Gold farmers in China may not be out of business after all as it turns out. In the wake of the news that the government of China has now officially banned the gathering of in-game virtual money comes the clarification that there is no such desire on the part of the government to curb this activity.

There's a new game trading site in town, and it boasts of a quality way to get the games you want, so long as you take care of the games you own yourself. It's called GameZola, and they boast some unique features.

For starters, they're banking on increased security to give themselves that boost among conscientious gamers by tracking games from the moment they're sent into their offices and out of their base. At the same time, trading is done with gamers in mind, letting you see the activity happening with the trades you're making and allowing people to buy tokens through PayPal with which to purchase trades rather than subscribing to a service to get your games.

Simon Lee, Chief Operating officer of the service, had this to say, "We were simple gamers who just got tired of spending so much on used or new games from retailers. So we started developing Gamezola for gamers by gamers." Well, with a distribution service that's easier on the wallet, you can be certain that they'll be getting themselves a pretty faithful userbase soon enough.

Well, we know microtransactions are here to stay, especially with the rise of point-payment schemes within the public consciousness. Now that all three consoles are out and micropayment transactions are more or less common knowledge to anyone tech-savvy, you can expect that Microsoft wants to get in on the action.

In fact, they intend to do so by building their own brand of micropayment service, one which Bill Gates thinks could stand on top of the world of micropayments.

During the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Bill Gates was looking into ways to make micropayments even more viable online. The DOW Jones Newswire mentions that Gates said,

If you want to charge somebody US$ 0.10 or US$ 1 a month, that will just be a click... you won't have to manage some funny thing or pay some big credit charge, where half of it goes to the clearing.

To do that, credit card fees have to be undercut, a feat that basically asks credit card companies to make a lot less money.

Ars Technica notes a couple of possibilities that Microsoft could take. For starters, they could expand upon the current notion of Microsoft Points, letting people buy as many points as they need to acquire a particular item they want. On the other hand, they could also try to beat out credit card companies and PayPal by making their own real-money service that intends to beat PayPal at their game. All in all, if Gates can pull it off successfully, you can expect a different way of paying for your games in the next few years, and perhaps, even your groceries.

As promised, Steam has just updated their client which now makes several new features available. Some of the latest additions include:   

• Added Guest Passes functionality - allows owners of certain Steam games to let their friends play games for free, for a limited time trial
• Changed Steam client auto-update mechanism to first acquire updates in the background and then ask user whether to restart & apply
• Added Favorites area and collapsable status categories to 'My Games' list
• Added 5 new colored skins (Default, Ice, Sand, Obsidian, and Grey), selectable in "Settings"
• Added 'next' button to Steam news window, allowing multiple messages to be viewed in a single session
• Fixed client attempting to update some games which user does not own; was occuring when user had played game during a Free Weekend
• Fixed games purchased via PayPal not working in offline mode

Some of the features which we are looking forward to try out would be the guest passes and the Favorites area, because a) the more the merrier, and b) no more hunting down the games that we want to play. And the new skins don't hurt either.

Amidst the bad PR we gamers usually get, Child's Play trudges on to get the world to think otherwise. This year, it has raised around US$ 963,000 for sick children in hospitals around the world.

Child's Play is a Seattle-based charitable organization founded in 2003 by gamers Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, aka Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade. The organization donates games, DVDs, books, and other toys to sick kids around the globe, including hospitals in Canada, Britain, Egypt, and Australia. Gamers, or people who simply wish to help, can see the wish lists at Amazon.com or donate cash through PayPal.

This helps a lot of sick kids go through uncomfortable treatments and gives them some sort of relief that they would be able to play while in therapy. And some people think gamers are mindless zombies with cash to burn. Think about it, hitting the one million mark would be a great milestone for all of us.

If the Xbox 360, Wii and PS3's online capabilities are any indicator, it seems the newer face of gaming calls for an internet-based shopping system.

And while these three consoles have already made it a staple for their fields, it's time we take a look at how some of the major developers are expanding in this growing trend, specifically in the PC market.

We've already made a recent report on EA Link, and how we're sure it'll ease up buying games for you guys out there. In connection with its recent opening, Gamespot interviewed EA's VP for online commerce, Chip Lange, regarding EA Link.

Chip talked to Gamespot about several topics, such as EA Link's capabilities aside from distributing and retailing games, and how they foresee its performance in the coming years as online game purchases becomes commonplace.

For the first part, Chris had this to say whether EA Link was simply isolated to distributing and retailing its games:

"No, it's really designed to be an all-purpose link to our PC customer base to serve everything from distribution of product to keeping software current, to messaging key community activities, to allowing people to experiment and try other types of products through demos, trailers, that type of thing."

If it sounds like the Xbox 360's applications and DL capabilities, it's for a reason: Chris points out that people who've been to EA Link will be accommodated in a very similar manner to Microsoft's XBLA, and offers similar degrees of customizability for their customers - remember the game pics and system theme DL's for the 360?

Another point of the discussion was the way EA Link had been built. Important aspects such as the payment systems were based on customer feedback from EA Downloader days: Back then, people purchasing games like Battlefield had to leave the Downloader application, then purchase the game on the web. These days, EA Link allows purchases from within its program via Paypal and Click&Buy, which streamlines the whole process.

As for his predictions for the coming future, Chip takes the prudent approach, saying that the gaming industry is difficult to forecast for the next five years. If anything, he foresees a solidifying of this means of buying games, all the more with the aforementioned online purchase capabilities showcased in the three competing consoles.

Feel free to click on the source link to read the full interview.