Abandon Interactive, the publisher behind toy-based MMO Freaky Creatures, announced a partnership with Hallmark Gold Crown stores to exclusively distribute Freaky Pets, its new interactive product, in 2010.

Targeting children aged four years old and up, the Freaky Pets line consists of reversible plush toys that retail for $14.99. The initial set will include ten different Pets, each featuring "cute" and "cranky" sides, which Abandon describes as "a funny and safe outlet [for children] to explore their emotions."

The toys include a one-year subscription to a Freaky Pets browser-based 3D virtual world, where kids can unlock a version of their plush pet in-game. Players can train and bond with their Pets by feeding them, petting them, and teaching them different tricks. Kids can then take them to a virtual Pet Town to challenge friends with trick contests, minigames, and more.

While in Pet Town, they can also buy pet food, send messages/gifts to friends, and earn rewards and in-game currency by taking quests and entering their Pets into different 3D minigames (e.g. hover racing, memory, trick performances). With Creature Credits, players can purchase accessories to customize their Pets and Pet lairs.

ArenaNet co-founder Jeff Strain, who left NCsoft in August of this year, has revealed his new project: Seattle-based game development studio Undead Labs.

Strain, a key figure in the development of Guild Wars, will continue to focus on MMOs -- this time on consoles, promising to "pioneer a new development model that will create a new breed of MMO built from the ground up for console gamers."

The sole focus of Undead Labs, according to the announcement, will be a massively-multiplayer zombie MMO -- or "MMOZ," as Strain calls it -- focused on action-humor elements.

"Every time I see a good zombie movie with friends, we spend days debating our strategies for surviving the zombie apocalypse," Strain says.

Zynga, developer of mega-successful social game FarmVille, says it has reached a major user milestone, with more than 100 million unique users playing its online games every month.

A million of those players spend money on virtual goods each month. Despite that figure only representing 1 percent of users, Zynga says such spending comprises 90 percent of its revenue. The company also says it has tallied 200 million monthly active users, a figure that counts the same user across multiple games as multiple users.

FarmVille, the Facebook-based farm simulation game, launched in June and has reached a user base of 65 million -- 26 million of whom play the game on a daily basis, according to Zynga. The studio has launched a standalone website, FarmVille.com, that hosts the game and hooks into players' existing Facebook accounts.

Zynga's latest titles, Cafe World and FishVille, have grown relatively quickly, reaching 9 million daily users and 6 million daily users respectively.

"Our games continue to delight and connect players as they immerse themselves in their worlds of farming, fishing or running a restaurant," said Zynga CEO Mark Pincus. "With the popularity of virtual goods today, we are in the early stages of a new economy that could grow and shape the future of the Web."

Social games developer Zynga, which today announced it reached 100 million unique users for its online titles (FarmVille, Café World), could generate a value of $1 billion dollars if the company were taken public, according to a stock analyst predicting the studio's worth.

"If the IPO were timed to price around mid-2010 or later, our expectation would be for a billion dollar or greater valuation," said Terry Schallich, head of Capital Markets at technology-focused investment bank Pacific Crest Securities, in a report posted by financial news site Bloomberg.

The FarmVille developer's CEO Mark Pincus, however, said he has no immediate plans to take Zynga public, as it would distract the company from its current goals. He added, "Our mission is to accelerate our product development and business plan."

If the company were to launch an IPO with a $1 billion valuation, that would make the two-year-old studio the third-largest U.S.-based video game publisher by market valuation, under Electronic Arts and Activision. EA also made headlines with the social gaming sector earlier this month after confirming its $300 million acquisition of Zynga rival Playfish (Pet Society, Word Challenge).

Zynga announced last week that it secured $15.18 million in a Series C round of funding, bringing its total amount of venture capital raised so far to $54.1 million. The company's recent positive financing and userbase news comes in spite of controversy around its use of scam-like lead generation offers with its games, which prompted one law firm to file a class-action suit against the developer.

The Chinese government will enact regulations requiring local game operators like Shanda, NetEase.com, and Tencent Holdings to emphasize socialist values in their games and hire specialized staff to monitor their content.

China's Ministry of Culture told operators that they must re-examine their games to limits obscene and violent content, the number of virtual marriages, and player-versus-player combat. NetEase.com CEO William Ding said that while he's unaware of all the new restrictions, his company is willing to comply.

