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Torchlight: Perfect World Acquires Majority Stake in Torchlight Dev
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
Chinese game publisher Perfect World, responsible for the eponymous MMORPG Perfect World as well as the upcoming 2.5D Battle of the Immortals has acquired a majority stake in Runic Entertainment, the folks behind the Diablo-inspired hit Torchlight.
Perfect World, of course, were the publishers of Torchlight, and with plans for an MMORPG based on the hit game, it makes sense that the company would make such a move.
via Joystiq.
Comments
Well, shit.
Now with 57.3% more flames!
Heh, Torchlight took Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 and mixed them together.
The fact that they want to make an MMO based out of this would be interesting. Especially if it ends up releasing remotely close to Diablo 3.
I own the single player version, that good enough for me.
FoE Fist of the Empire
What the hell?!? This is almost the exact same mistake Flagship Studios made, letting themselves get bought out by a foreign company. Please, for the love of all that is good and decent, tell me that they at least still hold ownership of the IP...
Did these people learn nothing from what happened to them at Flagship?!?!?
PW has the Majority stake, which means they now own the IP.
IMO this changes nothing.
Torchmmorpg would still have been f2p mmorpg operated, mantained and published by PWE.
All this did is:
1) Torchmmo now has 8million $ more in development.
2) Considering sales of torchlight went way past 500 000, the company has gotten a lot of hype and that main source of income for Torchlight and torchmmo development has been PWE, it only makes sense for them to invest into the possibility of stocks going up even more, when details on torchlight-multiplayer and torchmmo are out.
# A GRIM, ODD, ARCANE SKY
# ANY GOD, I MARK SACRED
# A MASKED CRY ADORING
# A DREAMY, SICK DRAGON
To my understanding, Flagship went under on its own accord and its IPs were sold/traded away as a result of thier contracts to get the money they needed to make the games.
Also, This means one of 2 things. 1, Runic stays intact as the western gate for Perfect World to enter the US with some force. 2, Runic employees get a bundle of money and move on to different companies.
Runic began development of the MMO prior to this transaction. So I doubt Runic will go anywhere until the release of the MMO. It just means the execs at Runic get a bundle of money and will move on if things go south, or far east.
FYI, if Perfect World owns Runic, then Runic still owns the IP, but ultimately so does Perfect World.
Just like how Blizzard Entertainment owns the Warcraft IP, but Blizzard Ent. is a subsidary of Activision Blizzard. So Activision Blizzard, in effect, owns the Warcraft IP and since Vivendi holds a 52% controlling interest, Vivendi can have its way with the IP. Though it would be nigh impossible for Vivendi to do anything to Blizzard.
I feel sorry for Runic. PerfectWorld Ent is a terrible company. They put out trash games as quickly as they can and do not do real beta testing. I loved Torchlight, but this is a bad move for Runic.
Guess who funded Torchlight release?
Guess who's official publisher of Torchlight?
Guess who was always intended to fund, run and manage Torchmmo?
Seriously, nothing has changed.
Oh and I would not call it terrible. PWE actually releases a good games and customer support and customer-developer interaction is one of the best I have ever seen lately.
# A GRIM, ODD, ARCANE SKY
# ANY GOD, I MARK SACRED
# A MASKED CRY ADORING
# A DREAMY, SICK DRAGON
Torchlight wasn't funded by PWE. They were one of many companies that Runic used to distribute the game. Get your facts straight.
Does this mean that the Torchlight MMO will now be a reskinned version of Perfect World with a slight mechanic twist like every other game from PWE? 8P
I guess only time will tell if this is good or not. If PWE lets Runic do their thing then we are golden if not then we are screwd.
PW owns mythos, and will make shit of it.
Now they own torchlight, and will make shit of it after they ruined mythos.
Not really confident in what future offers ...
Well, i like the single player torchlight game, i'll certainly stick on it ... wont buy 5 inventory slots for 20$; or one char slot for 15
Yet another MMO to scratch of my wanted list. Oh well.
PWI isn't a bad company, I have been playing PW for awhile now the updates are regular the devs actually listen to peopel no matter what their nationality. I think what we are seeing here will be very commonplace in the near future.
This sword here at my side dont act the way it should
Keeps calling me its master, but I feel like its slave
Hauling me faster and faster to an early, early grave
And it howls! it howls like hell!
I think what this highlights is the truth that game developers are always worried about funding.
It's just that big of an issue.
so if a company comes along and offers to be a sugar daddy, it seems that more often than not game companies sign on.
Look at Turbine. They are arguably a very successful game company for mmo's.
And yet they allowed themselves to be purchased by Warner Brothers.
My thought is that the times these game companies have come close to closing their doors or laying off more people than they would be comfortable with, happen more often than one would like.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
T3 entertainment owns Redbana who are now the current developers of Mythos. PW has nothing to do with Mythos.Google is your friend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythos_(video_game)
Hanbitsoft (mid 2008-present)
The intellectual property and game assets of Mythos moved into the ownership of South Korean MMO publisher HanbitSoft. In May 2009, Hanbitsoft released a statement on its Korean-language website revealing that parent company T3 Entertainment and T3's subsidiary Redbana are continuing development of Mythos. Included on the site is a message from a designer identified as "Alboos" who states that they are restructuring Mythos to make it "more suited as an online game."[8] In August 2009, Redbana/T3 launched an English-language Mythos website with a closed beta registration form. On December 1, 2009, Redbana began occasional daily updates via the Mythos "teaser" website.[9]
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
You do know this changes nothing, right?
PWE would have published this game anyway.
This game was always intended to be microtransaction-based, like how Mythos would have been.
Perfect World Entertainment would have ran, hosted servers and managed, admines, GM-ed Torchlight mmorpg anyway as that was the original project.
All that this investment does is tie PWE to Runic a bit more. Runic gets more money and increased stability and its PWE which takes bigger risk - if Runic projects fail, PWE gets to pay the bill.
All PWE did is invest 8 million dollars into project they would have ran, managed and published anyway
# A GRIM, ODD, ARCANE SKY
# ANY GOD, I MARK SACRED
# A MASKED CRY ADORING
# A DREAMY, SICK DRAGON
As far as Asian production companies go, PW isn't bad. I'm just sick of North American and European developers selling out to Asian production companies becuase it rarely ends well. Who knows though? I guess we'll have to wait and see. I actually enjoy some of PWs titles...
-------------------------
"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
Member Since March 2004
Currently Playing Path of Exile
lol, are you people serious? It was gonna be like this since the start, perfect world is simply publishing, they're not gonna interfere with development
but go ahead and ignore these posts and keep posting doom and gloom comments "OMG KOREAN COMPANIES ARE GONNA RUIN THIS BEAUTIFUL DIABLO CLONE" like you have been
also just an FYI hellgate london failed because of the great incompetence of the developers and people like bill roeper
For all the QQers, read this post by devs:
http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?p=112827#p112827
This purchase has been planned from beginning as a way to make sure that Runic wont go down during development of TorchMMO and whatever else they will create.
TorchMMo was always intended to be published, run and managed by PWE.
Just like English team of BoI can do pretty much everything they want with game and how they run it, Runic will always have full(and even bigger than in example case) creative control over their games.
# A GRIM, ODD, ARCANE SKY
# ANY GOD, I MARK SACRED
# A MASKED CRY ADORING
# A DREAMY, SICK DRAGON
Also to note, PW does have developers who work with Runic. This has been known for quite sometime and was talked about when they took the publishing rights. Nothing will change, all this was is a way to get more funding to support them throughout development.
One more off the list. Oh well, at least I have the single player game.