Let's not Boycott anyone...
By
Blunter,
Posted on: 2012-09-01 17:19 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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A third possibility: those blurbs are published by Paragon Studios and Paragon had no idea what was coming down.
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Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
I think the photographic evidence is pretty damning, personally:
 There are only two possibilities from this photo: 1) NCSoft made the decision to cut City of Heroes in 10 or fewer days. In which case, they are crazy. 2) They deliberatley misled us into buying a powerset they had no intention of supporting on even a semi-long term basis. I have\ never before accused a game company of straight up lying, but that's exactly what happened here. They lied, and took my money. I have no legal recourse, and am not really seeking it. But this company doesn't have a shred of respect for its own customers and I would urge anyone considering making micropurchases from them to reconsider. |
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-By former NCsoft Chief Technical Officer.
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NCsoft collectively knew very well that TR wasnt ready for launch, but went ahead and launched it anyway [..] directors of a public company who are trying to keep shareholders happy. Especially directors in a foreign country who may or may not even speak the same language as you. (Im not trying to make veiled accusations against individuals here, nor against the different national divisions within NCsoft Im simply pointing out basic facts of life when it comes to large multinational companies, and observing that there was *inevitable* pressure along those lines [..] Personally, for each of the senior management at the company at the time, I shall never forget that you guys did not make that happen. |
I think some people are getting hung up on the word 'boycott'. Most of us are not planning some sort of organized media campaign. We are simply refusing to give money to a company we no longer want to do business with.
Years ago, there was an auto shop I liked and trusted. Then one day I arrived to discover that I didn't recognize anyone working there. I was told that there was a new owner, and he had let all the previous mechanics go. I was only there for something minor like an oil change, and immediately they started trying to talk me into a zillion unnecessary services. I never went back.
Was I boycotting them? No, I just didn't trust them anymore. That's how I feel about NCSoft.
"Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in."
Actually....while a petition is great for morale....makes one feel like something's being accomplished, and yes, I signed it too...what is being proposed is THE BEST WAY to get our voices heard and our point across. Corporations only really care about one thing. The dollar. And how they can get yours. Well....by not giving ours to them any more...we're saying exactly what needs to be said. By spreading the word of their heinous actions on September 31rst, 2012....we let other gamers know to not trust the company. AND we let other companies know that yes...while we -do- pay for their games...don't frell with us. We've got the power, not you. Well...as long as we're united in purpose.
I was all set to get GW2. I don't know about a boycott, but I'm definitely reconsidering that. And any other NCSoft or Nexon purchases. A shame, since I really enjoyed Vindictus.
Seeing an IP sale to Titan Network or a credible publisher and/or an open-sourcing of the software would go an awful long way to change my mind. As in, I'd go buy GW2 while the ink was still wet.
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from all we know, this was a compete surprise tho everyone at Paragon Studios. Watching Wednesday's Coffee Chat, I'm positive that Zwillinger had no hint it was coming, nor his guests. Which meant business as usual for Paragon Studios, including new things Added and olther things on sale. So I doubt any was rubbing there hands going mua ha ha they'll buy this and we pull the rug out from under them.|
Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
I think the photographic evidence is pretty damning, personally:
There are only two possibilities from this photo: 1) NCSoft made the decision to cut City of Heroes in 10 or fewer days. In which case, they are crazy. 2) They deliberatley misled us into buying a powerset they had no intention of supporting on even a semi-long term basis. I have\ never before accused a game company of straight up lying, but that's exactly what happened here. They lied, and took my money. I have no legal recourse, and am not really seeking it. But this company doesn't have a shred of respect for its own customers and I would urge anyone considering making micropurchases from them to reconsider. |
I've said before that the surprise is the oddest thing about this, that there wasn't a series of actions ratcheting in the screws. which tells me maybe it was a snap decision, not since Wednesday but so fast there was no coordination, or the call had been up in the air with people trying to find options until it was time to make the call.
And I have seen both, things coming from nowhere requiring massive change TODAY and a choice being open until a call had to be made.
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
A third possibility: those blurbs are published by Paragon Studios and Paragon had no idea what was coming down.
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With no malice intended toward you: that is truly beside the point. It doesn't matter who in the chain was publishing the messages. If NCSoft intended to pull the plug, that is when they need to tell the developers that they should be dialing back services. The fact that NCSoft was also planning to screw Paragon Studios at the time they were screwing City of Heroes customers doesn't make their case any better. They were apparantly so worried about doing a clean pull out from under the developers that they decided to let customers take the fall. That's simply inexcusable.
Personally, I think it's letting this company off the hook much too easily to simply say "business is business."
