Kakao Games and XLGAMES finally managed to return the last pieces of missing items that weren’t previously compensated for, after last Thursday’s (May 12th) maintenance. That was a 6 month journey after the company took over the publishing from Gamigo in early December. They also sent out an e-mail message regarding the item restoration with another short apology that will ring hollow for many who no longer have any game time remaining (Unchained requires game time to even be able to login unlike legacy where you can at least still access your characters).
I mentioned this in my previous entry; where the least Kakao Games could’ve done, was given ArcheAge Unchained players a 7-day voucher to use so that they can at least claim those items (you cannot blame anyone for not wanting to even spend $10 for 30 days of time with this company). Likewise, I don’t think anyone on legacy would complain about 7-days of Patron (in order to provide legacy players compensation). But nope. Which makes the next bit seem even more suspect as to the ulterior motive.
Additionally on May 12th, Kakao Games decided to rescind the sanctions they had imposed on players who they found had engaged in an underwear exploit that was known as “Panty Gate”; they basically unbanned most everyone they had permanently banned (there may have been a few banned whose appeal were rejected, but those folks are in the minority). Basically, they are letting back in, the worst group of individuals in ArcheAge (the exploit early and often crowd). And these clowns are already at it with the “when new fresh start” messaging on the official Discord.
The timing of both of these is now in question because the next batch of complimentary free time (180 days) for ArcheAge Unchained, ends in around 3 weeks (plus several days since there were several free 3-day vouchers that were given out as compensation). Likewise for legacy, those players who decide to return, are more than likely going to want to pickup Patron. I no longer believe this is a coincidence as opposed to the company hoping it will lead to a blip in revenues.
From XL’s perspective, this has been a huge money wasting endeavor for them getting these items back into the global build. Kakao Games Europe has long been in the hole since they’ve been deriving very little revenues from game time given how poorly they’ve handled situations like this including the original “over compensation” in credits (which obviously impacted sales of credits), which they ended up screwing up further.
They as a company have already been long judged already as INCOMPETENT to the point where one need not ponder for too long if it is worthwhile to spend any money with them. They’ve lost any goodwill they originally had at the beginning, and have shown little they deserve patronage. The lead CM also made this comment during the AMA they had when they were taking over the game (in response to a question asked by a cynical player about “how things would be different this time” given how poorly both Trion and Gamigo also were).
Unequivocally, they have been the worst publisher of all (and that says a lot given my how bad both Trion and Gamigo were on the “lousy publisher” scale). And they aren’t really meeting the moment with trying to earn back the goodwill and trust they lost. In the last month, the amount of land that opened up on NA Kraken for Unchained (along with taking over a week for anyone to claim them) is a good indicator of the ongoing drop off (at least on NA), and that is going to see another bump in early June when the next major group of free game time ends (and a good percentage of those players do not renew).
