Activision Blizzard has inked a deal with Chinese online games giant Tencent Holdings Limited to bring Call of Duty Online to Chinese players. In its announcement this morning Activision said that Call of Duty Online has been in development by Activision Publishing for approximately two years. Under the multi-year agreement with Activision Publishing, Tencent gains the exclusive licensing rights to operate Call of Duty Online in mainland China. The game is described as free-to-play and uses a monetized in-game store to sell virtual items.

Cevat Yerli, CEO and president of Crytek, recently said that after his company finishes up its current projects all future titles from the studio will be free-to-play. In a lengthy interview with Computer & Videogames, Yerli said that free-to-play gaming is the future of the industry and the reason we do not see free-to-play games on consoles is because platform holders have done a good job of not allowing them at the behest of retail partners.

Ben Cousins, general manager of Ngmoco, recently gave a keynote at GDC Taipei where he offered his predictions on the five big trends in the game industry across the next 5-10 years. One of the big trends that will change the industry will be freemium and mobile, according to Cousins. In his keynote he claims that the combination of mobile and freemium games will ultimately kill off the home console.

BioWare’s Emmanuel Lusinchi, lead designer on the company's MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, says that the company is looking into the possibility of switching the game from its current monthly subscription-based business model to free-to-play. Speaking to GamesTM, lead designer Emmanuel Lusinchi said that the MMO space is ever evolving, and acknowledges that BioWare must adapt to the changes.

Is Habbo (formerly Habbo Hotel) a despicable hang-out for pedophiles that are continually preying on its underage users? A report that will air tonight on a Channel 4 news claims that they have strong evidence that it is. The report claims that pedophiles are chatting it up in the graphical social game-like teen destination, asking them if they have a "web cam," if they will get naked on camera, and trying their best to engage under age children in sexually charged conversations.

Speaking to web site Videogamer.com, Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli revealed that - after the company is done wrapping up its currents projects - all of its future game releases will be free-to-play. Yerli also said that he has become a little bit sick of DLC and premium gaming services that are "milking customers to death."

A few months ago rumors were flying that Japanese MMO company Nexon was going to buy a gigantic company like Electronic Arts. Today we see a more realistic investment from the company responsible for Maple Story and other free-to-play games in the U.S. Nexon has bought a 14.7 percent stake in South Korean MMO maker NCsoft. Nexon purchased 3,218,091 shares from NCsoft CEO Taek Jin Kim for ₩804,522,750,000 (approximately $686.8 million USD).

Valve announced that Dota 2 will be free free-to-play and revealed details on the Dota Store today. The game will feature an in-game store that will offer mostly cosmetic items, just like the offerings provided to Team Fortress 2 players. Valve says that it has no plans to sell hero characters in the Dota Store because "restricting player access to heroes could be destructive to game design, so it’s something we plan to avoid."

Electronic Arts co-founder Trip Hawkins announced via his official blog that he will step down from the role of CEO at mobile games company Digital Chocolate. Hawkins says that he will take an advisory role with the company he helped found.

"I am transitioning now into a consulting and advisory relationship with Digital Chocolate. For its next stage of growth, Digital Chocolate is narrowing its focus and it made sense to get more streamlined."

According to a GamesIndustry International report RuneScape maker Jagex Software will shut down its latest free-to-play MMO 8 Realms and lay off employees it can't relocate to other teams within the company. Apparently the company will shut down the game because it only garnered 10 percent of the amount of players needed to make the game profitable.

"Hate" is a pretty strong way of describing something that you might find slightly off-putting but that's the word that Edmund McMillen of Team Meat describes "freemium games." The maker of Super Meat Boy recently said on his team blog that free-to-play mobile games have a "lack of respect for players."

According to the latest data from research firm NPD Group, an estimated 40 percent who have played a "freemium" game that offers an upgrade option in-game have spent the money to buy the "full game." The data comes from NPD Group's "Insights into the Freemium Games Market report." The report uses data from 6,000 individuals it surveyed including both children and adults. The report notes that women and girls are more likely to play freemium games than men, but are less likely to spend money on these types of games.

China has an estimated 180 million gamers, and a new report suggests that they spend a fair amount of their hard earned money every month on online games. This news comes from a new study conducted by analyst group Niko Partners.

New data from research firm Newzoo reveals that more than 100 million consumers in the United States are playing games on various hand-held and mobile devices including smartphones, tablets, and iPods. The amount of users playing games on portable devices has grown by more than a third compared to last year, according to Newzoo data. In Europe smartphone and tablet gamers (from seven key territories) has also increased to 70 million, a 15 percent year-over-year increase.

