Rumor: Reason for the shutdown.
By
abbeymason,
Posted on: 2012-08-31 16:28 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
I am not interesting in any of the current other SH games. Maybe something in the future can capture what kept me and others here for so long. I doubt it.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
I am RAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
With a little bit of sadness mixed in.
The hate is mainly for the way the announcement has been made with no explanation at all as to why, and to how PS was laid off with no warning.
That was my post, and it was based off a link to another thread here, posted on Twitter by VoodooGirl. I can't take credit.
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Quote:
To answer your questions (with my own speculation), this is the kind of thing that happens where NCSoft and PWE are negotiating over the terms of a license extension, things are going fine, then, at the 11th hour, something happens. Maybe PWE wants something that NCSoft can't give.|
Originally Posted by Starsman
That rumor makes a LOT of sense... I am aware at least of part of it but not about the span of the lease or a possible refusal to renew.... where did you read it? Not sure why it would be a reason to fire the entire staff overnight... although the licensing may had also been the force to kill all income generated by the game... "we allow you a 2 month transition window but no income can be generated during that window" would be enough to force a studio shutdown... |
So then NCSoft has a big problem. They've been making plans all along thinking that the license would get renewed, and now they have to shut down the game in three months. First thing to do, you stop the bleeding (i.e. development work on the engine that you can't use anymore). Then you try to make the best lemonade you can. Which unfortunately means axing Paragon, since the thing they know how to do isn't part of the future.
Sucks. Sucks in a thousand ways.
Happens in business a lot.
Quote:
If there is truth to the rumor, it's very likely this was going negotiation that fell through at the last minute, not too unlike that Direct TV/ Warner Brother's fiasco recently.|
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
The hate is mainly for the way the announcement has been made with no explanation at all as to why, and to how PS was laid off with no warning.
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However in this case, it was not just about a few stations but about killing the oxygen supply on the studio.
There is a potential chance the team was aware this negotiation was going on, but they likely kept being told "don't worry, we will handle it". Again, if true, it's very likely Atary/Cryptic made the negotiation look reasonable all the time, while every day inching things away so it always was out of reach, so they could never be blamed of directly killing the game.
CoH was and is the BEST g-- da--ed hero game!! So angry about this theory I am gonna have to log off for a bit.
AHHHHH!
PS-
I love you Paragon Studios, COH, community. Gah!
Sylph Knight started the thread on Justice about it. Back Alley Brawler/Tic-Toc/Christopher Bruce just posted in that thread, saying that while he wasn't aware of any 5-year limitation, he'd ask Jack Emmert about it next time he saw him. So for now, take it as just a rumor.
Positron: "There are no bugs [in City of Heroes], just varying degrees of features."
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Starsman
This is from the Gucomic forums:
I followed up with the following bit: That rumor makes a LOT of sense... I am aware at least of part of it but not about the span of the lease or a possible refusal to renew.... where did you read it? Not sure why it would be a reason to fire the entire staff overnight... although the licensing may had also been the force to kill all income generated by the game... "we allow you a 2 month transition window but no income can be generated during that window" would be enough to force a studio shutdown...If this is true... the NCSoft hate may be entirely out of place... and moving on to Champions Online may be precisely what they want to come out of this. |
If this were truly the reason, then there would've (sigh, I'm being way to optimistic on this) surely been more communication on the game having a five-year dead line instead of blindly pushing forward before unexpectedly giving the ax to 50 members of a talented development team and pissing on the cheerios of 250,000 customer accounts.
I'd love to be wrong and for there to be an announcement in two months that says "By the way, our secret project was a renovated engine for City of Supers, Surprise!"
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Warning: crazy space limit reached. Please delete some crazy and try again. |
Very. very clever. I am sure this is just a Nemisis plot.
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Oh come on. Layoffs almost always happen without warning. Also I'd point out that the Paragon staff that have been posting haven't been raging. It's entirely possible that they knew this could happen.|
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
The hate is mainly for the way the announcement has been made with no explanation at all as to why, and to how PS was laid off with no warning.
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I guess Koreans don't know the rule about not laying people off on a Friday though.
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Yeah that's where this came from. I didn't know Starsman would take it from a webcomic forum and spread it all over.
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Originally Posted by Goliath Bird Eater
Sylph Knight started the thread on Justice about it. Back Alley Brawler/Tic-Toc/Christopher Bruce just posted in that thread, saying that while he wasn't aware of any 5-year limitation, he'd ask Jack Emmert about it next time he saw him. So for now, take it as just a rumor.
