Nothing happened.

Rhode Island's Economic Development Corporation will take no immediate action to aid the developer, following a closed-door meeting attended by Governor Lincoln Chafee and Schilling, who asked for additional help to save the company. Schilling refused to answer press inquiries and officials wouldn't declare how much money the studio is seeking.

"How do we avoid throwing good money after bad?" Chafee is quoted by the Associated Press as saying after the three-hour emergency meeting finished.

"The company still has the option to cure the existing default by paying the $1,125,000 guaranty fee that is past due," reads an official statement by the EDC board. "In the meantime, we will continue to talk with 38 Studios and develop additional information, and will resume the Board meeting at our regularly scheduled meeting on May 21. The members of the Board may not discuss the confidential information received and discussed today."

If the studio doesn't receive assistance, it appears Rhode Island taxpayers may very well be on the hook for the $75 million 38 Studios loan that, after interest, would require paying back $112.6 million through 2020.

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Browser-based FPS Offensive Combat is the new game from U4iA, a studio formed last year by Activision expats. It's an FPS with a mobile/tablet sidearm, described as working together "unlike any game before," though no further details beyond that were provided. The only other aspect U4iA revealed is customization, which we figure is the awesome lizard hat seen in the screenshot above.

U4iA was founded by Chris Archer and Dusty Welch, former Activision and Call of Duty vets. With Offensive Combat, the two hope to deliver "the most competitive multiplayer action ever seen within a browser." A beta for Offensive Combat kicks off this summer.

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Free-to-play shooter Tribes: Ascend has been downloaded 1.2 million times, a significant boost from the debatably framed 800K registered accounts from a month ago.

"It is truly the player support of the title that has driven the population growth and fuels our team to deliver updates," said Hi-Rez Studio COO Todd Harris. "We see the community expanding primarily thru positive word of mouth."

Hi-Rez Studios also noted over 110,000 people have joined Tribes: Ascend through the company's referral system. Our experience with the game since launch has been chronicled by our "Murderous Skier."

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