I honestly hope we haven't given up already. Have you given up?
By
Ael Rhiana,
Posted on: 2012-11-08 17:31 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Actually, from what we've heard, it wasn't a downward spiral, it was pretty much steady state (which I'll grant isn't good). More, it is rumored (but with enough details that I believe it) that PS wanted to do a CoH 2 but was turned down by NCSoft.|
Originally Posted by Fire_Away
Total shock? Snap decison? No question about it from the player or hard working on the floor developer perspective. What about from the executive level? No communications between NCSoft and PS? Hard to believe. How about this strategy and outcome as a guess from me: When product X is on a slow but sure downward spiral develop new and improved product Z through a secret project to convince that mothership you have what it takes to deliver the profits they are looking for. Mothership is unimpressed with product Z, see a total waste of resources in product Z (a secret project that they knew about or worse, one they did not know about in advance thinking you were improving product X). Exit studio stage right. The end.
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And for the idea of communication on the executive level - you really think the execs at PS would have been told "things have to get a lot better soon or we're going to close the thing down" and would have sat on it? What would be the purpose?
In any case, looking at what Brian Clayton did post announcement tells me he got little if any advance notice. He'd have started negotiations as soon as it looked like it wasn't going to happen, and either would have been much further in working on details or, by announcement time, started polishing his resume because he knew NCSoft wouldn't sell.
I'll agree with you on one thing - clearly the secret project didn't impress the powers that be at NCSoft. But even if the deciding factor was the secret project, again it wouldn't have been a surprise in any rational business process.
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
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Also a couple of things to consider. |
Originally Posted by GadgetDon
And what happens then is that you do have people leaving the company while they can (always better on your resume for "got offered a better job" than "got laid off"), things get delayed, marketing tends to take on a hysterical tone. In our case, it would've meant stuff being shoveled into the store to try to get people to part with money. And the rumor mill starts running rampant - they're being shut down, they're being bought out, they're going to change everything.
And while all this is going on, the division starts getting shopped around. There are no accounting tricks that make a sale worth less than shelving something - even if you sell it for less than your book value, you get the deduction of the difference, same as the deduction as it depreciates away. And remember, the value of a deduction is the deduction times the tax rate. The value of income from a sale is every penny of the sale up to the book value and then (1-taxrate)*(saleprice-bookprice) for money above the book value. Plus you don't have to pay severance pay or the other closing costs if the deal is handled right. We got none of that, and from everything the people who worked for Paragon Studios said, this was a total shock. This was not a normal business decision "oh well, they just aren't measuring up, time to close the book on it." This was a snap decision and those are rarely well thought out. |
#1. Just having an MMO as old and legendary as CoH that you can say is still profiting, is something you can flaunt to the world to tell them you're a good game maker. It's a well-known title and it was still alive. To say that you're not just keeping it around as a favor to the gamers, but are actually still making money off it, is pretty darned good publicity. It may not be a flagship MMO, but it's still some nice icing on the cake. They also had PS, which among MMO's, had a better relationship with its player base than practically any other developer but Blizzard. Again, that's not a trophy you just want to toss out.
#2. If we had any inkling that PS was in danger of shutting down, I can't even imagine what would be happening right now. Take a look at what the players have done in an effort to save the game. If NCsoft didn't want to pay to advertise CoH, it probably wouldn't have even mattered. I've seen what this community has been able to do, and I dare say that practically ANYTHING that was needed to keep the game going, would have been accomplished. But then there's also the problem. Nobody was in danger. The game was still profiting, PS never saw it coming, and everyone expected to see new products. It's not just that NCsoft canned the whole thing. They never even gave PS a chance to rebirth CoH with a sequel, or finish the 'super-secret project'.
#3. Sell the frigging IP. That NCsoft decided to abandon the sequel should be enough of an indication that they have no interest in its future. BUT they still want to squat on it, for whatever self-conscious reason. If another company fare better than NC did with it is reason enough to bury it, then the opposite scenario should be no worse of an option.
Option A: Sell CoH, and risk losing face when company X turns it into a gold mine.
Option B: Bury CoH, and risk losing face for being a big meanie.
Either way, you're inviting trouble. At least with the first option, you can make some extra money.
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I've never bought into the "risk losing face someone else will make big money with it" idea. It would be easy to use the "not in our area of focus" argument - Superhero MMOs are different from fantasy ones, different market, more western market. NCSoft wants to focus on products that do well in Asian market as well as Western (and if they have to pick one, pick Asian). So NCSoft would be the wise company that knew what it does well and set free the one that's outside its focus.|
Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
#3. Sell the frigging IP. That NCsoft decided to abandon the sequel should be enough of an indication that they have no interest in its future. BUT they still want to squat on it, for whatever self-conscious reason. If another company fare better than NC did with it is reason enough to bury it, then the opposite scenario should be no worse of an option.
Option A: Sell CoH, and risk losing face when company X turns it into a gold mine. Option B: Bury CoH, and risk losing face for being a big meanie. Either way, you're inviting trouble. At least with the first option, you can make some extra money. |
And if the deal includes a percentage of profits for the first year or two - they become the REALLY wise company that knew how to make money from it.
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
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ah. i see.
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Originally Posted by Starsman
No. If I am a customer, and I own the game, even if they "open" up the service so I can either host my own server or have my private one-player game, that does not give me ANY right at redistributing what I got. Copyright protection is still there at full strength.
IP protection (copyrights) are not about limiting use, it has never been. It's only about limiting... well... what the name says: copying. |
-Female Player-
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Originally Posted by mauk2
Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words.
"Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard.  Never change, E_L! |
I don't think it's that NCSoft had no interest in the future of CoH, but rather they were smart enough to see that as it was CoH..had no future. The game was not attracting (enough) new players to offset those leaving. FREEDOM was their attempt to infuse cash into a dying game; but it was too little too late. If you honestly think PS decided on Freedom because it "sounded cool" or some other nonsense you have NO business sense. Freedom was their attempt TO meet the profit quotas as set forth by NCSoft.
In other words: NCSoft had the foresight to see the bigger picture and cut their losses; before they actually became losses. All this boo-hooing just shows that very few people understand what it's like to run a large corporation and are simply running their mouths because their hearts tell them to do so.
Everything NCSoft has done has made complete business sense; firing the devs the day of announcement (check), Refunding what was owed (check), not selling the IP (check)...all smart business moves. You don't leave a team of people around who could sabotage your product. You give customers refunds for what they are owed. You save the IP for yourself in case in 10...15 years you decide to use it again in a new project.
Trying to interject all this emotional BS into a simple business decision doesn't make NCSoft look bad...it just makes you look emotionally unstable. NCSoft gave a reason why they did what they did; people failing to accept that reason is their own issues. I wholeheartedly accept it - they are focusing on different products. When I see people demonizing NCSoft for this decision it doesn't make me hate NCSoft; it makes me feel bad that these people can't grasp the reality of the situation.
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Originally Posted by Paladiamors
I love you, I Burnt the Toast!
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yeah
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Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
And when you run a billion+ worldwide corporation you can make that decision.
Just because a few people FEEL like they are being treated badly doesn't mean the entire player base feels that way. Heck I was glad we got a 90 day sunset. I was glad I got a refund on my Paragon points purchase and subscription. I was glad I kept my VIP status after my sub time lapsed. NCSoft could have truly been jerks about it and closed the game on 9/30 if they really wanted to. They could have made accounts lapse into premium. They could have taken the forums down on 8/31. They could have done a lot of things that would have been much worse. So no I am grateful for the time I had with CoH, and the time/treatment after the announcement. |
-Female Player-
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Originally Posted by mauk2
Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words.
"Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L! |
Burnt, I don't totally disagree with everything you just said. Most of it is factual. But your opinion on those facts makes it look like you view capitalism almost like an infallible deity.
Burying the IP though does NOT make good business sense. Sitting on it just in case 10 years from now, they have another "shift of company focus" and gain an interest in the U.S. superhero market again is just a waste. By that time, the historic factor of the IP would bring it almost no particular value worth keeping. They could do just as well to create an entirely new one.
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Sometimes you have a choice in the matter to go to war, sometimes you dont have a choice to not be hit by terrorist attack and usually dont have a choice to not get robbed.|
Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
Dumbest phrase ever created by humans, done for no other reason than to trick society into believing that being a business somehow mystically ascends you to a god-like status and makes you accountable to nobody. Everyone is just accustomed to it being that way. Doesn't make it right. It's a kind of free-reign that business never should've had. And this isn't the same kind of thing as intense regulation that some people are whining is evil socialism, communism, or whatever they're calling it now. What happens when people start acting immoral? A law gets passed to discourage such behavior. Why should businesses not have to operate under the same pretense?
Just imagine other activities being given that get-out-of-blame-for-free card. "It's just war." "It's just terrorism." "It's just theft." |
But you do have a choice whether to partake in that buisness or not. So yea it is just buisness. And shutting down a game is not like none of the above and a bit insulting to trivialize terrorism and war compared to a buisness decision to shut down a game when I seen people missing limbs from stepping on a land mine, or see the pile of rubble when terrorist ran planes into the two towers full of people on board, seem pieces of people from Afganistan, some not even over the age of 19 have to be identified by a few pieces of flesh and teeth because the rest of him could not be recovered. Ever smelled burnt flesh? No where near the level of shutting down a game.
It's just buisness and if their buisness practice was so damaging then should not have gave them a penny at all. If you chose to then that's your fault. No one said you had to invest so much money that it felt like a "terrorist" attack when they made a simple buisness decision to close the game. If you didnt know what they was about before I guess it's safe to assume that now you know and have no more excuse to spend life savings into something that someone else owns. I alwasy thought that was common sense but doesnt seem to be the case.
-Female Player-
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Originally Posted by mauk2
Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words.
"Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L! |
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You seem to fail to realize that most wars are ultimately business decisions. Citing human rights or the spread of democracy is just the convenient sugar-coating that gets used to keep the civilians quiet about it. Take the American Civil War. Was slavery a factor? Yes. Was slavery wrong? Yes. But behind all that you had the fact that the South had a free labor class which would make them automatically capable of underselling the North no matter what. Business. Not morality. These days it's usually about natural resources though. Or even just having a hand in reconstruction, so you can send your warriors in to level a city on taxpayer money and then profit from the rebuilding of it in the private sector.
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Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy
Sometimes you have a choice in the matter to go to war, sometimes you dont have a choice to not be hit by terrorist attack and usually dont have a choice to not get robbed.
But you do have a choice whether to partake in that buisness or not. So yea it is just buisness. And shutting down a game is not like none of the above and a bit insulting to trivialize terrorism and war compared to a buisness decision to shut down a game when I seen people missing limbs from stepping on a land mine, or see the pile of rubble when terrorist ran planes into the two towers full of people on board, seem pieces of people from Afganistan, some not even over the age of 19 have to be identified by a few pieces of flesh and teeth because the rest of him could not be recovered. Ever smelled burnt flesh? No where near the level of shutting down a game. |
And your statements make it seem like I am some Corporate loving fool... No I am a realist. I don't live my life governed by emotions. I simply fail to see the benefits of arguing using emotions over something like a simple business decision. If ANYONE has a right to be angry at NCSoft it would be the PS staff...after all this decision impacted them way more than you or I. They closed a game...because they wanna focus on other games. Got it. Sucks but I get it. I don't have the time/energy to waste in my life to be angry at a corporation for wanting to maximize their profits. I do not run a bill+ worldwide corporation and have no idea what demands are being placed on them for profits, and getting all emotional over this will not change anything.
All the anti NCSoft posts etc do not make CoH seem like a community worth saving IMO; especially when misinformation, lies, half truths, etc are being used as the weapon of choice. It would be different if the opposition to NCSoft wasn't full of hypocrisy and emotional temper tantrums.
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Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
Burnt, I don't totally disagree with everything you just said. Most of it is factual. But your opinion on those facts makes it look like you view capitalism almost like an infallible deity.
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Originally Posted by Paladiamors
I love you, I Burnt the Toast!
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MOST wars are in the name of a God.....or an idea of right and wrong.
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Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
You seem to fail to realize that most wars are ultimately business decisions. Citing human rights or the spread of democracy is just the convenient sugar-coating that gets used to keep the civilians quiet about it. Take the American Civil War. Was slavery a factor? Yes. Was slavery wrong? Yes. But behind all that you had the fact that the South had a free labor class which would make them automatically capable of underselling the North no matter what. Business. Not morality.
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Originally Posted by Paladiamors
I love you, I Burnt the Toast!
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That is a little laughable and demonstrates a near complete lack of knowledge of American history. One it's almost impossible to run industrial enterprises with slave labor that is aware it is slave labor. Two the north had something called "Imigrants" that were much better than slaves for the purpose because not being a capital investment they could be treated far worse.
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Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
You seem to fail to realize that most wars are ultimately business decisions. Citing human rights or the spread of democracy is just the convenient sugar-coating that gets used to keep the civilians quiet about it. Take the American Civil War. Was slavery a factor? Yes. Was slavery wrong? Yes. But behind all that you had the fact that the South had a free labor class which would make them automatically capable of underselling the North no matter what. Business. Not morality. These days it's usually about natural resources though. Or even just having a hand in reconstruction, so you can send your warriors in to level a city on taxpayer money and then profit from the rebuilding of it in the private sector.
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Because the same BS that went into this business decision is exactly the same BS that goes into driving all sorts of greater destructive forces. The very use of the word business is wielded all the time as a way of minimizing the implications of whatever party A did to party B. It tells business folks that they don't have to think about anything but profit, and that scenario is BAD, whether you're a realist or not. And there's a lot of anger brewing all over the place over things like this. Disregard for humanity in favor of the blind pursuit of profit drives everything from a simple MMO shutdown, to the fall of the housing market that now has the whole world balancing itself on the head of a pin.|
Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
And your statements make it seem like I am some Corporate loving fool... No I am a realist. I don't live my life governed by emotions. I simply fail to see the benefits of arguing using emotions over something like a simple business decision.
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| All the anti NCSoft posts etc do not make CoH seem like a community worth saving IMO; especially when misinformation, lies, half truths, etc are being used as the weapon of choice. It would be different if the opposition to NCSoft wasn't full of hypocrisy and emotional temper tantrums. |
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Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
MOST wars are in the name of a God.....or an idea of right and wrong.
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Originally Posted by Another_Fan
That is a little laughable and demonstrates a near complete lack of knowledge of American history. One it's almost impossible to run industrial enterprises with slave labor that is aware it is slave labor. Two the north had something called "Imigrants" that were much better than slaves for the purpose because not being a capital investment they could be treated far worse.
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Say what you want about the North having an equivalent workforce, but don't try saying that they actually had it WORSE.
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You don't leave a team of people around who could sabotage the product you're shelving. Riiight.|
Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
Everything NCSoft has done has made complete business sense; firing the devs the day of announcement (check), Refunding what was owed (check), not selling the IP (check)...all smart business moves. You don't leave a team of people around who could sabotage your product. You give customers refunds for what they are owed. You save the IP for yourself in case in 10...15 years you decide to use it again in a new project.
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And as for saving the IP for yourself - they've "saved the IP" of Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault, Dragon Runners, and Exteel and it's done nothing but gather dust.
