
In the land of MMOs, few have ginned up more controversy than Sony Online Entertainment. Sony announced that they would be partnering with Alaplaya, gaming division of ProSiebenSat.1 to publish most of Sony’s MMOs in Europe, transitioning European players off of Sony’s account system and on to PSS. The deal has an astounding laundry list of negative impacts on both the North American and European communities which you can read here at EQ2Wire, and the drama only increased when allegations arose that PSS once had a policy of publishing personal details of its customers, and how Alaplaya’s current library is mostly filled with cheap free to play Korean grinders with pay-to-win cash shops, servers riddled with exploits and gold farmers, and mostly absent GMs.
The community has exploded over this news, and the forums were set ablaze by angry customers resulting in numerous posts deleted and users banned for “excessive negativity,” including Morgan Feldon of EQ2Wire. Sony has been mostly silent, saying little more than that the deal is not a done deal and nothing is set in stone yet, while ProSiebenSat has set up a forum and has been talking to users about specific complaints.
There will surely be more information on this as it appears.