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'Eve Online' Studio Acquired By Korean MMO Maker (engadget.com)

Posted by msmash on from the in-some-business-news dept.

MAXOMENOS writes: EVE Online developer CCP Games has been acquired by Pearl Abyss, the South Korean studio behind the action-oriented MMORPG Black Desert Online. According to VentureBeat, the deal was worth $425 million and will close in early October. It's a surprise announcement for CCP, which has long operated as an independent developer. Eve Online isn't the biggest MMORPG on the market, but it has maintained a steady and loyal userbase through continuous updates and a well-timed switch to a hybrid premium and free-to-play model. The 15-year-old game is unique, too, with its large-scale battles and notoriously complex economic and political systems.

3 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Not Good News by Kunedog · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Shamus Young has a series on Black Desert, explaining how shockingly aggressive, expensive and game-ruining he found the microtransactions system to be, even if you're familiar with the worst of the American systems. There's manadatory PvP and deliberately cramped inventory space but the "cash shop" can always make things better (i.e. playable).

    I'd be worried if I were an EVE Online fan.

    https://www.shamusyoung.com/tw...

    I see all the default clothes are bland and I need to pay real money for a cool outfit. Aesthetics are important to me. (Which is why I spend so much time on sculpting my character.) So I really don’t want to spend the rest of my time looking at these blando outfits. Sigh. Fine. What’s a pretend suit of armor cost these days? Three bucks? Five bucks?

    FORTY SIX AMERICAN DOLLARS? ARE YOU TRYING TO START A FIGHT?

    The cheap outfits can be had for $22. They also offer ladies underwear sets for just $7, if you want to run around in your underpants. (I don’t, thanks.)

    (They also offer similar options for male characters. I was tempted to get the outfit that would let my kung-fu guy go shirtless, because he’s a kung-fu dude. But all of the choices looked like modern-day boxers. You can’t just wear baggy pants with no shirt.)

    Would you like to dye that super-expensive outfit you just bought? Or any other outfit? That will set you back another $10. And that’s somehow a rental. Your ten bucks gets you a month of being allowed to have dyed clothes. After the month is up, your clothes revert to their original colors and you gotta fork over another $10.

    Do you enjoy wheeling and dealing at the auction house in other games, but the egregious 35% tax on all your sales is making it impossible for you to have fun or turn a profit? Pay fifteen real-world dollars and the tax will go down to the normal 5%. (For one month.)

    Everything is exorbitantly priced like this. It’s so outrageously expensive that I get immediately pissed off. It’s not even about the money, it’s about the sheer audacity of the seller to ask this much[2] for what should be trivial virtual goods. Even if you’re a millionaire, you’re still likely to get offended if someone tries to sell you a stick of ordinary gum for five bucks.

    1. Re:Not Good News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Everything is exorbitantly priced like this. It’s so outrageously expensive that I get immediately pissed off. It’s not even about the money, it’s about the sheer audacity of the seller to ask this much for what should be trivial virtual goods. Even if you’re a millionaire, you’re still likely to get offended if someone tries to sell you a stick of ordinary gum for five bucks.

      Sometimes, I thought Stallman was being a pendant for gripes about terminology like "intellectual property".

      Now I realize he was exactly right.

      This guy uses the words "virtual goods", like it's something he'll actually own. Dollars to donuts, the EULA and TOS says these 'virtual goods' are nothing more than bits on their server, you don't own a single bit of it, and they do whatever they like, and fuck you we're keeping your money if you don't like it.

      Seriously, this should be a legal term. If your company sells "virtual goods", you should be obligated from the time of sale until the time of the consumer's death, to keep that virtual good accessible to the customer (and the customer's friends) or refund EVERY SINGLE PENNY of the transaction, including fees. Don't like it? Then stop selling GOODS, and call by what it is: temporary limited service perks

  2. Re:RIP Eve by duke_cheetah2003 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Now watch the new owners completely misunderstand the userbase's culture and wreck a good thing.

    CCP already did that years ago.