Don't make it any more than it is. Betrayal? Closure out of spite (that's referring to the post I was replying to)? But of course! Clearly, that is how companies make business decisions in the time of a raging financial crisis.
Don't get me wrong. I am not trying to argue that we are supposed to like them. But the fact remains that without their effort to keep the game afloat, it could've been shut down back in 2007 or at best entered maintenance mode. Instead the game bloomed like never before.
Yep, and only with the Freem 15 at one point... due to NCSoft's amazing cash abilities...
I can't shake that this is betrayal. It's not anything less in my mind. NCSoft told Paragon "here's money, go make something. No, really, we love you guys, go do this. And keep CoH going."
And kept that up, with them, with us, until *BLAMMO!* Hatchet to the neck. Knife in the back. Whatever you decide to put there.
Is it the adjective you don't like? Tell me the correct one then. Disingenuous, turncoat... which adjective does apply then?
Not that I want an argument, really. It's very nice that NCSoft saved the stuido and the game back when. Really. I said so when I emailed Mr. Kim, et al, and I even THANKED THEM. I'm not about [Vengeance] (as I never took that power anyway, as it happens) but I am not about sugar coating the past to make the present look less heinous.
And I'm the guy who argued "It's just business." It's just... this is my feeling, logic aside, about this... they did this on purpose. And did it to the wrong folks if anything, because they had OTHER PROPERTIES that are better suited to the decision. On paper, without accounting tricks and such. According to what I can read... and is being thrown about... certainly not from NCSoft, as if that's the truth, then Paragon was the right decision.
But how can that be the truth, for sure, if they are not telling us the reasons, straight up? We can take it, honest! While again, that's Buisness for ya, being all sneaky and secretive and such, it is not fueling any less than deception and conspiracy to kill the stuidio and trick the playerbase to move to another of their products... that we don't like (most of us, apparently, or so I've read hereabouts.) If it's true, and they want the PR problem to die, rather than wait it out, let's see the real deal(tm).
But they can't, because it would reveal... interesting tactics, let's say. Stuff the people/governments wouldn't like. So they... can't. And that isn't helpful at all to the equation.
And they COULD SELL. Just because they have a history of not, doesn't mean this couldn't be let go. They are hoarding it for whatever nefarious (at this time that's what it looks like) purposes. Just... let it go be something somewhere else. Excepting desiring to funnel potential CoH sales into something else they offer, there's no other reason not to, when you get down to it... but they don't.
There is SO MUCH they could do to make it less of a problem, but they simply refuse to for... what?
That's why, to me, it's a betrayal. Nothing less. They refuse to work with anyone for... no good reason except to do it. Not even sell the product back to the studio, or just let it keep going and shut down the part of the studio that was doing the never gonna happen product, and start making money from it, or make some money and sell it...
Nope... Just BOOM. Headshot! Drop dead y'all, or hey, come play one of our grindfests, see?
Emotional? Naw. Just callin' it like I see it. May sound like it, but it's not.
But that's business for ya... it doesn't make sense a lot of times to the consumer. And it sucks. And it's not honorable, if that would have mattered to them, to be disingenuous to the Studio, their investors, and us, in regards Paragon's situation, instead obfuscating it behind bean counter trickery. If that's what happened. I wouldn't know... they won't say.
/Gotta love fancy ass accounting, yeah?