Okay, I've been conned out of money by game developers forever, since pong kept taking my quarters and since Maxis and EA released a quadrillion expansions for every game they produce.
Seriously, how is this any different, they just use a different tactic. Except that a guy is allegedly being sued, despite it being a claim on some unknown forum by a guy who I can't even find the blog of. IMO it's all made up because this moron has taken a hating to a game instead of ignoring it and letting it go the way of a million other webgames.
The issues with Evony are not made up. I was introduced to it by a friend, but became very leary of it when 1) I could not really find out information about the company that runs it, 2) seeing numerous customer service complaints related to payments and their ievony client, 3) the reported copying of other games (Civilization, Age of Empires) including images and text, 4) the use of certain of the advertising images that call into question their rights to use them (http://blog.costumecraze.com/2009/05/dubious-civony-game-use... (note, Evony was originally called Civony)).
I also find their monetization model fails to understand the value most people place on the dollar. $30 = 300 game cents, and with that you'd find most items needed are in the 50 game cent($5) to 200 game cent ($20) range. Fine for those willing to pay it, but I think they're failing to recognize the true potential of the game at those exchange rates.So in the end, I refer to it as the carny model of payments. It's about hooking a few new (and gullible) customers.
Interestingly enough, this game is a clone of Civilization, which happens to have a multiplayer mode, and a very active community which basically gives you endless online game time, if you so desire. Why would one take this game over the original one?
Being browser based actually would make me even less likely to play it. I dropped both Free Realms and Cartoon Network's MMO because they were both browser based. Free Realms was specially poor designed to handle slow connections since it downloads everything on demand, every time it is demanded.
I'm not saying Evony is a good game. I even won't play it on principle (boob ads? wtf?). But being a browser game is a competitive advantage (if your can deliver quality) because your users threshold to try it out is orders of magnitude lower.
I disagree. I believe the user threshold to be higher because it does require a good connection. And good connections are not common.
You may probably have a good (or even a decent) connection to the net, but I have a painful 3G connection that lately have been dishing out a performance worse than my old US Robotics 33.6 Modem.
Playing browser based games nearly mandate that you have both a good and stable connection. Stable being a often forgotten keyword. Connection spikes can kill you easier than the challenges you face, even very small spikes can bother you severely.
However, desktop based game tend to be very network-cheap. Civilization can be easily played on a 56k dialup connection, without much hassle. But the latest batch of MMOs are very network demanding, which is the main reason I won't even bother to try them for a good while, even the desktop ones. Devs seem to be only cattering to the very small percent of the gamers that happen to have good connections.
The kind of browser games I'm referring to are no more demanding on your internet connection than the average News site.
I seriously can't see how you can disagree with this. Having to not downloading something lowers the threshold to give it a try. That's so obvious to me I can't explain it any more clearly than that, sorry.
His blog is linked from the bottom of his post. I'm also a regular of the forum.
To me, it passes the smell test. Why go to such elaborate lengths to create pages of fake legalese, imitating a real lawyer firm? If it's fake, why would The Guardian report they've received a legal threat at the same time? Is it so surprising a company that has been alleged to take part in unscrupulous tactics suddenly decides to move onto sending legal threats to those who make accusations?
The blog links were failing whenever I clicked the links, I rechecked them and they look legit enough although I'm still somewhat dubious.
However the whole deal makes no sense, in the UK IIRC you have to be served in person and it has to go through the local justice area and again IIRC London has about 28. I imagine, the Australian system being based on the UK legal system, the courts would never even hear such a claim, especially from a US based company! It's actually a frivolous lawsuit, they purposely sued him in the wrong jurisdiction as a scare tactic.
Edit: The reason I feel it is false is not only because it's a US based company suing a UK citizen in Australia. But it's a defamation suit going through the Supreme Court, which in commonwealth countries is reserved for the most sever crimes (the high court is the appeals court). This means the case basically has to have a jury, defamation rarely has a jury.
The whole thing is false, my suspicion on the author is severely reduced (especially seeing where he's worked) but no legal firm in Australia would take on a frivolous case when both the prosecuting and defendant parties are both not based in the country.
You would be surprised. Games like this have micropayments built in to the gameplay. While the number of users who fork out cash is low (~1%), the amount they pay on average is high (~$50). With good metrics, you can A/B test your way to doubling those numbers.
Seriously, how is this any different, they just use a different tactic. Except that a guy is allegedly being sued, despite it being a claim on some unknown forum by a guy who I can't even find the blog of. IMO it's all made up because this moron has taken a hating to a game instead of ignoring it and letting it go the way of a million other webgames.