Embracer buys out PWE, Cryptic Studios

[Latex]

https://embracer.com/release/embracer-group-enters-into-agreement-to-acquire-perfect-world-entertainment/

 

Seems newsworthy!

 

Did Cryptic sell the IP of City of Heroes to NCSoft in the early days? I remember seeing the Code Doc for this game and it was most certainly Cryptic Studios developed, they used the same engine to create Champions Online which they definitely own that's owned by Perfect World Entertainment which is now owned by Embracer.

 

Could this mean an official re-release of City of Heroes?

[Vanden]

3 minutes ago, Latex said:

Could this mean an official re-release of City of Heroes?

 

No.

[GoldenAvariel]

Cryptic sold COH to NCSoft back in 2007. NCSoft is the sole owner as far as I know.

 

[Troo]

18 minutes ago, Latex said:

Could this mean an official re-release of City of Heroes?

 

It's always possible.

[UltraAlt]

16 minutes ago, Latex said:

Did Cryptic sell the IP of City of Heroes to NCSoft in the early days?

 

"Acquisition and new studio
On November 6, 2007, NCsoft announced that it would assume ownership of both City of Heroes and City of Villains. As part of a push to further develop City of Heroes, the company also announced the formation of a new development studio dedicated to new titles as well as their interest in distributing and administering their future works once launched. This new team was centered on key members of the Cryptic and NCsoft City of Heroes/Villains teams who accepted the NCsoft offer to join their new studio in Northern California. The sale of the City of Heroes IP granted Cryptic Studios the freedom to work on its new superhero MMORPG (at this time, an RPG/Action hybrid) Champions Online without concerns of conflict of interest.[64]

Shortly after having acquired full ownership of the property, NCsoft granted all existing and former City of Heroes account holders access to both games (City of Heroes and City of Villains).[65] This allowed all Hero players access to Superbases, which initially required a CoV purchase from its release in Issue 7 until Issue 10, and was no longer required as of Issue 11. Before the purchase, NCsoft allowed players with a subscription or a time card for City of Heroes to have the same access to City of Villains as well (at its lowest price point, $14.99 covered access to both titles for a month), whether or not they had purchased the other title. This was still being honored after all accounts who had only City of Heroes received access to City of Villains for free. In a July 2008 press release, NCsoft announced the successful completion of allowing all copies of City of Heroes or City of Villains to access the other game (it claimed that Single Title Retail Boxes recently purchased did not successfully unlock the other game when activated).

On April 14, 2009, NCsoft NorCal formally changed its name to Paragon Studios to become a fully owned developer subsidiary of NCsoft (similar to Destination Games and ArenaNet) dedicated to City of Heroes. Paragon Studios was credited alongside Cryptic Studios on the website and NCsoft websites for development of the game."

 

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Heroes

[Without_Pause]

The thing which strikes me the most is the cost of 125 million. For game companies and one which has access to Torchlight and other assets seems insanely small.

[Hardboiled Hero]

I don't think anyone outside of NCsoft and maybe cryptic or paragon really knows why CoH isn't re-released.. or even why it was shut-down in the first place.  I kinda suspect that there's some kind of bad blood or power struggling going on (because the reasoning clearly makes no economic sense.)  Therefor having some of the agencies involved in that struggle removed COULD free things up some.

 

  With that said, I think the problem is more between NCsoft and Paragon, rather than Cryptic.  I also think that getting into it much deeper is probably an economic/political discussion that we shouldn't have on a game forum.

[Hardboiled Hero]

50 minutes ago, Without_Pause said:

The thing which strikes me the most is the cost of 125 million. For game companies and one which has access to Torchlight and other assets seems insanely small.

 

  Remember though, they didn't flat out buy Perfect World Entertainment.  They bought enough shares in Perfect World Entertainment from a third party (Perfect World Europe) to become the controlling interest in Perfect World Entertainment.  It's completely possible that they only actually bought 5 or 10% of the shares with this one deal.

 

  Edit:  The article says that Embracer bought 100% of PWeurope's shares in PWNA and PWpublishing..  but it doesn't say how many shares or what percentage of those companies that actually was.

