An insider supposedly using a burner account posted in the comments section of Kotaku’s original article the other week in order to “set the record straight”.
The basic gist was that like Paragon Studios and City of Heroes, Carbine Studio and Wildstar was being closed by NCsoft because they were given long leashes but ended up wasting the money they were given.
While there is no way to actually verify this was an ex-Paragon Studio and Carbine Studio employee, this also isn’t that far fetched either.
I’ve written before regarding how Bluehole has done the same thing (with their Bluehole Alliances) where they acquire other studios, initially provide them resources including funding, and then a long leash. My primary topic was Ginno Games -> Bluehole Ginno when it came to the Devilian franchise -> PUBG Corp and PUBG.
It’s not unusual to see this given the competitive nature in Asian societies where even internal divisions are sometimes pitted against each other (intra-company coopetition) and allowed to sink or swim. When it comes to a western studio, this is where the disconnect occurs with the Korean leaderships expectations versus the discipline of that western studio. Paragon Studios was founded by NCsoft as a wholly owned subsidiary in Mountain View, California (aka NCsoft NorCal) while Carbine Studios was founded by former Blizzard employees and later acquired by NCsoft.
From my own experience, I’ve witnessed the excess that occurred during the heights of the dot.com era bubble in the 90’s so I can understand what happens when huge sums of money are dropped onto these studios (where more often than not, this money is mismanaged). That is why the closure of Carbine and Wildstar was not surprising especially considering the mismanagement at the leadership level.
With regards to NCsoft, they are justified in shutting things down when the performance isn’t there BUT I also believe there needs to be a better job down by the parent company (Korean leadership) at clearly communicating their expectations especially to western studios which they fund, create, or acquire such that the optics don’t always appear to be seen as a company that is quick to pull the plug on a title (that is the sort of reputation NCsoft has with myself for example).
Note that official developers who were part of Paragon have long denied some of the allegations of such misconduct. That isn’t to say there were issues higher up the chain but that too could be only considered unverifiable speculation. My point is more or less the aspect that subsidiaries at some Korean companies are allowed to operate independently where the possibility does exist for shenanigans to happen.
