Well, i mean for you as the Studio and Company its probably a good thing, but for us players, this is part of the worst outcome to be.
I guess the Check was too big to pass up even among the whole Subnautica controversy and lawsuit ongoing where they tried a forceful takeover to get out of paying 250Mil USD.
Sad to see EHG turn from a passion project into a greedy company that is satisfied taking a big payout while working with one of the worst Partners they could’ve chosen.
Krafton? Wauw, that’s a bold move considering everything that’s going on right now, and their past history in general. I have personally zero trust in Krafton - good luck
They said the same thing to Unknown Worlds, and then they fired their founders.
Congratulations Judd and team!
For doomers and gloomers - see the quote below. You either have that or you have a game that competes with The Slormancer at best.
We’ve played enough…now it’s just money money money and not a drop of optimization improvement etc etc? Or am I wrong?
Poe’s bitter experience has made me know…
We’re aware of the situation with Unknown Worlds. I don’t want to comment on it directly but after understanding it more deeply it isn’t something that concerns us entering into the partnership at all. There’s plenty of misinformation or partially informed parties talking to that situation. I appreciate your concern for us though - cheers.
Guess reputation it nothing in comparison to the big moneys.
All I ask is that you be careful. I honestly do love you guys and Last Epoch. You’ve done an amazing job with it and I don’t want to see your team or your game ruined.
Met, if this is an ask for performance and optimization improvements for the game I assure you we have some big stuff coming in that regard.
We made a big’ol tangley mess out of asset loading when we were a smaller team that we’re unraveling right now which will give us a lot of optimization gains. We have a great third party helping with the effort now, but again those contracts are expensive and a move like this enables us to do those things without risking financial insecurity for the studio.
Want to first say I absolutely love Last Epoch and EHG. You guys have been absolutely amazing to me, and have made an amazing game. As someone familiar with PUBG and Tera, this is a MAJOR worry for the players. These games have run rampant with p2w, features that force you to pay money to advance at a normal pace, and poor moderation for hackers/cheaters. I trust you guys completely, I know making a game is expensive, what worries me is that they will be in position to TELL YOU what to do and force changes from who you guys are as a company. It has happened all too much in this business and it hurts not only us players but you guys too. If you trust them, I trust you, just please don’t fully give them the power to force things you don’t agree with morally.
RIP EHG, I guess. Fucking venture capital and predatory publishers.
No good news at all… at least for us players.
I am very worried.
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If it helps the sentiment I’ll note that it was us that went out looking for a partner here to bring more stability and growth potential to the studio. I know publishers get bad wraps, often times for good reasons, but we vetted many of them and Krafton was most aligned in our mission. Many others were interested but actually did want to change core aspects of our planned future whereas Kraftons main stated want was expanding the franchise and more consistent releases over time.
Is this a joke? