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MMO closing down - Is it fair buisness towards the people that purchased it ?
Lobotomist
Member EpicPosts: 5,981
I have at home a box of Tabula Rasa standing on my shelf looking at me. Its useless paperweight. All other game boxes - be they good or bad games. I can install and play them if i wish too. But not this one.
It was a MMO that closed.
I ask myself is this fair buisness. 50$ standard price for something that stops functioning whenever the manifacturer decides to ?
But with Tabula Rasa we were lucky. NC soft let it run for around one year time.
APB !
3 months! People bought the game that became disfunctional paperweight after 3 months.
I am suprised that we as MMO player comunity are not vocal about this. We are effectively treated as lowest type that has no rights whatsoever. Scams , half finished products - but this tops it
Denial of service after mere 3 months !
Question here is.
Should MMOs ask for box price, if they can be closed any time. Thus making this boxed game disfunctional ?
Should closed MMOs offer posibillity of running private servers ( you purchased the game, so it should work)
Or maybe offline mode ?
Whatever it is. I think MMO community should be vocal about it. And not let themselves being treathed as lowest type of consumer there is.
Comments
How about a company not make a game that does not sucks so it won't close down.Also while they are need to stop making games that are in between FPS and RPG.Either use pure RPG Mechanics or FPS mechanics when you make a game.Guess what TR and APB have in common other than huge budget.
I think the easy answer is no especially in the case of games that did in fact release and were open for months to sometimes years on end. MMO's are the same price and in many cases lower priced than other video games with similar development processes and often end up costing alot less to purchase post release, they practically give copies away so we pay the sub fee.
I think where the slope get's slippery though is while you may get years of play out of an mmo that suddenly closes unlike games you've just beaten there is no going back to that mmo to play anymore.
Ultimately I feel like in comparing the entertainment value of an mmo to a console or offline video game as long as the game stays open for atleast one month post the sale of any access then you are getting what you paid for maybe on the light side but certainly fair in my opinion.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Aye, read about that with APB, they also have another one called realtime worlds which is also going to go the same way as the company went into adminstration.
Your right though, that game was only out recently and has to be the quickest up and gone game in history for an mmo.
If I still had my Atari 2600, I could still play Combat.
Earth and Beyond? No.
Auto Assault? No.
Shadowbane? No.
If I want to go to the movies to see a movie, I buy a ticket to see; and I get to see it once. If want to see the movie a bunch, I can buy the DVD when it comes out.
I do not have to buy a DVD of the movie before I can buy my ticket to see it in the theater.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
I think box prixes are here to stay. Mostly since games takes a long time to develop and they want to get some of their money spent back quite quickly and then concentrate on running servers and updates.
Is it fair that a game shuts down for the consumer: Nope
Is it necessary because the devs have no money: Yep
Bottomline must be that not alot of people liked/ played the game and therefore even private servers might not work. But sure allow the code to be released, it´s not like they´ll use it themselves.
All statements I make is from my point of view unless stated otherwise.
Is it fair buisness towards the people that purchased it ?
Yes, it is fair business.
However, it also sucks.
It's fair business, and you buy an MMO knowing that it will eventually be shut down at the publisher's discretion. The only question is how long that will be. If you take a game that has a solid foundation, such as Ultima Online, that could be over fifteen years from launch (Ultima is trucking along at 13 and still going fine). If you pick a game like FURY with no solid anything, that could be ten months.
The easiest way to "punish" a developer for pulling tactics like that is to not support their future products. I've sent a few angry emails to NCsoft saying I can't support a company that will go to the lengths of committing fraud so they could shut down a game (firing Richard Garriot and forging his resignation letter, Garriot won the lawsuit and $28 million earlier this year). I know many independent companies who would have loved to pick up Tabula Rasa and its 5-10 thousand subscribers, if NCsoft had put the game up for auction rather than just shutting it down for good.
In cases of All Points Bulletin, I think we can fairly easily feel bad for the consumer. Given that this was a $100 million dollar project, by the guys who created Crackdown, no one in their non-trolling minds would have expected Realtime Worlds to go into bankruptcy so fast after the game released, or that no other company would pick up the project. If Realtime Worlds were still in business and shut the game down, I might be supportive of some sort of fraud investigation, but you won't get restitution from a company that has $0 in the bank.
Also you are only look at from your point view
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-09-17-apb-dev-blames-collapse-on-complacency
You are out of 50 bucks,Realtime worlds is out of 100 million because APB didn't make that money back ,The company basically had to close as well,People loss jobs,People when looking for a job on their resume work on 100 million dollar failure and one of shortest mmo lifespan ever.You are worry about if it is fair too you because lost a couple bucks.
One counter argument is that box sales provide such an injection of cash at the most critical time in the cash flow cycle it can make a huge difference to the way an MMO develops in it's crucial first few months. I am sure we would have seen a lot more APB style failures if it were not for box sale income so, in principle, I don't have a problem with it as long as the publishers are acting in good faith.