So let's assume in 10 years someone gets the smart idea of saying "hey, let's try that superhero thing again that we totally failed to sell in our main market" and aren't shouted down. CoH was already an old code base now, 10 years from now it'll be ancient, like playing Adventure on an Atari 2600 - and that's assuming we'll still be gaming on desktops and laptops running a version of Windows. The hero and villain groups? Will they still have relevance in 2022?
And when it comes to the value of a brand game, anyone who remembers it will remember it as "oh yeah that game that NCSoft killed".
So NCSoft is trading real money today against a vanishingly small chance it'll be worth money in the future. And that's a smart business decision. It's still probably moot - it's too late for a deal that keeps the servers up without interruption, the devs who know the code are moving on to other jobs, so NCSoft has probably destroyed any value in the IP so there may not be much difference between sell now or shelve it. But selling it as an active division with experience development team and well-thought-of update coming down the line, that's where real money was possible.
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
See - emotional.
This is a GAME not something dealing with the real world. I didn't realize that saying they wanted to focus on other projects meant people would be forced to spread lies about their other products or games. They told you why they were closing CoH. People have shown how CoH has slowly been dying. It doesn't take a genius to put 2 and 2 together to see WHY NCsoft did what they did. It just takes the ability to not get all emotional and see it from a less biased viewpoint.
CoH was a great game, but ya know what...it didn't have the numbers to sustain itself. FREEDOM was the last ditch effort to bring some more revenue in..... You can try to make this as emotional as you want, but I am sorry to tell you your emotional distress is of your own making and not NCSofts.
I have nothing against you...heck I even cried at your first video, but there is a time to let things go. NCSoft is not some evil corporation all of a sudden. They are the same business that supported CoH over the years until that support was no longer proving beneficial to them...a simple business decision. I'm sorry you can't/won't see that and hope after Dec 1 you can find something to help you, but a lot of people have stopped...mourned..and moved on. I LOVED CoH... it was the only MMO I played...I will miss it. I do not fault NCSoft for closing it down. I do not fault NCSoft's press release as it it tells me why they did what they did. I will not boycott NCSoft for making a business decision. I do not feel/think I am owed any explanation as I have figured things out for myself and have never "demanded" an explanation from any other company for such things. I am a consumer/customer...if I truly dislike a company it is for more ethical reasons that relate to things that truly affect my life and views (Animal testing for example).
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NCsoft has nobody to blame but themselves for the misinformation, lies, half-truths, etc, with the pathetically minimal amount of information that has been handed out. And what's the alternative? Just accept it? Next time someone shoves my face in the mud, yeah, I'll just sit there and take it, because that will get me way more respect than fighting back against something that every cell of my being knows is wrong.[/QUOTE]
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Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
Because the same BS that went into this business decision is exactly the same BS that goes into driving all sorts of greater destructive forces. The very use of the word business is wielded all the time as a way of minimizing the implications of whatever party A did to party B. It tells business folks that they don't have to think about anything but profit, and that scenario is BAD, whether you're a realist or not.
All the anti NCSoft posts etc do not make CoH seem like a community worth saving IMO; especially when misinformation, lies, half truths, etc are being used as the weapon of choice. It would be different if the opposition to NCSoft wasn't full of hypocrisy and emotional temper tantrums. |
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Originally Posted by Paladiamors
I love you, I Burnt the Toast!
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Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
Burnt, I don't totally disagree with everything you just said. Most of it is factual. But your opinion on those facts makes it look like you view capitalism almost like an infallible deity.
Burying the IP though does NOT make good business sense. Sitting on it just in case 10 years from now, they have another "shift of company focus" and gain an interest in the U.S. superhero market again is just a waste. By that time, the historic factor of the IP would bring it almost no particular value worth keeping. They could do just as well to create an entirely new one. |
The entire argument seems to boil down to this one point of selling the IP (and/or the entire game) just about every single time. If you were given a logical, rational and cost based or legal based explanation why this did not happen would you feel better? I'm not saying I have such an explanation that would convince you... but if one existed...
