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WoW Database Site Sells For $1 Million
MattHock writes "Wowhead (a WoW information database) has been sold to ZAM (Affinity Media) for the price of $1 million. ZAM is the owner of several other WoW databases, including Thottbot and Allakhazam. Until recently Affinity was also the owner of IGE, a highly controversial company that sold in-game wealth for real life money. Affinity recently sold IGE, which Wowhead claims as the reason they allowed the sale to go through. But did ZAM really sell IGE? The blogger who put this story online doubts that IGE and ZAM have actually distanced themselves. He believes that the supposed sale was just actually a means of restructuring to hide the relationship, similar to how IGE's relationship to Thottbot was hidden for a number of months through a convoluted set of parent companies."
From wowhead's press release, they were explicitly told that neither ZAM or its parent companies controlled IGE or other gold-selling operations, and that no gold-selling ads would appear on wowhead.
Ultimately, as long as no gold selling ads appear, the wowhead user won't see a difference, and the wowhead staffers pocket a good chunk of change. Whether ZAM in fact does own IGE or support chinafarmers isn't relevant as long as it's properly compartmentalized away from wowhead.
how much is that in gold?
sigfault. core dumped.
This sale is probably a bad thing, in terms of quality of the site as it currently stands. Thottbot was used to launch that .ani vulnerability a while back too. I expect more adverts, changes in the design to accommodate more adverts, a flood of new users filling it with crap and spam just like all the other sites...
Still, not bad money for what is essentially a pretty front-end to content other people have created for you! What a shame that something about the whole deal just seems...suspicious. The press release is cringeworthy - full of "We're sure these guys are HIP and COOL!" and "We'd NEVER do anything EVIL! We're not GOOGLE!" crud.
FACT: ZAM now own the three most visible sites which support players of World of Warcraft. These sites provide in game support, listing rare in-game items, as well as locations of rare spawns. Combined, these three sites could provide a goldmine of information about what is popular and what will sell well at the moment.
FACT: ZAM once claimed ownership of a Gold Farming and Selling business, IGE. These businesses thrive by attempting to gain a monopoly on popular and rare in-game items which are then subsequently sold for real world cash.
FACT: Both Alkhazam and Thottbot were recently 'compromised' by an Internet Explorer vulnerability that installed a keylogger. This Keylogger gathered WoW login details from unsuspecting visitors, and used these details to dissolve the players' virtual assets - transferring them to Gold Farming and Selling businesses. This occurred after ZAM claimed to have sold their stake in IGE.
SUPPOSITION: WoWhead will find itself similarly 'compromised' in the future.
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
WoW: World of Warcraft
:)
Wow Database: A database which contains information useful to players of the game. This information includes items usually obtained by killing monsters in the game, recipes obtained from vendors and also from monsters, character classes, races, locations, quests, etc.
WowHead: Located at www.wowhead.com it has become the most popular WoW Database site since Thottbot, www.thottbot.com was sold to IGE. IGE is a site that sells in game gold for real world money. The virtual economics of doing this are beyond the scope of this post, but it generally ruins the complex virtual economies of the games. WoW is by far not the only MMORPG (Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game) to have virtual currency being sold by IGE and others for real world money.
Database Site: A web site which is primarily used as a database. This could be for an online game, an inventory checker, values for your collection Beanie Babies, anything. Just raw data that can be searched and compared with other data. In a gaming database such as WoWHead, this would allow you to see if your "Sword of Ultimate Doom" has an upgrade available, and which monster you'd need to kill or quest you'd need to complete in order to obtain this upgrade.
Rezzah
70 Priest of Radiant Dark
Windrunner Server - Alliance
I used to work for Allakhazam, and I was employed around the time of the Affinity Media/Allakhazam merger, and I can tell you, before the owners of Allakhazam.com signed any papers to sell the site, they wanted to make sure that the site was as far removed from the IGE portion of the company as possible. Their stance has always, and probably will always be that the selling of virtual currency degrades the experience for everyone. There was a huge uproar on the forums about this merger just for the possibility of there being gold selling ads on the site, and the site lost a few subscribers based on the fact the Affinity would be involved somehow. But it was always the stance of the admins and owners of the Allakhazam site that RMT ads were not tolerated in any way, and worked hard to stamp out those ads.
Okay, listen carefully. Affinity Media owns ZAM, and once owned IGE. Semi-recently they have sold IGE to a private investor, since others were complaining and the company was hurting AM's image.
But, you ask, why aren't they announcing anything? There's two reasons:
1) The sale transaction between IGE, Affinity Media and the private investor that bought IGE is, well.. PRIVATE! IGE does NOT want to be known as a 'notorious company', and have very likely bartered for privacy. So if anyone asks a suit from IGE, it is an all likelihood that they will deny saying a word about it ON PURPOSE. Also, IGE is now solely based in Hong Kong, and doesn't have really have an outlet in North America or the United Kingdoms.
2) Affinity Media is undergoing reconstruction. Go to their website, AFFINITYMEDIA.COM, for more information.
Also, I'd like to point out something - if you go to any website affiliated with the ZAM.com network, you will not find a single RMT-based ad, at all. I DARE you to try and find one.
Gamasutra.com: When we first met, you said, 'Oh, I bet I know what you're going to ask me about.' What did you think I was going to ask you about?John Maffei (senior vice president of Affinity Media, owners of ZAM.COM and WOWHEAD.COM) : Oh, just everyone has been so interested in the IGE thing, because IGE is a controversial business. Very controversial, and we'd always kept this incredible differences between the businesses.
If you go to any of our sites, you'll never see a gold-selling ad. The guys who founded our business, guys like Jeff Moyer and Bill Dyess, they've got absolutely nothing to do with that other side of the business.
So for us, it was a positive, in that we thought, for the people who cared, that's no longer an issue. Since it's a private company, a private transaction, we're not releasing actual news on terms. But we're no longer in that business.
Source: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?sProve that the VICE PRESIDENT OF AFFINITY MEDIA is lying. (See my gamasutra.com snippet above.)
Seriously, do you all think that every company on the face of the earth is just one big corrupt entity? Lighten up, people. The marketplace is constantly, CONSTANTLY changing in order to adapt to the changing consumer. All of the websites on the ZAM.com network no longer have any RMT advertisements anymore. AT ALL. And this includes Wowhead.com.
I honestly don't see any reason - and I'm going to bold this now, again - for THE VICE PRESIDENT OF AFFINITY MEDIA to flat out lie to everyone, only to have people scrutinize his statement with a fine-tooth comb and then have someone explode it as controversy and bad business practices. That doesn't make money.
So, you know who has more cred than some junky blogger with a 'he said she said' news story? The vice president of a company. Shut your yaps and at least attempt to get your facts straight.
I'm getting redundant now.