"Over this year, China's online game industry has grown at a rapid pace," the ministry said in a statement released last Wednesday and translated by Reuters. "But the current product offerings are not up to standard, and the cultural content is lowbrow and having a negative effect on the healthy development of the industry."

Earlier this month, China's General Administration of Press and Publication in the country ordered NetEase.com to halt its local operations for World of Warcraft and stop accepting new accounts due to what the regulator described as "gross violations" of rules". The conflict seemed to stem from a power struggle between GAPP and the Ministry of Culture over control of online content.

Every week, we'll examine the most popular Facebook applications (according to MUA, monthly active users), as well as the social network's up-and-coming apps that have picked up the most users in the past seven days.

Zynga's FishVille is at the top of the upstarts chart for the second week in a row, this time picking up 6.7 (+42 percent) million users to bring the aquarium simulator's total player count up to nearly 16 million. The company's FarmVille also popped up in the list after a week's absence, appearing at #2 after attracting 2.2 million (+3 percent).

Happy Pets, CrowdStar's newly launched pet adoption title is growing fast, boasting a 70 percent gain with 2.1 million new users. Other new games in the top ten "gainers" include Mob Science's Snowball Fight (+947,440, +74 percent), RockYou's Zoo World (+856,129, +40 percent), and LOLapps Champions Online (+723,726, +100 percent).

Some 2 million Xbox Live users have logged into Facebook since it launched over the service on November 17, Microsoft says -- which means about 10 percent of the total userbase has tried the new feature.

Discussing early indicators of strong performance for its social networking features with CNet, Microsoft also said that Xbox Live users have created half a million Last.fm accounts in the first 24 hours.

Spokesperson David Dennis did not provide specifics on Twitter usage over the service, except to note "tweets from nearly every market where we have Xbox Live."

Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm are all available to Xbox Live Gold subscribers, as part of Microsoft's stated goal to make its console "the largest social network connected to the TV."

Hoping to entice Silver members to try out the new features, Microsoft has also announced free weekends in the month of November, during which Silver subscribers can access services normally only available to Gold users.

Russian MMO company Nival Network closed a $5 million round of funding from an undisclosed investor, which will go toward the development of Prime World, an online strategy game with social networking elements.

The studio develops, publishes, and operates both subscription-based and free-to-play online titles for Russia and former Soviet countries. Its MMORPG portfolio includes Cabal Online, Khan Wars 2.0, Shaiya, Dragonica, and many others.

Established in September 2008, Nival has development studios in Moscow and Minsk. The company is majority owned by CEO and founder Sergey Orlovskiy, who revealed the investment round to local newspaper Vedomosti newspaper (reported by Quintara). Russian software vendor 1C Company also owns a 30 percent stake in Nival.

It's unclear what social networking features the developer plans to include with Prime World, but it's possible the MMO will hook into Nival's gaming and social networking portal Zzima.com. You can see screenshots for the title after the break.

Russia's online games market is expected to reach $238 million in 2009, with MMOs accounting for $210 million and casual games taking up $28 million of that total, according to estimates from Russian firm iKS-Consulting.

NCsoft has enacted what it calls a "massive" ban across North American and European servers for its Aion subscription PC MMO, removing user accounts for violations.

The violations targeted were primarily "botting" -- or modifying the client to automate play -- or illegally buying and selling in-game currency. The offending accounts -- "nearly 16,000" in total -- were closed as part of a server-wide reboot.

"Please note that if your account was closed for the use of 3rd party software (botting) or participating in RMT (gold buying/selling) the evidence for the account closure was gathered over several weeks," wrote community manager Andrew Beegle on the game's official forums.

Beegle explains that NCsoft monitors accounts for actions that modify the game client or automate in the fashion of a bot and "flags" possible violators for a closer look, gathering several instances before banning an account.

Aion saw a strong launch, selling a total of 970,000 copies in its first week in North America and Europe. The game was largely single-handedly responsible for driving NCsoft's third quarter revenues -- despite being released at the very end of the quarter -- creating an 836 percent leap in year-over-year quarterly profits on revenues that more than doubled.

MMO company Frogster announced the launch of a new Runes of Magic server with a fully localized Spanish version of the game for the U.S. and Canada, claiming this is "the first free-to-play online game in North America to launch a Spanish-language server".

