Six months after GOA terminated plans to release the MMORPG, UTV True Games has announced a partnership with German MMO firm Gamigo to exclusively publish, distribute, and operate Mytheon in Europe.

Developed by Petroglyph, Mytheon is a free-to-play online action/RPG that allows players to take on the role of Stonecasters that can "cast spells, summon minions, and erect structures that aid them in battle" as they explore a world where classic mythology has come to life.

Online games portal GOA initially pledged to publish Mytheon in Europe, as it had with UTV True Games' free-to-play MMORPG Warrior Epic, but the company announced that it was cancelling the launch and closing its Warrior Epic servers last December to focus on other online titles in its catalog.

"With Gamigo holding such a strong position in the European MMO marketplace, we know this is the perfect publisher to bring Mytheon to a whole new realm of players," says UTV True Games founder and chairman Jeff Lujan.

Lujan adds, "We are excited about our new relationship, and we hope gamers in Europe will welcome the title that has been highly anticipated in the U.S. for months."

The deal follows a few weeks after Petroglyph and UTV True Games set aside litigation regarding Mytheon, which began after the latter filed suit against the former last May, claiming the developer failed to comply with contractual obligations to deliver a finished game, first by November 2009, then by this February.

The companies agreed to work out the issues and allow their management teams to work together to resolve their differences, so they could focus on preparing Mytheon for its launch this July.

Theme park company Six Flags Entertainment announced the launch of its first social game, Mascot Park, a Facebook title that allows players to create and customize animal mascots.

Designed for gamers of all ages, Mascot Park has players creating a mascot and putting on performances to entertain friends. As players put on better shows, they'll earn more fans and coins, which they can spend on new costumes, mascots, stage props, and sets.

Six Flags teamed up with "business invention agency" Noise and developer/tech provider/live service operator Making Fun to produce the title, which it describes as a "fun-for-all Facebook experience with unique twists like hip-hop dancing rhinos and exploding bunny guns".

Making Noise's CEO John Welch previously was CEO and founder PlayFirst, the publisher that introduced consumers to addictive casual gaming hit Diner Dash -- which has released on at least ten platforms, received five sequels, and enjoyed more than 400 million downloads.

"We designed this game to be inherently more social than other Facebook games because you actually interact with your friends’ shows and mascots," says Welch. "If you’re so inclined, throw an ax at your friend’s mascot while they are putting on a show or dazzle them with pyrotechnics. Players can decide the level of interaction."

Developer Resistor Productions has selected offer-based ad provider Super Rewards to manage its payment services and advertising offers for its new free-to-play MMO fighting game Clan Wars.

In Clan Wars, which releases a new version today, gamers can jump into real-time, two-player fights in their browsers without needing to download or install extra software. Resistor says it will be able to take advantage of Super Rewards' network of advertisers to drive new users to the browser-based title.

To promote Clan Wars, Super Rewards has agreed to link the game and run display ads in its network, which serves more than 20 billion impressions per month, inside other Facebook games and MMO titles.

With Super Rewards' platform integrated into Clan Wars, players can earn virtual currency, goods, and in-game points for free by completing surveys, watching videos, or subscribing to online services. The ad company's new "User Feedback Loop" feature also allows consumers to customize which offers they see.

"We are committed to providing a top quality gaming experience with our newest version of Clan Wars, and our partnership with Super Rewards will help us do just that," says Resistor Productions CEO and founder Tobias Batton.

He adds, "Super Rewards' virtual currency platform will not only increase our user engagement and broaden our customer base but it will also help us reach our main objective -- creating the best possible gaming experience for our end-users."

Sony Computer Entertainment America has announced the PlayStation 3 system update v3.40 will launch 'soon', and will include the PlayStation Plus subscription service and Facebook integration features.

Playstation Plus is a paid subscription service for the Playstation Network announced during E3, which allows players to access new features and applications.

The company plans to let PS3 owners try out PlayStation Plus for free for three months before choosing from several subscription options: $17.99 (€14.99) for 90 days and $49.99 (€49.99) for 365 days.

Subscribers will receive early access to betas and demos, a photo gallery, a video editor and that allows uploading to Facebook and YouTube, a five-star rating system for PlayStation Store content, and automated power save settings for the PS3 console.

The upcoming v6.30 update for PSP will add PlayStation Plus to the handheld platform as well. Services previously available on the PlayStation Network will remain unchanged and will not require a paid subscription.