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom (or freem?) fighter; just as one man's exploit is another man's feature.
Uhmm no you don't leave people around who can sabotage your product. There is a reason almost all companies have people exit the day of a lay off/firing...because it would be stupid to let them still "mess" with your product and customers. People are WAY too emotional (see these forums for a prime example) and when people/employees get emotional they have the propensity to do damaging things. It is better to not risk it and make firings immediate. Don't have to be a business guru to comprehend this - simple human nature and understandable business practice. I have NEVER worked for a company who laid people off or fired them and let them continue working there; which is why most of these things happen on: Friday.
The IP consists of more than just the code.....Lore.
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Originally Posted by GadgetDon
You don't leave a team of people around who could sabotage the product you're shelving. Riiight.
And as for saving the IP for yourself - they've "saved the IP" of Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault, Dragon Runners, and Exteel and it's done nothing but gather dust. So let's assume in 10 years someone gets the smart idea of saying "hey, let's try that superhero thing again that we totally failed to sell in our main market" and aren't shouted down. CoH was already an old code base now, 10 years from now it'll be ancient, like playing Adventure on an Atari 2600 - and that's assuming we'll still be gaming on desktops and laptops running a version of Windows. The hero and villain groups? Will they still have relevance in 2022? And when it comes to the value of a brand game, anyone who remembers it will remember it as "oh yeah that game that NCSoft killed". So NCSoft is trading real money today against a vanishingly small chance it'll be worth money in the future. And that's a smart business decision. It's still probably moot - it's too late for a deal that keeps the servers up without interruption, the devs who know the code are moving on to other jobs, so NCSoft has probably destroyed any value in the IP so there may not be much difference between sell now or shelve it. But selling it as an active division with experience development team and well-thought-of update coming down the line, that's where real money was possible. |
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Originally Posted by Paladiamors
I love you, I Burnt the Toast!
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Yes, I would rather hear that. Though I'd say my eyebrows are raised more at the "exhausted all options" comment rather than the original shutdown notice at this point. We don't live in an age where you can just drop a bombshell out of nowhere, and then say "negotiations have failed" when you can't even provide proof that they happened at all, and expect everyone to just believe it. The limited info we've gotten from news sources about what may or may not have happened behind closed doors, doesn't paint a pretty picture. That's the trouble with a severe lack of transparency. If there's anything sneaky going on, NCsoft has everything to gain by not only fooling us, but also fooling investors. But the more silent you are, especially to a demographic who feels like they've been wronged, the more you vulnerable you make yourself to speculation. And if that ISN'T the case, and they really did try to save it, we could feel like we were at least worth the detailed explanation.
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Originally Posted by Fire_Away
The entire argument seems to boil down to this one point of selling the IP (and/or the entire game) just about every single time. If you were given a logical, rational and cost based or legal based explanation why this did not happen would you feel better? I'm not saying I have such an explanation that would convince you... but if one existed...
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In their mind, however, its a tight MMO market. Any money and customers a new CoX makes elsewhere are money and customers that aren't going to NCSoft.|
Originally Posted by GadgetDon
So NCSoft is trading real money today against a vanishingly small chance it'll be worth money in the future.
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Yeah, it sucks and its irrational. But in a world of eleventy billion MMOs competing against social games and MOBAs, you get stuff like this and 'churn' and lockboxes and TOR's F2P debacle. Everyone's grabbing for that last lifeboat full of money on the MMOtanic.
Blood Widow Ricki * Tide Shifter * T-34 * Opposite Reaction * Shaolin Midnight * ChernobylCheerleader
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There's two parts of that.|
Originally Posted by Fire_Away
The entire argument seems to boil down to this one point of selling the IP (and/or the entire game) just about every single time. If you were given a logical, rational and cost based or legal based explanation why this did not happen would you feel better? I'm not saying I have such an explanation that would convince you... but if one existed...
