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City of Heroes Closure Article in The Korea Times *MONEY* Section
therain93
Member UncommonPosts: 2,039
So, awareness and criticism of City of Heroes' closure is spreading. The profile on it has been raised such that there's now a scathing article in the Korea Times Money section. Not the gaming section mind you, the MONEY section.
Notable quotes:
"The Korean company announced in August that it plans to permanently shutdown servicing the 8-year-old game and terminated its Paragon Studios development team, despite the title continuing to bring in steady revenue."
"According to local industry analysts, the game has been bringing in 3 billion won ($2.76 million) every quarter. “It is hard to comprehend what NCsoft means when they said they closed it for strategic reasons,” one analyst said."
"NCsoft CEO Kim Taek-jin recently stated that he was planning a global acquisition in his bid to expand the company overseas. However, at first-glance the closure of CoH doesn’t seem in line with his plans."
"NCsoft’s image in Internet communities in the West is very negative. Some magazines writers have asked for boycotts, including Starburst Magazine which has 250,000 subscribers (the same as the firm’s Blade & Soul’s peak number). Other protests have spawned online."
"Meanwhile, NCsoft’s stock price continues to remain around 160,000 won, having more than halved from earlier in the year."
http://koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2012/12/602_126197.html
Comments
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
You know I use to like NCSoft and would have understood if the game was losing money but its not.
This is the real problem with the CoX shutdown. That it makes no sense. You can kinda plan for what a company might do if you understand why they are doing something. Greedy? fine. Cutting losses? fine. Wanting to expand? fine. Any of those would make sense but near as I can tell with CoX, managment simply threw a fit, gathered up their toys and stormed off the playground. You simply can't trust a company to be consistent of they show that they are not.
I now have no desire to play any of their titles because I simply have no idea if that game is going to be running still a year from now. Why get attached to something just to have it pulled away at random. I was married to a moody, flakey woman for 4 years. It was miserable. You never knew what to expect when you got home from work except that it was likely to not be pleasant. She's gone, for a reason and I don't need that sort of thing in my gaming either.
All die, so die well.
Taking a negative hit to the rep, which is the most valuable thing these companies have really, to make a boat load of profit I would understand to a point...
But to take that hit to kill a profitable studio with a dedicated playerbase (in a game that they have spent a lot of real money in a lot of cases) is actually pretty nuts.
What were they thinking? So much bad will generated over something that no one really understands.
I fear for Wildstar's future under this company...
I can't imagine any Carbine Studios employees not backing up their assets the following Monday after Paragon Studio's closure announcement. If that wasn't enough of a wake up call, the Seattle alignment really should have done it.
How much of NCSoft does NEXON now own? curious......
almost feels similar to when Activision bought Blizzard.
14% and achange. I believe it's majority, but not controlling.
It was obvious long before posts like this news article that this was about politics, not revenue. It was making a profit, perhaps not tons, but enough to take care of itself and evidently enough to support a crew since there was a new issue incoming. It also had a bigger, more active community than most other still-live games its age. The firing and disassembling of the studio that made it, Paragon, speaks volumes about what's really going on behind the scenes, though my guess is they're under some obligation (probably due to severence pay) to keep it to themselves. That team could easily have been absorbed elsewhere, it wasn't a big one by any stretch, but NCSoft literally wanted the IP crushed into nothing, down to refusing to sell it off for anything close to reasonable.
It's as if they were embarassed by CoX.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
There were about 80 staff working at the time, allegedly half of them on developing a new project...
NCSoft will NEVER see another dime of my money. They're just as bad as EA.
Sucks though because Wildstar actually looks pretty damn good. Maybe Carbine will wake up and switch to a better publisher. One can hope, anyway.
Playing: FFXIV, DnL, and World of Warships
Waiting on: Ashes of Creation
It's a consumer product -- vote with your wallet. NCsoft has a bad history of doing this to its consumers and they're tired of it. What do you have against that and why the compulsion to come into these threads and tell us to basically suck it up? If you want to reward companies like NCsoft with your money, that's fine and all, but I don't see the need to shutdown any attempts at consumer awareness, which is what you and a few others appear to be trying to do.
