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Why the Hate for companies that close down MMOs?
killion81
Member UncommonPosts: 995
I recently saw yet another, "I hate XYZ company for shutting down my favorite game and I will never give them another dollar, ever!" post and it got me thinking...
Whenever a game is closed down, there is hate posted anywhere and everywhere directed towards the company closing the game down. This may go on for weeks or months (or even years in some cases). However, no one seems to mention how great it was that a company spent TONS of money and TONS of man hours, along with a bunch of creativity, creating a game that people (including those spouting hate) gained years of entertainment from. To put that a little bit differently,
You NEVER would have had the chance to enjoy your "favorite game" had this company not created and maintained it at SIGNIFICANT RISK to themselves. If anything, you should be thankful they ever gave you the opportunity!
It's a lot like hating an ex that left you after a solid run. Ignoring all the great experiences you had over the years and instead focusing on how unhappy you are that life changed doesn't help you in any way. All good things must end. I'm just saying, take your fond memories, enjoy reflecting on them now and then and put your energy into experiences in the here and now that will eventually be more great memories. 
Comments
Well it's easy to see why:
- Sometimes the company that closes the game, isn't the same company that made it.
- Sometimes the game is still making money and paying for itself but gets closed anyway.
I think I have seen the most hate in a couple of instances:
- The shutdown was sudden (practically overnight with no warning).
- The company doesn't actually shut it down but sells it off (it's almost more infuriating if the game still exists but your account for it is no good in it's new home).
In either case there is a break down or complete lack of communication. It's one thing if a company is replacing an old version of a game with a new one. They let the players know ahead of time the v2.0 is coming out and to prepare for that. Also, it's not so terrible if they simply can't afford to run it and close it in a saved state (preserving it) until they can find a way to open it again. At least in that case the game is not dead, it's just sleeping (that one is an especially rare case though and when they do re-open it is usually only briefly). And, if a game isn't making money and the company lets the players know "hey, you all got about 6 months left with this if something doesn't change". That is also somewhat acceptable. People will complain in each and every one of those cases sure...
But, when they disappear over night with scarcely a word. When you log back in after a 3day or week break and the game is simply gone. I think that is the most anger making.
In any case I think we feel the effect of loss greater then gain. And, we tend to recall and adjust how we feel about things in order (the very last thing we see from a company sets the tone of our mood in regards to them usually). What will get us every time as people is lack of resolution. Feeling that something is incomplete, or like we missed a step. It's the same reason songs get stuck in your head. And, why often re-listening to a song gets it unstuck. Your brain either doesn't like a detail about the song or can't recall exactly how one part goes. So it gets stuck in a loop trying to resolve that.
And, with the games that vanish I think it's the same thing. We often are left feeling unresolved. And without resolution you can never fully get over it. Because, your brain works best when things make sense. And, will do everything in it's power to force things that don't make sense to become sensical. Even if that means conspiracy theories and raging at the darkness. Any thing to restore logical flow. That feeling of "unfair" is a feeling we are not built well to cope with.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
MMO providers do not have an unspoken promise. Neither do cloud service providers. Also, that doesn't actually answer the question. It's just trying to justify being upset.
People treat MMORPGs as if they were products that the players owned instead of services that the players rent. When an MMORPG shuts down, the players feel like they are losing the product that they paid for, instead of the service to which they had no ownership rights.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
There is but one answer...
if they close an MMO down... they must give the server code for free to all players that ever played the game
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I disagree in that MMORPGs are businesses first and foremost. No business runs with the end goal of covering it's costs. Yes, it certainly needs to cover it's costs, but if that's all it's doing, it may as well do nothing at all with the same end result. Business is about money. If a product doesn't generate profit, you cut it from your lineup and allocate any resources it was using to another product that will (or hopefully will) generate profit.
Businesses simply don't offer products and services to make people happy. Often times that IS a side effect of what they do when they're providing a luxury service that people don't need and only want, but it's not the reason they do what they do. Would you stick with a job that paid you exactly what it cost for you to eat, sleep and travel to and from work, but nothing more? Apply that to a business.
You beat me to it. Stupid work making me leave my response window open for an hour before posting...
*Looks at killion81's avatar - - - hmmm, a bouncy visualization and the words "Not quite dead yet"*
Insight perhaps?
Nah, couldn't be.
Companies close down profitable games all the time for no apparent reason whatsoever *coughNCsoftcough*. In fact it happens so often that it is quite normal and can be expected of any game at any time. Hell, I expect Star Wars the Old Republic to be shut down tomorrow and World of Warcraft to go dark within hours. Afterall, it is within the owners's rights to close them down however and whenever they choose whether the players have a say in it or not.