Edited December 22, 2021 by Hardboiled Hero

[Snarky]

This is a definite confirmation of the re release of CoH.  Just glad we were able to see it in time to make plans…

[Without_Pause]

1 hour ago, Hardboiled Hero said:

 

  Remember though, they didn't flat out buy Perfect World Entertainment.  They bought enough shares in Perfect World Entertainment from a third party (Perfect World Europe) to become the controlling interest in Perfect World Entertainment.  It's completely possible that they only actually bought 5 or 10% of the shares with this one deal.

 

  Edit:  The article says that Embracer bought 100% of PWeurope's shares in PWNA and PWpublishing..  but it doesn't say how many shares or what percentage of those companies that actually was.

A single release of a credible Torchlight would cover a good chunk of that cost.

[Albion]

2 hours ago, Hardboiled Hero said:

I don't think anyone outside of NCsoft and maybe cryptic or paragon really knows why CoH isn't re-released.. or even why it was shut-down in the first place.  I kinda suspect that there's some kind of bad blood or power struggling going on (because the reasoning clearly makes no economic sense.)  Therefor having some of the agencies involved in that struggle removed COULD free things up some.

 

  With that said, I think the problem is more between NCsoft and Paragon, rather than Cryptic.  I also think that getting into it much deeper is probably an economic/political discussion that we shouldn't have on a game forum.

You have to understand the Korean business mindset, CoH may have been managed by a USA branch but its owned by a Korean company, by it's very nature the game is at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to being interested in for the executives of the company headquarters.

[Albion]

2 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

The thing which strikes me the most is the cost of 125 million. For game companies and one which has access to Torchlight and other assets seems insanely small.

Taking on account the reputation they built for turning any neat project into crap in time, is not surprising to me, they would not be selling if they were popular and successful.

[Without_Pause]

1 minute ago, Albion said:

Taking on account the reputation they built for turning any neat project into crap in time, is not surprising to me, they would not be selling if they were popular and successful.

There are plenty of cases where a business were popular and then were sold. 

[Albion]

3 minutes ago, Without_Pause said:

There are plenty of cases where a business were popular and then were sold. 

Yes, but they were sold for a good chunk of money compared to the assets they were letting go of.

[Ruin Mage]

Quick notes from my reading;

• PWE/Cryptic have no rights to CoH. No need to worry or ask.
• Embracer Group only is getting PWE's NA branch & Cryptic. This does mean that PWE's international scene is still under, as named, PWE.

[Hardboiled Hero]

31 minutes ago, Shadeknight said:

Quick notes from my reading;

• PWE/Cryptic have no rights to CoH. No need to worry or ask.
• Embracer Group only is getting PWE's NA branch & Cryptic. This does mean that PWE's international scene is still under, as named, PWE.

 

  That second part had me a little confused.  The article clearly states that Embracer bought the shares of Perfect World North America and Perfect World Publishing from Perfect World Europe.. it also says that Perfect World North America and Perfect World Publishing make up Perfect World Entertainment.  Apparently PWE IS Perfect World North America Corporation and Perfect World Publishing, while Perfect World Europe is simply called "Perfect World" and I guess the Chinese company isn't really involved with any of that.  PWE includes all the titles that we really care about in the west including Star Trek, Neverwinter and D&D, and Torchlight.  PWE was apparently sold for cheap because the only thing they've been able to produce over the past 2 years was the botched Magic: The Gathering game.  It was actually losing money.

 

  In related news, Embracer has been doing alot of buying over the past week.  They bought Asmodee (Which itself owns many other board/card/miniature game companies), they bought PWE, Dark Horse, Shiver Games (which produces PC/tablet/phone games), a german streaming company, DIGIC (an animation company that has worked on game animations and Netflix series)

 

  In other words, they're poised to take over the world.  They could probably put their heads together and make a decent game that CoH players would appreciate, but they wouldn't be able to use any CoH characters.

Edited December 22, 2021 by Hardboiled Hero

[roleki]

1 hour ago, Hardboiled Hero said:

  In related news, Embracer has been doing alot of buying over the past week.  They bought Asmodee (Which itself owns many other board/card/miniature game companies), they bought PWE, Dark Horse, Shiver Games (which produces PC/tablet/phone games), a german streaming company, DIGIC (an animation company that has worked on game animations and Netflix series)

 

  In other words, they're poised to take over the world.  They could probably put their heads together and make a decent game that CoH players would appreciate, but they wouldn't be able to use any CoH characters.

 

Embracer is Wizards of the Coast-ing it, but with Dollar Tree properties.  

