Curiouser and curiouser, the rabbit hole deepens!
The Famous Bard has given us a most intriguing snippet here, one that fills some infuriating gaps...yet it also creates new gaps of its own.
Legal issues and ties binding to the CoH IP would indeed explain official corporate silence, but as NCsoft's record with communication is chequered at best, such silence itself should not be taken as a sign of goodwill, ill will, or indeed any other flavour of will, it simply...is.
As always, I'm driven to regard the
timing of CoH's closure as the key to this riddle. Vis a vis the game's financial history, there was no more reason to close CoH a year ago, or 2 years ago, than there was on August 31st. So it's logical to look instead for any
change at NCsoft which might explain a desire to change the administration of CoH.
And change aplenty there's been this year, in the shape of NCsoft CEO Kim selling 2/3 of his personal stock at below market price to biggest rival Nexon. Somewhere in that shift of power is the "realignment of focus" we seek.
So, logic time -
1. Why not simply transfer CoH to Nexon to run without closing it?Well, if there's a legal ball and chain attached to CoH, then transferring lock, stock and barrel might be an utter legal minefield. Closing the game would likely break legal bonds, making a transfer easier.
2. Okay, so what's with that $8 million price tag for the IP?If NCsoft wanted Nexon to have the IP, it would be logical to overprice it to chase buyers away. The beauty of this is for them is that for all we know, the transfer of the IP for $8 million might
already have been part of the share deal between Kim and Nexon. He did sell his shares at below market value after all...perhaps the IP sale was part of it, but would only be officially confirmed later when no-one but Nexon wanted to stump up the $8 million asking price.
But this brings us to the next point -
3. Would Nexon even want the IP at all?Ah, now here's the new gap in the puzzle. Keeping CoH running would probably have meant Nexon would ultimately end up running it, because from what I can tell, NCsoft seems to favour retreating to within Korean borders, while Nexon is blustering about building its profile in the US. With the two in partnership, the conclusion there is obvious. But what if Nexon didn't want to run it? What if, in fact, part of the deal between Nexon and NCsoft
IS the closure of CoH because Nexon didn't want to be dumped with legal hassles, and perhaps also isn't even interested in developing a new, legally unbound version of CoH2 that would take several years to see the light of day anyway?
Nexon after all prefer to market games developed by others - and in this case, of the two companies, NCsoft is the developer with the proven track record. It's possible that Nexon could buy the IP from NCsoft and then effectively give it back by allowing NCsoft to develop a CoH2...but given that GW2 likely benefitted from keeping GW ticking over, the logic there would surely have been to keep CoH ticking over too - unless these mysterious 'legal ties' meant closing CoH and making CoH2 years later was easier than keeping old CoH ticking over...which would seem rather bizarre.
So if Nexon didn't want to run CoH, and NCsoft don't want to use the IP (remember this quote from Lincoln Davies, NCsoft West director of corporate communications :
"The continued support of the franchise no longer fits with our long-term goals for the company." ) then the IP would indeed be up for grabs come December 1st.
Now all we're left with in
that scenario is the logic behind that puzzling $8 million price tag on the IP. With nothing to lose from delaying the sale of the IP til closure was certain anyway, perhaps this might be simply to make sure any legal issues die with the game's closure, ensuring no trailing legal stingers could come back to haunt NCsoft later.
*sigh*
The waters are still muddy though. I guess we just have to wait and see if they settle a bit come Dec 1st and we might finally be able to see something clear in there
