Value of CoH IP if someone want to acquire it

[Chris24601]

1 hour ago, Chance Jackson said:

As I understand it, ncsoft got a huge tax write off when they ended the game so the game would have to sell for significantly more than any tax penalty incured for selling a game ncsoft already got a huge tax write off for, any hypothetical loss of revenue due to competition, the cost of lawyers working on negotiations & any cost associated with tabulating all the costs. 

Tax write-offs don’t work that way. Profits and losses are assessed on a fiscal year basis. There’s no retroactive penalty if a product that lost value in year X then gains value in year X+Y. Instead the current year’s taxes will just be assessed based on the current value of the product.

 

If the IP is sold or licensed from some quantity of money, taxes would be assessed for the current year (and future years if payment is ongoing) based on the revenue from that activity.

 

 

[Haijinx]

a Lot of good Superhero stories have basically been abandoned over the years. So at least its in good company.  

[Chance Jackson]

2 hours ago, Chris24601 said:

Tax write-offs don’t work that way. Profits and losses are assessed on a fiscal year basis. There’s no retroactive penalty if a product that lost value in year X then gains value in year X+Y. Instead the current year’s taxes will just be assessed based on the current value of the product.

 

If the IP is sold or licensed from some quantity of money, taxes would be assessed for the current year (and future years if payment is ongoing) based on the revenue from that activity.

 

 

The more you know 

[boggo2300]

3 hours ago, Chance Jackson said:

The more you know 

unless you know, NC-Soft has to comply with South Korea's tax law, since the shut down NC-Soft NA as far as I know

[dangeraaron10]

17 hours ago, boggo2300 said:

you do know HC are in negotiations with NC to get a license right?

Yes, and I hope the negotiations go well.  I just wish they kept ignoring it and I fear negotiations could go south at any time.

 

Let me rephrase, being able to keep HC as is with NCSoft's approval is the best we can hope for.  But HC being as is with NCSoft ignoring it outright would have also been good.  

[srmalloy]

11 hours ago, Chance Jackson said:

As I understand it, ncsoft got a huge tax write off when they ended the game so the game would have to sell for significantly more than any tax penalty incured for selling a game ncsoft already got a huge tax write off for, any hypothetical loss of revenue due to competition, the cost of lawyers working on negotiations & any cost associated with tabulating all the costs. 

If NCsoft licenses the CoH IP and code to the Homecoming group for free, the negotiations for the license can specify an arbitrary value on it and write that value off as another tax loss and expenses for advertising and goodwill (letting us use the IP for free won't make us love NCsoft, but it will likely reduce the widespread animosity toward them, and they get HC and whoever else winds up allowed to use the code as free market research to see if it's worth developing a CoH 2 MMO). And I'm sure that the lawyers on one side or another have pointed this out as part of the negotiations.

[boggo2300]

6 hours ago, dangeraaron10 said:

Yes, and I hope the negotiations go well.  I just wish they kept ignoring it and I fear negotiations could go south at any time.

 

Let me rephrase, being able to keep HC as is with NCSoft's approval is the best we can hope for.  But HC being as is with NCSoft ignoring it outright would have also been good.  

the negotiations may have started (this is only a rumour I've heard, I don't know if it's true) because NC-Soft were NOT ignoring it outright, I have heard that Homecoming were contacted by NC-Soft to stop and asked if there was anything they could do to continue and the negotiations came from that   (I have heard this twice from different people who MAY know, but I cannot confirm this to be true)

[Techwright]

On 12/23/2019 at 5:02 PM, Call Me Awesome said:

It wasn't a grind fest so the Korean's didn't like it.  Because it wasn't successful in Korea they didn't want anything to do with it... but it belonged to them so they wouldn't give it up.  Their culture is very strange by our standards and if they were to sell it and someone else was able to make a profit on it then selling would have been a mistake and they hate admitting to a mistake.

 

Lots of Asian cultures view mistakes as a "loss of face" and would rather do anything other than admit it.  They'd rather loose millions then admit to an error.  

This explains the steady deconstruction of the promising game Firefall after acquisition by The Seven, including a refusal to sell the game back to its creator, and a "promise" that the game would be turned into a mobile game (which was just vaporware to save face).   It also explains NCSoft's shutdown of Tabula Rasa, rather than move past its rough points.