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My new Youtube Channel with CoH info
You might know me as FlintEastwood now on Freedom
Babs posted this in answer to this rumor:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Tic-Toc
I don't believe this is accurate. As far as I know, NCSoft wholely owns the CoH IP. There was a license agreement for the engine in place, ie. Cryptic still owns the engine and licensed it to NCSoft/Paragon...but I wasn't aware of any 5 year term on that.
I may be misinformed, but I only work here...I'll ask Jack about it next time I see him. |
My new Youtube Channel with CoH info
You might know me as FlintEastwood now on Freedom
Quote:
America is a scary place.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
Oh come on. Layoffs almost always happen without warning. Also I'd point out that the Paragon staff that have been posting haven't been raging. It's entirely possible that they knew this could happen.
I guess Koreans don't know the rule about not laying people off on a Friday though. |
"Men strunt �r strunt och snus �r snus
om ock i gyllne dosor.
Och rosor i ett sprucket krus
�r st�ndigt alltid rosor."
And if the rumor is true, then NCSoft should have said that when they made the announcement to us. Simply knowing who delivered the dickshot would put the focus where it belonged. On PW/Cryptic.
Doing it this way they've only hurt themselves.
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Actually, what he said was that he wasn't aware of a term on the license agreement.|
Originally Posted by Thor's Assassin
Yeah Bab's debunked this:
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That's a pretty long way from 'debunking.'
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Good point, debunk was the wrong word for it, edited.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
Actually, what he said was that he wasn't aware of a term on the license agreement.
That's a pretty long way from 'debunking.' |
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You and I see it that way. But a company like NCSoft may prefer to piss off a few consumers rather than engage in mudslinging with another company that they may need to partner with in the future.
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
And if the rumor is true, then NCSoft should have said that when they made the announcement to us. Simply knowing who delivered the dickshot would put the focus where it belonged. On PW/Cryptic.
Doing it this way they've only hurt themselves. |
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As I mentioned, if true, the licensing deals can go south at the last minute easily, especially if the owning party had no actual interest in enabling the competition to exist.|
Originally Posted by John_Printemps
If this were truly the reason, then there would've (sigh, I'm being way to optimistic on this) surely been more communication on the game having a five-year dead line instead of blindly pushing forward before unexpectedly giving the ax to 50 members of a talented development team and pissing on the cheerios of 250,000 customer accounts.
I'd love to be wrong and for there to be an announcement in two months that says "By the way, our secret project was a renovated engine for City of Supers, Surprise!" |
Also, it's not about the IP, I think they actually purchased the IP. NCSoft can take all the characters, power data, content, everything, and create it's own new client and server and keep rolling City of Heroes. Problem is: thats the hardest part to change. Would had been easy to change the name and sugar coat.
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If this is true....| Since Cryptic went to Atari and Atari went to Perfect World, they didn't want competition in the superhero genre and either refused to renew or made it too expensive on purpose. |
I need to punch an inanimate object, brb.
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My money is on GW2.
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...=1#post4366209
They want everyone going to their new toy.
Honestly, if you download and look at the NCSoft corporate info, it's pretty clear that CoH is a tiny, almost meaningless piece of the pie. The reduction in sales (worldwide) on Aion from Q1 to Q2 this year is 5x the entire revenue from CoH for the quarter. Yes, that's what I said. Not Aion's sales, just the margin of lower sales...
For better or worse, Paragon Studios and CoH are rounding errors in NCSoft's math.
I don't plan on giving them any more money to round off.
(All on Virtue)
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Too many others to consider.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/sh...d.php?t=373701
Frankie says it best.
If the lease on the engine was the issue, then why shut down the whole studio that's also working on a second different project?
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This is from the Gucomic forums:
Apparently this was all dropped like a ton of bricks on the studio this morning, with no warning whatsoever. They had huge plans for the game in the upcoming months. This also happens to be the exact same week that Guild Wars 2 hit from the same publisher and the NDA was just lifted on Planetside 2 beta today.
The rumors are that when Cryptic sold the rights to the game, they kept the engine and licensed it to NC Soft Norcal, now known as Paragon Studios. It was for a 5 year license and that license is ending.
Since Cryptic went to Atari and Atari went to Perfect World, they didn't want competition in the superhero genre and either refused to renew or made it too expensive on purpose.
If this is true... the NCSoft hate may be entirely out of place... and moving on to Champions Online may be precisely what they want to come out of this.