China – Page 4 – MMO Fallout

Jagex Acquired By Chinese Investors

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Jagex, the Cambridge-headquartered creator of RuneScape and Chronicle: RuneScape Legends finally announced their acquisition by Chinese investors, with a new Board of Directors being constituted immediately upon their purchase. The acquisition was first hinted at months ago after news broke that the developer was considering offers from Chinese iron mining company Shandong Hongda.

CEO Rod Cousens praised the acquisition for its offer of “visibility in China, which is now the biggest gaming market in the world.”

“Jagex will continue to be operated by the existing management team, which has overseen an impressive trading performance in recent times and has driven its iconic franchise, RuneScape to continued to growth. It will be business as usual for the Company, its players, and its employees post-acquisition.”

The news of the acquisition comes on the heels of what Jagex refers to as “best ever performance.” In addition to RuneScape and its Old School spinoff, Jagex is currently working on card game Chronicle: RuneScape Legends and an idle game based on the same series.

(Source: Jagex press release)

Marvel Heroes Heading East To Asian Markets

MarvelGame 2014-05-19 15-08-48-84

Step aside, Avengers, or actually just stay where you are. Gazillion Entertainment has announced a partnership with cloud computing company Ubitus Inc to bring Marvel Heroes to Asia this summer. Leveraging Ubitus’ market reach, the super hero MMO will be rolling out over the region beginning with Korea and heading China-bound with other countries to follow. In addition to being available on PC and Mac, gamers will also be able to enjoy Marvel Heroes on their tablets, Smart TVs, and IPTV set-top boxes.

“Marvel itself has done an excellent job of further popularizing its iconic characters in Asian territories, and now is the perfect time to bring the ultimate game set in the Marvel Universe to those regions,” said Dave Dohrmann, CEO of Gazillion. “Marvel Heroes 2016 has gotten a great reception from our fans, and by broadening the reach of this game to a global scale, we are thrilled to have our game enjoyed by millions of new players.”

More information on the Marvel Heroes launch as it appears. No word at the moment on whether the game’s mobile functionality will hit western markets.

(Source: Gazillion Press Release)

Jagex Acquired By Chinese Mining Operation

Never let anyone tell you that 99 mining won’t get you everywhere in life. Jagex, makers of the MMO RuneScape and its many spinoffs, has announced that it is in the negotiation phase for a potential acquisition by a Chinese company by the name of Shandong Honda. You may be thinking that Shandong Honda is one of China’s many game publishers, but you would be wrong. The company is actually an iron ore mining operation.

“Jagex has entered into a non-exclusive, non-binding arrangement for a potential acquisition. The negotiations surrounding the acquisition are ongoing and it remains very much business as usual for the Company.”

Jagex’s head of community, also known as Mod Balance, posted a response that the news coverage today noting that the deal may still not materialize into anything.

Jagex is in early stage discussions with the firm in question, but we must stress that they may – or may not – materialise into anything. However, should they come to fruition, it would potentially allow us access to the Asian marketplace to a high level.

Players have been promised that their questions are being collected and answers will be given in due time.

(Source: Deal Street Asia)

Wildstar Free To Play Transition Accompanied By New Content

Wildstar is heading free to play this year and eyeing a Chinese launch, but before that happens Carbine Studios wants to detail a few changes that are coming.

“WildStar going free-to-play is so much more than a new business model”, said Mike Donatelli, product director at Carbine Studios. “We’re also introducing a massive game update full of new features and quality of life improvements. It’s going to be a fun environment for new players to join and we’re also going to do right by the players who have been with us since the beginning”.

A new rewards system will allow players to obtain points for making NCoin purchases, buying subscriptions, and redeeming CREDD. The reward system is retroactive, providing points to anyone who had previously invested in Wildstar. New players will be greeted by a revamped tutorial and new game experience, with options based on the player’s prior knowledge of MMOs. The way equipment works will change, with certain stats (brutality, finesse) being removed and replaced by other new primary stats (assault, support, health, armor).

Also accompanying the updates are changes to dungeons, splitting them into separate level tiers, and new content areas for PvE and PvP.

Look for these updates, and more, later this year.

