Tencent Acquisition

To GGG and PoE community,

You have started from nothing, put all of your money, faith, creativity and many years of work into this project to create an amazing game - you have finally started to reap the rewards with a steady growth in your player base. May I ask you the question that is on everyone's mind - Why? You have done all of the hard work already and built a big team, do you really need big corporation's money to continue the development of PoE? "Well, this will get us further, faster" - what difference does it make? Is your progress not fast enough and not good enough to the point of selling out? I understand taking an offer when you are in the trenches with no money before the launch of the first version of the game, but where were Tencent and other corporations when you were stuck in the mud?

Secondly, and more importantly, why not let the community invest in your company? I mean, you have loyal fans of the game that have donated hundreds and thousands of dollars just for fun, I am sure the community would have raised you enough capital through share acquisition, which would have kept Grinding Gear Games as the majority stake holder and actual loyal players as the voting base steering the direction of the company?

This decision, when you have ALREADY made it and been through the worst 10+ years of making PoE into something, is unbelievable to me and from what I gather in the comments, to other players too.

"..allowing a high level of autonomy in continuing to operate and develop their games."

Key word allowing - you cannot buy your shares back now even if you begged them or paid a premium, but I at least hope that this move is based on a strong, legally sound contract that will give you actual autonomy as opposed to hope? Tencent is the biggest profit-oriented corporation that could not care less and could not be further from GGG values, just look at the portfolio of their games. They believe in making money off silly pay-to-play games. Associating with them will inevitably impact the course of this game, if not now, then down the line.

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WithLoveEarL wrote:

May I ask you the question that is on everyone's mind - Why?

At a guess it would be because the players are ever demanding of more and more things and while GGG are making a good bit of money that it was coming to the point where costs were verging on too high to do what they feel they wanted to do and what the players wanted them to do.

Was there another way to go about this, probably.
Would it have been good for the game as a whole? probably not.

I mean they could have just been content with what they have and continued to plod along BUT players get bored and fuck off elsewhere.

Even if they were to put up options like a kick starter the development cycle would slow down and a large portion the potential paying players would dwindle.

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WithLoveEarL wrote:

To GGG and PoE community,
You have started from nothing, put all of your money, faith, creativity and many years of work into this project to create an amazing game - you have finally started to reap the rewards with a steady growth in your player base. May I ask you the question that is on everyone's mind - Why?

Why? It is plain and simple. At the beginning, the company was a small, INDIE-like venture that has achieved success and over time it has evolved into quite big and successful business, in the meantime, gaining many literally fanatical (and paying) supporters. Some time ago, the model of eternal crowd funding had to run out. As a result, the creators and the actual owners of the game decided to sell it for good money to the one that offers the most, in return earning a lifetime retirement. Of course, they left for themselves some symbolic shares, mainly so that the existing playerbase would not be scared and run away in panic.

As for the game itself, it will probably change, because it must somehow earn money for the new owner, who invested large pile of money. And the "supporter packs" are sold completely differently, being "a small, INDIE-like company made up of players who create a game for players" and a completely different being gigantic corporation. It's like suddenly Google or Microsoft started selling "supporter packs". Acting as if they needed additional "support".

There are two possibilities. Either the whole game will quickly transform into P2W garbage and then it will die a natural death or only Chinese version will be transformed into such trash, and the international version will remain a kind of reserve left as a bone thrown to former supporters. Time will tell :)

The real why is bestiary. Bestiary was their vision of where the game should go, and when they found out that the players hated it, they threw the towel and cashed out. Not like they get their vision anymore anyhow, so it’s time for a fat paycheck.

No, but that's the whole point - they could have gotten the same exact paycheck having people/community/players/other minor stakeholders as investors if they made shares tradable/offer them and the founders would have cashed out either way. The thing is, why sell yourself to the devil and lose complete control? Why one major stakeholder, and one of the worst ones as well?

i basically agree with charan now and wish they better had a annual subscription than selling to tencent.

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vio wrote:

i basically agree with charan now and wish they better had a annual subscription than selling to tencent.

Completely agree.

If you need money so much that you're shaking like a coke addict, just make it PAID.

I would be happy to buy the game, heck I'd even pay $50 for it or an annual/monthly subscription. It's way better than selling out to a corporation that has absolutely no interest in your ideas or authenticity.

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WithLoveEarL wrote:

If you need money so much that you're shaking like a coke addict, just make it PAID.

I would be happy to buy the game, heck I'd even pay $50 for it or an annual/monthly subscription. It's way better than selling out to a corporation that has absolutely no interest in your ideas or authenticity.

They could not make a monthly or annual subscription, because it would block them from making drastic changes. Currently the game is so-called F2P and pretends it is not pay to win at all. With such a model, developers can do whatever they want with the game, because buying stash tabs and other MTX stuff is completely voluntary. Meanwhile, someone who paid for an annual subscription may require that a character whom he/she has worked with has not changed into a trash after some patch :)

Personally, I had probably 4 fine-tuned meta characters, which after the introduction of the patch became useless. As a man who bought only "currency tabs" I can not complain, but if I had a monthly subscription, I would consider it a deliberate "spoiling" of the game (product I subscribed/purchased) and demanded to be repaired. (undone nerfs). In the US they would get a lot of lawsuits.

Just put a clause in the Terms that GGG reserve the right to constant changes to the game as they see fit when you're enrolling for a paid game.

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WithLoveEarL wrote:

Just put a clause in the Terms that GGG reserve the right to constant changes to the game as they see fit when you're enrolling for a paid game.

Sure. General Motors and other car companies also have clauses for constant changes. But if they suddenly started to introduce changes, after which the maximum speed of some cars would be 30 km / h, then after a week they would not exist anymore :)