https://archeage.playkakaogames.com/news/579
The transfer of the ArcheAge franchise (NA/EU region) from Gamigo to Kakao Games, resulted in the move to a global build of the game client. That has translated into some items undergoing a name change, a change in their properties, or outright removal either because they no longer exist, or in the case of ArcheAge Unchained, being removed since it was an item considered to be a marketplace item that gave advantages.
The list consists of over 2000 items and how they were handled in the transfer; substituted, deleted completely (with no substitutes or compensation), and items that were removed and compensated (in credits or manastorm). Some cosmetic items were removed because they were transformed into image items instead while others removed because they have not been added back in any build. Kakao is still looking into a few items that may not have been properly substituted. Most all event tokens were simply deleted as were various event rewards.
The issue I personally have is how poorly communicated this aspect of the transfer was. This falls squarely on Kakao because they decided (in conjunction with XL) to move away from the publisher specific client that Gamigo was using. That decision was obviously not something that was decided at the last minute by Kakao. This was something that should have been part of the process once the decision was made to not renew Gamigo’s publishing contract (that negotiation itself was happening several months prior to the public announcement). That public announcement happened on November 4th with the relaunch date news coming a week later; Gamigo noted here they would be performing a final account data handover to Kakao on November 18th.
What the two companies should have done was to have that account data transfer take place closer to the December 1st date when Gamigo’s contract expired. That way, Kakao could have made it clear of the move to this global build change and the heads up about the item changes. Players therefore would have had knowledge prior to the data transfer and could have acted accordingly with items that would be removed during the transfer; stuff like event tokens could be redeemed, event rewards like balls opened, and still unopened marketplace crate redeemed. It’s just a basic level of respect and transparency that should’ve been prioritized. Part of this was actually worse for legacy players because there was just a lot more stuff that built up over time (I know I had some old event coins and reward boxes from 2016; the boxes I could not open due to lack of inventory space).
In this particular case, Gamigo isn’t to blame either because they had no idea of what Kakao was planning in this area (with moving to a global build that affected the item database). All they could do was go under the assumption that everything would transfer as is. What actually happened is all on Kakao Games for not communicating this ahead of time to both Gamigo, and to the players. I also don’t believe this was all decided at the last minute either because that list is a testament that Kakao and XL knew of those details with the global build.
But what’s done is done, and they now need to clean up and deal with the edge cases for what is not covered in this table. I can now see from this table that a lot of the holes in my furniture storage boxes are seasonal decor (Halloween and winter ones being the most obvious) since part of the expectation is for us to buy them back with the compensated credits. I do know that folks like myself made out in the credit compensation (it’s even more for my alt account which I also previously miscalculated since I missed a 51K credit token on a character). But I already made the decision not to resub on that alt account (thus I’m not going to try to place land for them in this weekends land rush) and I am still on the fence with what I plan to do for my main account once my free time is up. This weekends land rush will be a determining factor (since that is pretty much what I primarily play Unchained for). And I already know with this fresh start, that there will be another server merger when that ends up turning into a ghost town after the 6 month mark.
Thus I already see Kakao’s calculus of moving from the buy to play business model to a subscription one, being a losing proposition (revenue and retention numbers) when taken into conjunction the credit compensation for the item changes with this move to a global build. They are already not getting any subscription revenues for the first 90-180 days and any revenue from credit sales. I also know I am not the only one who has already made an upfront decision with alt accounts (this will turn into negative retention when it comes to metrics).
I will give Kakao the benefit of the doubt when it comes to managing the game during my initial 90 days of free game time. But let’s just say it’s not that great of an initial impression, nor improvement over either Trion or Gamigo. They also need to do a much better job with communication where it’s not all over the place (main web site, Discord, social media like Twitter). Just having all of their primary communication on Discord is already a negative (to me) since I’m not exactly enamored with it as a platform.
