It seems like things are not going well over at Gamigo according to two reports at Massively OP. The first one notes that they will be shuttering the Aeria Games Portal (thus ending their publishing of Aura Kingdom, Grand Fantasia, Last Chaos, and Shaiya) in February 2023. None of these games will be closing; they’ll be taken over by other publishers (X-LEGEND for the first two and Fawkes Games for the last two).
The second article notes that Fractured Online has vanished from Gamigo’s web site, while also detailing how Fawkes Games seems to be a new entity based in Bulgaria. Just looking at their site, it just seems sketchy as hell that this company will actually be able to provide an actual live service and support of these two titles (Last Chaos and Shaiya) they are taking over.
But I digress. Gamigo has long provided really short shrift for the games they took over. Their handling of the Glyph platform games from their acquisition of Trion, was terrible based on my personal experience when they were publishing ArcheAge/ArcheAge Unchained (which they lost the publishing rights for in late 2021). I said it then; besides Trove, the ArcheAge franchise was a huge revenue generator at the time when Gamigo acquired Trion’s assets (yes, revenues were nowhere as large during the initial few years of the games life at Trion, but from Gamigo’s perspective, it was a gold mine).
ArcheAge Unchained (a buy once business model) was created under Gamigo, and was a huge revenue boost for at least the first year. But it was also unsustainable with the original Archepass (cosmetic items which were mostly recolored rehashes). Eventually, Gamigo went back on its original premise of cosmetic items in the premium track, adding in questionable items, while also charging for DLC content. That move itself, began to alienate portions of the player base; that is when the entire IP began bleeding players.
Kakao Games (KR) in the mean time had acquired a majority stake in ArcheAge developer XLGAMES in early 2020. At that point, I already knew that the company would look at self publishing ArcheAge/ArcheAge Unchained. Gamigo’s acquisition of Trion’s asset did not automatically translate into a longer term extension of the existing publishing contract. I’d presumed that Trion’s original contract was between 5-7 years so when Gamigo took it over, they were already coming up on the 5 year mark. When 2019 came and went, I figured it was probably 7 years (which would put contract renegotiations around 2021). And that is exactly what transpired. Their handling of ArcheAge was already falling apart; early in 2021, Gamigo pretty much had the game on auto-pilot (running an array of Archepasses) until they announced that Kakao Games Europe was taking over.
Just like how Trion ignored their player base (which eventually came to bite them in the rear), the same is happening to Gamigo where they’ve had to continue downsizing their portfolio and personnel. Last year, I pretty much said to stay away from Fractured Online. Unsurprisingly, development still continued to be slow going. Furthermore, it wasn’t even gaining traction with potential players. Now an year later with Gamigo’s ongoing woes, it goes MIA on the companies site. It’s like these gaming industry publishing companies really believe they can keep pulling the same BS, and expect it not to impact their retention of paying customers.
You would think there would be way more self-awareness; unfortunately they seem to go through this cycle of repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Kakao Games Europe should be taking notes. I noted in one of those Gamigo related posts, that I would take Kakao Games over Gamigo. Well, the joke was on me because Kakao Games Europe is actually even worse at handling ArcheAge/ArcheAge Unchained. And that is saying a lot given how bad Trion, and then Gamigo were. It remains to be seen what the longer term prospects are for Gamigo (they will probably continue downsizing staffing). Trove is probably their biggest revenue generator. RIFT is like in limbo (according to this latest report, the games last community manager was let go). The MMO no doubt has a small but very captive player base. But this is Gamigo; they’ve handled it horribly, and probably have little clue as to its value (I mean they let go so much of its dev team ever since the acquisition, investing very little into it).
But this is what happens when executives are just greedy SOB’s who prioritize milking the games versus treating their customer player base respectfully. When you keep treating your customer base as expendable, eventually karma is going to come back, and bite you in the rear. As the title of this entry says, karma can be a bitch.