The update will also allow users to integrate their PlayStation Network accounts with their Facebook profiles via an upcoming application for the Facebook platform. Users will have the ability to share their PSN information, send PSN invites, and check the online status of their PSN friends via Facebook.

Iceland-headquartered EVE Online developer and publisher CCP announced the opening of its fourth studio, CCP Newcastle, which is working on upcoming console MMO first-person shooter Dust 514.

The North East England studio is collaborating with CCP Asia in Shanghai for Dust 514 -- the publisher's first ever game for home consoles and not PC -- and also aims to provide assistance with lighting, physics, and artificial intelligence to CCP's future, currently unannounced console projects.

CCP Newcastle's founding engineers, such as its technical director Richard Smith, hail from Midway Games. The EVE Online company notes its Midway veterans have a particular expertise with Unreal Engine, which Dust 514 is built on. It also claims the MMOFPS is the first console title using UE3 to feature fully dynamic lighting.

Dust 514 mixes first-person shooter and real-time strategy elements in a persistent virtual world set within the EVE Online universe. Commanders and ground infantry work together in the game using "real-time configurable modular weapons and vehicles to adapt to and control dynamic battlefield conditions."

Battles in Dust 514 also affect events in EVE Online, potentially determining who controls different planets in the online PC game. CCP has not yet set a firm release date for Dust 514 or specified which current generation systems the title will appear on.

"The decision to establish a UK studio was an easy one for CCP," says Smith, formerly technical director at Midway Games "The North East has a distinguished heritage of game development, an experienced console-development talent pool and local universities producing exceptional graduates."

He adds, "We have been able to assemble a world-class team of console developers with unparalleled Unreal Engine expertise and integrate them with CCP's global organization."

Open source web browser Mozilla Firefox released a new update over the weekend specifically aimed at resolving a bug that prevented users from playing popular Facebook game FarmVille.

While FarmVille's audience has decreased significantly in recent months due to changes made to Facebook's application notifications, the Zynga-developed game is still the most popular app on the social network, attracting more than 63.7 million monthly active users, according to figures from AppData.

A portion of those users likely use Firefox v3.6.4 to play the farming simulator, and some reported that the game "hangs the browser long enough for [a] timeout to trigger and kill it". The latest version of Firefox, v3.6.6, uses an interim solution that increases the timeout, as developers look for a more ideal fix.

The FarmVille issue is the only listed bug in the new update. Though no other games or apps are listed on Mozilla's site as having issues with the previous v3.6.4 release, several Firefox users have reported that the bug occurs on other Flash sites.

So, the anonymous poster who commented on the update, "I can't believe FarmVille is solely responsible for a Firefox update *facepalm*", can find solace in the fact that non-FarmVille users will benefit from installing v3.6.6, too.

[Via The Ludologist]

Organizers of GDC Online (formerly GDC Austin) have announced the first set of lectures for this October's pre-eminent conference related to online games, including a 'Live' track featuring Sony Online, Wizard101 and IMVU speakers.

The Austin, Texas-based GDC Online conference and expo is keenly focused on development of connected games including social network titles, free-to-play web games, kid-friendly online titles, large-scale MMOs, and more, with a leading advisory board guiding the evaluation and choice of lectures.

While there are already over 25 confirmed lectures across the entire event -- created by the UBM TechWeb Game Network, as is this site -- organizers are focusing on the 'Live' track, which discusses the vital topic of successful strategies for online games post-launch.

The rise of swiftly iterated social games and microtransactions have led to a wide array of new techniques and technologies that can help increase fun, profitability and retention, and the 'Live' track will deal with many of these.

Some of the highlights of the GDC Online 'Live' track, as announced thus far, include:

- In 'From Shadowbane to Wizard101: Strategies for Expanding Player Communities and Sustaining Enthusiasm After Launch', J. Todd Coleman & Josef Hall of KingsIsle Entertainment will reference their 10 million registered-user online game and previous experience, identifying "sustaining community that transcend genre and generation, the importance of always having new content in queue, and strategies for communicating milestones and methods for remaining engaged in public conversation."

Online games publisher Bigpoint and developer Schell Games, who are working together on an MMO adaptation for Universal Pictures' film franchise The Mummy, have licensed Exit Games' network engine Photon.

Pittsburgh-based Schell Games is developing The Mummy Online in multiple languages with the Unity game engine. Exit says Photon, which will power the MMORPG's online features, complements Schell's process as its network engine provides a .NET/C# development framework and a Photon Unity Client SDK.