[UltraAlt]

13 hours ago, Hardboiled Hero said:

I don't think anyone outside of NCsoft and maybe cryptic or paragon really knows why CoH isn't re-released.. or even why it was shut-down in the first place.  I kinda suspect that there's some kind of bad blood or power struggling going on (because the reasoning clearly makes no economic sense.)  Therefor having some of the agencies involved in that struggle removed COULD free things up some.

 

  With that said, I think the problem is more between NCsoft and Paragon, rather than Cryptic.  I also think that getting into it much deeper is probably an economic/political discussion that we shouldn't have on a game forum.

 

NCSoft is a Korean company.

From what I understand, City of Heroes never did well in Korea. Compared to their other games City of Heroes was just simply having too small of a return per player and too small of a player base for it to be worth continued investment.

I did hear gossip about some directions that NCSoft wanted the game to go in and, if I call correctly, that mostly had to do with increased microtransactions.

[srmalloy]

13 hours ago, Hardboiled Hero said:

I don't think anyone outside of NCsoft and maybe cryptic or paragon really knows why CoH isn't re-released.. or even why it was shut-down in the first place.

While the real answer is likely only known to NCsoft, there are a few things that I think contributed. First, because of the way that MMOs evolved in Asia, they are very group-centric; in many of them it's functionally impossible to do any significant advancement solo. CoH wasn't; its playstyle was foreign to what the people who played Asian MMOs expected, and as a result, the Korean regionalization fell on its face. This greatly lowered the perception of the game to NCsoft management. Second, most Asian MMOs don't rely subscriptions for their income, but rather on a cash shop for better and flashier gear; the design of CoH made it difficult to monetize that way -- think about the costume packs that were released, and imagine having to buy each costume part separately for each character that used it, or enhancements that were better than what you could get in game, but which you'd outlevel and have to replace. This also pushed the perception of CoH down, making it unimportant, since it couldn't be turned into a steady stream of microtransactions. Then, while CoH itself was turning a profit, NCsoft had saddled Paragon Studios with an undisclosed development project, whose expenses made Paragon Studios as a whole lose money. Finally, Paragon Studios was trying to buy itself out from under NCsoft, instead of being a properly subordinate subsidiary (not behaving like a proper Korean business); Paragon Studios losing money justified shutting it down and removing this group of upstart employees who didn't understand their proper place in a Korean corporation.

 

As an aside to this, reading some of the posts on job boards about NCsoft's US component, the primary complaint was that the management was shipped in from Korea expecting to run the division like a Korean company with no understanding of American corporate culture or the business operations they were managing (after all, if you've got an MBA, you can manage any business, right? You don't need to have any understanding of what it does, management is the same). For example, people were expected to put in unpaid overtime, simply because that was how you show that you're dedicated to your job, and were marked down in performance appraisals if they didn't.

[Hardboiled Hero]

I understand corporate shenanigans. What I don't understand is why NCsoft would be sitting on the property.  Clearly they know they could sell it, but they choose not to.  The only product they've used the CoX IP with other than CoX was a flop (and i'm not even sure they cared).  They even had to refile to retain the IP.  There has to be more to this than some simple arguments with their employees.  I mean one could argue that NCsoft is violating corporate law by holding the property and not doing anything with it. (although I think that argument would have to be made by a shareholder)

[Nerva]

21 minutes ago, Hardboiled Hero said:

What I don't understand is why NCsoft would be sitting on the property.

 

The reason is NCsoft rarely ever sells properties.  In their dysfunctional asinine corporate culture, anything they get their hands on is theirs and they'd rather bury it than sell.  They did the same thing with Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa.  It's why they forged Richard Garriott's name on papers releasing him from his control over Tabula Rasa.  In NCsoft's twisted worldview, he was trying to exert too much control over something that was "theirs" and they wanted him gone, but couldn't get it done legally because - love him or hate him for it - Garriott won't abandon his creations until forced to.

 

This is why getting owned by NCsoft is an inevitable death sentence for any IP; it might extend its life in the short term, but once they get their talons on it, it's only a matter of time before it gets shuttered and squatted on, like a dead carcass being picked over by a flatulent vulture that's too fat to fly.  As their short-lived MOBA proved, NCsoft will even make flop media just to extend their ability to hold IP rights and prevent anyone from challenging those rights.  That's all Master x Master was ever intended to do.

 

Edited December 23, 2021 by Nerva
Further explanation.