The Latest from Tony (Oct. 4th)

Originally Posted by TonyV

In response to NCsoft's communication on October 2, I want to start by saying yet again that I appreciate the support that NCsoft has given City of Heroes and its community for eight and a half years. Throughout this entire ordeal, I have had the implicit understanding (and publicly stated) that without NCsoft supporting City of Heroes at the outset, there likely would not be a game for us to fight for. We appreciate everything that NCsoft has done over the years to help build our community--things such as sponsoring conventions, meet-and-greets, and Player Summits; acquiring the intellectual property rights to City of Heroes from Cryptic Studios in 2007; and the financial support provided to Cryptic and to Paragon Studios as both were just starting out. For years, NCsoft has embraced City of Heroes as an essential part of NCsoft and helped to build its community into the wonderful one it has become, and for that, we are grateful.

I am not sure what changed, what made NCsoft decide that City of Heroes and Paragon Studios no longer fits within the long term goals of NCsoft. From multiple sources, it is my understanding that City of Heroes was still doing very well. Indeed, looking at the data provided by NCsoft's earnings releases, City of Heroes seems to be a steady performer in the NCsoft portfolio, even better than games like Guild Wars, which has received a sequel and continues to be actively supported. Nevertheless, it has never been my intention to question the business decisions made by NCsoft. If NCsoft does not wish for City of Heroes to be part of its portfolio going forward for whatever reasons, then I will respect that decision.

However, I continue to strongly feel that NCsoft is not seriously considering the option of allowing the City of Heroes intellectual property and code to be acquired by a third party. To be blunt, I do not understand how NCsoft can honestly claim that it has "exhausted all options." As long as NCsoft owns the City of Heroes property, it always has the option of allowing it to be sold. The only way that all options could possibly be exhausted is for a contract to be signed and the property transferred, at which time NCsoft would no longer have any say in the matter.

Perhaps the statement meant to say that NCsoft has exhausted all options it finds reasonable. If so, then I still disagree. While I do not know the details of negotiations that have been occurring between NCsoft and former members of Paragon Studios and/or other game publishers, I am aware that they have been taking place. I find it impossible to believe that these studios and publishers have not been able to offer any reasonable offer for the property. Also, I have reached out to NCsoft multiple times in an attempt to discuss the situation myself, to hopefully either make an offer on behalf of the game's players or, at the very least, to inform NCsoft of factors that need to be considered in negotiations with other studios. With the exception of the legal department providing an e-mail address for players to express their thoughts to NCsoft, I have received no response to my communications. If this is the case, then I strongly feel that NCsoft needs to seriously consider whether what it finds reasonable is, in fact, reasonable.

So I hope you understand that when I read that NCsoft feels that it has exhausted all options for keeping City of Heroes active, I find that statement disingenuous at best.

I feel that NCsoft is still looking at this issue as a question of, "What reasons do we have to sell City of Heroes?" In my communications I have offered several, including the obvious answers of providing revenue for other projects and the positive public relations that would come from a game publisher working with a community to achieve something almost unprecedented in the industry: keeping a game alive even after its publisher feels that it is no longer part of its long term plans. Maybe NCsoft feels that it has exhausted all options in coming up with answers to that question.

However, I think that an even more important question is: What reasons does NCsoft have to not sell City of Heroes? Because this is the question that really has me scratching my head. Are there legal issues? Of course, but are they insurmountable? Obviously not, as proven by the fact that NCsoft itself acquired complete ownership of the game in 2007 from Cryptic Studios. Is NCsoft afraid that City of Heroes will become a competitor with the company's other titles? Then hedge your risk by retaining an ownership stake in the title with no investment obligation. If it performs well, everyone wins; if it does not, NCsoft has not lost anything.

Are there other issues that are preventing the sale? If so, then tell us, and together we can figure out some way to work around it or compromise on a solution. I currently work for one of the largest IT companies in the world, and my full time is dedicated to a client who is also one of the largest manufacturing companies in the world. In my experience, there is no such thing as exhausting all possibilities in the business world. When a company wants or needs something to happen, it happens. When a company says that it has exhausted all possibilities, that means that it did not want or need it badly enough to continue trying. To me, our current status is simply that we have not yet convinced NCsoft well enough that it wants to sell City of Heroes.

