DICE is looking for an anti-cheat security expert, according to a new job listing on its official site. The Battlefield series developer is looking for someone willing to take up residence in its home office (Stockholm, Sweden) where they will be charged with "secure the online experience for all DICE titles." Whoever dons the mantle of "Anti-Cheat Administrator" will have their work cut out from them, given all the hacking and cheating going on with its latest title Battlefield 3.

A dust-up over 38 Studios' Kingdoms of Amular: Reckoning locking on-disc content behind an "online pass" system has raised the ire of some gamers - which in turn has brought studio founder and former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling out of the woodwork to defend the plan.

The Online Pass Code was found in early copies of the game sent to reviewers and leaked onto the Internet. When fans found out they took to the official forums to complain about it.

The text that came with the review copies of the game reads:

BioWare has explained some of the recent Star Wars: The Old Republic bans and vowed to make adjustments to areas where players have been found to be exploiting. Last week some players were banned from playing because they were looting containers in planet Ilum at too low a level - a move that apparently made many in the SWTOR community upset. Community manager Stephen Reid took to the SWTOR website to explain exactly what had happened and why some players were banned.

Nexon has gone public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and has managed to raise $1.17 billion from its IPO. Nexon's IPO is the biggest of the year for the exchange, putting the company's total market value of between $7.69 billion and $8.97 billion. In an interview with Bloomberg, Nexon CFO Owen Mahoney said that the social gaming and online gaming company plans on using the money to fund new acquisitions.

Despite a recent security breach in November and contending with the timing of Zynga's initial public offering, Nexon will makes its debut on the Tokyo Stock Exchange December 14, according to Reuters. The social and online game developer will reportedly sell at around ¥1300 each with Nexon expecting to raise around ¥91 billion, or $1.2 billion USD, with a market value of ¥560 billion.

Account information from more than 13 million MapleStory players was compromised in a recent hacking incident, according to a report in the Korean Herald. According to that report, the attack took place last Thursday on Thanksgiving, and affected three-quarters of the game's player-base - right around 13.2 million people. The data that may have been stolen included player names, user IDs, passwords, and registration numbers (Korea's version of the US's social security number).

Psychiatrist Philip Tam believes internet addiction should be classified as a disorder. The Sydney, Australia based psychiatrist and some Australian parents think that internet addiction and online game addiction need to be officially classified as addictions so that children can be treated for the so-called disorders.

Infinity Ward, the developers of Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, announced via Twitter that it has banned more than 1,600 players online for cheating. Infinity Ward Creative Strategist, Robert Bowling explained via Twitter what was going on.

"Any attempt to cheat, hack, or glitch in #MW3 will not be tolerated. 1600+ bans issued. Updates in works."

He went on to answer questions from followers about how to report cheaters from within the game:

Riot Games announced that - over the last four months - its user base for League of Legends has more than doubled. The popular competitive online strategy RPG game now has 11.5 million active players and over 1.3 million of those people play League of Legends every day at peak concurrency. Riot Games claims that more than 4 million players enjoy League of Legends daily and that the game has more than 30 million registered players as well.

New research released by Newzoo digs a little deeper into the lucrative Chinese and Korean online gaming markets. The research focused on the 190 million Chinese (76 percent) and 26 million Korean (60 percent) consumers ages 15 to 50 - who make up the majority of those who play games in those countries. Newzoo found that both countries were passionate about MMO games, with 100 million MMO gamers in China and 8 million in Korea. While both countries enjoy games, players in each country have different preferences when it comes to social and mobile gaming.

If you somehow managed (by hook or by crook) to get a copy of Modern Warfare and are trying to play it online via Xbox Live, you'll be treated to a ban. The game officially launches November 8, but apparently Microsoft has noticed that some Xbox Live users have the game and are trying to play it online. Those people are having their accounts banned.

