GaymerCon, the gaming and tech convention focusing on LGBTQ culture (set to take place early next year in San Francisco), announced that the convention has gained the support of Electronic Arts. EA is the first game publisher to announce participation in the event.

"EA believes that to be truly innovative, you must be inclusive. We are proud to be a part of this event," said Ginger Maseda, Global Diversity and Inclusion for EA.

Engage Digital announced that three different divisions of The Walt Disney Company will take part in The App Conference by providing a "unique and powerful keynote" at the event. The App Conference takes place October 18-19, 2012 in Santa Clara, California.

In its second year, the App Conference focuses on application development, marketing and revenue generation on mobile and tablet devices. The conference program features two tracks covering the important elements of product and business strategies in the mobile space.

Games Industry International announced today that it has acquired the GameHorizon Conference and business network, with plans for the launch of a new event in December of 2013. GameHorizon is a leading business network for UK-based games companies including developers, publishers, and middleware makers. GameHorizon is in its fifth year.

Episode 18 of the Super Podcast Action Committee sees host Andrew Eisen team up with GP Managing Editor James Fudge, who sat in for E.

The Kickstarter for GaymerCon closed, raising $91,389 from 1,531 backers. When organizers launched the crowd funding appeal they were looking to raise right around $25,000. Thanks to the generous support of the gaming community, North America will see its first GLBT gaming event ever August 3 - 4, 2013 in San Francisco. Details on the venue will be revealed at a later date.

A new video from members of Microsoft's Xbox Live team throws its support behind GaymerCon, the first GLBT friendly gaming event to take place in early 2013 in San Francisco, California. Obviously organizers of the event are glad to have the support of Xbox Live.

You can watch the video to your left. At the time of this writing the GaymerCon Kickstarter has managed to raise $75,000. The Kickstarter campaign ends Friday, August 31 at 11:43 pm EDT.

The organizers of GaymerCom passed along an update to let us know that the Kickstarter campaign for the first-ever GLBT gaming event (to take place in early 2013 in San Francisco) has managed to raise nearly $70,000 from 1,209 backers with just three more days to go.

Last week the 2012 Game Developers Conference Europe had a final attendee count of 2,100 industry professionals, up from last year's event. The event also hosted more than 100 speakers, over 65 exhibitors and saw more than 290 media representatives attend.

More than 275,000 people attended this year's Gamescom in Cologne, Germany according to the event's organizer. Those numbers are in line with last year's attendance of the European gaming expo open to the public and press. Last year's attendance was "about 275,000," according to show officials. Organizers say that next year's show will take place August 21 - 25 in Cologne, Germany.

Update: We asked GaymerCon co-founder Benjamin Williams what the next stretch goal would be for the event and what organizers planned to do with the money if they manage to raise it before the deadline:

CD Projekt RED's DRM-free role-playing game The Witcher 2 has swept the European Games Awards. The game won awards for Best European Art Direction, Best European Character Design, Best European Gameworld, Best European Game Design, Best European Game, and Best European Special Edition.

Battlefield 3 did pretty well too, scoring awards for Best European Action Game, Best European Multiplayer Game, Best European Console Game, and Best European Sound.

When we last checked in, the GaymerCon Kickstarter had managed to raise $28,471. Nine days later the crowd funding drive has managed to raise $48,102 from 921 backers with just 16 more days to go. GaymerCon promises to be the first "all-inclusive" fan-focused gaming event to provide a friendly, fun, and safe atmosphere for gamers and geeks to get together for two days in San Francisco (August of 2013).

The Gaming Alliance Middle East (which is made up of Microsoft Xbox Gulf, Sony Gulf - PlayStation Division, Pluto Games and Red Entertainment Distribution, among others) announced this week that its fifth annual GAMES event will take place in Dubai on September 20 at the Dubai Festival City. Admission for the event is free.

League of Legends maker Riot Games announced that, beginning in early 2013, it will kick off the League of Legends Championship Series. The new professional gaming league will feature teams from North America, Europe and Asia, taking part in multiple regular season matches each week, all streamed in HD broadcasts available globally for free.

More importantly, players will actually be paid like the professional gamers that many of them are.

GaymerCon the first-ever all-inclusive fan gaming event that promises a friendly and fun atmosphere for gamers and geeks to get together for two days in San Francisco (August of 2013), has managed to surpass its funding goal of $25,000 in just a few days via a Kickstarter campaign. With 25 more days to go, the GaymerCon Kickstarter has managed to generate $28,471 (as of this writing) in funding from 560 backers.

The Academy of Interactive Entertainment (Lafayette, Louisiana) will be hosting its annual Independent Game Developers Festival (iFest) at the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise(LITE) Center on Saturday August 4th (10am - 5pm).