The company believes the new server has the potential to attract "several million" new players to the MMORPG. It also says the server will help those learning or interested in further developing their Spanish-language skills to interact with other Spanish speakers, playing the game while also practicing real world skills.

Created by Taiwanese developer Runewalker Entertainment, the free-to-play game has players creating different classes in the fantasy world of Taborea, leveling crafting skills, completing quests, fighting enemies, exploring dungeons with groups as large as 36 players, and more. Runes of Magic has attracted over two million registered users since launching last March.

"With millions of native language Spanish speakers in North America, as well as people that want to actively practice their Spanish language skills, the market is large and untapped," says Frogster America CEO Lars Koschin. "Runes of Magic is the first free-to-play MMORPG to actively pursue the Spanish speaking audience and we hope this is just the first of many servers to support the community."

Along with the new server, Frogster is localizing the Runes of Magic's community website, and is hoping to hire Spanish speakers to act as in-game Guides and Game Masters.

Social game developer Playfish is rolling out Poker Rivals, a new app looking to "take Texas Hold 'Em Poker to a whole new level", on Facebook, setting up a Beta version of the game that you can already jump in and start playing (though I had disconnection problems when I tried it out).

The game will challenge the already established Texas HoldEm Poker from rival developer Zynga, currently the seventh most popular app on Facebook with over 19.5 million monthly active users. Zynga also has a Live Poker iPhone app that uses Facebook Connect to allow players to hook into their Texas HoldEm Poker account while playing a portable version of the game.

With Poker Rivals, players can learn about the game with a tutorial, play with their friends, step into a table with up to nine other strangers, and even enter tournaments. They can also customize their character by using their winnings (or Playfish Cash purchased with real money) to customize their look, buy accessories, or upgrade their house to a condo or yacht.

The game will be Playfish's first release since mega publisher Electronic Arts confirmed its $300 million acquisition of the UK-based developer earlier this month. Playfish's other titles on Facebook include Pet SOciety, Restaurant City, and Country Story, the last two of which Zynga also has more popular equivalents for -- FarmVille and Café World.

You can see screenshots of Poker Rivals after the break.

MMORPG publisher Codemasters Online announced a partnership with online payments platform PlaySpan to enable its players to purchase digital goods and services using more than 56 different payment methods through the UltimatePay system.

PlaySpan describes UltimatePay as an amalgamation of two of its subsidiaries, "the combination of PayByCash’s 10 years of payment services experience and Spare Change’s leading social network payment platform". The service offers users popular cash-based payment methods like CertaPay, MoneyMail, hyperWALLET, CashU, MobileCash, and more.

The announcement comes as the release for Siege of Mirkwood, the upcoming expansion for The Lord of the Rings Online, approaches. Though developer and publisher Turbine handles LOTRO in the U.S., while Codemasters operates the game in Europe.

Shanghai-based MMO operator and developer The9 Limited says year-over-year revenues for its third quarter (ending September 30th, 2009) fell by 94 percent after the company's local license agreement with Activision Blizzard for World of Warcraft expired, taken over by rival publisher NetEase.

The9 reported third quarter revenues of RMB25.5 million ($3.7 million), 91 percent less than its second quarter profit of RMB287.9 million ($42.2 million), and 94 percent less than the RMB408.4 million ($59.8 million) it enjoyed during the same three-month period last year.

The MMO company served as World of Warcraft's distributor and operator in China since mid-2005, but Activision Blizzard chose not to renew its contract with The9 last June, instead partnering with NetEase, which also signed on to operate Warcraft III and StarCraft II in the region. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said the new relationship would "promote a consistent level of quality and service" for the three titles in China.

World of Warcraft's transfer to NetEase hasn't been without problems, though, as it required two months' downtime and a long closed beta while undergoing regulatory approvals and content edits. Then earlier this month, an apparent power struggle between two Chinese government groups resulted in regulators ordering NetEase to suspend the MMO and refuse new accounts due to "gross violations" of rules.

In a discussion with sister website Gamasutra at the Gstar 2009 video game trade show in Busan, Korea, Taiwan's XPEC Entertainment revealed that its upcoming sci-fi MMO, Bounty Hounds Online, was inspired by massive piracy of the original Bounty Hounds on PSP.

