There are corporative lies, which technically some would say are just “not telling someone everything”, but such things are misleading too… I won’t say the whole thing with the pandemic was all “smokes and mirrors” to justify why they left GoW in such state.
I think they were preparing everything for this way before, the lack of communication and participation, the delay on fixing issues, the lack of brain work behind some events here and there…
YET… This holds true for all accounts, don’t get me wrong, but we know you would never say GoW is being abandoned until the month to unplug the servers comes. “Will it take until the end of this year?” Is everyone guess…
I just hope the team is practical enough, and has the decency, to not allow any subscription’s purchase one month prior to the server’s shutdown. This way you guys won’t have to deal with tickets and refunds for purchases and the players won’t feel scammed.
Damn, so believing all this about Gems of War being abandoned by the developers, are you guys going to keep playing it? I ask only because a lot of you guys sound like you feel betrayed and stuff.
I thought this was discussed in the 505 acquiring I+2 thread, already?
Gems of War is not shutting down in the short or even medium-term future. All but hard-zero percent chance of that.
How do I know this? Because it is literally written in the press release where 505 acquired I+2.
Reverent part of the second paragraph on the press release,
… an earn out scheme for the next four years based of the future revenues has also been agreed. Part of this earn out will be paid to the key employees in order to align the long-term interest. The earn out is not capped and could range from 0% to an 9% maximum of the revenues generated by the videogames realized by the two Australian companies.
In non-corporate speak: the development team is being paid based on the money Gems of War brings in over the next four years. If the devs are being paid based how much money the game brings in, then they are incentivized to keep the game going and actively continue to develop new content for the next four years.
Of course, the flip side of that logic is that the devs are being heavily encouraged with compensation to grow the playerbase and to develop new monetization methods into the game going forward.
And it’s most likely the developers are aware of this. Many other companies/franchises when releasing a new game will see a shift on revenue from their older game to the newest one. Specially in this case since PQ is Sirrian’s famous “golden goose”, and while GoW itself was a great game in many aspects (and for a good while until it became something else) it doesn’t have the notoriety of PQ… So PQ3 will gather the fans of the old games and most likely some of GoW’s disgruntled ones who are looking for a fresher experience. Some might even be inclined to place their money on PQ3 to build up an advantage over the other players since it’s another F2P model.
I think you, are mistaken on one thing:
… an earn out scheme for the next four years based of the future revenues has also been agreed. Part of this earn out will be paid to the key employees in order to align the long-term interest. The earn out is not capped and could range from 0% to an 9% maximum of the revenues generated by the…
…VIDEOGAMES…
…realized by the two Australian companies.
The word VIDEOGAMES implies, at least for me, that ANY GAME produced by the developers is part of this agreement. So… They could theorically release Puzzle Quest and as soon as it’s generating enough revenue to cover that agreement they could shut down GoW like:
So, it doesn’t matter if they have one, two, three or a dozen games as long as they can fulfill their agreement.
Why wouldn’t they want to profit from both games?
Y’all make zero sense.
No developer ever gives up on one IP as long as it’s profitable. GoW is profitable. End discussion.
And Covid 21 MIGHT kill us all before that happens. If we spend all day worrying about hypotheticals then …wait nevermind… That’s all the internet is …carry on.
Not saying it’s necessarily the case here, but opportunity cost. Game X might be profitable, but if the developer would make more money by pulling all resources off of Game X and putting them on Game Y, then Game X is at serious risk.
What resources?
90% of GoW is managed by bots and 10% of it is played by bots. That won’t change when PQ3 comes out.
Support already takes double the time it used to. That number will definitely increase. But I doubt they’ll abbadon GoW just because they overwork their support staff.
Honestly, I know it’s expensive to make a video game. But I’d be shocked to hear that Gems of War cost more than 1 million to operate a year. That’s ALL costs included. And it made how much money last year?
And considering GoW is still banking off much of the design choices it made the first few years. I’d be way more worried about PQ3 being Successful/unsuccessful than the survivability of GoW.