What I think that NCsoft is not realizing (or possibly grossly underestimating) is that we as a community have a lot more at stake in the game at this point than NCsoft. The reasons we need NCsoft to continue working to allow the game to be sold are much more compelling. I could write for pages about the time and creative energy (and in some cases, much, much more) people have invested in the game, and as individuals, I know how important that is. However, in this response, I will address something that might be more compelling: money. NCsoft has invested money into City of Heroes, but the fact is, so have we. In fact, we have invested more money into City of Heroes than NCsoft has, as evidenced by the fact that the game was earning a profit. We have more than paid back NCsoft in revenue, and until August 31, were willing to continue doing so.

At this point, I feel that I have to point out that this profit from City of Heroes is part of what has made NCsoft's other titles such as Aion and Guild Wars 2 possible by funding their development. Hopefully you can understand the anger and disappointment we felt when a mere three days after Guild Wars 2 launched--a game that our money funded--NCsoft in essence kicked us to the curb and has now repeatedly denied us the basic dignity of continuing to exist as a community. While the money we have invested may not give us any legal standing from an ownership perspective, I believe that it does put an ethical onus on NCsoft to do whatever it can to allow the game to remain active.

So I want to make this clear: We have not yet exhausted all of our possibilities. To date, I have tried my best to be as deferential as I could to NCsoft in the spirit of staying helpful and productive to the negotiation process. I have worked hard and with utter sincerity to convince NCsoft that allowing the game to be sold is a smart business decision, as I am convinced that it is. However, it seems that these efforts have failed to make a meaningful impact, and NCsoft is apparently unswayed by our appeals to allow the game to be sold.

At this point, I intend to continue increasing pressure on NCsoft to further convince them that they should want to sell City of Heroes. Starting now, I am going to step up our media efforts, including reaching out to mainstream media outlets to further explore the issues of people pouring time and creative energy into gaming services that can be shut down at any time, even when they are making a profit. I will also be reaching out to Asian media, particularly in Seoul, so that they stop thinking of this as just a problem "over there" and so that we can reach people in their own back yard. I am going to be increasing our publicity efforts, including mobilizing the community to show up at events such as comic and gaming conventions to get the word out further of what is happening to communities that share a common interest. I am going to start a campaign of informing NCsoft's customers via avenues such as game review sites and media that NCsoft seems to have become a company that is willing to needlessly kill off gaming communities. I am going to be performing in-depth financial research into NCsoft to try to answer some of my own personal questions, such as why it is willing to shut down a profitable game, lay off 80+ employees, and kill one of its most active communities to reallocate resources towards... what, exactly? I am going to be reaching out directly to NCsoft investors to ask if this is really the direction that they want the company to be headed in, in the hopes that if NCsoft management cannot be persuaded, the people paying their paychecks and allowing them to run the company can.

I also want to be crystal clear that these are not threats. I have always said and will continue to say that I will be intolerant of any illegal activities, including activities intended to physically intimidate anyone or deny service to resources such as game servers. However, I feel that we are well within our rights to express vocally and loudly that NCsoft has not exhausted all of its options. This has always been and continues to be simply a matter of willingness to engage in good faith negotiations, and I intend to do my best to make NCsoft reconsider the question of why they are not allowing the game to be sold. While I appreciate the sentiments expressed of how proud NCsoft is of City of Heroes and how special a place it has in NCsoft's heart, we need more than sentiments. I have given my e-mail address and telephone number to NCsoft; they have demonstrated that they know how to reach me. So please, let's stop with the sentiments and figure out a plan for how together we will be able to keep the game going in such a way that we all benefit.

Sincerely,
Tony

Originally Posted by Sengara

I've been saying this in a few posts, and I just want to hear a reply from someone before I give up pushing the idea.

Is it possible to "sell" the game to the fans through something like Kickstarter?

There seem to be a lot of developers and designers that got "let go" or moved off of CoH that could basically form a new company and take CoH off NCSoft's hands. Would it be feasible to buy the game from NCSoft with that raised money and form a new company? In one of NCSofts reply posts they said they couldn't find a buyer... so could the fans be the buyer?

Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim

Indiegogo.

Originally Posted by Brillig

Originally Posted by Xzero45

Fix'd

Originally Posted by Brillig

There's that incredible CoH community again! Not sure why anyone wants to save it... I really have no clue why NCSoft won't hold substantive discussions with them...

Originally Posted by Xzero45

What do you expect? What you're doing is the equivalent of going to a funeral and shi.tting all over the casket.

Originally Posted by DarkCurrent

I'm just glad that Tony finally realized you bring weapons to a fight not words.

Negotiation isn't part of NCSoft's lexicon. Their Aug 31 Pearl Harbor of CoH is proof of that.