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First, if Burnt Toast or someone came up with a realistic reason it wouldn't or couldn't be sold, to the point of not even talking to those interested to discuss prices, I'd find that interesting, but not particularly comforting because it's only one of the stupid things NCSoft has done. (Honestly, if they're going to piss off a bunch of players, who with an IQ above room temperature would do it BEFORE the launch of a new game that there was cross-game appeal.) Any third party rationale is going to include supposition "so if their tax situation is this and if...", there's no reason to believe that the circumstances are that or that was why NCSoft did it.
If at this late date, NCSoft decided to end the mushroom treatment and lay it out why they're doing this - why they closed the game without the normal signals ahead of time, why it had to be done so quickly, and why they won't sell - I'll be honest I'd view it with suspicion and at best it would convince me that this wasn't all set in motion by a well-worn Ouija board. There might be some comfort to know there is intelligent life in NCSoft HQ, but they've still done so many things so poorly that it's not going to change anything.
Here's when it would have made a difference. Let Zwillinger make the first announcement, as the community manager. But follow it up with a full explanation, both the closing and why they feel they can't/won't sell it. I wouldn't have been happy to see the game closing, but I would've understood it. If they'd been public about not selling and why, it would have saved a lot of false hope and saved time of people I respect trying to make a deal it's now obvious they simply wouldn't do.
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
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And I said that it's the same kind of business process that leads to more destructive forces IRL. I did NOT say, that destroying CoH is of the same the same caliber as destroying a real town. Only that the thinking behind both acts is essentially the same, and equally without a conscience.|
Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
See - emotional.
This is a GAME not something dealing with the real world. I didn't realize that saying they wanted to focus on other projects meant people would be forced to spread lies about their other products or games. |
As for spreading lies... well with a lack of proof to the contrary, it's all pointless to argue whether they're lies or not. But I guess you'll just have to be a realist and accept that people have a right to speculate... unless you want to defend the rights of the game industry and stomp on the rights of news industry in the same breath
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I understand the theory for when some people are being laid off. I think it's rather insulting to the people you've hired, and should be done on a case by case basis.|
Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
Uhmm no you don't leave people around who can sabotage your product. There is a reason almost all companies have people exit the day of a lay off/firing...because it would be stupid to let them still "mess" with your product and customers. People are WAY too emotional (see these forums for a prime example) and when people/employees get emotional they have the propensity to do damaging things. It is better to not risk it and make firings immediate. Don't have to be a business guru to comprehend this - simple human nature and understandable business practice. I have NEVER worked for a company who laid people off or fired them and let them continue working there; which is why most of these things happen on: Friday.
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But when the entire office is being laid off, what are they going to do? Write bad code into the game being shut down?
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| The IP consists of more than just the code.....Lore. |
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
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GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
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All nonsense. Businesses have contractual obligations. Anything beyond that, additional things YOU think they should do, are optional.
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Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
Dumbest phrase ever created by humans, done for no other reason than to trick society into believing that being a business somehow mystically ascends you to a god-like status and makes you accountable to nobody. Everyone is just accustomed to it being that way. Doesn't make it right. It's a kind of free-reign that business never should've had.
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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
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And that is: BAD.|
Originally Posted by Ironblade
All nonsense. Businesses have contractual obligations. Anything beyond that, additional things YOU think they should do, are optional.
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No entity should be permitted to operate without a moral conscience. That includes individuals, business, government, and whatever else you can imagine.
And people wonder why there's so much regulation on business now. Well there's only 2 ways for it to go. Either the businesses regulate themselves, or the government does it. And business with it's severe lack of morality certainly isn't going to regulate itself.
This was not a normal business decision "oh well, they just aren't measuring up, time to close the book on it." This was a snap decision and those are rarely well thought out.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom (or freem?) fighter; just as one man's exploit is another man's feature.