(Source: NCSoft press release)

Snail Games Legal Double Feature

Snail Games is the subject of legal action on two fronts, so for the sake of brevity let’s talk about both of them in one article, shall we?

The first, former executive of Snail Games David Runyan is seeking damages from his employer alleging unlawful dismissal and racial discrimination. Runyan’s lawsuit specifically targets Snail Games founder Mr. Shi Hai, alleging racial discrimination against non-Chinese employees of the company. Shi Hai, according to the lawsuit, preferred Chinese employees to non-Chinese and would make disparaging comments about American customs and culture. Runyan was terminated following a back injury, and is alleging that his termination is due to his race, nationality, and necessity for disability leave.

(Source: Gamesindustry.biz)

Second, Blizzard is hot off the heels of their recent successful lawsuit against a copycat Hearthstone game, and the behemoth has set its sights on Snail Games. The latter recently launched a mobile game Taichi Panda in China and the main character is a panda. Unhappy with the similarities in character design and naming, Blizzard’s Chinese publisher Netease sent a letter to Apple requesting that the app be removed from the app store. Snail Games has denied the claims, releasing a helpful comparison chart (even more helpful if you speak Chinese) explaining the origins of the panda’s character design.

(Source: MMO Culture)

Guild Wars 2 Did Not Sell 3.8 Million In China

You may have seen some news over the past few days that Guild Wars 2 has sold 3.8 million copies in China, which would be excellent were it true. As it so often turns out, the information was spread via a fansite and is inaccurate, according to an Arenanet Twitter post:

We’d like to clarify recent news of GW2 China sales: it’s inaccurate, from a Chinese fansite, and they could be estimating characters.

The moral of the story is: Always wait for an official source.

(Source: Twitter)

1.5 Million Concurrent On Blade & Soul

Tencent Games is ready to talk about Blade & Soul’s performance in China, and the results are expectedly enormous. According to Tencent, the peak total concurrent players came up over the 1.5 million mark, with over 450 million creatures killed on the first day. Thousand Soul Demon has been slayed over 7.7 billion times, and the average queue time is apparently around six hours. This is hardly surprising when you factor in that the game launched with two hundred servers, and still had major problems with queues. Blade & Soul has so far exponentially outperformed all of Tencent’s previous games.

As far as Blade & Soul launching in the west, nothing to report.

(Source: MMO Culture)

TERA On Its Way To China

It’s hard to believe that TERA launched nearly two years ago in Korea, and even harder to believe that the game didn’t come to China before it came west. That hasn’t stopped publisher Kunlun Games from continuing with its efforts to bring the MMO to the northwest. According to a news article on MMO Culture, TERA is set to begin its first testing phase in China on January 9th, 2014. Players will be able to access content up to level 38, similar to the low content cap used in other regional betas, as well as an exclusive level 34 dungeon only available on the Chinese client.

(Source: TERA)

Blade & Soul Making Bank In China

Blade & Soul may not be coming westward for a while, but gamers in North America and Europe should be relieved to see that the game is performing exceptionally well in China. According to MMO Culture, not only is Blade & Soul on its way to surpassing two hundred servers, fifteen of which were added last week, the game has eighteen million active users. To top things off, the number of concurrent online users surpassed 1.8 million. To put that into perspective, if you took 1.8 million people, all of them would be playing Blade & Soul.

Look forward to Blade & Soul’s spike in revenue on NCSoft’s next quarterly report.

(Source: MMO Culture)

Lessons From 2013 #6: A Rift Between Regions

This year taught me that Trion Worlds isn’t all too enthusiastic about overseas endeavors. Over the course of 2013, Rift announced its impending shuttering in China, Korea, and Russia, but what caught my eye wasn’t that the game was shutting down, but why. In early October when Shanda Games announced that Rift would be shutting down in China, the publisher put the blame mostly on Trion Worlds. Xiangdong Zhang, CEO of Shanda Games, pointed to Trion and accused them of not responding to requests for localized content, leading to a lack of updates that harmed the game’s ability to keep customers. Later that month, Belver shut down the servers for Rift in China. In their announcement, Belver also noted that Trion Worlds refused to support the localized version.

The lesson here is not to localize Rift.

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