You are exactly right! We should all expect this from each and every game that goes online and is served to us over the internet. There's no reason to hate these fine upstanding companies for their decision to give us things we love and then just take them away again without reason or logical explanation. When they close down one game we should just move on to another like the previous game didn't even matter. It's the way of the industry and we should agree and abide by it without anger, grudge or...heck any emotion whatsoever.
We're all unfeeling robots afterall. 010010010110100010001001011011010101110
Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint.
The simple answer to OP's question is: attachment
We invest hundreds or thousands of hours in something and then it goes poof. Like life, there's a kind of grief that happens when you lose something you love. And it often manifests as rage.
Then I guess a better question would be, "Why do people see it as 'OK' to exclude reality when making sweeping decisions regarding supporting game developers?". However, I'm going to guess that any answer to that is just as irrational as the initial thought process that brought them to their opinion.
I see nothing wrong with boycotting a company for well grounded reasons. Personally, I refuse to purchase EA games, but that's based off their business practices.
I disagree in that MMORPGs are businesses first and foremost. No business runs with the end goal of covering it's costs. Yes, it certainly needs to cover it's costs, but if that's all it's doing, it may as well do nothing at all with the same end result. Business is about money. If a product doesn't generate profit, you cut it from your lineup and allocate any resources it was using to another product that will (or hopefully will) generate profit.
Businesses simply don't offer products and services to make people happy. Often times that IS a side effect of what they do when they're providing a luxury service that people don't need and only want, but it's not the reason they do what they do. Would you stick with a job that paid you exactly what it cost for you to eat, sleep and travel to and from work, but nothing more? Apply that to a business.
One of the early economic concepts taught is the idea of "next best alternative". Basically, if a company is spending resources doing one thing, but they could spend the same resources doing another thing and make more money, they are losing money if they don't do that other thing. Things like closing down an MMORPG probably fall into this category. The money saved by not running the MMORPG, or the money being invested in a different project looks like it will make more money, and a rational business will want to make more money rather than less money.
Using your example, if you could do the exact same job you're doing now, with the same benefits and no additional costs, but make more money, wouldn't you choose to do so? A rational person would choose to make more money when all other things are equal.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I think part of the reason is because people get really attached to MMO's compared to other online products.
It's not that rare for players to spend hundreds if not thousands of hours on them, and it sucks knowing all that time is now gone.
Run this little experiment, give a kid a toy, let that kid play with it for a few hours (but not long enough for the kid to get tired of it). Then take it away from them and say they aren't going to get it back because you decided that they shouldn't have access to it anymore.
Notice how the behavior of that kid is almost identical, it doesn't matter the kid had a couple of hours of fun with it, all that matters now is you took their toy away. That sort of feeling of losing something you wanted to play with doesn't go away because you grow older, and usually you are taught that as long as you behave that you will get to keep things givin to you, most people don't feel like they've done anything wrong so why should something I like get taken away from me? Thus they feel like their being punished for doing nothing wrong and theres very little chance they will get said product back, so they lose all the work they did as well. Granted nothing lasts forever but that doesn't change the reaction once it's taken away.
yes it's a company and they need to make money but most people don't care (nor should they need to really) about if they make money, all they know is thats the company that took away something I like to do. This makes it even worse when you take something away for almost no reason or for confusing reasons such as CoX which was making money but closed down anyhow.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Originally posted by Arskaaa
"when players learned tacticks in dungeon/raids, its bread".
I just love the "you have no reason to feel the way you do" threads.
If there was no reason to feel a certain way, then nobody would feel that way, and there would be no need to have the conversation. But there is, and they do, so there is.
Why shouldnt they care? They would be even more irrational if they expected a company to run a game that operated at a loss. Financial solvency is something they should care about. And if it isn't making a substantial profit, and they have talented developers they can move elsewhere for a possibly bigger gain why wouldn't they? The fact is, the players could care less about the people and the companies that create them. It is an extraordinarily selfish view to believe the company owes you something when you can't even be grateful for the fun they did give you.
I wrote a big long post, but here's the long and short of it; I've deleted most of it now.
The first girl I ever loved died of brain cancer. Suddenly. Found out she was basically already gone and had thirteen days. Still with her at the time. Quite young. I was mad. I was furious and fucking crushed and out of my mind and in fucking agony and I'd spent all my time with her for quite a long while.
It's a huge loss and I reacted to it the way any person would react to a huge loss.
Now, with Vivian, I spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours with her, we had a great time, we fought, we laughed, she taught me how to sing, all sorts of cool things happened in that relationship.