I'm also wondering what will happen with unspent Paragon Points. They are naturally going to claim that they are forfeit, and there is a no-returns policy. I hope for their sake every country in which they do business agrees. Even though nothing would likely ever come of it, if the idea was that they could take cash from customers and then walk away clean in a few months time, the fact that they've been dealing in virtual currency could come back to bite them hard--if not in this particular timeframe, over this game, then eventually. I'm constantly amazed at how efficient this industry is at screwing itself over.
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That's not how layoffs work though. You never give people advance notice that they're going to be laid off. That's not NCSoft's policy, it's the policy of every company I've worked for or heard about.|
Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
With no malice intended toward you: that is truly beside the point. It doesn't matter who in the chain was publishing the messages. If NCSoft intended to pull the plug, that is when they need to tell the developers that they should be dialing back services. The fact that NCSoft was also planning to screw Paragon Studios at the time they were screwing City of Heroes customers doesn't make their case any better. They were apparantly so worried about doing a clean pull out from under the developers that they decided to let customers take the fall. That's simply inexcusable.
Personally, I think it's letting this company off the hook much too easily to simply say "business is business." I'm also wondering what will happen with unspent Paragon Points. They are naturally going to claim that they are forfeit, and there is a no-returns policy. I hope for their sake every country in which they do business agrees. Even though nothing would likely ever come of it, if the idea was that they could take cash from customers and then walk away clean in a few months time, the fact that they've been dealing in virtual currency could come back to bite them hard--if not in this particular timeframe, over this game, then eventually. I'm constantly amazed at how efficient this industry is at screwing itself over. |
Adding a thought - this problem would be impossible by your standards. No matter when they pulled the plug, there would have been something that went on sale prior to it, which would be inaccessible after fixed time X.
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So you're saying NCSoft should have continued paying a bunch of people, while telling them to not work?
| If NCSoft intended to pull the plug, that is when they need to tell the developers that they should be dialing back services. |
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
So you're saying NCSoft should have continued paying a bunch of people, while telling them to not work?
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No. I'm saying that their relationship to their workforce has exactly zero to do with their relationship to customers and if they had any respect for their customers that would be the bottom line. But it isn't. I get that some people feel the need to defend the rights of corporations to act like sociopaths, but then that's why this industry is in the state it's in. Sales of electronic goods are based on goodwill and trust, and as a player they are not a company I can trust.
IMO corporations are not the only ones allowed to look out for their own interests. Sociopathy is a not virtue just because its perpetrated by a multi-national organization. The idea that I, as a person who bought Nature Affinity 8 days before the parent company decided to also announce cancellation of the game, should let it slide just because that company was also planning a mass layoff and needed to keep it secret from their own employees is simply bizarre to me. I am not here to collude with them against their own development team. Their labor relations are not my concern whatsoever and the idea that I should be the middleman in that equation is simply absurd.
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You're ignoring the fact that any other service provider would behave in exactly the same fashion in the same situation (i.e. closing a subsidiary studio.)|
Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
No. I'm saying that their relationship to their workforce has exactly zero to do with their relationship to customers and if they had any respect for their customers that would be the bottom line. But it isn't. I get that some people feel it's their need to defend the rights of corporations to act like sociopaths, but then that's why this industry is in the state it's in. Sales of electronic goods are based on goodwill and trust, and as a player they are not a company I can trust.
Honestly, I don't get why people feel like corporations are the only ones allowed to look out for their own interests. Avoiding this company's business in the future is a perfectly rational decision, just like I would any other service provider that behaved in such an unethical manner. |
And calling it sociopathic behavior misses the mark as well. If they had no respect for their customers, they could have just pulled the plug on the servers today.
I know a lot of people are very upset. I'm one of them. But imagining that NCSoft has some higher responsibility to keep the game running is just self-delusion.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
You're ignoring the fact that any other service provider would behave in exactly the same fashion in the same situation (i.e. closing a subsidiary studio.)
And calling it sociopathic behavior misses the mark as well. If they had no respect for their customers, they could have just pulled the plug on the servers today. I know a lot of people are very upset. I'm one of them. But imagining that NCSoft has some higher responsibility to keep the game running is just self-delusion. |
I didn't ask for the game to stay open indefinitely. I did say that I think selling a powerset 10 days before announcing a shut down of the game is pushing the edge of unethical behavior. Whether it crosses a legal threshold or not is completely irrelevant. The fact that some businesses would do the same thing is also irrelevant. Some businesses are willing to screw their customers. These are usually businesses I avoid. End of discussion.
I don't know what it is about the way NCSoft has handled this situation that impresses you so much, but I do think you are someone with minimal expectations, or at least a very literally legal interpretation thereof.