With a little under two days of activity the Kickstarter campaign for GaymerCon has managed to raise $14,192 of its $25,000 goal from 246 backers, with 28 more days to go. As we mentioned yesterday, GaymerCon is a two-day event set to take place in August of 2013 in San Francisco.

You may recall our interview with Matt Conn (Episode 5 of the Super Podcast Action Committee) of GaymerCon, the first-ever gaming event that caters to the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) community set to take place in San Francisco in 2013.

Rajan Zed, President of the Universal Society of Hinduism, has issued another statement against Hi-Rez Studios' upcoming massively online battle arena (MOBA) game, SMITE. This time the group is asking the organizers of QuakeCon (which starts this Thursday in the great state of Texas) to remove the game from its competition line-up. From the statement, as reported by Kotaku:

With QuakeCon kicking off on August 2, organizers decided that now is as good a time as any to detail some of the special things going on at the annual event dedicated to id Software's beloved first-person shooter franchise. With Zenimax now owning the studio responsible for Quake and Doom, you can expect to see some games in the works from Zenimax Online and Bethesda as well.

According to this GameSpot report, the organizers of the Penny Arcade Expo may have their sights set on a third location for the popular fan-based gaming event: the great state of Texas. Speaking during the Penny Arcade Panel at Comic-Con this weekend, Penny Arcade co-founder Mike Krahulik responded to a fan question about the possibility of a PAX event in the Austin Texas area by saying that organizers are "aggressively exploring a third PAX very near you."

Blizzard did not attend the Electronic Entertainment Expo in June and it announced that it wouldn't be hosting a BlizzCon event this year, but the company seems to be ramping up its attendance at events that allow actual fans (as opposed to just industry professionals and games journalists) to experience its games and culture first-hand. Recently it announced that it would be in full force at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany later this year, and today it revealed its plans for Comic-Con 2012 in San Diego at the end of this week (July 12 - 15).

Nintendo will be at Comic-Con 2012 showing off the freshly announced Nintendo 3DS XL, the company announced today. It will not be showing off the Wii U for some reason...

VentureBeat has revealed the full list of speakers and moderators for GamesBeat 2012. The event will feature a who's who of video games journalists including GamesBeat lead writer Dean Takahashi, Wired's Chris Kohler, GamesBeat culture editor Sebastian Haley, Inside Social Games editor A.J. Glasser, IGN Mobile editor Justin Davis, GamesIndustry International writer Steve Peterson, GamesBeat editor-in-chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu, TechCrunch writer Anthony Ha, and many others.

The organizing committee of the 5th annual China Game Developers Conference (CGDC) announced that Havok CEO and Executive Director David Coghlan will deliver a keynote speech at the event. China Game Developers Conference will take place in Shanghai, China on July 25-27. Havok is a software physics company owned by Intel. Coghlan's keynote speech will detail the trends of image, physics simulation and the Internet as related to 3D technology and games.

Blizzard Entertainment may not be hosting the BlizzCon fan event this year, and it may have opted out of E3 last month but the one event it does plan on attending this year is Gamescom. Gamescom will be held at the Koelnmesse in Cologne, Germany from Wednesday, August 15 to Sunday, August 19. During the event European fans will be able to check out playable content from all three major of Blizzard's franchises including the next World of Warcraft expansion, the next Starcraft II expansion, and Diablo III.

Sony Online Entertainment has opened registration for its annual fan event, SOE Live. In its 12th year, SOE Live is a fan gathering for the entire SOE community to celebrate their favorite games and connect with other players and the games' developers. Taking place at Bally's in Las Vegas October 18-21, SOE Live will celebrate the communities of such games as DC Universe Online, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Free Realms, Magic: The Gathering - Tactics, PlanetSide 2, PoxNora, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

British indie developer The Indie Stone, best known for its popular zombie apocalypse game Project Zomboid, will be conducting an interesting developer session next month at the Rezzed: The PC and Indie Games Show event. What is particularly noteworthy about the talk called "How (Not) To Make A Game" is that it will unabashedly dive into the joys and sorrows of the first year as an indie studio. During the session they will discuss what they believe indie developers should and shouldn't do when making a game.

Online registration for the Online Community Summit ends tomorrow (June 22). Taking place next week, the annual event dedicated to managing communities in the age of social media starts June 28 in San Francisco, CA at the Moscone Center. Admission to the event is $99 if you register online at communitysummit.org.

Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb announced via his official blog that Microsoft will skip two key gaming events later this year: Gamescom in Cologne, Germany and TGS in Tokyo, Japan. Hryb said that Microsoft is changing its focus from participating in large scale gaming events to doing more localized, smaller events.