The thing about APB though is I don't see how the publishers can possibly have been acting in good faith. The plug was pulled so quickly the publishers must have known it was a distinct possibilty, if not likelihood, at the time of launch. The whole thing smacks of a cynical cash grab to recoup some of the development costs before abandoning ship. I'd be surprised if there isn't a reasonable case to be made against some of the people involved for fraudulent or negligent business practices.
Their problem, i as a customer couldnt care less how good or bad a company is doing, all i want is good value for my money spent. if they cant even keep things running for 3 months they should have never started in the 1st place.
I feel bad for everyone involved on both sides of the fence.
With that said, I cannot see how APB cost 100 million to produce? Did they spend all the money on pizza and mountain dew? They surely didn't spend it on the game.
Tattoos. They spent it all on the character tattoos.
And dragon ball z hair.
In the immortal words of Phineas Taylor Barnum, "There's a sucker born every minute." Welcome to Capitalism...the ultimate game of chance where you can win and win big or lose and lose big.
It's not like the company wants the game to shut down. They just didn't have a choice to continue.
Having MMOs let people run private servers may lead to liability issues so the companies shy away from that. Besides, the company may want to reserve the option of selling the asset during bankruptcy court.
Hope you're not complaining about the B2P and P2P business models....
This why I support the emulation of MMORPGs, because it garuntees the client purchaser the right to play the game they purchased.
--When you resubscribe to SWG, an 18 yearold Stripper finds Jesus, gives up stripping, and moves with a rolex reverend to Hawaii.
--In MMORPG's l007 is the opiate of the masses.
--The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence!
--CCP could cut off an Eve player's fun bits, and that player would say that it was good CCP did that.
If the developers saw fit that they can't run the game anymore, I wish they'd allow the game to be run privately , etc. for the people that actually did purchase the game.
The only thing that prevents an old computer game from running on your current rig are technical issues. That's it. And there's lots of fan made fixes out there for various, older games.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
I think it's fair. There's always plenty of warning when this is going to happen. If you shelled out $50 anyway, hoping the reviews and complaint-ridden forms were wrong, that's on you.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I agree with the OP on this one. I think the gaming community should lobby harder to reduce or remove box sale price. The op spoke to APB having only been out three months. Well if you bought the game when it came out then you effectively got your money's worth. But up until the day the announcement was made they were talking about running an update to the game. So what if someone knew the game was going to recieve an update and thought "hey now is the time to give this game a try" and went and spent full cover price on the game only to have it shut down the next day. People in that catagory didn't get their money's worth, not even close to it in fact. Those people who bought the game in the weeks just prior to the shutdown were in fact sold a defective product. I think at the very least we should be able to have box price refunded.
I realize of course that when games shut down its mostly over monetary issues, meaning they prob couldn't pay everyone back. But something needs to be done. There is no way we as consumers would allow this to stand in any other market so why do we allow it to happen in this one, our favorite one?
Yes, but here is the problem with your arguement. Just because say Game Informer, thinks the game sucks doesn't mean I will. Reviews and other players complaints are really just opionion unless they are speaking to known gltiches or bugs. Frankly I have read a lot of positive reviews of APB. I'm just glad I didn't buy the game after this.
That is a silly thing to say. Look how popular shooter games are that incorporate RPG elements : TF2, CoD4, CoDMW, BF2.
Just because online RPGs have yet to incorporate shooting effectively into their games, doesn't mean the genres shouldn't cross, in my opinion.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
If the game stays afloat for your free 30 days play then there is no reason to bitch. You buy a single player game how long does it last? Nobody owes you anything, the sooner you realize that the sooner you will grow up. Socialized gaming, what a concept.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
I have to agree with Pale here. Currently I am playing Fallen Earth and it combines those two elements rather effectively IMO. Also, look at the Mass Effect series. Although not an online franchise, they combine those elements and are hugely popular.
Seriously? You made a post on this? Some need to get a refresher on free enterprise. There are no "levels of consumers". Also, go read the terms of agreement that you had to read and agree to in order to play the game. You paid for the software, not to play the game. That monthly fee or whatever other subscription model was what you payed to play the game. Even then, your character, items, armor, etc did not belong to you.
A company that "turns their game off" is obviously "turning off" their game because they are not making money. What do you expect them to do? Seriously guys, if you created something and expected to make money from it, and didn't, would you really turn around and give it away for free after all the hard work and time that you put into? Pffftt, I say,,,pfffft.
You can yell at the top of a mountain for all the world to hear but your voice is not going to be heard because there's nothing that can happen, nothing that can be done. It is silly to suggest a community to rally together to demand that a game that isn't making a developer any money to stay open.
Look, If they said on the cover you are only gaurenteed 30 days of play, I'd say you are right. Sure, we as mmo players do take the risk of shutdowns, but we should be given say 30 days notice. Again I have to point out, what about those who bought APB say last week?
I am not siding against you, but your single player logic example is flawed. A single player game you can play as long as you own it... more or less.