How would you have preferred it to go down?
That they stop development. And then sometime later, tell us as they pull down the servers? We're getting three months before they shut down the servers, which is quite a bit of time still.
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Ah, so you wanted them to fire Paragon, and not tell us. Then it would have been perfectly fine. If they had shut down the servers yesterday, I'd say you'd have a case for 'unethical'... but they're not for three months.
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Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
I didn't ask for the game to stay open indefinitely. I did say that I think selling a powerset 10 days before announcing a shut down of the game is pushing the edge of unethical behavior. Whether it crosses a legal threshold or not is completely irrelevant. The fact that some businesses would do the same thing is also irrelevant. Some businesses are willing to screw their customers. These are usually businesses I avoid. End of discussion.
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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So layoff can also be challenged to be injust , since the division was profitable . |
Originally Posted by Brillig
That's not how layoffs work though. You never give people advance notice that they're going to be laid off. That's not NCSoft's policy, it's the policy of every company I've worked for or heard about.
Adding a thought - this problem would be impossible by your standards. No matter when they pulled the plug, there would have been something that went on sale prior to it, which would be inaccessible after fixed time X. |
customers do have rights to challenge any product purchased with a CC within 30 days .
Since I wish not to be refunded in another NCSOFT , I can easily go to the bank and ask them withdraw back the spending , especially if product was spent on a soon to be none excistant virtual good .
That they dare to charge me 200 euro , when they made decisions like that , maybe boils to fraud and deciet .
Out of respect for Paragon studios , I will reconsider , but basically depending on how much NCSOFT is going to be pissing me off .
Since virtual goods is not important to me , but emotional value is !
That is one asset lawyers always fail to calculate on ! since everything in the end boils down to spending for emotions .
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All I'm saying is that your standards divide businesses into two classes. 1) businesses that you avoid and 2) businesses that haven't had the chance to make you avoid them yet. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just strange that you think the businesses in the first category are in some way unethical.|
Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
I didn't ask for the game to stay open indefinitely. I did say that I think selling a powerset 10 days before announcing a shut down of the game is pushing the edge of unethical behavior. Whether it crosses a legal threshold or not is completely irrelevant. The fact that some businesses would do the same thing is also irrelevant. Some businesses are willing to screw their customers. These are usually businesses I avoid. End of discussion.
I don't know what it is about the way NCSoft has handled this situation that impresses you so much, but I do think you are someone with minimal expectations, or at least a very literally legal interpretation thereof. |
I'm not impressed with how NCSoft has handled the situation, that's just you projecting. Personally, I think I have a pretty realistic appreciation of how businesses operate. It keeps my blood pressure low.
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Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
Ah, so you wanted them to fire Paragon, and not tell us. Then it would have been perfectly fine. If they had shut down the servers yesterday, I'd say you'd have a case for 'unethical'... but they're not for three months.
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I didn't prescribe any particular course of action. Just a word of warning for them: sunsetting a game is as much a marketing issue as it is a financial one, if you plan to stay in the business with a similar product. I have been through this process before as a team member supporting other software products. Be careful of reminding your customers just how temporary their virtual purchases are. What you are selling isn't a real product. It's trust. In a world where every new MMO didn't bottom out within a few months, that might not be a lesson that needed to be taught. But here we are.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, etc. I won't be boycotting, but that's the last of my virtual purchases. Sorry NCSoft, but you took away my confidence, and I don't give a flying fig about your labor force, taxes, or other games. I can't trust you, so I'm not buying what you're selling on trust. The end.
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No, you didn't. And I was asking you what would be one, in a case where they decide to shut down a game. An ethical one, since you expressly stated that giving three months notice was unethical.
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Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
I didn't prescribe any particular course of action.
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
No, you didn't. And I was asking you what would be one, in a case where they decide to shut down a game. An ethical one, since you expressly stated that giving three months notice was unethical.
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For an MMO serving a multi national audience, with strong overlap with other products marketed by the same company? Personally I would say that to maintain the illusion of virtual products having real world value, the preferred path is probably a server merge and transition to backburner status. Some people will say that the financials don't support this, but I very much disagree. The value of your virtual currency depends entirely on how much trust your users place in it.
Remember that in the modern MMO what is being sold primarily is no longer subscriptions (ie access to service), it is virtual goods. These goods only have value when the illusion of durability exists. People simply will not pay for these items when they think the game could shut down at any minute (as many people clearly would not have with Nature Affinity and Water Blast had they seen what is the cards for the game very shortly thereafter).
