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[Gamasutra highlights choice quotes from game industry figures such as Double Fine's Tim Schafer, FASA founder Jordan Weisman, Zynga's Brian Reynolds, and many others.] In our original and exclusive interviews, analysis, and feature pieces over the past week, a wide variety of developers, publishers, and indies shared their thoughts on game cloning, arcade titles from Atari designers, and Kinect's future. This Week's Noteworthy Game Industry Quotes "There are now more opportunities than ever for game ...

In the latest postings over the last seven days, Gamasutra's jobs board plays host to roles in every major discipline, including opportunities at Visceral Games, 2K Marin, Sony Computer Entertainment America, and others. 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 Gamasutra's network of submarket sites, which includes content ...

[Gamasutra rounds up the week's biggest reports on South Korea's booming online games market from This Is Game, the leading English-language site about the country's game industry.] In our latest round-up of news from South Korea's online games space, we look at a new game ratings group set up by the government, plans to review online gaming regulations, and WeMade Entertainment purchasing online action game Lost Saga. 470,000 minors presumably addicted to games The South ...

Apple struck a blow against video game clones today by removing several offending apps from one rather prolific independent developer. Among the removed games are apps such as Plant vs. Zombie, Angry Ninja Birds, and Temple Jump, each of which (as you might guess from their titles) had more than a little in common with with major titles such as Plants vs. Zombies, Angry Birds, and Temple Run, respectively. The recently-removed Temple Jump in particular ...

With the 2012 Game Developers Conference inching ever closer, show organizers are highlighting new talks within the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, featuring Halfbrick on Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride, PopCap on Bejeweled Blitz, and Pocket Gems on post-release development. These talks join an already jam-packed lineup for the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, which will feature sessions covering the latest and most influential practices in mobile development, spanning platforms from iOS, Android, Windows Phone, ...

[Every week, IndieGames.com: The Weblog co-editor-in-chief Tim W. will be summing up some of the top free-to-download and commercial indie games from the last seven days on his sister 'state of indie' weblog.] This week on "Best Of Indie Games," we take a look at some of the top independent PC Flash/downloadable titles released over this last week. The delights in this edition include a racing game for the Xbox Live Indie Games service, a ...

Canadian Internet Service Provider Rogers has agreed to stop throttling its customers' connections, after pro-Internet group OpenMedia.ca and the Canadian Gamers Organization filed multiple complaints with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).

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Walmart has finally decided that it will share its video game software and hardware sales data with research firm NPD Group. The firm had been hampered by not having sales data from Walmart and instead had to estimate weekly and monthly figures related to the retailer. NPD today confirmed that it has reached an agreement with Walmart to receive and analyze its point-of-sale information from it retail stores and Walmart.com.

The agreement also covers many other industries that NPD tracks, including Entertainment, Apparel, Home, Hardlines, and Toys.

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A sad story from Sky News (by way of The Escapist) details how the dead body of a man in a New Taipei city, China cyber cafe went unnoticed for a full nine hours. The man, who was playing an undisclosed online game, died on Tuesday night according to local reports. The cyber cafe had 30 customers that night, some of which sat next to him, and didn't notice that he was no longer alive.

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Electronic Arts has confirmed that it has laid off a number of its staff at EA Canada. The company would not disclose just how many employees were affected by the layoffs. The cuts are part of a restructuring plan at the Vancouver office and its studio in nearby Burnaby. That studio is responsible for the development of such titles as Need For Speed: The Run and FIFA 12.

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Newsbrief: Japanese publisher Nippon Ichi has raised its annual financial guidance following better-than-expected sales of its Disgaea franchise. For the 12 month period ended March 31, 2012, Nippon Ichi expects to see 203 million yen ($2.7 million) in profit, up from 59 million yen ($770,000), while overall revenue is expected to hit 2.29 billion yen ($30.1 million), down slightly from 2.25 billion yen ($29.5 million) previously. According to Japan-focused game site Andriasang, the company's boost ...

Electronic Arts has laid off what it's calling a "small number" of employees at its Vancouver branch as part of a restructuring effort to focus more on its digital content. With the move, EA said it hopes to better align its Vancouver branch with the company's current focus on digital, online, and free to play games, reports Industry Gamers. While technically located just outside of Vancouver in Burnaby, British Colombia, this branch is home to ...

Xbox Live's policy and enforcement director Stephen "Stepto" Toulouse, who has worked at Microsoft for nearly 18 years, announced that he's resigning from the company in two weeks to explore other opportunities. Toulouse often served as the public face for Xbox Live matters, and managed complaints and user bannings/suspensions on the Xbox 360 online service. He described his position as "[making] the Xbox Live experience a consistent, safe, and enjoyable one." Prior to joining the ...

[In this weekly column, Gamasutra rounds up the most popular paid and free iPad gaming applications on the App Store as of today, with Kingdom Rush, Hamlet HD and Paper Monsters currently ranking among the platform's top downloads.] This week's top paid titles are: 1. Where's My Water? ($0.99) 2. Kingdom Rush ($0.99) 3. Paper Monsters ($0.99) 4. Angry Birds Seasons HD ($1.99) 5. Words With Friends HD ($0.99) 6. Angry Birds Rio HD ($2.99) ...

Rex Ng, the chief executive of 6waves Lolapps, has come out today strongly denying allegations that his company violated a non-disclosure agreement in a lawsuit filed by Spry Fox’s related to its social game Triple Town on Facebook. Seattle-based Spry Fox filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against 6waves Lolapps because alleging that 6waves’ Yeti Town mobile game copied the gameplay and look of its Triple Town Facebook game. Spry Fox said in its lawsuit that it had a non-disclosure agreement with 6waves Lolapps.

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Yesterday during THQ's conference call to discuss its third quarter results, the company acknowledged that it has had some trouble developing Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online, and is now looking for an outside developer to handle future development on the title. In January rumors surfaced that THQ had canned the project altogether. With this revelation it at least proves that the Warhammer 40,000 MMO project is in serious trouble and that development has probably come to a stand-still.

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Destructoid points out in this story that Ubisoft's plan to take down servers next week shows why "always on" DRM is a bad idea. During the maintenance the publisher has planned next week, any game that has "always online" DRM will not be playable. That means that legitimate copies of games won't work. Which games will be broken next week?

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked all parties involved in the MegaUpload criminal case to halt any plans to delete or otherwise dispose of data hosted on severs once leased by file-hosting services. With its assets frozen and its operators in jail, MegaUpload is unable to pay for storage of the data.

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According to a new study conducted by the Institute for Special Populations Research in New York, some types of games are more addictive than others and have the potential to create "problem gaming" habits in a small percentage of gamers. While the mental health community is not quite ready to make the leap of faith it takes to proclaim that video game addiction is a real mental disorder like gambling and drug addiction, studies like this one are certainly trying to establish causation.

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Yesterday during THQ's conference call to discuss earning with investors and the media, the company admitted that they were wrong about a number of things.

"On our last call we told you we anticipated that our third quarter would be the largest in our company's history, " said President and CEO Brian Farrell at the start of the call. "Unfortunately, we were wrong."

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