Deal announced today.
Tag: buyout
Tencent Wants To Buy Funcom
Tencent wants to buy Funcom. Thank you everyone, good night.
Okay there is more information. Funcom this week publicly revealed that Tencent, currently shareholder of 29% of the developer, intends to buy the other 71% from other shareholders. Funcom is claiming that there are no plans to change management, staffing, or structure following the acquisition, nor will Funcom deviate from supporting its current library of titles.
“We have had a great relationship with Tencent as our largest shareholder so far and we are excited about this opportunity,” says Funcom CEO Rui Casais. “We will continue to develop great games that people all over the world will play, and we believe that the support of Tencent will take Funcom to the next level. Tencent will provide Funcom with operational leverage and insights from its vast knowledge as the leading company in the game space.”
Thankfully players can look forward to nothing changing, since businesses are well known to keep their promise of not making gigantic cuts following acquisitions.
Source: Funcom
XLGames Resolving Unspecified Issues Regarding Trion Worlds Buyout
Rev up the rumor mill.
In a surprising bit of news, XLGames has posted an announcement on the ArcheAge forums announcing that the 5.0 update release date is still being decided, and that the company is currently working to resolve some issues that have popped up in the recent acquisition of Trion Worlds by Gamigo. The 5.0 update was slated to launch today, with the announcement coming late yesterday afternoon that it would be delayed.
The full message has been placed below.
Dear ArcheAge players,
You may be aware that there has been a business transaction involving Trion Worlds. XLGAMES is currently resolving issues to ensure that there is no harm done to the users since our ArcheAge fans are of the utmost importance to us.
XLGAMES will do its best to settle any matters with the involved parties in a speedy manner. The release date of the Relics of Hiram 5.0 Update will be decided and notified to you soon.
Thank you for your support.
-XLGAMES Team
How City of Heroes Could Have Avoided The Press
I’ve known about negotiations between unnamed buyers and NCSoft to purchase City of Heroes, the fact that attempts to buy the game have been ongoing since it shut down in 2012 should be of little surprise to anyone given the game’s fiercely loyal fanbase and revenue margin. I haven’t run any stories on it, and not because it was requested of me to keep the matter quiet (and it was), but because the story doesn’t have a whole lot of meat to it. Truth be told, there are always attempts by developers and indie outfits to purchase defunct MMOs and nine times out of ten nothing comes as a result of the “negotiations.” To write a story about the potential deal would only serve as a hype piece, and to provide a scapegoat for the community if and when the negotiations finally fell through.
And then Massively wrote an article, and what do you know? There are some who not only have already blamed Massively for messing up the deal, but are claiming that it was an intentional act of sabotage.
Justin’s articles are always belittling CoH and the fact that the playerbase continues to try. (Mostly because of his inherent hard-on for SWG.)
I saw that to and am annoyed. My trust in massively.com has gone down because of that. Like, seriously can’t they respect us until we got more details and the deal comes through? Can’t they wait for this deal and the team to finish or fail before posting about it? But the way Justin talks it’s clear he doesn’t give a crap.
On the other hand it has been requested time and again that people keep it low key while the negotiations are going on, so if Justin really does have some sort of animosity towards CoH and the associated community posting an article on Massively right at a time when negotiations are supposed to be at a critical stage could be a very deniable way to try to hinder the deal.
It almost seems like it was done purposefully. If the guy scoured the forum pages in an effort to undermine the effort, then he is truly a spiteful, little, miserable man.
If the team negotiating the deal didn’t want the situation being discussed, they shouldn’t have discussed it. Rather than keeping the situation quiet, however, small updates on the negotiations have trickled out onto the publicly available forums of the game’s most popular fansite, by a moderator of said forums, in a thread stickied to the top of the category called “new efforts,” in the section labeled “task force hail mary,” with a timeline of said statements compiled in the original post, with more than two hundred thousand views and nine thousand replies.
The answer to not wanting publicity is to not talk about the matter publicly. Loose lips sink ships, and a major gaming press website writing a story about this was guaranteed to happen sooner or later with chatter on the Titan forums growing larger every day. If anything, the surprise is that it took this long for a news site to jump on board.
Perfect World Scoping Out Warframe Developer
Perfect World Entertainment is in talks to acquire Digital Extremes, developers of the popular Warframe shooter. Nothing concrete has been determined at this point, as Perfect World conducts a due diligence investigation into the affairs of Digital Extremes. Digital Extremes has not commented on the impending buyout due to legal reasons:
You may have read something about the business development side of Digital Extremes and it may have you concerned. For legal reasons, we can’t disclose specifics but if you know the history of Warframe you’d know that we are intent on having Warframe’s design remain in the hands of Digital Extremes. Yes, opportunities will arise for us but the game itself is and will remain a labor of love.