On 12/27/2019 at 6:45 PM, Chris24601 said:

 

 

For example, given their use of Statesman recently, NCSOFT might put restrictions on using existing signature characters in any new content (which might be just as well... Homecoming is a new lease on life, starting new stories seems like where it’d be best to take it anyway).

Restricting existing signature characters might not be a bad thing.  It would give opportunity to use the Portal Corp lore to create the game as a parallel Earth where alternative signature heroes, villains, and events arose, perhaps even differences in zones, such as Baumtown.

[Snarky]

From what i can tell Dr Aeon has always had control of a ‘certain company’ and has been working to amass power through control if it and the soace time continuum. However the Menders have been working diligently to clean the time threads and truncate his evil abuses. Many times they use unknown Heroes, Vigilantes, Rogues, and yes even Villains ti accomplish these tasks

 

we will never submit to evil control of our lives

 

/em holdchicken Homecoming

[boggo2300]

28 minutes ago, Snarky said:

From what i can tell Dr Aeon has always had control of a ‘certain company’ and has been working to amass power through control if it and the soace time continuum. However the Menders have been working diligently to clean the time threads and truncate his evil abuses. Many times they use unknown Heroes, Vigilantes, Rogues, and yes even Villains ti accomplish these tasks

 

we will never submit to evil control of our lives

 

/em holdchicken Homecoming

at least you aren't choking it!

[Chris24601]

16 hours ago, Techwright said:

Restricting existing signature characters might not be a bad thing.  It would give opportunity to use the Portal Corp lore to create the game as a parallel Earth where alternative signature heroes, villains, and events arose, perhaps even differences in zones, such as Baumtown.

I wouldn’t be opposed to it either. Heck, there could even be something like a community contest to swap out the signatures for trainers and TFs with player-created ones.

 

That said, the characters as they existed up to shutdown would probably be able to remain as is... its more that if something like that were in place anything added by the HC crew wouldn’t be able to change the status quo of the current signature characters.

 

The main effect this would likely have would be that they’d essentially have to drop the “Coming Storm” as planned and create a story of their own.

 

I honestly wouldn’t mind a change of direction from the storm being a singular force of aliens to it instead being a period of great upheaval with a series of crises in close succession (one of which could be an alien invasion).

 

In the dev AMAs post-shutdown they discussed how the story was ultimately going to ramp up to absolutely cosmic levels (from Battalion to the Dimensionless to whatever was past them) where it’d be nearly impossible to actually continue the game as a practical matter (in the, why are beings on par with Marvel’s Galactus or DCs Monitor/Specter still dealing with mundane human threats).

 

A series of overlapping crises though... we’ve already had the Praetoria War with Mot in the middle of that.

 

So add in a smaller scale Shivan/Battalion vs. Kheldian war (with the Nictus wanting both sides dead), a resurgent Primal Hamidon (I seem to recall the devs running a DE zone event that culminated with Primal Hami spawning in Atlas Park; so there might already be some code for that hidden in the spaghetti somewhere) and Malta using underhanded means to try and re-start the metahuman draft because of all these crises and, finally, a major Arachnos scheme going off.

 

There’s your perfect storm of events that could throw the world into the chaos that the Dream Doctor and Mender Silos are trying to prevent (though if it were up to me I’d make the actual threat be all the instability resulting from those two’s temporal war against each other... because time travel to prevent something leading to that something actually happening is one of the best tropes ever).

 

But before any of that comes to pass... we pretty much need the assurance of a deal with NCSoft to make devoting the sort of effort necessary to do more than the work we’re seeing now.

[VV]

You'd be more likely to be able to buy NCSoft directly, than the COX IP individually. Besides, at this point, why would you even want to buy it? The code is safe in the wild. We (the fans) can keep it up for as long as we like. We can make any changes to it we like. At this point, having NCSoft just continue their stupidity is kind of the best thing for us. There would be no actual benefit to owning the IP, either to the owner or to the community. 

 

On the other hand, if your friend does have a bunch of money that he or she needs to get rid of, I can help guide you to a very deserving charity that, if nothing else, would provide your friend with a good tax write-off (as well as the awesome feeling of doing good).