The middleware firm claims its product is unique in that it provides "UDP protocol support, binary sockets and an interest management framework" for large-scale online titles and real-time games. Bigpoint comments that the network engine will also help it handle thousands of concurrent users on a small number of servers when The Mummy Online releases.

As with the movies, the MMO adaptation is set in Egypt during the first half of the 20th century. Players take on the role of adventure seekers with customizable talents and skills, exploring environments and meeting characters from the films as they battle against each other and "ancient evil".

"We are extremely proud that Exit Games Photon was chosen for such a fantastic and large scale MMOG production," says Exit Games CTO Chris Wegmann. "That is a great example of what Photon is made for. We can hardly wait for the game launch to see Photon's high-performance architecture being proved once more."

He adds, "Schell Games and Bigpoint really went through a tough due diligence process and at the end Photon was the winner. I think that tells the story."

Credit card company Visa have debuted PayClick -- a new teen-targeted online payment service for purchasing digital content such as music, movies, and games -- in Australia.

PayClick is designed to allow consumers to pay for online content without needing to share their personal details or financial information with sellers. To do this, users first attach their PayClick account to a Visa, MasterCard, or Bank account, then make purchases at participating sellers.

Parents can set up "Sponsored Accounts" for their teens to make sure they can monitor their children's purchases and control the amount spent. They can also take advantage of an automated top-up function to transfer funds to their PayClick account on a regular basis.

Visa says the service has several advantages for sellers, such as making is easier for children under 18 to make purchases, "increased security and efficiency" as it handles all sensitive card or bank account information, and automated dispute handling.

The credit card company has announced several partners that have integrated PayClick into their payment options, such as iTunes, BigPond Music, and BigPond Games. It's also managed to get PayClick into Sulake's teen-targeted virtual world Habbo for microtransactions.

"Visa has been making ecommerce payments as safe, reliable and convenient as possible since the advent of online shopping," says Chris Clark, general manager of Visa's Australia, New Zealand, and South Pacific operations.

He adds, "With global ecommerce continuing to grow at more than 10 percent annually, PayClick continues this evolution. We know consumers seek convenience, security and value when shopping online – and PayClick offers a secure new way to pay."

Visa has not yet revealed plans to launch PayClick in other regions.

BioWare and LucasArts have selected Monolith Software's core monitoring and technology management solution for their upcoming MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Monolith's IT management solution is designed to "increase the operational efficiencies of network operations centers (NOCs) while delivering a fully integrated, open architecture platform for managing fault, availability and performance management."

The company says its software is a "multi-tenant, fault/event management and availability/performance monitoring solution" that collects, analyzes, and correlates data through web-based dashboards, which allows developers and publishers to visualize and monitor that information in real time.

BioWare chose Monolith's solution for its ability to manage the real-time monitoring of thousands of devices at several data centers in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The developer says the solution also fits into its Linux environment and met all of its requirements, including specific customizations.

"We are building a large game that will be supported by an expansive, complicated IT environment," says BioWare's director of infrastructure and services Ruben Cortez. "When you have this complex of an environment for a business reliant on continuous connectivity, you need a monitoring solution that can manage that in real time."

He continues, "We needed a solution that would not require a large footprint so we can identify and respond at Internet speed. Monolith won us over for its robust feature set, real time dashboards, reduced total cost of ownership and commitment to us as customers."

Offer-based ad provider gWallet says its publishing partners are seeing their revenues grow by as much as 400 to 500 percent after taking advantage of its Brand Bar and Video features.

The company's Brand Bar is designed to make offer walls, or a selection of offers that players can participate in to earn free virtual currency for social games, more visible by displaying them on the main screen instead of a designated page that users need to seek out. According to gWallet, its partners that implemented the Brand Bar saw a 66-fold increase in user impressions.

Those publishers also have the option of adding of featuring video offers, which give users virtual currency for free in exchange for watching a video advertisement. In the first three months after the firm debuted video offers, consumers watched more than 1.7 million minutes of its video ads.

gWallet says its video offers increased click-throughs by 200 to 300 percent, and that publishers who combined video offers with the Brand Bad increased monetization by four to five times, and increased yield by up to 80 percent. It adds that in just six months, its network has enjoyed a 70 percent monthly increase in unique users.

"Bringing video to social gaming monetization brought brands to this category in a way that hadn’t previously been seen," says gWallet founder and CEO Gurbaksh Chahal. "And the improvements in engagement and click throughs that video was able to drive also exploded revenue opportunities for our publishing partners across the social gaming space."

