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General: NCSoft Western Operations Layoffs Confirmed
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
NCSoft has confirmed that it is 'restructuring key operations" within the company that will include a round of layoffs across all Western propertiess, including Carbine Studios, developers of WildStar. This does not, however, include ArenaNet, developers of Guild Wars 2.
While decisions like this are always hard, they are necessary as we begin the implementation of a new strategy designed to strengthen our footing as a leader in global entertainment.
Moving forward, we will continue to focus on our core development capabilities and the intellectual properties (WildStar, Aion, Lineage, and Guild Wars franchises) that have made NCSOFT what it is today. However, we are looking to move into new business segments like mobile and tablet games as well as explore emerging technologies.
Again, the decision to reduce staff was not an easy one, and we sincerely wish everyone well in their next endeavors.
We'll keep you posted as the story develops.
Comments
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
I wouldn't call WS below average, at least not yet. The games they closed down so far had less than 100K players all of them (and in most cases far below that).
Clearly is that they hoped they earned more money in the West and that GW/GW2 is doing best here (since they cut people from everything else).
The big question is if they plan to turn this (and in that case how) or if they instead plan to focus on the eastern market and slowly pull out of the West. The might very well be taking resources from less successful projects into something new after all.
sad news all around,
although this was down the pipeline for sure, one can clearly see how Ncsoft are leaving GW2 untouched(becaouse they are doin ok rev)- and carbine getting most hits (for poor rev) - simply said.
wonder what i will be reading next year at this time about wildstar...i hope good news.
Another Dev moving away from the MMORPG by the looks of it.
I feel bad for those getting laid off, especially right before the holidays. Hopefully, they've saved for a rainy day. It also seems that NCSoft had unwisely put their faith in a game that was seemingly doomed to not be a smashing success. I think many of us could see that WildStar wasn't going to be a great game, simply on the premise alone. Double that with the fact that they were attempting to cater to the hardcore crowd, yeah you're going to have a bad time.
It'll be interesting to see what NCSoft does from this point forth. I haven't been a huge fan of many of their mmos, but perhaps a wake up call and new look to the future.
Yes the majority of us know this is the truth but businesses are not a success by telling the truth.
Question..
Why not try the GW2 system of f2p?Why completely give up on Carbine ,lay off workers and create a bad image?
Why did they not try to revamp and make Tabula Rasa work instead of folding up shop?
How much money can GW2 be making strictly off a cash shop and if the game is making a lot of money why are players supporting a system that is worse than forcing you to pay to enjoy the game?It is not f2p if it is making a ton of money now is it?
I have never liked NCSOFT not way back when i played Lineage and found out how they work and don't care one bit about cheating or their game or their community.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
This sucks but not entirely w/o good reason.
That teleporting nonsense in WS was unacceptable and took away from everything else.
It broke the immersion of the game entirely for me which led to the cancelled sub.
One Dragon slain, line her up on AA boys!
No trials. No tricks. No traps. No EU-RP server. NO THANKS!
...10% Benevolence, 90% Arrogance in my case!
Amen brother!
Actually, even release Blade and Soul 1 in the West and I'd be happy!
Still, NCSoft is smart to can "Carbine devs" a.k.a. "people with 0 skills of any sort that prob get paid to be retarded*. I still hope they decide to hire actual game developers for Wildstar, some of the basis for the game is decent. Do like FF XIV: destroy the initial dev team, cancel the game, then re-release as Wildstar 2.0!
NCsoft invested heavily into long and troubled development of Tabula Rasa. And than closed it emidiately after it didnt have enough subscriptions. Even though they had to play 20 million dollars penalty for doing this. They didnt even try to sell the game.
So yes , any even slightly underperforming game is doomed under NC soft
Party pooper here. NCSoft has learned its lesson and will never again release a Korean-made MMO in the west. Just look at their betting on Wildstar instead of B&S. Also, look at GW2 backed by NCSoft.
Look forward to more by-us-for-us MMOs backed by NCSoft.
There is so much wrong here ...
How much money can they be making? Enough to keep servers up and support expansions?
if the game is making a lot of money why are players supporting ...? If you like a game and want to spend some money on fluff stuff, why not? You also happen to be supporting the server uptime so you can continue to enjoy the game.
system that is worse than forcing you to pay to enjoy the game. What!? You mean you don't have to pay for enjoyment!?!??! .. really dude? are you even thinking when you write this stuff?
It is not f2p if it is making a ton of money now is it? Just to clear things up, "Free to play" means you don't have to pay in order to play the game. It doesn't mean you can't pay for fluff or other stuff. F2P being "worse" than "forcing" you to pay to play is an opinion, don't use it as fact.
On that note, GW2 is BUY to play.
instead of complaining about F2P, people need to think of them as regular subscription games that allow you to also play for free with less benefits. That's what most FREE TO PLAY games are. They're not ALWAYS EVERYTHING FREE NO MATTER WHAT games, they're free to PLAY. Set yourself a budget of $15 per month for a free to play game. Be it a premium subscription or shop items. In APB I bought a sub for faster gains and when my characters were maxed out I would buy a permanent weapon every 3 months (they run aprx $45). I still spent WAAAY less money on F2P games than I ever spent on pay to play games I used to play.
Being a recent return to GW2 after 7 months away I can see that GW2 is doing pretty well. The gem store seems to be the way they have survived. People who play based on what I see have dumped hundreds in for either items or gold conversion, and the conversion is crazy atm. I know I have spent like $80 myself on items I wanted, like the harvest nodes for my home instance and the salvage machine, a costume, few minis and an armor skin...few other things too. Most likely GW2 is what is keeping them afloat. They are hiring while other studios are laying off.
TSW went F2P faster than SWTOR. Hell, ArcheAge went F2P in Korea faster than SWTOR. Now SWTOR is one of the most successful MMOs out there now. It's hardly the poster child for failed games that people make it out to be.
Even when SWTOR went F2P it had double the player base of WS. And you are forgetting the huge budget behind SWTOR. Which accelerated the need to go F2P to recover revenue. Now after 2 years it has turned things around. WS hasn't reached that stage yet to declare it a success as a F2P game.
We can only talk about P2P model and as a P2P games WS is indeed a failure.
Should I take this as time to give up on B&S getting a western release and try a translation patch for the Asian release?
Poor NCSoft. I do hope they find their way. But MMOs seem to be hitting a downturn at the moment. Pull back. Cool off. Make some single player versions of their licences, maybe, and get some easy money. Then come back to them in a few years with a new vision, a bunch of new programmers and developers, a new mindset and hopefully some new ideas for the genre.
Sadly that's what many people have done who were eager to play B&S. I tried getting it up and running but at the time (a few months ago?) there were some issues with getting it to work on Windows 8.1, yay lucky me -_-
Their EN pages/twitter/whatevs haven't been updated in ages.
https://twitter.com/bladeandsoul (10 Dec 2012)
http://us.bladeandsoul.com/uk/news/state_of_the_game.php (05 Dec what year?)
"The development team at NCSOFT West has been working closely with Team Bloodlust to ensure that we deliver the best, most faithful version of Blade & Soul to Western gamers. We are making progress and plan to reveal more details about the game in the coming year."
Sure.
From http://www.bladeandsouldojo.com/topic/94205-bns-euna-product-manager/ it says "Release date is aimed at 2015" and "Beta Early 2015".
The new year is around the corner so let's see what happens. It'll be a while anyway.
"...we are looking to move into new business segments like mobile and tablet games as well as explore emerging technologies."
Basically an admittance of failure. Resorting to disgusting cash trap shovelware; always knew NCSoft would end up there one day.