If Sirrian is actually in charge of PQ3 then yeah it’ll be a great game. If 505 Games is pulling his strings and using him as a puppet and just prostituting his good name… Then good luck. Because the last 3 years of GoW wouldn’t have survived without the first 3 years as a base.
But that’s exactly one of the concerns. As we saw these past months the quality have been dropping and just as well the number of active players. Sure, profits can probably hold the game for a while, but once the newest game comes out players may jump the boat. It’s like I said before:
Some people left, and when PQ3 is released more might go as well and the developers are certainly aware of this. And for that they might put more dedication on the new product.
If the perceived notion is that PQ3 is just “GoW perfected” as some of us wished it would be, then more reasons to drop the old game as a player and eventually more reasons for the developers drop it too.
Well I’m of the belief that epic tasks are priced and scaled in such a ridiculous fashion that they are designed to be changed the second GoW dips in profit.
But the devs at me bitch at them on the forums. They see the player base shrink in size. But then they see those who stay, or those who start to play, spend more money… And they’re like “sorry bro, money talks and bull shit walks”
It was either a year or 2 ago, I tried to convince the community that the best way to save GoW long term was to stop spending money short term. At this time I don’t have the energy in me to start that crusade again. But that advice still rings true.
Understandable, but if you have experience with similar situations you can surely imagine the scenario where even the “premium players” will notice how unfun things are, how it seems to be better on “that-other-game-people-are-playing-now”.
At first such players won’t drop the old game instantly, but they might consider doing a little $4.99 purchase in the new game because: “I can’t get anything important in my old game with just that anyway, and on this one I’ll get many benefits…”
And they start having fun with the new game, they start to spend more time on it because: “I can ignore this little daily task in the old game, I already a lot of -insert premium currency name here-… But in the new game I better farm this -insert another premium currency name here- to unlock this important upgrade!”
It happens naturally and in such cases the developers are still profiting, and when the balance shifts enough they will officially retire the old game.
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This. From the financial threads, GoW carries the entire F2P division of 505 on their backs. Why in the universe would 505 kill their F2P cash cow? Yes, it’s technically possible that next week the lights go out on GoW just because, but that is in some other alternate universe.
Keep in mind that 505 and I+2 are no longer separate independent entities. As such, the performances of both companies are now tied together through the acquisition. If GoW has another banner year in 2021, while 505 for some reason has a horrific year and loses a ton of money in the retail console game market and PQ3 for some strange reason absolutely tanks, then GoW will likely not receive their incentive payouts because the 505 is operating in the red for the year. The alignment of “long-term interests” between the companies is to encourage operations for both entities to operate in the black and make money for the year. This is 100% completely normal and expected in these types of arrangements.
I’ve been around as much as before on the forums, streams, etc. My writing work on PQ3 took over writing work for Gems of War and some other itnernal reporting and management. The writing hasn’t significantly impacted the amount of time I had been spending in the Gems of War community over the last two years.
PQ3 isn’t Gems of War perfected. It goes in a different direction with match-3, and is at its core a very different game. It will be an experience that is unique from Gems of War.
Gems of War is profitable and we intend to continue developing it for years to come.
People thought the same thing when Red Dead Online was announced that GTA would die. For the first year or so RDR got all the attention from R* while GTA was still quietly updated but pushed to the side. RDR was a bit of a flop and now still receives updates but GTA is back to being the centre of attention for R* with it having it’s so called biggest update ever last month and another re-release later this year. GTA lost some players for a month or so but it quickly went back to being a lot of peoples main game with RDR being a casual game for some.
PQ3 could explode and take all GoW players but it could just be a casual game for some GoW people to play for a few hours a week.
But in this case we might have to consider the difference between the size of the companies and the playerbase which are entirely different. Not to dismiss your opinion and input, but people only remember that GoW is much smaller in such terms when it seems like The Perfect Excuse™ for their shortcomings/mistakes/failures…