Bill Roper, the former Blizzard executive who now serves as chief creative officer for MMO developer Cryptic Studios, will deliver a keynote address at the 2010 Game Developers Conference China in Shanghai this December, event organizers announced today.

In his keynote presentation, Roper will "speak to the future of game development" in a wide-ranging speech on his career and views on the industry, according to an official statement.

Best known for the decade he spent at Blizzard, Roper was heavily involved in all of the studio's franchises starting with its first PC game, WarCraft: Orcs & Humans, on which he served as producer. Over his time with Blizzard, he contributed in a variety of roles to StarCraft and Diablo as well, and became most associated with Diablo after becoming a VP at that series' creator, Blizzard North.

After leaving Blizzard in 2003, Roper co-founded Flagship Studios, which produced the online action-RPG Hellgate: London before the company folded. Since late 2008 he has been the CCO at Cryptic Studios, the original developer of City of Heroes and now the company behind Champions Online and Star Trek Online.

"We are delighted to host such a luminary as Bill Roper for the keynote address," said event director Meggan Scavio in a statement. "Bill's expertise helps cement GDC China's place as the essential event for learning, networking, and inspiration for the Chinese game development community."

This year marks the third GDC China event, to be held from December 5 to 7 in Shanghai -- more information on the event, which is created by the UBM TechWeb Game Network, as is this website, is available on the official event website.

Blizzard is thinking hard about nontraditional business models.

In South Korea, the company plans to offer both StarCraft II and World of Warcraft under a combined subscription-based payment plan, while World of Warcraft's current lead designer has publicly pondered the still-theoretical notion of dropping the MMO's monthly fee at some point in the future.

During a recent press event in Seoul, Blizzard said that Korean World of Warcraft subscribers would have free access to StarCraft II as long as their WoW subscriptions are active. The company will offer this dual-game pass for 9,990 won (about $8) a month, or 2,000 won (about $1.65) for a day. The game will still be offered as a standalone no-subscription box as well, as in the West.

Blizzard likely instituted the shared subscription model to drive Korean interest in World of Warcraft more than in StarCraft II. While WoW is the company's biggest game worldwide, the StarCraft series holds that honor in South Korea, and Blizzard may be hoping that players who are already sold on StarCraft II will take advantage of this deal to try out the company's MMO.

And in the longer term, Blizzard says it is open to experimenting with World of Warcraft's subscription model or even dropping it as a mandatory payment plan, as fellow MMO developer Turbine has done with its Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online.

"At some point, it may not make sense for us to have a subscription fee," said lead designer Tom Chilton in a PC Gamer interview.

Chilton said that such a drastic move could arise in the future as a response to external or even internal competition in the MMO space; Blizzard is known to be developing another massively multiplayer game, although no details on its setting or gameplay have been released.

"If another game comes along and blows us away it may not make sense for us to have a subscription fee," he said, "or even further down the line, when we have another MMO out."

Some gamers and members of the press treat PlayStation Home as sort of an oddball among other online gaming-related activities. Here's a service born out of the virtual world craze that implements microtransactions, and serves as a marketing tool for consumer products. And your 3D avatar has to walk around a lot.

Recently, an employee with Veemee, developer of the Home space London Pub, even found it necessary to reportedly say that Home is "not shit" during the Game in Scotland event earlier this year -- apparently he felt that enough people thought Home was shit to warrant such a comment.

PlayStation Home director Jack Buser acknowledges the skepticism and criticism that the service has garnered since its December 2008 beta launch. But he thinks there's an explanation for it.

"Home is new. We're doing a lot of really new stuff that I think the industry is still wrapping its head around," he said. "We're seeing a lot of innovation in the space, and some of us have hit success. And I think it takes some time as the industry as a whole, whether that be consumers or whether that be the media, to start to shift their focus to these new types of platforms and see how people are actually spending their time with the console and with gaming in general. I think we are part of that evolution, part of that conversation."

Blizzard Entertainment launched closed beta testing for its much-anticipated World of Warcraft expansion Cataclysm, which aims to reshape the MMORPG's world and steal players from rival online games.

Slated to release some time this year, Cataclysm is the third expansion for the MMO, following The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King -- both of which broke PC game sales records on their release. The latter is the most recent expansion, having shipped in November 2008.

Since World of Warcraft's launch in November 2004, the game has attracted 11.5 million subscribers worldwide. That number hasn't moved much since late 2009, though, but analysts expect that Cataclysm and Blizzard's other major release StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty could sell as much as 12 million units in 2010.

