Realtime Worlds today unveiled its plans to host a "full public beta of APB," its upcoming crime-based MMO due out on PC and Xbox 360. Helmed by Grand Theft Auto creator David Jones, the studio's first release was the open world title Crackdown (360).

The news and two new bits of character art were tucked away within the announcement of Chris 'Ulric' Dye as the game's community relations manager.

According to business manager Mario Rizzo, Dye's hiring "signals the start of a new phase for APB where we can interact more fluidly with both gaming sites, and our potential future player base. This is an important milestone for the game now that we are transitioning into Alpha and moving towards the full public beta of APB."

Alpha and beta tests are relatively common for massively mutliplayer online efforts, though they often occur within the confines of an closed, invite-only environment. No timeframe or platform details were provided for the public beta, though the game is expected to launch in 2009.

Via Shacknews

DISTRIBUTION RIGHTS TO GROUND-BREAKING ONLINE GAME APB FOLLOWING SECOND ROUND FUNDING

Realtime Worlds, Inc., a leading independent video game developer, today announced that it has regained the global distribution rights to All Points Bulletin (APB), the highly-anticipated urban-themed massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) under development in the company抯 Dundee studio.  The move follows Realtime Worlds?recent US$50 million second round funding and provides the company with the independence to push creative boundaries in the development of the game and to take a more active role in managing APB's global distribution strategy.

NCsoft and Epic Games have announced a deal that will allow the Korean MMO developer to develop two as yet unannounced MMOs using the Unreal 3 Engine. There is no word on specifically what games those will be.

NCsoft Announces Unreal Engine 3 License for Two Upcoming Projects

World-renowned online game developer expands on Unreal legacy

SEOUL, KOREA (March 25, 2008) - NCsoft® Corporation, the world's leading developer and publisher of online computer games, today announced that it has reinforced its relationship with Epic Games, Inc. by licensing Unreal Engine 3 to develop two unannounced, top-tier massively multiplayer online games. NCsoft has achieved spectacular results working with the Unreal Engine over the years, shipping the highly successful Lineage® II, and the soon to be released Exteel ™, using Unreal Engine 2.

"Unreal Engine 3 has a well structured rendering pipeline, and its graphical quality is superb thanks to advanced lighting and shadowing systems," said Young-muk Choi, lead programmer, Development Unit, NCsoft. "Tools within the Unreal Editor empower us to instantly produce and optimize our outputs, and we especially love how the engine enables

The Arena Net team, which makes the Guild Wars game, has announced their official stance on real money transactions and gold sales.

Real-Money Trading Policy

It is our goal to provide an enjoyable experience to every Guild Wars player. That's why we take the topic of real-money trading (buying and selling gold or in-game items for real-world money) very seriously. Every week, we ban thousands of accounts used by real-money trading companies, because those companies harm the game for other players by running large networks of bots to farm gold and items, spamming chat channels with their advertisements, and even attempting to steal login credentials from unsuspecting players.

How we deal with real-money traders

To help protect the Guild Wars community from the problems caused by real-money trading

SOE announced a deal with Live Gamer to expand in-game real-money trading in its current and future MMOs last week. But do real-world economics belong in a fantasy setting?

     Have you ever been paid or received real money for virtual goods?

ppls ,i need ur opinions about it.

As for  me,  i often buy some virtual money from ppls in-game

i dun break the  game balance and dun use any cheater in-game LOl

plz let me know,whether i was wrong ?

That means that the large chunk of users that enjoyed using in-world casinos and betting Linden Dollars on events both inside and outside the game world will now have nothing left to do.

Perhaps more to the point for Linden, the move will cut off the revenues earned from those owning Casino-style islands in the game, the owners of which are some of the top contributors to the Linden coffers through currency fees and land rental.

Online gambling is illegal in the States, and the FBI had been running an investigation into Second Life to determine if it was breaking any laws, so it's good to see that the war on terrorist funding has not been in vain. Obviously.

No word on whether this will appease the FBI or whether they will demand arrests of either Linden staff or gamers. But don't expect Linden to stand up for your privacy if they come after you - Linden's new Terms of Service states they will comply with all subpoenas from law enforcement to give away as much information about your as the Feds require.