Note: Because there are some folks who are taking these postings out of context (not accurately interpreting them), I need to stress that NONE OF THIS IS OFFICIALLY CONFIRMED. That is a reason why this and my prior post, has the word official in quotes. I’ve been taking the stance of giving the Twitter announcement the benefit of the doubt (it was too easy to write from the skeptical point of view since I for one, am normally a skeptic about stuff like this; the truth will come out a few weeks from now). We still haven’t seen a confirmable press release to be put out by either GameOn, Co or Krafton (including the Bluehole Studio subsidiary that oversees TERA) as of this writing. And as I mentioned in the previous posting, this could all not be on the up-and-up where it’s just someone using GameOn, Co as the company. I probably should’ve made this more obvious in the prior post but this blog isn’t widely seen/fairly obscure to begin with.
Following up on my prior posting, the latest my source has been able to dig up is a big fat ZERO burger so far (none of his contacts at Krafton have heard any changes with regards to PC TERA). Obviously, if there were any sort of discussions happening, company names would not be disclosed until actual contracts were signed and all parties had official announcements ready to go. It’s highly unusual at this stage though given the timing, that there isn’t something like “yes, there are talks happening with various parties to continue to license the game in maintenance mode”; from that time perspective, this doesn’t look good for the Twitter announcement claim. Again, I need to stress I’m giving this the benefit of the doubt until the end of this month anyway.
If we’re digging into the Discord side of things, that is where things do get more obviously sketchy. I mean even the Twitter account, doesn’t come across as how GameOn would be operating it (why would an official account associated with the gaming industry, be following SpaceX, Tesla, or BitCoin for example). But I’m ignoring that for the time being. Digressing, the Discord moderators themselves have little information (and some are skeptical but also taking a wait, watch and see attitude). They’ve been given very little and vague information to date except one that stands out like a sore thumb to me. The game client size an administrator gave out to the moderators, clocks in at 59GB. No actual version number (which raises a flag since there would be no reason to to not have that information already) except when questioned, is not a private server sort of deal. v115 (the final official build excluding whatever changes are being made for KR with their ending events content) weighs in at 72GB. The v100.02 client build is 67GB while the v92.03 client, is around 53GB. Basically, something doesn’t add up. Another tidbit they were provided is that there would be a take over of only the SEA regional server from Gameforge (this would effectively be a data migration from Gameforge). Gameforge operates the SEA server Shen as part of their EU cluster (the SEA server data originally came from PLAYWITH SEA when they operated that regional server). That of course is only one part of the discussion. The other discussion is the nature of the licensing. Again, unearthing that part has been a ZERO burger so far and doesn’t make sense from a time perspective.
Due to the GDPR, both Gameforge and GameOn, Co (or whomever that wanted to potentially take over a region) would have to create a workflow process to transfer that data which satisfies the privacy requirements in the GDPR. Wearing my skeptic hat, I have severe doubts about this because the closure is as of this posting, only 18 days away with ZERO official pronouncements (normally, all of this would’ve been handled well before June). I do know that Krafton/Bluehole as licensees, do have the option to “acquire” the account data back from their publishers (this is normally written as standard in the publishing contract). But without some kind of provision like that agreed to (or an agreement made between Gameforge and GameOn/any business entity [which would also need to have at least an agreement in place with Krafton to take over the license for the SEA region]), Gameforge would have no obligation after June 30th, to handover any of that account data (standard operating procedure would be a deletion of all that information).
Again, I need to stress I am giving all of this the benefit of the doubt until the end of this month (despite all of the skeptical and sketchy information) because it’s simple; the folks behind that Twitter announcement need to show something after June 30th. I know Twitter has rules about impersonating a business (but that will be up to both GameOn, Co Ltd and Krafton to deal with should all of this prove to be fake).
