online game

Zynga is launching first game in mainland China in association with Tencent Holdings Ltd in a move to grab a share in the $5.8 billion Chinese games market.

An early version of a game called Zynga City will be released by Zynga on Tencents' open platform, Zynga said in a statement on Monday.

It will be a Chinese version of CityVille, Zynga’s most popular game, featuring Chinese architecture, references to Chinese pop culture, as well as events and contests in the game that will be linked to Chinese holidays and news.

John Carmack from id Software was talking about the future of mobile gaming, reports The Register. He explained why “why tablets, smartphones and cloud-gaming services such as OnLive will become the dominant gaming platforms.”

"It’s unquestionable that within a very short time, we’re going to have portable cell phones that are more powerful than the current-gen consoles," he said.

According to the China Daily’s report Chinese People’s Liberation Army has created an online military game called “The Glorious Mission” to train its soldiers in combat skills and technological awareness.

It is a first-shooter online game allowing players to participate in individual or group missions. The game, which features PLA weaponry and realistic battle scenarios, took 32 months to develop, the newspaper reported.

All PlayStation network functionality is available again, announced Sony. This includes access to the PlayStation store the access to which will be fully restored by the week end.

However, in few areas in Asia with very strict regulation some features will still be missing. Meantime, other countries will have access to online games like Dirt 3.

Sony PlayStation Network has not been hacked, according to a new statement made by the company in a blog post. Sony spokesperson Patrick Seybold says that the PlayStation Network wasn’t hacked so much as threatened yesterday when a password exploit accessible through its PSN web page login page came to light.

“We temporarily took down the PSN and Qriocity password reset page,” wrote Seybold, quickly adding “Contrary to some reports, there was no hack involved.”

3.3 million copies of World of Warcraft game were sold by Activision Blizzard in its first day on the market. "World of Warcraft: Cataclysm," launched December 7, surpassed the record set by the previous "World of Warcraft" release in November 2008, said the company.

The multiplayer online game has 12 million subscribers around the world, providing the company with steady and recurring revenue. Nearly half of those subscribers are in Asia, and the other half are in western countries, analysts say.

The excitement spurred this week by the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops video game was exploited by the scamsters to lure unwitting users into giving away their personal information.

GFI Security researcher Chris Boyd warns that supposed cracks for the eagerly awaited first-person shooter actually take gamers through a variety of shonky online surveys.

 PapayaMobile, an open, mobile social network for Android, has announced to partner Zong, Billing Revolution, and Adknowledge's Super Rewards to offer the most complete and effective monetization solution for Android developers. As a result of these key partnership agreements, PapayaMobile now enables in-app purchases, support for various billing options and integration of advertising offers from Super Rewards.

PapayaMobile mainly focuses on casual gaming and virtual currency.

A consumer protection website SiteJabber which is funded by the National Science Foundation posted a chart of common scams on World of Warcraft servers. Today the game is played by 11.5 million people worldwide and it is one of the most favorite havens for scammers, hackers and fraudsters who try to lure unwitting and unwary victims into their schemes so that they would give away their credentials or money.

A provider of monetization solutions for online games PlaySpan entered into an agreement with Ubisoft. The partnership will enable Ubisoft to use PlaySpan’s virtual goods monetization platform for a selection of its online games across multiple platforms worldwide.

It seems that for the first time in a 20 year history of wars between software companies and users the victory will be more favorable to ordinary consumer. Late last year a Hawaii man Craig Smallwood sued Lineage II maker NC Interactive on allegations that his compulsive urge to play the game caused him to sink more than 20,000 hours into it. As a result, he had to be hospitalized and continues to suffer extreme and serious emotional distress and depression that requires treatment and therapy three times a week, according to court documents.

Blizzard was granted over $88 million in damages inflicted by private gaming server “Scapegaming”. The federal judge found that the gaming server violated the companies EULA along with aspects of the DMCA. Scapegaming allowed users running a modified version of the client to join their third party server, and the owner recorded over $3 million dollars in revenue by selling virtual items.

A provider of payment solutions for online games, virtual worlds and social networks PlaySpan announced that its services were selected by Sanrio Digital, the developer and online publisher of Hello Kitty Online. Under the agreement, Sanrio Digital will deploy PlaySpan’s UltimatePayTM for the upcoming commercial release of Hello Kitty Online.

Under new legislation adopted in China gamers will have to start registering with their real names. The new regulation that came into effect Sunday is the first in China to control online gaming. It is meant to protect minors from Internet addiction and unhealthy content, according to China's state-controlled media.

However, while the regulations call for new restrictions geared for minors, they also require that online game companies begin implementing a real-name registration system for all users, both new and existing.

Barclays has launched an online game, 56 Sage Street, that sees players arrive in a virtual city broke and improve their status through work and sound money management, targeting to allure teenage customers.