Things haven’t been all sunshine and lollipops for Gala Net. In fact, the company has been operating at a notable, and growing, loss for the past four quarters straight. In the most recently released quarterly report, Gala announced an operating profit in the red at -167,145 (thousand JPY). On the heels of this news, MMO Culture has learned that Gala Net’s operations in North American and Europe, as well as Brazil, will be sold off to Webzen. The deal was struck just a few hours ago, and the transaction will take place on February 15th, 2013.
Webzen appears to have picked up Gala Net on the cheap, to boot. According to Reuters, Gala Net was sold for $17.5 million. Gala Net is best known for its publishing of Allods Online, Uncharted Waters, Continent of the Ninth, and more. Webzen has been covered here at MMO Fallout over their publishing of Archlord after Codemasters dropped the title back in 2009. We will have to sit back and see how the two services change as a result of this acquisition, although all likelihood points to gPotato’s games being assimilated into Webzen’s library.
If you’re like me, you still have All Points Bulletin installed on your computer, and occasionally start up the client. For those of you who don’t, you can still read the news ticker here: The ticker is occasionally updated with news on APB and Realtime Worlds, the latter still going through the negotiation process to find a buyer for the former.
A couple days ago, the following appeared on the blog:
=== 22/10/2010 ===
It’s looking like there might be light at the end of the tunnel for APB. The end of the administration process is apparently close and there appears to be a buyer for the game.
You can find more information at the above website, or by launching your APB client. We may see APB come back by the end of the year (or early next year). Perhaps Webzen will take it on, they have something of a history picking up dead MMOs. I think this is the longest an MMO has gone postmortem still being covered here on MMO Fallout.
I have not paid nearly enough attention to Archlord and, to be honest, I apologize for it. Not only do I have to start this out by bringing you back into the loop, but I had to do enough research into the Archlord archives just to bring myself up to speed. Last we left Archlord, back in January, I announced that Webzen, who had taken over hosting from Codemasters last year, was opening up a new server: Deribelle, which would play host to increased experience and drops, where players could transfer from the shutdown North American servers.
I am still not 100% back up to speed on Archlord, so if any players are viewing this I would love some information. Deribelle is still there, but American/Australian players are still without a server in their area to play on. There are currently four European servers and one Asian, and from my research of over 70 pages of Archlord threads, most of these servers shut down on a regular basis due to stress and server load.
Much of this might be attributable to the number of players attempting to reach the servers from America and Australia, who will be happy to know that Webzen has just announced the upcoming opening of Gracia, a server for American players. How for American servers is it exactly? So for American players that only American players, of the North and South variety, can transfer their characters over to this server when it opens for beta May 27th, for a live launch June 3rd.
As is usual for new servers on Archlord, the new server will play host to events as well as upped experience and drops. Hopefully I will have something to talk about by the time this update hits, but by Archlord’s way of getting into the news, that might not be until October.
A man once said, “Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach Gym.” I have a similar phrase for companies that make MMOs:
“Those who can’t develop, develop for China.”
-Omali, MMO Fallout, on the Asian MMO Market
Now, if you’re going to accuse me of implying that the Asian MMO market is saturated with hundreds of titles that are nothing more than cookie cutter item mall clones with enough grind to turn a pepper plant into microscopic sized specks, developed by small companies that rake in huge profits of the item mall selling faster leveling and insanely rare items for cash, and then use that money to not support the product by not getting rid of the endless amount of gold farmers that will populate the server and sell to a market in the millions whose standards barely break the point of “I don’t care about lore, immersion, or anything else as long as I can kill this one NPC several thousand times over,” well I would have no idea what you are talking about. I contest your assumption that I am comparing the quality aspect of developing for the Asian market, to the literature aspect of writing a book for toddlers.
Red 5 Studios was founded by World of Warcraft veterans, including Mark Kern, Team Lead over at Blizzard, which could lead one to believe that the company would be marginally as successful as Blizzard. Thanks to some trouble hiring, despite Red 5 going as far as bribing the hopefuls with Ipod Shuffles, development at the new studio never took off the ground. A company that fits the profile of “Never was, is not, and never will be,” Red 5’s initial staff of 100 was butchered down to 65 in 2008, after the company closed its Shanghai office.
Red 5 has confirmed that they have had another round of layoffs, leaving the company with a skeleton crew of just over 30 employees. Webzen, who you will remember took control of Archlord in the Western markets, invested in Red 5 back in 2008, over an MMOFPS that the developer was working on. It now appears that the title may never be released, and Red 5 has plans for another game.
This time, rather than a worldwide release, Red 5 will be “restructuring” and focusing on releasing an MMO in the Chinese market, although they are still claiming that the MMOFPS is not down and out yet, simply shelved until a further date. Haven’t heard that before.
Archlord is one of those titles I don’t get to talk about much, because it falls into the category of games that are small enough that any announcement made is heard within the radius of your average MMOs local chat. So when the companies give status updates on the title, I jump on it like, well, myself on status updates.
Last we heard from Archlord, back in early October, the game had shifted from Codemasters to Webzen, not only offering to transfer characters and their currencies, but bringing in a new swashbuckling class. Webzen has been busy for the past few months, and 2010 is when we will see the fruits of their work:
On the good side, Webzen is starting out the year with a new server. Deribelle, as it is named, will play host to increased experience, better loot drops, and item giveaways to welcome the new players. Later next month will see the release of a multi-language client, bringing German, Portugese, Spanish, and French into the game. The Chaotic Frontier, a new dungeon, features level scaling, allowing players of any level to jump right in and experience the wonders it has to offer, with loot scaled of course.
Sadly, there is no good without evil, and the new Deribelle realm comes on the heels of two of the four European servers shutting down.
Despite the setback of two lost servers, there is no doubt (at least in my mind) that Webzen wants to make Archlord work for those who are still loyal to the title. For those of you who have not given the title a try, now is as good of a time as any. It is free to play, after all.
More on Archlord if I get to talk about it this year.
Ok, you caught me. I have to admit, however, that for a title that was as widely panned as Archlord (As I mentioned in my previous news bit, Archlord was panned for being “dull and repetitive” among other issues) Archlord is quite resilient. Last September we learned that the free to play title was to be shut down after Codemasters lost the rights to run the title in North America and Europe. Ever since the title launched, it was wrought with controversy, as I mentioned coming across quite a large number of claims of corruption within Codemasters, and convenient bans for people who purchased large amounts of in-game currency (The game runs on a micro-transaction format, shop currency is specifically what I am referring to).
Archlord shut down on the first of this month, for two days when the newest host, Webzen, officially launched the new North American and European servers. Webzen is offering a transfer service to players coming over from Codemasters, that is expected to complete on the 14th. In order to sweeten the deal, Webzen updated the game offering transfer players some microtransaction currency, and the new Archlord now features a female-only swashbuckling class.
A change of pace should be just what the doctor ordered for Archlord, but it may be too little too late. I foresee the next news story you see here on MMO Fallout related to Archlord will be its shutdown notice.
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MMO Fallout 