One thing I’ve been trying to do every year is to go back to the stories that MMO Fallout never followed up on, and to try and bring you all up to speed on whatever happened to the guy or the game or the thing. With that in mind, here are the five stories that MMO Fallout failed to follow up on from this year.
1. Daewoo Securities Predicts Doom For Wildstar
Initially reported on in January, Daewoo Securities predicted that Wildstar would remain flat and continue losing sales up until the fourth quarter where the number sat at zero, either meaning the group expects NCSoft to shut the title down, or that the income would be negligible. Well, they weren’t wrong, barring a bump in sales in the second quarter, Wildstar is now sitting exactly where Daewoo said it would be in the third quarter, at about a billion Won or just under $1 million USD.
Which means…well, nothing. For every quarter where it seems like things can’t get much worse before NCSoft pulls the plug, the game continues trucking along. Furthermore, the head honchos at NCSoft refuse to talk about the game during the quarterly earning calls so as I have said in the past, we won’t know anything until NCSoft tells us. Until then, all we can do is track sales and traffic.
2. Divergence Online’s Spinoff Already Dead
Divergence Online was abandoned due in part to the fact that creator Ethan Casner can’t convince people to work on the game for him in return for no pay. Luckily for him, there are plenty of inexperienced developers desperate enough for work that they would be willing to put time into an equally empty survival game, once again for no pay. As the old saying goes, you get what you pay for, and Divergence: Year Zero is just as dead as its predecessor. Alright, not as dead. There is one person playing as I write this, which is one person more than Divergence Online and technically an exponentially higher number.
With Divergence Online dead and its savior spinoff Year Zero floating face down right alongside it, this is probably the last we will hear from Ethan Casner, provided he doesn’t attempt to siphon yet another twenty grand to crowdfund a new venture.
3. Epic Sues Paragon Cheat Maker
Back in June, Epic Games sued a cheat maker who had already created a paid hack for their MOBA Paragon. The defendant, Robin Kreibich, almost immediately buckled under the weight of Epic’s lawyers and settled the lawsuit. In August, the court awarded Epic Games a permanent injunction barring Kreibich or his agents from creating or distributing cheats for Paragon or any of Epic’s other titles.
Hopefully other developers will follow suit, since Robin Kreibich’s website hosts a number of paid cheats for other games, and has already shown himself to crumble under the slightest pressure.
4. Patreon MMO Sacrament Pulls In Little
Sacrament was the subject of a May Crowdfunding Fraudster article, where I noted that the developer was switching to Patreon, a platform where prospective supporters could enjoy the benefit of paying a monthly fee for a game that will likely never see release, with none of the protections offered by Kickstarter. At the time of writing, the Sacrament Patreon had not yet started. It has, and looking at the monthly revenue stream has not drawn much faith.
Presently, Sacrament is pulling in $83 per month from 5 pledges. The development team, for their credit, has been talking nonstop about Sacrament and continues to do so. Should the game reach a point where there is something to show outside of concept art and pages of lore, MMO Fallout will be first in line to cover it.
5. Blizzard Sues Cheat Maker
Blizzard sued Bossland GmbH, bot maker and gold farmer, in California federal court back in July and we haven’t heard anything out of the lawsuit so far. Since its filing, the case has been relocated and Blizzard has yet to bring the creator into court. As of the latest court dockets, filed October 20, plaintiff Blizzard has granted the defendant an extension up until November 18 to respond to their civil complaint.
As Blizzard’s primary objective is to prove that California has jurisdiction over this case, the defendant’s first move will likely be in objection to that claim. If Bossland GmbH can convince the court that they have no jurisdiction, the case will have to be thrown out. We won’t know until Bossland responds, if they do, later this week.
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