[Chris24601]

The wild is hardly ideal though. It’s hard to have much of a community if there’s a server being shut down every week because NCSoft changed it’s mind about going after “public” private servers at a later point.

 

The benefit of licensing the IP is that you get yourself legal protections (it’s a contract), certainty for our devs that all their hard work isn’t going to have to be dumped due to changing legal winds because the whole thing is legally dubious, and, most importantly, the ability to really let people know that City of Heroes is back (right now it’s all word of mouth and articles that are now 7-8 months old and moving further down the search results all the time).

 

It might sound cool to “stick it to the man” but the legal no man’s land that results isn’t all that great for long term health of the game and community. I’d much prefer to see a fair deal worked out that gives Homecoming the legal protection to make significant further development worthwhile.

 

 

[SeraphimKensai]

Realistically because the source code has been leaked the value from a commercial standpoint is pretty much non existent unless someone could figure out a means of generating a profit (CoH The Movie, Paragon Adventures The Netflix Series, Hasbro's Custom CoH action figures, etc...)

 

The game has immense sentimental value to us as players. 

 

That said if I was an investor, unless there was a tangible means of a significant ROI, I wouldn't bother, mainly as a player I can now boot up the game whenever I want as it's hosted on numerous free private servers (including my own setup).

 

That all said, if someone else wants to make a go at it by all means, and hopefully it works out.

[Nericus]

On 12/23/2019 at 3:36 PM, Heliopause said:

What do you think is the value of the City Of Heroes IP if another company wanted to acquire it, considering it is a legacy IP abandoned by a company?  10s of thousands, 100s of thousands, millions?  I have a very close friend whose an avid gamer who may soon come into a substantial amount of money.

They won't sell, it has been tried at least two times to purchase and ncsoft allegedly/likely strung out the talks and then said no sale.

 

The game was making profit, but in Asia the game wasn't loved as much as it is here so they killed the golden goose despite the fact the eggs were still gold.

 

They won't admit they screwed up and alienated many gamers.

 

Plus the code is out there for people to o absorb, preserve and launch their own servers and is a bit of a coders nightmare, would the value should be low..

 

But they won't sell.

[Snarky]

On the scale of possibilities. 
 

more likely: Korea turning into a year round summer vacation destination

 

less likely: NC Soft selling the game 

 

least likely: North Korea giving up Nukes

[VV]

2 hours ago, Snarky said:

On the scale of possibilities. 
 

more likely: Korea turning into a year round summer vacation destination

 

less likely: NC Soft selling the game 

 

least likely: North Korea giving up Nukes

Did you hear that North Korea is building a vacation resort? Be careful what you predict!

[S33k3r]

On 12/30/2019 at 4:59 PM, Chris24601 said:

The benefit of licensing the IP is that you get yourself legal protections (it’s a contract), certainty for our devs that all their hard work isn’t going to have to be dumped due to changing legal winds because the whole thing is legally dubious, and, most importantly, the ability to really let people know that City of Heroes is back (right now it’s all word of mouth and articles that are now 7-8 months old and moving further down the search results all the time).

My only concern with this approach is that I wouldn't want NCSoft to own anything the HC Devs -- or any one else, for that matter -- created. It is bad enough NCSoft owns the base IP -- we know how they treated it and us -- but I wouldn't want their IP to become more valuable for them to again abuse us.

[Chris24601]

1 hour ago, S33k3r said:

My only concern with this approach is that I wouldn't want NCSoft to own anything the HC Devs -- or any one else, for that matter -- created. It is bad enough NCSoft owns the base IP -- we know how they treated it and us -- but I wouldn't want their IP to become more valuable for them to again abuse us.

Honestly, I think people need to get over this "NCSoft is forever the enemy" attitude because its NOT helpful to the negotiations at all. The fact they've taken zero action against any of the CoH servers when they could legally have them all shut down tomorrow is not the actions of an enemy.

 

It is also worth noting that the decision to shut CoH down was made seven years ago. Do you know if the people who made that call are even still working at NCSoft today?

 

For example, shortly before the shutdown, the Nexon corporation acquired 15% ownership of NCSoft. They sold their share in 2015. Did they have a say in CoH being shutdown?