Cataclysm looks to win back players who've abandoned World of Warcraft for new experiences at other online titles, and also acquire new subscribers who've waited for an opportune time to start playing the established MMORPG, as the expansion revamps the world of Azeroth, affecting nearly every area and adding new adventures/quests.

In addition to increasing the character level cap to 85, Cataclysm brings the return of "the corrupted Dragon Aspect Deathwing", who is responsible for the dramatic changes to World of Warcraft. The expansion also introduces two new playable races, Worgen and Goblins, who've joined the Alliance and Horde in an effort to survive the devastation brought by Deathwing.

Blizzard has already started sending Cataclysm closed beta invitations to fans who've signed up for accounts at its Battle.net online gaming service. The company notes that those testers will receive an early look at the game and provide feedback that will help it find bugs, address balance issues, and polish new content.

"Our focus with Cataclysm has been to build on the knowledge we've gained through the previous expansions to deliver the best, most compelling World of Warcraft content for our players to date," says Blizzard Entertainment CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime.

He adds, "Gathering focused feedback during the beta test will go a long way in helping us reach that goal when we launch Cataclysm later this year."

Every other week, we'll examine the fastest growing Facebook games (according to monthly active users), looking at which titles and developers are having the most success attracting new players on the social network.

Though Zynga's most popular game, FarmVille, continues to lose millions of users every week, the opposite is true for the developer's pioneer sim FrontierVille. Released early last month, FrontierVille already has 13.7 million users, 4.3 million of which started playing this week, and is currently the fastest growing Facebook game.

At number two is Verdonia, Playdom's strategy game that has players managing a kingdom and its army. The title picked up 1.4 million users in the past week, growing its audience 180.4 percent to nearly 2.2 million.

Digital Chocolate's city-building title Millionaire City has seen a surge of players recently and is the third fastest growing game on the social network, more than doubling its audience after adding 858,171 players in the past week, now boasting a total of 1.6 million.

EA Sports FIFA Superstars from Electronic Arts and Playfish continues to benefit from the ongoing World Cup, sitting at number four and bringing in 705,738 new players this week, a 30 percent increase that brings its total amount of monthly active users up to 3 million.

Two more city/kingdom-building sims follow in the chart, CrowdStar's Hello City at number five (+541,601 this week for a 5.2 million total) and Electronic Arts' My Empire at number six (+522,750 this week for a 5.3 million total).

ZipZapPlay's bakery sim Baking Life at number seven grew 27 percent this week and attracted 473,054 new customers for a 2.2 million total, and MetroGames' fashion store sim Fashion World at number swelled 43 percent as it brought in 405,371 new users for a 1.3 million total.

At number nine, Mall World almost reached 4 million users after enjoying 405,371 new shoppers this week. And the tenth fastest growing game on Facebook this week, Playdom's soccer title Bola, saw its userbase grow nearly 7 percent and add 405,371 users to its 1.3 million total.

The full list of the top 20 fastest growing Facebook games along with exact monthly active user counts are as follows:

Aurora Feint announced that it has partnered with four developers -- Halfbrick Studios, PikPok, Retro Dreamer, and Hypercube -- for the private beta of its OpenFeint X mobile virtual goods platform.

Designed for iOS devices like iPhones and iPads, the OpenFeint platform allows developers to integrate social features into their games, such as online leaderboards, friends lists, chats, and more. Over 2,200 games so far have integrated OpenFeint, reaching some 28 million users.

OpenFeint X takes advantage of cloud-based servers to enable companies to add virtual goods to their games. With the platform, developers won't need to build their own infrastructure of servers to offer digital items that players can purchase inside games.

The four announced partners plan to release games with virtual goods later this year. Other interested studios can request for more information on OpenFeint X at the mobile platform's official site.

“With few good quality virtual goods-based social games available for smart phones, the market already exceeds $168 MM," says Aurora Feint CEO Jason Citron. "We think that this is a tremendous revenue opportunity for game developers."

He continues, "OpenFeint X offers game developers the opportunity to enter this market quickly without having to build the internal server expertise required to support scalable social games."

Mythic Entertainment, an Electronic Arts subsidiary and developer of Warhammer Online, changed its name yet again, now calling itself BioWare Mythic to indicate its merging with the EA studio last year.

Though the company had not announced the name change or formally used its new title until earlier this week, BioWare has referred to the newly merged division as such internally for some time now, according to a report from consumer site Joystiq.

