New laws to exempt most online and mobile phone games from classification for a further two years have passed the lower house.

Earlier today, Destructoid discovered a list of games on EA's website that will lose online multiplayer support starting February 2. We've included the entire list below, but some of more notable games worth highlighting include last year's Madden game (Madden NFL 09), a few failed arcade sports games (Facebreaker and NFL Tour), and Tiger Woods 2007 on the PC, though I'm sure Tiger has bigger problems on his plate right now.

China's state news channel has blamed hugely popular online games for problems including drug addiction, teen pregnancy and even murder this month as regulators crack down on allegedly harmful content in games.

Chinese authorities have promised to clean the country's online gaming industry of "unhealthy" content such as violence and pornography, asserting more control over use of the Internet in the country.

Steve Perlman, CEO of a company called OnLive that's readying an on-demand video game service, cringes whenever Google's gmail or other high profile Web services conk out. After all, his company's bold plan is to offer streamed access to a slew of brand name video games via the cloud in such a way that users at their PCs and TVs get performance they're used to experiencing on consoles.

It looks like Zynga, the casual online games developer known for its wildly popular farm simulations, ticking off Facebook, and alleged "lead generation" scams just added another lifeline to its list of audience-expanding deals by cozying up to Yahoo.

Last week, Activision-Blizzard released a new in-game item for its mega-hit MMO, World of Warcraft. This time out, it was the Celestial Mount and it was the first "usable" virtual pet that the company has sold (your character can ride it). They priced it at a whopping $25.