gpots – MMO Fallout

Capture0010 — Available Again...Forever!

It isn’t very often I get to start out an article with “and finally the saga is coming to a close,” because (despite my own objections) stories like these tend to go on for a long, long time, or simply fade away into obscurity to the point where no one is talking about it anymore (because I also watch the communities for further news on ongoing stories). I don’t like to lead people on, which is why I only update ongoing stories as important events occur.

So with great pride, I can finally say that the Aika Online cash shop issues are coming to an end! Earlier this month, I talked about how Aika Online under gPotato was only meant to work in North America. Unfortunately, the company allowed players from virtually any country to register and play. When the time came for the actual developer to put their foot down and demand IP restrictions, gPotato had already launched the cash shop one week prior. The end result was that non-North American players found themselves locked out of the game, and their purchases.

Well put down those credit card chargebacks, folks, because after a couple of weeks gPotato is back with great news: The IP blocks will still be put in place, however anyone with an account created before the blocks can still play, all items and characters intact.

It’s good to see Aika’s continued track record of listening to their customers, and even better to see another saga come to an end.

My Lord of the Rings account can’t be used in Germany, nor will my World of Warcraft account work in China. My Archlord account may now work in Europe, but my Chronicles of Spellborn account will certainly not work in the Philippines. My Allods Online account might work in Australia, but my Tabula Rasa account will not work at all.

A lot of people are not aware of this, but there are a lot of developers that outsource their MMOs in foreign countries to where it was produced originally. gPotato, for example, is not actually a developer for most of their games, but actually a portal through which North American players can enjoy something directly out of Korea. gPotato hosts the servers and rakes in some cash from the cash shop, but ultimately must pay the developing body for the rights to host the title. Occasionally you will hear about MMOs switching hands, such as Codemasters losing Archlord and Cabal not shutting down in the west but actually moving over to ESTsoft.

As is the case with most publishers, gPotato only has the rights to publish Aika Online in one region: This region being North America. Due to legal restrictions, namely gPotato only having the rights to publish in North America it was only a matter of time before they acted upon that restriction, and started blocking IP addresses from outside of North America. Technically that happened three days ago, but who’s counting?

The important matter of all of this is that the cash shop was open for a full week before the announced shut down, leaving non-North American players with plenty of time to fill up on gPotato Chips (that’s what they call it, right?), the currency for Aika’s cash shop.

Players are, understandably angered at this “bull doodoo” (Not my words, from the Aika forums, also not censored.), reports are already coming in of players who had spent several hundreds of dollars worth of gpots to buff themselves in Aika, only to be barred from their accounts.

“Currently, a decision has not been reached regarding the status of existing Aika accounts which were registered outside of North America. The issue is under intensive review by management. In the event that existing accounts are blocked from playing Aika as a result of this decision, those players whose accounts would be unable to access the game will be issued a full refund on a case-by-case basis of any gPotato purchases they have made specifically for or in Aika.“

Hopefully gPotato will be able to come to a resolution. Gpots can be used in any gPotato game, so international players may be stuck using them in Allods Online or other titles. The developer for Aika is Hanbitsoft, the same company bringing Hellgate London back to the West.