MMOs also involve hundreds of hours of having a great time, with being mad and being glad and laughing and learning to do things. I don't love them like I did her, but it doesn't mean I don't feel a sense of loss when they are gone forever.
The degrees are obviously different. But Tabula Rasa is gone just as surely as Vivian is, or Jason's, that little place that had great pub cheese, where I ordered 'tequila, straight-up, and keep it coming' at six years old, goaded on by my uncle.
Loss sucks. Even when you lose something that's not central to your life (and hey, maybe your MMO is), it still hurts and makes you angry and sad. We blame people because there is someone to blame. I have no one to blame for my big loss; what, am I going to be mad at cancer? I contribute to research, it's what I can do. But it's really easy to be mad at Smedley or whatever ridiculous gamewrecker lives at NCSoft and just loves throwing fucking 'off' switches. So we are. They're there, and we're hurting and sad.
If you don't feel sad and angry after losing something you've spent so much time with and attention on, I have no idea how you came from the same monkeys I did.
I hate to break this to you..humans aren't usually rational when they feel wronged by someone, they don't just suddenly say oh thats okay I understand you fell on hard times or that you may not be doing as well. Heck most companies don't even feel this way (which are also run by people) lose your job even for a few months..that rental agent wants their money, that phone better get theirs or your service is gone. That internet? yep it's gone to if you can't pay it. They don't care you have problems they don't concern themselves with that, they concern themselves with the part that matters to them, getting the money they are owed, also to point out the end bit If i suddenly didn't pay my rent do you think my rental agent (who has received theirs every month for the last 4 years) will ever rent to me again? No they will not, they will most likely tell other rental companies that they shouldn't rent to me either because I missed a bill (they will not mention the years of good paying I did) They won't be all happy you paid them and respect you, no they will say you didn't pay well and this is going on your record. This works in reverse, as long as the company is making you happy, you are fine, once they stop making you happy, You stop giving them your service, you won't deal with them again and you'll tell others of your bad experience.
As stated above this gets turned back towards companies as well, the public doesn't care if they are operating at a loss (they are falling on hard time) as long as i'm paying the bill (sub fee or buying things from the shop) you keep that service running, if not, then you failed and i'm going somewhere else. No they don't expect them to operate a game at a loss, they expect them to run the game well so that it doesn't operate at a loss otherwise you aren't doing it responsibly and therefore I go with someone else, and i'll most likely tell my friends as well (or forums in some cases) of my bad exerpience.
Yes I know thats sort of a bleak way of looking at people, but most people (at least in america I can tell) only care that they are being hurt by a company not that they got a lot of fun out of it.(be it physical or emotionally), in conclusion if the person is hurt they will blame the person hurting them forget if it's rational/logical, that doesn't play in here. We'd all like to be calm, rational, and logical and weigh things equally, they will be fair until something bad happens to them then all that good things go out the window to be replaced with the one bad thing you did. It's an emotional response, emotions don't always equate to logic or reasoning.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I care about financial solvency only insofar as I want to protect what I enjoy. Truthfully, nobody wants their game of choice to fail. That said, I don't know how an individual subscriber can be responsible for keeping a game open. Even if I pay hundreds upon hundreds of dollars into the game, I can only do so much. It isn't my fault that I game I threw a lot of money into folds...yet I am treated as if it were my fault, because all the good things I paid for are taken away, with nothing in return.The problem is simply this; what is a "substantial" profit to make our games interesting to the people who publish them, and how do we know when it gets there? Because these things change; what was once a good game with potential becomes today's "yesterday game". What was once a good profit of 5% becomes not profitable enough to the new executive who is jealous of his competitor making 6%. And there are also instances where no amount of profit will make a game worth maintaining, if the publisher convinces itself that they don't like your game, and decides "we're better off investing in something new."
The truth is that more and more of the risk in these games is pushed away from the publishers and onto the players of these things. The publisher suffers no risk, because the publisher can close at any time. It's the players that have to be responsible for not only their risk but, also, the publisher's risk. Because as soon as a publisher gets bored with the revenue, we're screwed as players.
Quite frankly, I find it rather perverse to say we ought to be "grateful" towards those who take away the things we buy and pay for, simply because we enjoyed them at one time. Gratitude implies we are still in an association with these publishers, but when they take the things we pay for away and close down the only thing that's keeping us together, there's no point. It isn't like they are in a position to hear the gratitude and, even if they were, it wouldn't make the lot of the people who were screwed any better.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Main Game: Eldevin (Plat0nic)
2nd Game: Path of Exile (Platonic Hate)