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NCSoft.
NCSoft are a Korean MMO publisher that know what they're doing in the Korean market but are clueless when dealing with westerners. They took over and probably at the time saved City of Heroes, a MMO I've played for more than 8 years. Out of the blue, a month ago they sacked all the staff and disbanded the US studio and said the game was closing in 3 months as it didn't fit the new company vision. Earlier in the day, the developers were talking about what their plans were for the next 2 years, so this was a huge shock to them too. The game is still profitable. They won't now sell the IP, even though several consortia want to buy it and NCSoft will never use it again.
Efforts are continuing to save the game, but there's little we can do if they won't release the IP although it looks like there's going to be a serious fan led attempt to build our own superhero MMO as the others are crap. The campaign on social media however to save the game is a new phenomenon in the industry. A petition with more than 20,000 signatures was started and a vigil was held (and thoroughly reported in the MMO internet press) where we managed to fill 2 servers and overflow onto a third. It will be interesting to see if any western studio will deal with NCSoft or any other Korean publisher in the future, as there is a real sense of outrage among the MMO community and press, and a growing group who won't touch anything NCSoft has anything to do with.
NCSoft are a Korean MMO publisher that know what they're doing in the Korean market but are clueless when dealing with westerners. They took over and probably at the time saved City of Heroes, a MMO I've played for more than 8 years. Out of the blue, a month ago they sacked all the staff and disbanded the US studio and said the game was closing in 3 months as it didn't fit the new company vision. Earlier in the day, the developers were talking about what their plans were for the next 2 years, so this was a huge shock to them too. The game is still profitable. They won't now sell the IP, even though several consortia want to buy it and NCSoft will never use it again.
Efforts are continuing to save the game, but there's little we can do if they won't release the IP although it looks like there's going to be a serious fan led attempt to build our own superhero MMO as the others are crap. The campaign on social media however to save the game is a new phenomenon in the industry. A petition with more than 20,000 signatures was started and a vigil was held (and thoroughly reported in the MMO internet press) where we managed to fill 2 servers and overflow onto a third. It will be interesting to see if any western studio will deal with NCSoft or any other Korean publisher in the future, as there is a real sense of outrage among the MMO community and press, and a growing group who won't touch anything NCSoft has anything to do with.
Well something really strange has happened. 3 groups of ex CoH players got together (2 as volunteers, one professionals reskinning another game) to produce separate attempts at making a successor game. Ours (we are missingworldsmedia, our game is City of Titans, I suspect I'm not allowed to post links to another commercial organisation here) came to kickstarter Wednesday morning. We've so far as I type raised $184K of our $320K goal in about 41 hours of the 33 day KS period, with amusingly some of the ex-CoH devs chipping in too. I'm amazed and humbled that as well as the lower value pledges, 20+ people have trusted us with $1000-$5000 of their money.
UPDATE: Less than 6 days in and we have 331K/320K already pledged, we are funded and going after stretch goals.
Especially, as often happens, when the peever is wrong and the target has made no mistake.