 

Also in 2015 several of their officers were spun off into a subsidiary (Iron Tiger Studios). Did the person in charge of that decision end up there instead of in the position to determine the outcome of negotiations with Homecoming?

 

A more recent turnover was their chief development officer being replaced in mid-2018,

 

It'd be counterproductive to label people who didn't even work for the company at the time as "evil" for their non-existent role in ending City of Heroes... particularly if those people are willing to negotiate now.

Edited January 2, 2020 by Chris24601

[VileTerror]

That's the whole crux of a corporate brand right there.  The brand may stay the same, but the people who are actually making the decisions, doing the deeds, and causing the problem/creating the solutions could change without anyone on the outside (and often even people on the inside) knowing about it.

Well said, 24601.

[boggo2300]

I'll second that

[srmalloy]

5 hours ago, VileTerror said:

That's the whole crux of a corporate brand right there.  The brand may stay the same, but the people who are actually making the decisions, doing the deeds, and causing the problem/creating the solutions could change without anyone on the outside (and often even people on the inside) knowing about it.

Not to mention that the authority-deference that is tied deeply into Korean culture makes things more opaque; once a decision is made by your superiors, you are expected to suck it up and quietly accept it, regardless of your opinion or feelings. I suspect that this complicated things after the announcement of the shutdown and the closing of Paragon Studios -- we were 'barbarians'; we didn't just accept NCsoft's decision and move on, we came back in their collective faces and argued with them about it.

[jubakumbi]

17 hours ago, Chris24601 said:

Honestly, I think people need to get over this "NCSoft is forever the enemy" attitude because its NOT helpful to the negotiations at all. The fact they've taken zero action against any of the CoH servers when they could legally have them all shut down tomorrow is not the actions of an enemy.

 

It is also worth noting that the decision to shut CoH down was made seven years ago. Do you know if the people who made that call are even still working at NCSoft today?

 

For example, shortly before the shutdown, the Nexon corporation acquired 15% ownership of NCSoft. They sold their share in 2015. Did they have a say in CoH being shutdown?

 

Also in 2015 several of their officers were spun off into a subsidiary (Iron Tiger Studios). Did the person in charge of that decision end up there instead of in the position to determine the outcome of negotiations with Homecoming?

 

A more recent turnover was their chief development officer being replaced in mid-2018,

 

It'd be counterproductive to label people who didn't even work for the company at the time as "evil" for their non-existent role in ending City of Heroes... particularly if those people are willing to negotiate now.

 

IME, consumers live for the righteuos outrage they can throw at companies.

I have not given NCSoft any money since CoH...but that is mainly because they have not produced anything I wanted to buy, while influenced by my outlook on thier corporate personality to a degree, the shuttering of CoH has not been the long term reason.

 

There are people who post about this game that are somehow still under some delusion the players have a diety-given right to this game and that NCSoft is an evil that must be thwarted, when in fact, it is just a set of code that has found it's way into the public domain through nefariuos means and is still owned by NCSoft.

These same posters, IMO, would be on the other side of this coin if they had their own personal data stolen and used like this, which they did when the user DB walked out the door...the end users of the game at that time were also victims of that data-theft.

 

From my PoV, we have a bunch of humans that literally think because the culture behind the company is something they don't like, it's OK for us to steal thier stuff.

[Chris24601]

3 hours ago, jubakumbi said:

From my PoV, we have a bunch of humans that literally think because the culture behind the company is something they don't like, it's OK for us to steal thier stuff.

Which is why the ideal for me would be a completed license agreement with one or more servers to operate legally and a push by community leaders to support those legalized servers over the alternatives.

[jubakumbi]

22 minutes ago, Chris24601 said:

Which is why the ideal for me would be a completed license agreement with one or more servers to operate legally and a push by community leaders to support those legalized servers over the alternatives.

A license scheme for the servers is the only real path that I can see occuring; I cannot see NCSoft just walking away from the IP.

I would prefer one that allows more, rather than less, different groups to be able to run the game, as in a cheap or free license with few restrictions.

At this point, people who want to play privately for free are already doing that and will be able to do so indefinately.

A license scheme would simply allow the masses to play without so much fear.

 

Such an interesting series of events to watch unfold...