More information to come as this story develops.
(Source: Press Release)
Paragon Studios Discusses Its Closure
It’s been five months since City of Heroes shut down, and the more we hear about the events surrounding the closure of Paragon Studios, the less realistic that NCSoft’s explanation that they had “exhausted all options” seems to become. Gamasutra has published a very informative piece on the closing of Paragon Studios, detailing how Paragon Studios management attempted to buy out the studio, its employees, and its games. Due to a last minute roadblock, the deal fell through and we all know what happened next.
“It was very much a surprise. We all were really working as if things were going to work out. … It was business as usual right up until the last day.”
-Matt Miller, former lead designer at Paragon
You can read the rest of the three page article at the link below.
(Source: Gamasutra)
Rumor: Nexon Making Offers To Purchase Electronic Arts
File this one under pipe dream, Yahoo News is reporting that Nexon has contacted Electronic Arts with an offer to buy the company.
Japanese online game company Nexon reportedly contacted Electronic Arts (EA) about making an offer, according to Bloomberg, citing a South Korean newspaper.
The contact is still a rumor, and even if it holds true does not mean Electronic Arts will respond. EA’s stock has seen a steep decline, down almost 40% since this time six months ago. Also, to clarify: Nexon is primarily a South Korean company, but its headquarters is based in Tokyo, Japan.
(Source: Yahoo News)
WAR's Auction House Becoming WAR Flea Market
File this one under “how is this in improvement?” I don’t normally talk about game’s individual updates, but the upcoming patch to Warhammer Online, 1.3.6, is revamping the UI of the auction house to better fit the searching needs of the game’s players. As a result of this upgrade, all auctions are standardized to 48 hours, and Mythic has decided to remove the option of bidding on items, opting for a buyout only approach.
According to the WAR Herald, the options being removed are due to lack of popularity, so I won’t question that aspect. I do have to question how removing the aspects altogether, rather than allowing the few who do utilize them, can be an improvement. It is possible, of course, that the new infrastructure of the auction house required some of the options to be removed, but aside from a technical limitation point of view, I don’t believe there is much Mythic can say to convince me “no, this is for your own good.” I feel like I’m talking to the Apple of MMOs.
Personally in the grand majority of MMOs that I have played where an auction house exists, I’ve found myself setting up a tried and true method of selling my wares: start low, set a high buyout amount, and start gathering data on how well the items sell for. On World of Warcraft, this method has become a godsend in selling stacks of cloth and has allowed me to make a substantial amount of gold doing what is essentially a side-job.
Runescape is one of the few MMOs I can think of that only features a buyout option, although the Grand Exchange isn’t billed as an Auction House, and the system of buying and selling is 100% anonymous.
I have a feeling Mythic might offer their players some clarification, and hopefully if enough people ask for it bidding might be returned to the game.
WAR’s Auction House Becoming WAR Flea Market
File this one under “how is this in improvement?” I don’t normally talk about game’s individual updates, but the upcoming patch to Warhammer Online, 1.3.6, is revamping the UI of the auction house to better fit the searching needs of the game’s players. As a result of this upgrade, all auctions are standardized to 48 hours, and Mythic has decided to remove the option of bidding on items, opting for a buyout only approach.
According to the WAR Herald, the options being removed are due to lack of popularity, so I won’t question that aspect. I do have to question how removing the aspects altogether, rather than allowing the few who do utilize them, can be an improvement. It is possible, of course, that the new infrastructure of the auction house required some of the options to be removed, but aside from a technical limitation point of view, I don’t believe there is much Mythic can say to convince me “no, this is for your own good.” I feel like I’m talking to the Apple of MMOs.
Personally in the grand majority of MMOs that I have played where an auction house exists, I’ve found myself setting up a tried and true method of selling my wares: start low, set a high buyout amount, and start gathering data on how well the items sell for. On World of Warcraft, this method has become a godsend in selling stacks of cloth and has allowed me to make a substantial amount of gold doing what is essentially a side-job.
Runescape is one of the few MMOs I can think of that only features a buyout option, although the Grand Exchange isn’t billed as an Auction House, and the system of buying and selling is 100% anonymous.
I have a feeling Mythic might offer their players some clarification, and hopefully if enough people ask for it bidding might be returned to the game.
MMO Fallout 