https://forums.enmasse.com/tera/discussion/29436/moving-forward-post-dmca-takedown
En Masse Entertainment (EME) provided an update regarding how they will be moving forward after having issued a DMCA takedown of several third-party software (against the Terms of Service) repositories around 2 weeks ago.
The whole statement they provided is vague at best since there really needs to be an official statement made by Bluehole themselves regarding their long term plans for TERA. The game has some serious architectural flaws in terms of its server/client design which allowed this unsanctioned ability to begin with.
This is a 6+ year old title with no clear cut direction for the past few years. So I am having a difficult time seeing how they will even be able to address some of the issues without them just being even more bandaid fixes.
It’s also no longer clear as to EME’s stand on their own Terms of Service since they alluded to “reaching out to talent outside of our organization, investigating ways to enable, empower the existing mod community to find and build their own sanctioned solutions.”
This whole thing is reminding me of PUBG Corps flippant approach to Epic Games Fortnite when they first hinted about their concerns of copyright infringement (and then later filing a lawsuit in South Korea, only to pull it a few weeks later). It’s like they didn’t completely vet the whole thing through before pulling the trigger.
In this case (given the statement I quoted above), that EME filed the DMCA (well within their rights) and expected to be done with the matter. 2 weeks later though, they are now hinting at the possibility of allowing third-party software which given the state of TERA’s current server/client architecture, would require a massive investment by Bluehole to actually support. That in itself is something I find hard to believe given how a lot of these core issues have been neglected for many years.
This also sets a bad precedent for other developers and publishers because EME is telegraphing they may have pulled the DMCA trigger too quickly and may not have expected the level of discourse that has taken place over the past two weeks. For many, it will give off the impression that EME caved a bit. There was a lot of noise regarding players quitting or starting over on EU (Gameforge). My own take on that was it was just that, noise. But many will interpret this as meaning that there was a large exodus of players to fit the narrative (confirmation bias) that those folks were pushing (as a way to “put a bag of hurt on EME’s version of TERA”). In the end though, the damage is done from all the acrimony.
What has been probably happening though for a much longer time is a trend of decreasing revenues starting from around 2016. And I would say it really accelerated when EME hired Sean “Seandynamite” Neil as TERA’s new (PC) product manager in 2017. He had previously worked at NCSoft (and then their subsidiary ArenaNet) so I was expecting to see more cash grab style pushes. And that is sort of what has been happening with the games monetization over the last year where I believe that less and less players are biting on that bait. And over the last two weeks, there may have just been this vertical drop in revenues from EMP sales that they could not ignore (because those are the sort of important metrics which falls on the head of the product manager).
Using myself, the last time I purchased EMP was back during the Attack on Titan promotion during their 6th anniversary. I bought $500 worth; 75% of that used to purchase several of the time limited cosmetics and the remaining has been what I used for minor purchases here and there (with around $95 worth of EMP still unused). I purchased a bunch of 50% price reduced 30 and 90 day Elite vouchers but haven’t used them since my last used one expired back in June. This Elite subscription is one of the things they really need to overhaul (along with the Rewards Emporium). Both of these were previously discussed but has fallen off into a chasm along with further updating of the Fashion Coupon shop as well as keeping the TERA Dressing Room updated (that’s another system that is poorly designed on the backend where the database of ID’s tend to get wiped out on some updates, and requires reloading by the publisher – which in EME’s case, falls off into another chasm).
But getting back to the subject matter, I really do have a difficult time seeing how EME and Bluehole are going to manage the sanctioning of the mod community especially when that community has never had a positive relationship with EME (some being permanently banned in prior actions due to exploiting). As I mentioned several paragraphs up, I find it difficult to envision Bluehole actually investing time/resources into the changes required (the correct way to do it would be like what NCSoft has committed to with Blade & Soul as an example with rewriting it using Unreal Engine 4) along with their other franchises. I don’t know… maybe this might actually kick someone at Bluehole in the ass where they might reconsider their plans for not doing a “TERA 2”.
UPDATE: One of the TERA proxy developers who was contacted by an EME community representative did a writeup and included their Discord communication.
To be frankly honest, I’m flabbergasted with how this entire situation has been handled. The DMCA was filed for a reason since the key encryption used for the games opcodes, data center (and by extension, the packet handling) has to be cracked in order to allow the functionality that the proxy modules provided. In the screen capture in the developers writeup, they specifically mention this to the EME representative.
This entire chat also confirms that EME reached out to the same developer which they filed the DMCA against; the representative put out feelers gauging the interest in being an outside contractor which was declined by the proxy developer.
Furthermore, the representative noted that they (EME) weren’t comfortable with consumer data leaving their ecosystem (this was the potential problem that the holes in TERA could allow anyone with knowledge to exploit; it didn’t require the proxy or an exploitive module – that aspect just made it easier should that code have made it out into the wild).
I’ve pretty much been a bystander in this whole thing (understanding the QoL things some modules provided which to me, are things that Bluehole should have been directly addressing several years ago, while also noting that EME was well within their rights to uphold their Terms of Service when it specifically came to these third-party software).
But this Discord chat session really does put into question EME’s handling of the DMCA takedown (when it comes to those who signed off on it). While the representative made it clear that it was just him (right now) reaching out, that decision obviously had to be okayed by a higher level manager.
In the meantime, there is no short term solution because there is no way Bluehole will be able to address such an officially sanctioned third-party mod system since TERA was never designed with that sort of functionality in mind. As mentioned in prior postings, the overall design has fundamental issues with lack of server side data validation and trusting the client too much as a result. The entire game code would need to be refactored (Bluehole does not have that kind of manpower nor the original design and development team that created it) which amounts to a near complete rewrite (basically the effort required is equivalent to a new game).
A big company like NCSoft with its resources can throw engineers at Blade & Soul (or to do a Blizzard like scrapping of an entire project as was the case with Lineage Eternal to start over again with Project TL). But it also requires a vision for those franchise. As I’ve mentioned before, Bluehole doesn’t seem to have any roadmap or long term plans for TERA. They dismissed the notion of a “TERA 2” years ago. IMHO, they need to seriously reconsider their plans because I do not know if it will be worth the time and effort to recode an old game like TERA as opposed to a follow-on that is built from the ground up with a modern game engine and technology.
But none of this addresses the short term when it comes to actual solutions. The proxy developer made it clear they have no interest in working with EME after what happened and will not implement support for NA again. EME literally comes out of this with egg on their face (given this Discord chat) and now has to prove by actual action that they will attempt to fix the communication and interaction issues with their community. Myself, I am not deeply involved in this community by personal choice so I’ve been sort of indifferent.
Having looked at the acrimony created by this entire event though, I can honestly say that it will be a huge challenge for both sides to overcome (as the player community is obviously cynical having heard the same thing before while EME now has a bit of mea culpa to now overcome given the signals they are now sending out with regards to the third-party development scene).
