Inmates at a prison in China were "forced" into gold farming, respectable British newspaper The Guardian has reported. 300 people at one particular prison were made to collect virtual currency in online games, to be sold for real money to people who didn't want to gather it themselves.

"Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," Liu Dali, a pseudonymous former prison guard who was jailed for three years in 2004, told The Guardian. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn CN¥5,000-6,000 [$770-925] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off." Read more »

Sony Online Entertainment has announced that it will merge its DC Universe Online servers later this month, slimming its count crop to just four servers in total.

DCUO players on servers located in the United States will be merged into two separate servers, one each for the PC and PS3 versions of the game. Users connecting to European servers will see an identical shift to the two-server setup. In the announcement, SOE called the servers "super servers," pointing to the possibility of new accounts or a delicious play on words based on the server's contents. Read more »

After announcing a free-to-play web-based Battlestar Galactica MMO earlier this year, Universal Partnerships & Licensing and Bigpoint have announced another free-to-play collaboration: The Mummy Online.

Based upon Universal Pictures' film franchise, The Mummy Online is described as "a free-to-play Action-RPG MMO game with adventure elements inspired by the films, players will take on heroic roles as adventure seekers with various talents and skills that will allow their characters to be unique within the MMO virtual world." Read more »

Having signed a ten-year MMO licensing agreement with comic book maker Marvel back in March 2009, publisher Gazillion has now unveiled some details and artwork from the first title to emerge out of the partnership.

Aimed at "wide audiences," Super Hero Squad Online is being developed by Gazillion subsidiary The Amazing Society" and will see players "lead their handpicked squad of Super Heroes on unforgettable adventures" in a massively multiplayer online world. Read more »

Okay, so it's entirely in Japanese and I don't understand anything that's going on in this video, but it's over two minutes of in-game footage from Square Enix's upcoming MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV.

Black Box's free-to-play massively multiplayer racer Need for Speed Online (PC) is now slated to make its public launch in summer 2010, publisher Electronic Arts announced today.

Prior to the game's public launch, the studio is conducting an ever-expanding closed beta, with the English portion kicking off today. Those interested can sign up for a shot at participating over at world.needforspeed.com. Read more »

A massively multiplayer game based off popular science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica is due to launch this fall, license holder NBC Universal announced today.

A client-free and browser-based affair said to pack "state of the art graphics," Battlestar Galactica Online is being powered by Unity--the same technology used by EA's broswer-based Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online. Read more »

It seems that Star Trek Online is to continue going where no man has gone before, as developer Cryptic and publisher Atari have begun to outline the various "Special Task Force Missions" coming to the PC MMO.

Described by executive producer Craig Zinkievich as "five-man raids," the new episodes will be available to both Federation and Klingon players, beginning with "Infected." Read more »

After being put on "indefinite hold" by defunct developer Perpetual in October 2007, mythological MMO Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising has now been resurrected.

Heatwave Interactive today announced that it has acquired the intellectual property rights to Gods & Heroes along with all game assets, including the two game engines Perpetual had created for Gods & Heroes and Star Trek Online. Shortly after halting work on Gods & Heroes, Perpetual shut down and the Star Trek Online rights went to Cryptic. Read more »

A visual update to NCsoft's 2004 PC MMO City of Heroes will be available when the game's "Issue 17 - Dark Mirror" update arrives in April, the publisher has announced.

Dubbed "Ultra Mode," the optional enhancements are said to deliver "a superior graphics rendering process...that will give City of Heroes a new look and feel with a heightened level of detail in lighting, reflections, shadows and water effects." Read more »

Developer NetDevil has opened beta registration for LEGO Universe (PC), providing the opportunity to help test the block-buster MMO before it launches sometime this year.

While some signups are a rather detailed affair, this one is relatively simple--after signing in with a LEGO ID, one simply states if they have no, some, or much experience testing online games. Of course, not everyone will be chosen to participate; " Read more »

Founded by World of Warcraft veterans in 2005, long-silent MMO developer Red 5 Studios today confirmed that it has been forced to lay off some of its staff.

The studio has been working on an unannounced massively multiplayer game, one that, judging by today's announcement, it still intends to release. Said the company:

Recently, the team formed around a new direction and took on additional investment from a strategic partner in the online games industry. Read more »

Capcom's massively multiplayer take on its popular Monster Hunter franchise is coming to Xbox 360 in the form of Monster Hunter Frontier Online, the company revealed today.

Monster Hunter Frontier Online will launch on Xbox 360 in Japan sometime in summer 2010, joining the previously released PC edition already running in Japan and Asia. As for North America and Europe, Capcom told Kotaku that "the title has not been confirmed for release" in those territories. Read more »

As the Fallout MMO courtroom drama between Interplay and Bethesda continues to unfold, a recent filing has reignited the long-running rumors that Bethesda and parent company ZeniMax are readying an MMO based in The Elder Scrolls universe.

Specifically, Bethesda requests certain parts of its recent testimony be censored before the transcripts are made public, as "trade secret information" regarding "a particular Read more »

While it's only been about two months since Infinity Ward's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 hit store shelves and shattered countless sales records, rumors of the studio's next project and the inevitable Modern Warfare 3 are already making the rounds.