Electronic Arts is saying this week that consumers shouldn't be worried about getting their hands on a copy of Star Wars: The Old Republic at launch. The only reason fans that want to play the upcoming MMO are worried is because EA announced earlier this year that it planned to ration sales of the game when it was released in December to keep game servers stable.

It looks like the online game Mythos is about to disappear from the European gaming landscape. MMORPG.com is reporting that MMO operator Frogster will discontinue operation of the game on October 27. The game launched in April but did not gain the kind of player support that the company had hoped. The company made the official announcement via the game's forums:

EA's studio DICE has released some interesting stats from its recent Battlefield 3 online multiplayer beta test that are worth mentioning. According to DICE's internal figures, around 8,125,310 players took part in the multiplayer beta test. In fact DICE even counted how many bullets were shot during the entire test! Players fired a total of 47 billion bullets and killed 1.5 billion other players. Around 19 million of those players were killed with a knife, while an additional 21 million COM-stations were destroyed.

Uncharted series developer Naughty Dog says that without the money from Sony's PSN Pass, the company wouldn't be able to afford to include as much online content as it has with Uncharted 3. In fact, they say that if they didn't implement Online Pass, they would have had to split the game into two different games - single and multiplayer. Uncharted 3 director Justin Richmond made the comments in a recent interview with TheSixthAxis.

DICE has revealed - to no one's surprise - that Battlefield 3 will come with a code needed to play the modern-day warfare game online.

The news was confirmed by DICE designer Alan Kertz on Twitter. His comments were in response to follower questions on the need for an Online Pass code for the company's newest title. He said that the decision to use the system was "because servers cost money, and used games don't make developers any money."

Last night at a gala event (as part of GDC Online 2011 in Austin, Texas) the GDC Choice Online Award winners were announced, with Trion Worlds and Mojang honored with several awards, along with Sony Online Entertainment, Sega, and Playdom. Trion's RIFT won Best Online Game and Best Technology, while Mojang's Minecraft walked away with the award for Best Live Game and Best Community Relations. Sony Online entertainment walked away with two awards; one for Clone Wars Adventures (BEST AUDIO for an ONLINE GAME) and DC Universe Online (BEST ONLINE VISUAL ARTS).

EA studio DICE is warning players that they should avoid playing the beta of the upcoming modern-day shooter Battlefield 3 on unofficial servers, noting that doing so could compromise their accounts. Last week, Battlefield 3's server files were leaked onto the internet, opening up players to a large amount of unofficial servers for the game's ongoing beta test on PC. Using these leaked files lets those who want to run a server to adjust player counts from 32 to 100, among other things.

Last week OnLive launched in the United Kingdom, and though it may have had a hiccup here and there when it launched, the service mostly went off without a hitch. But customers of ISP TalkTalk noticed that they were having a lot of trouble connecting with the service during peak evening hours - according to a TorrentFreak report. At first customers thought this was on OnLive's end, but a little bit of digging found that TalkTalk had been throttling connections because the OnLive data traffic was being misread as P2P file-sharing traffic.

Online gambling for real money is illegal, but a loophole manipulated to great effect by a new company called Playhem makes it perfectly legal. The trick being manipulated by the New York-based start-up is that it allows its users to place wagers on themselves as they compete against each other for cash or prizes.

Even with the distraction of a foulmouthed twelve-year-old cursing in your ear, you’ve still got game.  But how well would you hold up against streaming video of a topless porn star?

Adult performers Alana Evans and Misti Dawn have launched PwnedByGirls, a new website that will allow eager gamers to play video games with them or just kick back and watch them mop the floor with competitors who just can’t seem to focus.

While you'll be able to pick up Batman: Arkham City on Steam and other digital distribution platforms, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has confirmed that the game will use Games For Windows Live for the PC version. If you happen to hate GFWL then this is certainly disheartening news. A WBIE representative has told VG247 that “Arkham City is indeed a G4WL [sic] title.”