Originally Posted by DarkCurrent

I'm just glad that Tony finally realized you bring weapons to a fight not words.

Negotiation isn't part of NCSoft's lexicon. Their Aug 31 Pearl Harbor of CoH is proof of that.

Originally Posted by Brillig

There are a lot of problems with that statement.

In no particular order:


2. He keeps going on and on that CoH was profitable. I've yet to see any proof of that, but even conceding the point, there's no way that CoH was significantly profitable. The idea that CoH was a part of what made Aion and GW2 possible is pretty ludicrous. Saying that GW2 was made possible by CoH profits is a joke. If CoH never existed, GW2 would still have been made. On the face of the numbers, it appears that the profit from CoH was what was sustaining new products development at Paragon. New products development at Paragon didn't actually produce any new products.

Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy

Wow. Good going with trivializing the Dec. 7 1941 Pearl Harbor event where merely only 2,300 people died. Yeah, the end of a game is on that level.

Originally Posted by Father Xmas

I think the point being made was the how the announcement was a shocking surprise to us all. No rumor, no steady downsizing of the developer or reduction of new content that hints the end is coming, just BAM!



Supplies!

Originally Posted by Father Xmas

I think the point being made was the how the announcement was a shocking surprise to us all. No rumor, no steady downsizing of the developer or reduction of new content that hints the end is coming, just BAM!

Originally Posted by Brillig

There are a lot of problems with that statement.

In no particular order:

1. Of course "exhausted all options" means "exhausted all reasonable options." Do we really expect NCSoft to consider a leveraged buyout from Lord Xenu? And there's no indication that the Save CoH community actually understands what a reasonable option is. J.Random.Person sending an email to NCSoft saying that they want to buy CoH isn't a reasonable option for NCSoft. For it to be worth NCSoft's time to even evaluate an offer (even just an offer to talk), it needs to be credible. Aside from the talks with the former Paragoners, I haven't heard of anything that could be considered a credible offer. TonyV reaching out to NCSoft isn't a credible offer. If you're going to walk in off the street and expect to be able to sit down and talk, you're going to need a business plan and financial backing. And legal counsel in very short order.

2. He keeps going on and on that CoH was profitable. I've yet to see any proof of that, but even conceding the point, there's no way that CoH was significantly profitable. The idea that CoH was a part of what made Aion and GW2 possible is pretty ludicrous. Saying that GW2 was made possible by CoH profits is a joke. If CoH never existed, GW2 would still have been made. On the face of the numbers, it appears that the profit from CoH was what was sustaining new products development at Paragon. New products development at Paragon didn't actually produce any new products.

3. The community hasn't invested money in CoH. Paying for a service is not an investment. There is no "ethical onus" on NCSoft to deliver anything to us just because we paid subscription fees in the past. Paying for lunch at McDonalds doesn't make you an investor. And no matter how many McRib sandwiches you buy, there's no "ethical onus" on McDonalds to continue to provide them after the limited offer time expires.


4. Yeah. Reverse engineering is illegal. Tell me again why NCSoft should listen to anything coming out of Save CoH? On the one hand, you're supporting an effort to steal their work, and then you're complaining they they don't want to talk with you?

From the beginning, TonyV and Save CoH have done a great job of mobilizing the community and reaching out to the media, and a terrible job of pretty much everything else. Or to put it another way, you can be a businessman or a revolutionary, but you can't be both.

Originally Posted by Brillig

And my counter-point is that it wasn't a shocking surprise to all of us, and in fact should have been a surprise to none of us (if we were paying attention). Sales were flat or trending downwards, the launch of Freedom brought a very brief bump, but had no real positive effect on sales.

Reducing staff, rumors about the end, all would lead to one thing. Even fewer sales. In a situation like this, the most rational thing is to end things immediately once you've made the decision to end it. Letting things linger just keeps the costs running while the revenue goes to zero.

Originally Posted by Minotaur

Brillig, please stop trolling these threads with dubious facts at best.

Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy

Wow. Good going with trivializing the Dec. 7 1941 Pearl Harbor event where merely only 2,300 people died. Yeah, the end of a game is on that level.

Originally Posted by Brillig

Cool, once again we find that "troll" is the same as "person whose facts I can't deal with" on this board.

Originally Posted by DarkCurrent

Wow. Literal much?

It's a metaphor.

You know what that is?

Pearl Harbor... surprise strike with no warning?

Like Aug 30... everything is fine and I24 is going to be released soon. Aug 31... we're shutting down the game.