Lord of the Rings Online creator Turbine has added a new VP of corporate and business development in Glu Mobile vet Nate Jones, the company announced today.

Jones will oversee the company's content and licensing partnerships globally, and will also be responsible for heading up Turbine's joint ventures and merger and acquisition prospects.

Prior to joining Turbine, Jones was VP of strategy and corporate development at Glu Mobile, where he headed up the company's acquisitions of Mig and Superscape, among other initiatives focused on iPhone and other platforms. He's also been a VP at analyst firm Lazard with a focus on media and technology.

Turbine president and CEO Jim Crowley says Jones' dealmaking experience will be "crucial" as the company looks to expand.

"We continue to add firepower to our senior team and Nate’s strong record both as an investment banker and as a senior executive in the gaming industry will be a great asset to our growing business and we are delighted to have him join our team," says Crowley.

Social gaming company Zynga announced that it will give three entrance scholarships totaling $20,000 to students enrolling in the upcoming Fall semester of The Masters of Digital Media (MDM) Program.

MDM is a Master's degree jointly awarded by the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Zynga's scholarships will be awarded to students entering the areas of Game Design, Art, and Programming.

"At MDM, we're thrilled that Zynga is keen to support our Masters of Digital Media students,” said MDM Executive Director Dr. Gerri Sinclair. "The backing of an industry leader such as Zynga is a testament to the quality of the students joining our two-year program, and we thank the company for their support not only of our program, but of the digital media industry in Vancouver and throughout North America."

The scholarship initiative is the second partnership between Zynga and the MDM Program. Previously, Zynga sponsored a design competition in which MDM students and faculty created and prototyped a social network game.

All MDM enrolling students demonstrating exceptional grades and talent in their respective fields will be considered for Zenga's scholarships. The application deadline for MDM's Fall semester is June 30, 2009.

Sony Online Entertainment's family-friendly PC MMO Free Realms is now up to two million unique registrants, the company announced today.

75 percent of these are under the age of 17, and 46 percent are younger than 13, SOE says, adding that nearly a third of players are female. The company it plans to celebrate the milestone by awarding all its users with a special bundle of in-game items.

The game, which is free-to-play but has optional microtransaction and subscription elements, lets users play, socialize and battle, and interact on a social networking site alongside the game.

It ties into a trading card game playable both with physical cards and inside the game via digital codes. SOE says the virtual cards are "sales leaders" inside the game's digital store.

"In less than a month, Free Realms has captivated a core player base of tween and teen gamers, while also strongly resonating with MMO gamers," says SOE president John Smedley. "We wanted to create a game to play with our families and are excited to have hit the mark with our intended audience."

38 Studios has acquired Rise of Nations developer Big Huge Games from publisher THQ. In the transaction, the Massachusetts-based developer-publisher receives all of Big Huge's IP, tools, assets, tech and all its projects in development.

The financial terms weren't disclosed, but 38 Studios calls the move "a critical step" in its strategy to build entertainment properties around its original fantasy IP, Copernicus. The remaining Big Huge Games team -- which had already gone through more than one round of layoffs under THQ -- will remain in its Timonium, Maryland home, but will be integrated into 38 studios.

"The acquisition of Big Huge Games will be tremendously beneficial to the growth, market position, financial stability, and long-term success of 38 Studios," says 38 Studios president and CEO Brett Close.

The crux of the acquisition was apparently Big Huge's proprietary RTS/RPG engine, which Close says will "accelerate" development for the online game based on the Copernicus IP. But he notes the engine will also support development in "multiple genres that are based in a shared world."

Veteran developers Brian Reynolds, Jason Coleman, Dave Inscore, and Tim Train founded Big Huge Games in 2000, and have enjoyed the involvement of Oblivion and Morrowind co-creator Ken Rolston along the way. Its last-released project was the Xbox Live version of board game Catan, and the studio has an unnamed RPG in the works for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PC.

In April of this year, THQ applied major layoffs to the studio as part of widespread cost-cutting initiatives across all of its studios. At the time, THQ said the studio would be closed if it couldn't find a buyer.

"Big Huge Games and 38 Studios share a common vision – to deliver the most engaging, compelling, original experiences possible," says Big Huge CEO Tim Train. "Joining the 38 Studios family allows us to continue translating our passions into great games."

Live Gamer, which works with publishers to serve player-to-player microtransactions in online games, has appointed former VEconomy CTO Barry Sohl as its new senior vice president.

He'll support the company in evolving its virtual economy business models, according to Live Gamer CTO Josh Kramer. "He has deep technological expertise and extensive relationships in this space and we look forward to the new business and product lines he will pioneer on behalf of our clients," says Kramer.

At VEconomy, Sohl developed technology platforms and business models for virtual economies, and he's also served as a strategic counsel to companies includng Nickelodeon's virtual worlds group and Electronic Arts' mobile and social projects.

"Publishers and operators face a significant opportunity to implement and expand their virtual economies," says Sohl. "I’m delighted to join Live Gamer, a company dedicated to innovation, and looking forward to keeping us on the forefront of technology and delivering on the potential of these emerging business models."

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Microsoft's Halo team to a level designer for Blue Castle's Dead Rising 2.

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 in each market area this week include:

As World of Warcraft's operator license in China changes hands from The9 to rival NetEase, the game's servers will see some downtime.

In a letter published to its users, WoW servers in China will be down starting on June 7 until NetEase opens the first server group. Additional server groups will open up from June 20 on.

Although users will get some free playtime based on how long they have to wait to get back up, Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian says this downtime could result in some "subscriber churn" that could affect WoW's total global userbase.

"We expect some churn among infrequent users off of the current 11.5M+ WoW subscriber count," says the analyst. "In fact, data suggests declining timecard purchases ahead of the transition."

Activision needn't expect much of an impact to its revenues thanks to the transition, however. Asia accounts for about 50 percent of WoW's global userbase, suggests Sebastian -- but contributes less than 10 percent of total revenues because of its licensing structure and timecard-based payment model.

The $10-$15 million Activision will lose in the transition will be "more than offset" by the higher royalty rate NetEase will be paying to operate the game -- $100-$120 million, as opposed to the $70-$80 million WoW's China operations were bringing in before.