So. I'm a journalist by trade. On October 4, I emailed H&K Strategies to ask them for comment for an article I was hoping to place in a magazine with some questions for NC Soft about the sunset of City of Heroes.
This is..reasonably standard fare in journalism. You get someone who comes to you with a story, and then you contact the other side of the argument for their side of the story to keep it unbiased. Here's the email I sent them.
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Sir/Madam,
My name is (deleted) and I am a freelance journalist, working on an article for (deleted) Magazine, the UK's (deleted) magazine. I apologise if I have sent this to the wrong person, and I'd be grateful if you could pass this email on, if you are not the right person to address these queries to.
We have been covering the story of the ongoing campaign to save the MMO City of Heroes, after the games publisher, NC Soft announced it was to close. I have enclosed links to two articles we have previously run on the campaign.
(LINKS WENT HERE)
Following the official statement issued by NC Soft, a number of people from the Save campaign have contacted us, questioning the content of the statement.
The statement says that NC Soft have 'exhausted all the options including the selling of the studio and the rights to the City of Heroes intellectual property, but in the end efforts were not successful.
The Save campaign say that Paragon Studio was closed the same day of the announcement, with no attempts made to sell the studio. They claim that Paragon Studios were unaware of the closure of both the game and the studio and were unaware of any attempts to sell them. I would be grateful if you could confirm when these attempts were made, who the interested parties were, and why the sale did not happen.
The save campaign also say no attempt was made to sell the rights to the intellectual property and that they are aware of a number of potential investors who came forward to try and buy the rights, who did not receive a response of any kind from NC Soft.
They believe the announcement of 'exhausted all the options' are more than a little premature, given that the game is not due for closure until November 30, and taking into consideration that is has been only 32 business days since the announcement of the 'sunset' of the game.
They are demanding to know why closure was the first thing considered by NC Soft, instead of combining servers, putting the game in maintenance mode and keeping it running without further developments or updates, allowing people to create their own, private servers, or selling the game to other, interested parties.
The campaigners are also calling on NC Soft to publically name a price that they would be willing to accept for either Paragon Studios, or City of Heroes itself.
They are demanding to know why a game that was running 'well in the black' and had seen an increase in players in the months leading up to the announcement is being closed down, while games such as Guild Wars which are running at a loss, are being kept alive.
They also want to know why NC Soft did not respond to an invitation from players to play the game with them, or a letter from best-selling author Mercedes Lackey to endorse NC Soft products, free of charge, for a period of five to ten years, for free, if they would be willing to work with players to keep the servers online.
My deadline for this article is October 14 and I would be grateful if you could provide me with a statement addressing those points as soon as possible.
Kind regards,
Me.
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HK Strategy didn't acknowledge my email, until I tweeted them from my work account 7 days later and added the HKSTrat hashtag, so all their customers could see that I was chasing them and they'd ignored me. They sent a DM asking how they could help, then ignored me again.
I gave them another three days, but with no response I tweeted HK Strat London, thinking maybe the US branch was ignoring me because I was trying to place the article in a UK magazine, and asked if they could help. They said they'd try, so I forwarded them the email I'd sent the US office (which I CC'd in, in case it'd got lost.)
This is now October 16, and two days /after/ my original deadline.
I asked them the same questions, and added in:
"If you no longer represent NC Soft, I'd be grateful if you could let me know so I try to find out who I should be talking to.
If I am sending this to the wrong person, I'd be grateful if you could let me know who the right person would be, so I can contact them directly.
If NC Soft do not wish to issue a response to these queries, I'd be grateful if you could let me know.
If I don't get a response by Friday afternoon, I will be submitting the article to my editor, saying that NC Soft and HK Strategies did not respond to requests for comment, and did not take the opportunity to put their side of the story across."
Tonight (Oct 17 - 13 days after my original email, three days after my deadline) I had a response from NC Soft in Seattle. Their response was:
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"I wanted to let you know that we will be declining your interview request as it relates to the sun setting of City of Heroes."
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I'm honestly completely confused. For one thing, I didn't ask for an interview, but still. That's neither here nor there.
I've been a journalist for eight years, and I've written thousands of articles in that time, both as a reporter on my local newspaper, and freelance for other publications. This is the first time anyone has ever refused to answer my questions.
Sure, I've had "We can't get you a comment in time," or "We can't comment on individual cases, but...we strive hard to make sure that our customers get the best service but sadly sometimes we fall short on that..." I've had people lie to me, I've had people try to spin me (most memorable was our local council who reported me that they were setting aside a bunch of money to buy a new skatepark, hurrah! With a bit of digging, it turned out it was because they'd gone in and demolished the old one in the middle of the night without notice, on International Skateboarding Day, no less.)
But I've honestly never had anyone point blank refuse to give a response to questions.
If any journos out there want a copy of the correspondence, PM me and let me know. It might make the basis for a 'why won't NC Soft answer questions' piece. I'll try and pitch that to a few of my contacts too, but some of you in the gaming press may be better placed than I am to get something out there quickly.
It's ridiculous for them not to answer these questions. They're not unreasonable. I was basically giving them the opportunity to shut us up and send us packing with our tails between our legs.
I really need the rest of the press to put pressure on them now. If they won't answer the questions, I need you guys to help me find out why they won't answer these questions. Why they won't discuss the sunset of City of Heroes.
I'm pretty sure that it's because they didn't do anything that they said they did in their press release, and I want people to know that they lied to their customers. I need for the rest of the press to call 'em on this.
Please.