That some companies start MMOs with no carefully pre-determined sunset plan is obvious, but that most modern MMOs fail in spectacular fashion is equally apparent. One thing I can at least say for Blizzard is that they have at least long understood the value of leveraging legacy products as marketing tools and vessels of community goodwill, in ways companies like EA and (apparently) NCSoft do not.
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In other words "never."
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Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
For an MMO serving a multi national audience, with strong overlap with other products marketed by the same company? Personally I would say that to maintain the illusion of virtual products having real world value, the preferred path is probably a server merge and transition to backburner status. Some people will say that the financials don't support this, but I very much disagree. The value of your virtual currency depends entirely on how much trust your users place in it.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
In other words "never."
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More like "long enough not to do serious damage to your company currency." But that's really beside the point. The company has shown its hand. Its virtual products are of lower value than I originally anticipated. Shame on me for buying them. I won't make the same mistake twice. As someone who seems keenly interested in actors making self-interested decisions that should delight you. I, like NCSoft, am capable of making decisions about my financial situation and where I am willing to risk an investment.
Maybe that means the company was selling placebos all along. Well, now I know.
CoH doesn't have a strong overlap with their other products. NCSoft is big in Asia. CoH was a complete and total failure in Asia. CoH was also very small compared to their other games (unfortunately).
There might be a little erosion of the 'value' of virtual currency... but that's only assuming people intentionally keep large amounts of money in that virtual currency for extended periods of time. I'd imagine the most common situation is to never have more than a few dollars in the currency at a time just sitting around (if there's more, it probably is temporary because a purchase is about to be made), so the 'durability' isn't an especially large factor that's intrinsic to the currency. The durability of the MMO itself, I'd wager, continues to be more significant. Screw the virtual goods, it's the hundreds to thousands (if not tens of thousands) of hours spent playing the game that matters more to people.
There's already been many MMOs that have closed, including ones larger than CoH. Again, CoH is much smaller than NCSoft's other games, including Aion... so most people probably probably won't have their position on NCSoft moved at all... after all, they already had a reputation for killing underperforming MMOs, rather than running them for all of eternity.
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Making a decision isn't necessarily a good thing if it's a bad decision |
Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
More like "long enough not to do serious damage to your company currency." But that's really beside the point. The company has shown its hand. Its virtual products are of lower value than I originally anticipated. Shame on me for buying them. I won't make the same mistake twice. As someone who seems keenly interested in actors making self-interested decisions that should delight you. I, like NCSoft, am capable of making decisions about my financial situation and where I am willing to risk an investment.
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If you thought your stuff would be around forever... well, you obviously weren't familiar with NCSoft's long established track record, nor do you value the time you got with the goods already (a minimum of three months for the MOST RECENT items).
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
... well, you obviously weren't familiar with NCSoft's long established track record...
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Well that's something we can agree on.
I should add btw Kitsune that I hope this doesn't seem personal. I think you have a lot of good points. I just get a little testy when my money gets involved--especially when it's glaringly obvious the company had this planned for some time but continued to allow powerset sales, which many players would not have made had they been aware of the game's looming deadline. I definitely didn't think the game would last forever. This is not my first game sunset, or even the most traumatic one. I still feel suckered by the company and it would take a monumental effort for me to invest heavily in them again.
I do still think companies in NCSoft's position need to think hard about the nature of their business model though. The "free to play" model is quickly falling into many of the traps that endangered the old "pay for access" models. For players to pay you money for goods, they have to believe that the goods have value. We may know in a "rational" sense that they do not, but reminding your customers of that is never, ever a good thing and must be very carefully managed.
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I would wager something like this: http://mmofallout.com/2011/05/17/cry...eing-sold-off/|
Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
No, you didn't. And I was asking you what would be one, in a case where they decide to shut down a game. An ethical one, since you expressly stated that giving three months notice was unethical.
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First you privately shop around to see what you can get for CoH, then you discontinue but let the development team finish any short term work they were doing while publicly announcing your intention to sell off the division.
You'd get continued sales chiefly because the player base would also attempt to make the game look as profitable as it can if they wanted to keep playing it (look at all the people on these forums willing to put up at least $10 to save CoH right now after the fact) and it would ensure a smooth transition because whoever bought it would have instant admiration and loyalty of almost an entire player base which would give you leeway to make any discomforting changes you need to make.
No matter how bad this is, it's not like NCsoft forged a letter to screw Mat Miller out of stock options like they did to Garriot.
Cpt. Shwan.
Virtue, AR/Dev Blaster, lvl 50+3, 3300+ Hours logged.
Created 8/20/2004 - Proud Captain of Hero Dawn!
I will still boycott ncSoft and never give them another dollar
...
Well, crap.
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