Meteor Entertainment has raised $10 million to launch a downloadable online game called Hawken. Hawken is described as a fast-paced shooter where players can get inside gigantic powered armor and hammer on each other in ruined cities. Investors backing the project include Benchmark Capital and FirstMark Capital (who invested in League of Legends makers Riot Games). That game was so successful that China-based Tencent bought spent more than $400 million last year to acquire them and their game.

Sony announced plans to release the multiplayer component of Guerrilla Games' Killzone 3 as a standalone download on the PlayStation Network, but the best part of this news is that it will be free to play. Sony made the announcement during the most recent episode of the Sony Blogcast. The one caveat is that level progression will be capped, though to what extent or exact point we do now know.

Blizzard Entertainment's next MMO project, currently an enigma in its scope and subject matter, will be a free-to-play game, according to a Develop report. This is according to a Develop source "connected to the matter." Blizzard had no comment on the story. Blizzard has been on the margins with the model, having dipped its toe ever so slightly in it by making World of Warcraft "free" up to level 20.

Microsoft will not allow third parties to build content for its new Microsoft Flight game. They say that allowing third parties to develop content for the new game would simply cause brand confusion amongst customers. The game series has a rich tradition of third party content, but this latest iteration is a free-to-play game offering bonus content created and sold by Microsoft.

Imangi Studios' Temple Run has been downloaded more than 36 million times since launching in August of 2011, according to Gamasutra. Some of that increase in downloads can be attributed to a couple of things. The first is the last five months of switching from a pay title to free-to-play game. The company also claims that the game has 7 million daily active users at present.

Red 5 Studios, makers of the upcoming MMO shooter Firefall, have come out strongly against SOPA and PIPA, and plan to go dark for one day on January 18 to protest. The company also announced that, because of the Entertainment Software Association’s support for the bills, it has canceled its E3 booth and plans to skip the show. The shutdown will include all of its websites, its community sites for the game, and the Firefall beta.

League of Legends developer Riot Games let us know that they, have officially announced their opposition to controversial legislation under consideration in Congress: the U.S. House of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate’s PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). The company's CEO, Brandon Beck, took to the official forums for the game (which has 11-million-players, for the record) to say that these two bills in their present form are unacceptable:

Sony Online Entertainment is proclaiming victory in its switch from EverQuest II being a subscription-based MMORPG, to being free-to-play. The company announced that new player registrations for EverQuest II have increased by "around 300 percent" since Sony Online Entertainment switched the game to an entirely free-to-play model in early December.

All Points Bulletin Reloaded, the relaunched free-to-play version of the online gangland action game, has managed to garner one million registered players. The game, which was created by Realtime worlds as a subscription-based MMO, launched in 2010 and only managed to garner 130,000 players. Much of the relaunched game's early success can be attributed to being available via Valve’s Steam platform as a free download.

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.

Niko Partners has released its 2011 Southeast Asian Game Market Regional Report covering the fast growing geographical region that includes Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The report offers analysis on the online games segment, as social games and free to play online games are primary drivers for growth in these countries.

Another AAA MMO has gone free-to-play - or will in October, according to Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). The company announced that beginning sometime in late October, its DC comics-based MMO will be free to download and play without a monthly subscription fee. DCUO will be from both the PlayStation 3 and PC and will offer three new access levels: Free, Premium and Legendary. All three levels will provide general access to open world gameplay and missions, general game updates and fixes to the game, with each level offering different game options and benefits.

Sony Online Entertainment and LucasArts today announced that its free-to-play Star Wars game based on the popular Cartoon Network reimagining of the early Star Wars films has managed to attract more than 8 million registered players since its launch one year ago.

Players over the age of 25 generate around 79 percent of revenue in "freemium" games, according to new research from mobile analytics firm Flurry, but younger players tend to play those games longer. Players under 24 or younger spend 54 percent of the time spent in these games, but only make 21 percent of the overall in-app purchase revenue. The 25-34 year old player group made up 29 percent of game time, and brought in 49 percent of overall revenues. Customers 35-54 years old account for 28 percent of the revenue made in freemium games.

MMO developer Artix has been experimenting with ads that players only see when they die in the online game AdventureQuest Worlds. The practice is getting some interesting reactions from players, according to CEO Adam Bohn, who spoke at length with [a]list Daily in a recent interview. The ads are what are commonly called "house ads," or ads promoting the company's own products and services such as other game titles and the company's store:

A new report by Newzoo, claims that consumer spending on games in the US by the end of this year will total $21.6 billion, slightly lower than spending in 2010. In 2012, Newzoo predicts slightly modest growth of the total US games market of 3 percent as online and mobile games continue to increase their share of the total market and console games spending stabilizes.

The results depicted in the infograph, are based on analysis of high-level data from the US National Gamers Surveys over the last three years. For the first time in 2011, mobile, online and download games will capture more than half of total consumer spending by Americans.