It is not that difficult, NC Soft have not got any interesting game. Wildstar looks too simplistic, Blade of Soul does not look worthwhile.
Life goes on, and got better things to do with my time and money than trust it on NC Soft again. They did not just mess around with just City of Heroes, they also shut down Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault and maybe others I did not play too, without decent reason.
NC Soft have a history of shutting down games in NA/EU too easily. If I was Korean I would not avoid NC Soft, as that is where their loyalties lie, and the chances of games shutting down will be the same as everywhere, but for NA/EU they will pull the plug on any game at any time.
I am more upset about SWG closing than I am of City of heroes, but the closure of COH is just plain wrong, and in the end it did not save more jobs from being lost (about 80 people lost their jobs under Paragon Studios, and then earlier this month, more people within NC Soft lose their jobs too), and they do not seem to have a good business sense. I suppose LA managed to get more money from SWTOR than SWG for 2012, but I bet if SWG stayed going they could have gotten more money in the longterm from it. NC Soft are still losing money despite all those job cuts.
It is hard to be mad at Lucasarts now, as they are now no more, and bought up by Disney. I wish NC Soft would sell out, and let a US/EU company deal with the US/EU market of their games.
AION is with Gameforge now, not NC Soft for EU, although I assume NC Soft has the power to shut it down, and Gameforge / Areanet are like Paragon Studios, where they do not get the say whether the games stay active or not, but NC Soft still do.
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
Your emotions have long since gotten the better of you. Good to read that you're moving on, though.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
SWG was emotional, City of Heroes is not, not at all. I could not play COH much at all. I subbed to COH for 6 months with 1 month free after SWG closed, and did not play it at all, except maybe one weekend when they did double XP. In the last few months I put more effort into it, but I still could not play it much.
I do understand that MMOs closing is more than just a game, it is a community, and that community gets lost/shattered after a MMO closes. MMOs closing should not easily happen - They take loads of your time and money, let you build up online friends and relationships, and then when shut down, you are left with nothing. It is hard to get involved in another MMO again, and these MMO companies need people to get involved with them again, but are not going to if shut downs are unreasonable, like COH, TR, AA.
COH only went F2P last year, and then shut down a year later, so does that mean now then that SWTOR and TSW could shut down next year too? It makes that scenario more likely, and best to avoid these 2 games as well now
City of Heroes closing is wrong, both for the players and for NC Soft. I think they realise it was wrong too, but stuck to their guns, and changing their minds could have been a sign of weakness as a company for them.
SOE is the safest place to be, as they keep MMOs going longer than most.
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
Strategic reason... lol I bet they were expecting CoH players to jump over to GW2, I know lots of people in my CoH outfit that doesn't like the GW/fantasy genre.
Boggles the mind to why they would shut down something that's raking in almost $3m per quarter?
Because CoH wasn't big in Korea. "Obviously", if it wasn't big on their own home ground, no one else cared about it, right?
They are a Korean company, period. They have since split the EU/American publisher off on it's own, so they can focus on their home turf, I would guess.
It is always sad when a game gets shutdown, but it does happen.
3 million per quarter on an eight year old game AFTER adding free to play option to it. Why in the hell would they have shut that down? I did not play, I did not like the game, but this is really weird. I also feel completely horrible for the fans. I was an avid AC2 player and was sad when it got shut down, still can't believe it's been back nearly a week now. I really hope that maybe CoX finds its way back to life.
Gotta wonder if the person in charge over there isn't trying to get fired. Shut down a game making about 12 million per year, stock prices halved over the course of the year. "Strategy" isn't the word I'd use....more like pure idiocy.
The first 5 minutes of this sorta answers your question. http://www.gamebreaker.tv/video-game-shows/game-changing-cyber-punk-mmo/
I mean looking at from the outside, even if its bringing in 3m per quarter, that is only 5m or so profit per year. This is much the same argument that was made when Comcast bought out Syfy and decided to shut down Eureka. Whether its still profitable or not, it may not be profitable enough to be worth the while.
I did battle with ignorance today, and ignorance won.
To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.