In a move that doesn’t surprise me, Krafton subsidiary En Masse Entertainment (which publishes Bluehole/Krafton’s TERA in North America), announced they will shutting their doors.
I’ve been railing on them (EME) for awhile now when it came to business decisions; I mentioned last April they were skating on thin ice given the sink or swim nature of the original Bluehole Alliance (what is now known as the Krafton Game Union). And I mentioned in October 2019 that if they did not clean up their act, they would end up going the way of insolvency like Trion. They lost way too many games (non-Bluehole/Krafton titles) in recent years due to mismanagement and were basically being kept alive by TERA (a niche but one that is profitable within that niche). But the studio was originally acquired with the objective of being more than just a publisher of its parent corporations’ games on PC.
And so here we are. This is ultimately what happens when you don’t really communicate (especially the listening part) to your customers and try to generate revenues in the most cash grabbing blatant ways. The whales can only keep companies afloat for so long; but most publishers (especially of 3rd party published titles that come from South Korea), haven’t come to that realization with their business models (and building long term relationships with customers by treating that relationship with a modicum of respect as that will be reciprocated over the long term by continued loyalty and business).
Both Closers and TERA will have news regarding their new publishers in the coming weeks. Considering that Gameforge has absorbed several other regions for TERA, I’m presuming this will be the future for TERA NA. I’m not sure about TERA Console (NA/EU/JP) being taken on by Gameforge though unless they build out their staff in that area. I personally dislike Gameforge as a publisher though but there honestly aren’t better options when it comes to publishers in the west that handle third party titles (please NO to Kakao Games and Gamigo which does have a console team for Trove and Defiance). And well, Bluehole already has the tools they made for Gameforge to migrate account data over (so it’s mostly business negotiations with the licensing and the actual schedule).
It sucks for the people below the c-suite level (especially now with this pandemic). Here’s hoping that most will get help with Krafton in getting leads elsewhere.
