Let me ask this. And it’s not a rhetorical question. I don’t actually know the answer so I’m looking for genuine responses that may or may not allay my fears for EVE Online at this point:
What examples are there of a game studio being bought, which subsequently led to an increase in success for their most well known IP?
The better question actually is “which subsequently led to an increase in monetary gain for their investors”.
Don’t try to shift goalposts, it doesen’t work with me. I said it within the context of the original post; the ideal situation.
Why are you even here? Some third year newbie, if you think EVE is so terrible, then ■■■■ off. And if you think EVE’s majority of player base is just gonna sit by idly when PA starts ■■■■■■■ with the game, you’re in for a heavy dose of reality.
Somewhere it did say, I think it was Hilmar himself, that the entire sum isn’t plain cash, but that some of it requires for certain goals to be met. This can mean a whole range of conditions and sums in fact. They could have bought CCP for $1 and the remaining millions may become available after a private lap dance. We don’t know anything about the details of the deal really.
But I also know that we often jump to the worst conclusions without any evidence, simply because we wish to be on the safe side and to be prepared for the worst.
I’ve seen at least one game go from gold to crap, to close two times (or maybe it was three times) only to open again, to being modded and botted, and finally closed only for someone to leak the code and run it privately. So I’ve been on one “nightmare ride” before, and I did actually like it. It was it’s own entertainment and the players just rolled with the punches. You either love it or hate it.
Salvos Rhoska
Employment history
Pator Tech School 2014.01.03 19:13 to this day (1707 Days)
Yes, there’s no official P2W in eve. Now. Thankfully.
The line of thinking I replied to has included a growth of the EVE playerbase as a precondition. This thread is quite long and so formerly discussed points easily fall under the waggon, so I simply referred to these assumed preconditions. Earlier I said, and for now I’ll stand by that, that this currently running game called EVE Online is only part of PA’s motivation to acquire CCP.
It’s important to consider on which level a player here is argueing before considering a reply. The player I replied to, is focussed on what will happen to the game currently known as EVE Online, not the entity called CCP. For such a player the entity CCP and the game they play are “eineindeutig” (which roughly means both being the polymorphous expressions of the exact same thing), which they are not.
Now, the line of thinking is quite common from a player perspective, because the question “what will happen to the game” is of the utmost interest and thus the greater picture is assumed to be of not that much interest. In the specific case the presented idea was that PA can and want to turn EVE into BDO with space theme.
My argument is roughly that this will need an entire re-build of the game itself. While a part of the players has gotten used to small steps towards P2W, the technical base without which the game can’t exist, are not ready for Millions. Single Shard and so on.
The other argument is that EVE players are uniquely well organized and while business operators doesn’t like it, people who are organized can and will fight back. Does that mean the players can force everything staying like it currently is? Of course not. The greatest “success” they could gain is destruction, nothing more. But they might be willing to and they’re somewhat capable.
If you look at the bigger picture, PA didn’t acquire CCP in order to fight petty battles with its current playerbase. CCP functions as an entry point for them, the company structure will allow them to further their own strategies not only in Europe and North America, but also on a structural level. There are also a number of unknowns, such as NOVA. In turn, it might not even matter if EVE continues to provide decent income. It might and they might re-build EVE, but they would be short-sighted if they banked too much on how things are currently working.
They must be prepared to use CCP to their own success, independently of what happens to the current playerbase and the current game EVE Online.
We will see, I’ll sit and wait and time will tell…
Check out their Forum if you want to know what BDO players thank of the company that makes BDO
That is actually pretty standard. Most of that also tends to be to staff with former shareholder status remaining. A small part of that tends to be liquidity stipulations and agreements on tech / expertise / asset transfers.
Those financial targets are presented as bonuses, for being awesome, but they are simple requirements stipulated in the sale. Nothing more, nothing less. And while matters are not public, there’s quite a bunch of people around who do have insight. This place is however subject to rules, and people to agreements.
You know, if only this was a situation where there wasn’t tons of verifiable information and established cumulative decision timelines available. It would make it so much easier to just write off people’s venting of steam as “haters gonna hate”.
Change is the one certainty. Direction of change the other. All the panic and drama is pretty silly. Change must be gradual in order to have results. It is as simple as this.
or rebuild EvE into something else, because when I heard EvE is a success I’m rolling on the floor, it is a niche game, very niche. Should they lose the current playerbase? They might. Who cares? Playerbase that shoot statue made of pixels when they don’t like changes made into to the game, because they know better?
What? CCP crossed that line a long time ago. You think $ to isk to skillpoints isn’t p2w?
I wasn’t drawing a link with lower player count as that’s a complicated, albeit related issue, about which there is also plenty of speculation but little data.
My point was those failures were what caused the cutbacks at CCP and possibly also this led to this particular deal.
And possibly quite entertaining to CCP.
Naturally. And beneficial. It’s one of the requirements for proper results as required from the scripted AMA. The more drama now, the better. And hell yes, we can be honest on this, there is quite the tradition of this kind of thing being considered entertaining. On specific levels. Not everywhere. On the contrary. When Lore and other teams dropped frustrated hints over months on, that also is a signal 
Do you think Somer could come back?
They ¶ care about this being a good deal for them. They’ll follow their own plan, details of which are not known to us.
At least 3 different theories exist, how this with affect EVE Online (the game, not CCP the entity)
The “boiling frog” theory as it fits what happened up until this point, to turn EVE slowly but steadily towards P2W. There are some compelling arguments for this, but also underlying assumptions that may not be realistic. For this theory to work out, they would have to be able to grow to profit that EVE is throwing up without quick changes and without fundamentally changing mechanics such as Single Shard universe. If you think about it, many limits of this will immediately come up: “whale” players are not endlessly willing to pay and thus the possibilities to milk the current playerbase is limited. Replacing that playerbase requires a mechanical re-invention of the game, which wouldn’t fit the “boiling frog” theory anymore.
The “replacement” theory in which EVE is rather brutally turned into a space-themed clone of BDO. The strength of this theory is that it can ignore the current playerbase as a whole. This is what you are claiming and it’s certainly possible. This theory however has the weakness, that it doesn’t account for two things: the organized strength of out-of-game player rage, which is something not to be underestimated and - more importantly - the inherent challenge to re-do all of the game in order to make it a multi-shard environment. Re-do as in: cut the power, do everything again, maybe copy some core aspects, but that’s it. This could only make sense if 3. is right:
They don’t care about EVE so much, neither about its current revenues nor about prospects of milking the players, because they have something entirely different in mind with the take-over. They want to use CCP’s IP and infrastructure, personel and experience to follow their own strategy that isn’t aligned much with the question of what happens to the game. In that case, CCP Iceland might have the freedom to keep EVE running as a test balloon for however long it throws up more profits than it eats.
Yeah, get ready to wait for another 15 years of crying about a game you don’t like. 
No. The core issue there is one of legal frameworks in tradezones the product is sold. At least it was for CCP when it was independant.
PA does have experience with this however. They would have to tweak venture directives, as they have with BDO publishers, in such a way that the studio CCP would have to come up with mechanisms not available to customers to run but only use which would be tiered. Aka, available to zone Z,but not Y.
For EVE as it is, that is a huge treshold. Complicating matter, it is based in Iceland, and subject to frameworks due to EU agreements even if the country isn’t a member state.
So Somer? No. Gambling? Maybe. For PA tempting.
To be honest, I expect much more from expanding the mutaplasmid and instance based gameplay options as entry points for expansive changes.
