Hurt Locker lawsuit hits record levels

Roughly a year after Voltage Pictures filed suit against alleged pirates of its Best Picture-winning film “The Hurt Locker,” the company has updated the complaint – and it’s a whopper.

The suit has grown from the original 5,000 users to a record-breaking 24,583, topping the number of people being sued for illegally downloading “The Expendables”.

Analysis: Does A Take-Two Takeover Make Sense?

[Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris discusses whether Take-Two Interactive would benefit from an acquisition at the moment, noting that anyone looking to buy will most likely “have to pony up a boatload of cash.”]

Here we go again.

With earnings becoming more dependable, another GTA game lurking in the shadows and key talent locked in for the next few years, it was only natural that talk of a Take-Two acquisition would resume. But today’s Take-Two isn’t the same company it was when EA came knocking on the door. And the takeover that once seemed a foregone conclusion in the gaming world is now a lot less certain.

Read more at Gamasutra

Report: Chinese prisoners forced to play online games for guards

When U.S. prisoners journey beyond their prison walls, it’s usually because they’ve been assigned to a roadside cleanup crew. In China, they head to World of Warcraft.

In addition to the physical labor he was required to perform during the day, a former inmate at the Jixi labour camp in northeast China is alleging he — and 300 fellow prisoners — were forced to play online games at night, raising credits and finding loot that prison guards then resold for real-world money, reports The Guardian.

Read more at Yahoo! Games

MLB 2K11 makes Louisiana man a millionaire

Brian Kingrey isn’t really a fan of baseball video games, nor is he particularly fond of baseball in general.

But money? He’s a big fan of that — and now possesses a hefty chunk of it. The Lousiana man raked in $1 million by being the first player to throw a perfect game in 2K Sports’ baseball sim, MLB 2K11.

Read more at Yahoo! Games

YouTube adds stereoscopic 3D offerings

While there are a handful of 3D videos on YouTube already, they’re anything but cutting edge.

The only 3D format the service supports is anaglyph – requiring the old-school red and blue glasses to see the effects. That’s hardly ideal for studios looking to promote upcoming films or publishers looking to showcase 3D video games. But that’s all about to change.

Read more at Variety’s Technotainment blog

Report: Social games giant Zynga to file IPO

With a valuation of $10 billion, Zynga is by far the largest private game maker in the industry. Now investors hoping to get a piece of that pie may have their chance.

Tech blog AllThingsDigital reports the company could file for a public offering as early as this week. Once that IPO takes place, the company is widely expected to be the second biggest publicly-traded publisher in the industry, far surpassing Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive Software.

Read more at Variety’s Technotainment blog

Wasting away on Facebook: ‘Margaritaville’ game in the works

With his enduring anthems to margaritas, cheeseburgers and flip flops, you wouldn’t peg Jimmy Buffet to be much of a gamer. But with popular -Ville games like FarmVille and FrontierVille dominating people’s time online, it only makes sense that the man behind ‘Margaritaville’ would join the party at some point.

That point is now. Buffett and THQ are set to bring the tropically inspired Margaritaville Online to Facebook and Apple’s iDevices, packed with a hefty dose of classic Buffett songs, characters and virtual cheeseburgers.

Read more at Yahoo! Games

Is Warcraft in trouble?

Subscriber numbers tend to ebb and flow with massively multiplayer games. No matter how high they get, people generally expect them to come down — unless that game is World of Warcraft.

So when Activision-Blizzard announced earlier this month that subscriptions of its crown jewel had fallen 5 percent, heads turned. Was the mightiest title in the persistent world universe finally showing signs of weakness?

Read more at Yahoo! Games