Founded in 1995, the Virginia-based developer was first known as Interworld Productions before its first name change two years later to Mythic Entertainment. After Electronic Arts purchased the company in 2006, the company operated as EA Mythic, then reverted to Mythic Entertainment in 2008.

Prior to its 2009 merging with BioWare, which was followed shortly with layoffs in its staff as part of broader EA reductions, the company worked on a number of massively multiplayer online titles, including Dark Age of Camelot, Imperator Online (cancelled), and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

Mythic continues to support Warhammer Online, and BioWare's group general manager Ray Muzyka has previously said the developer will retain its brands, unique cultural identity, and projects. He's also predicted that Mythic could potentially co-develop future titles with BioWare's other three studios in Austin, Edmonton, and Montreal.

On revealing the subsidiary's rebranding in a newsletter for Warhammer Online fans, producer Carrie Gouskos commented, "Like the fancy new name? We’re still getting used to it ourselves."

Media conglomerate News Corp. has appointed Sean Ryan, former CEO of avatar platform Meez and blogging service Live Journal, as the executive vice president and general manager of its new Games division.

Ryan is tasked with staffing and building the new unit around Irata Labs, the San Francisco-based developer News Corp. purchased in mid-April. The small studio, which only claimed three employees when it was acquired, specializes in producing social games for Facebook, iPhone, and Twitter; it's best known for releasing espionage game Spymaster.

Prior to this appointment, Ryan was the CEO and founder of Meez, a virtual world and platform for creating/customizing portable avatars. Previous to that, he was CEO of Listen.com, which was acquired by RealNetworks in 2003 and transformed into the Rhapsody online music service. He's also served as acting CEO of Live Journal and as a board member for microtransactions company Live Gamer.

Though News Corp. hasn't shared many details regarding the new Games group, it has said that Ryan will report to Roy Bahat, president of the company's game network IGN Entertainment, according to a report from PaidContent. The division will act independent to IGN, though, to keep News Corp.'s game editorial and game development teams separate.

News Corp. also owns social networking site MySpace, which has made efforts to strengthen its game offerings by courting third-party developers. The media conglomerate has promised that it will not incorporate Irata Labs into MySpace or any of its other major online assets, but it says the group may work with other units when appropriate.

In a plentiful week for new job postings, sister site Gamasutra's jobs board plays host to roles across the world and in every major discipline, including opportunities at Infinity Ward, Rockstar North and many 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:

ArenaNet: Web Developer
"ArenaNet is looking for an outstanding web developer to join our team. Qualified candidates should love agile development, working independently on their own challenges as well as together with the team on the bigger vision. You’ll work closely with everyone on the team to build fast-loading, AJAX-based applications."

Infinity Ward: Director of Studio Operations
"Join our ranks! Infinity Ward, Inc. is an award winning developer of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. We are fiercely dedicated to creating the best games on the market, and strive not only to exceed the standard in game development, but define it. An incredibly talented team, an exciting work environment, and competitive compensation await those who are interested in creating cutting edge games."

Star Trek Online's executive producer Craig Zinkievich announced that he's leaving Cryptic Studios after working at the developer for more seven years, and on the MMO for two and a half years.

"I’ve decided to take a break from Cryptic Studios for a bit and focus on other things, like hanging out with my kids over the summer, walking my goat more and taking care of my bees," said Zinkievich in an open letter posted on the game's official site. He didn't specify when he might return to Cryptic or if he plans to rejoin the studio at all.

His departure comes five months after Cryptic Studios launched Star Trek Online for PC. Based on Paramount Pictures' popular science fiction franchise, the game received a cool reception from reviewers upon its release, with some calling the MMORPG unpolished and unfinished.

Daniel Stahl, who's served as a producer on the project and on Cryptic's Champions Online, will take over Zinkievich's role and will help Star Trek Online through "the next phases of its life". Prior to joining the developer, he was a program manager at Microsoft and served as a web producer for Wizards of the Coast.

"The Star Trek Online development team is the most amazing, passionate, dedicated and hardest working team that I’ve ever had the honor of working with," said Zinkievich. "They constantly amaze me with the work that they put in, the care and reverence in which they approach the universe, and the sheer love for the game and its players."

He added, "When it comes to Season Two, Season Three and the future of STO, there is no end to the episodes, systems and species that they want to desperately see put in the game. With Dan in the Captain’s chair, I’m confident that this team will be true to Star Trek’s vision and continue to expand STO to its fullest potential."