"In 2006 the game went to market on the PSP platform," said XPEC Chairman Aaron Hsu. "Although it didn’t get released in mainland China officially, it was illegally downloaded more than 2 million times through the illegal download sites. So we figured we didn’t get a single penny from the China market, but the title has a lot of potential users, clearly."

The original game was a collaboration with Namco, sort of a Sci-Fi Monster Hunter-like title. "At the time we were the first overseas studio to work on a title with them, where they dispatched a producer to work with us for 18 months," said Hsu.

After two years of market evaluation, the company teamed up with what is now Namco Bandai. "We decided to make Bounty Hounds Online," Hsu continued, "to use the MMO PC RPG platform to get money from that market. Out of those 2 million illegal download users, if 1% converts to the MMORPG in mainland China, then the game will be financially successful."

“It’s our form of anti-piracy,” Hsu said, as the game will be a free-to-play, item-based microtransaction-funded title, which is continuing to gain massive popularity in China.

Bounty Hounds Online [video link] is more MMO than Monster Hunter, with its sci-fi themes and robotic pets that transform (Hsu jokingly added that the company's outsourced artwork on Transformers titles prepared them for this), and is specifically tailored for the China market.

Hsu and XPEC hope that the game's themes will appeal to western audiences, but will be content if the game simply does well in China, where he says “we have those many illegal downloaders to act as our product base.” Bounty Hounds Online is due out in 2010 in Asia, with a Western release not yet confirmed.

In our latest employment-specific round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Rockstar North, BioWare Austin, and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted this week include:

Rockstar North: Physics Programmer
"Rockstar North is seeking an experienced highly talented physics programmer to help breathe life, realism and fun into our next-generation games. This is an exciting opportunity to develop cutting-edge physics and collision systems and use them in creative and novel ways, working together with other departments to solve physics, animation and AI problems."

Digital Extremes: Level Designer
"Digital Extremes is always on the lookout for top-notch talent to join our team in London, Ontario, Canada. With a tight-knit team, a passion for best practices and an environment that fosters creativity not to mention fantastic perks - Digital Extremes is a great place to challenge and enhance your creative abilities. All you need to do is apply!"

Database and community solutions provider Playata announced an initiative to produce databases within Facebook for popular social games, beginning with the launch of FarmBook, a new resource catering to FarmVille's 65 million active users.

Playata's app is designed to help fans of Zynga's farming simulator "manage their game time and make the best purchase decisions" with a database of relevant game content they can browse and search through. They can look up the most profitable crops suitable to their play style and time commitment, as well as the game's latest content additions and items available for a limited time only.

FarmBook also offers an item viewer with previews of graphics/animations, a ranking list for the best items for gaining experience points and gold coins, and a table for the most popular decorative items based on player ratings.

Based in Germany and established in July of this year, Playata also offers similar databases for MMORPGs World of Warcraft and Aion: The Tower of Eternity. The company says it plans to release databases for other Facebook games soon.

"We are very proud to present the world's first information resource for a Facebook game in an easy-to-use database form," says Playata co-founder and CEO Johannes Sevket Gözalan. "Facebook, with its more than 300 million users, has become a phenomenal gaming platform. Offering gaming databases to the tens of millions of players of Facebook's most popular applications is an important extension of Playata's portfolio."

With the third most engaged Internet audience in the world (according to ComScore), following right behind Canada and the U.S., Turkey is enjoying rapid growth with nearly every aspect of its online games industry, including MMOs, virtual worlds, and social games.

Consulting agency Ico Partners, which spoke at a recent online games summit in Ankara, says that with more online gaming companies turning their eyes to Europe (due to its less mature market, and China's market seeming increasingly closed), the country seems like a "rising star" in the region.

MMO companies like Joymax, K2 Networks, and Gameforge have already laid their stake in the emerging market. Ico estimates that K2's Knight Online earns as much as $1 million per month from its Turkish operations, and that Gameforge's Metin2 attracts some three million active users in the country.

Other companies like Korean publisher NHN (Huxley, S.U.N.) have noticed the opportunity and are reportedly localizing their MMORPGs for Turkey. Local operators such as GameSultan and GGC have also popped up to handle distribution, payment systems, and localization for foreign titles.