Speaking at the recent Edinburgh Interactive conference, Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard said that Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo all opposed the idea of the company's MMO Runescape letting players interact with other players on rival platforms.

"Some console owners wanted us to charge five Euros for Runescape. What? It would be crazy to charge for Runescape on consoles," he said. "But Sony was ahead of the game, they said they get it. They understand free. But all three said, 'okay, but, we won’t let our console play online with any other'."

This year's finalists for the Game Developers Choice Online Awards have been announced, with winners to be announced during GDC Online 11 in Austin, Texas from October 10 - 13. The awards ceremony takes place on the evening of October 12. The finalists were chosen from a large selection of nominees by a committee of 400 industry professionals. Only online games that launched in North America during the last 12 months were eligible.

Australians who won't get access to BioWare's upcoming Star Wars-themed MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic got some good news today from the game's developers: it won't be region locked and can therefore be imported from other regions.

"There are no plans to ‘region lock’ or ‘IP block’ players from the game," says BioWare Senior Online Community Manager Stephen Reid. "You may experience some latency issues if you’re not playing in a launch territory."

The New York Times is reporting that minions of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il have found an interesting way of earning some much needed cash - MMO's. According to South Korean authorities, their neighbor to the North has created an army of young hackers and unleashed them on South Korea's most popular MMORPG's. This group is finding ways to exploit systems, gather in-game credits and convert it all back to cold hard cash.

Riot Games announced that its popular online strategy game League of Legends has hit a major milestone: more than 1.4 million players log on and play the game every day. The game currently sits at the 15 million registered players mark, with an average of ten games of League of Legends starting every second of every day. The first season of competitive play recently completed showing that the number of active players each month has grown to over four million.

"We are extremely proud and appreciative of the devoted League of Legends community which has grown substantially over the last year and a half," said Brandon Beck, CEO of Riot Games. "We’re committed to continuing to match their dedication with our relentless focus on ongoing enhancements to the player experience with great new features, content, and polish – and we have some very exciting surprises in store just around the corner."

A new survey by video game price comparison and marketplace Playr2 reveals that the average consumer doesn't spend all that much time playing a new game's campaign mode (or single player) before their interest wanes. The short answer to that question is the time spent on the campaign mode is usually just a handful of days, according to a survey of 1,671 users. Breaking that question down among the most popular titles, the answers become even more surprising:

- Call of Duty: Black Ops - 2 days
- Terminator Salvation - 2.5 days
- Resident Evil 5 - 3.2 days
- God of War 2 - 3.3 days
- Uncharted 2 - 3.8 days
- Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands - 4.1 days
- Assassin's Creed II - 5 days
- Uncharted - 6.6 days
- Metal Gear Solid 3 - 6.8 days
- Grand Theft Auto IV - 8.2 days

This question did not include downloadable content or online modes.

NCsoft Europe will serve as the host of the inaugural Golden Chippies Awards on Wednesday July 20 at Brighton’s Regency fish restaurant. The "tongue-in-cheek" awards honor massively multiplayer gaming journalists in the UK. The event will also raise money for GamesAid. The awards are a precursor to the Develop Awards.

"MMO journalism is a labour of love for those involved. A niche but growing subset of traditional gaming media, these guys really are doing it through devotion to the genre. The Golden Chippies allow us to sing their praises over some classic seaside fare and raise some cash for a good cause in the process." said NCsoft EU PR Director, Cat Channon.

Korean MMO publisher Webzen has filed a lawsuit against Red 5 Studios claiming that the developer breached a contract for the online shooter FireFall. Last month the developer filed for arbitration in a California court claiming that Webzen's new management failed to properly market the game - a provision in the original contract.

"We do not feel the new management of Webzen has honored their obligations towards Firefall, particularly in Asia," wrote CEO Mark Kern in an open letter published on the game's official forum. "The current management of Webzen is a stark contrast to the original CEO and executives who were once so excited to work with us on the game."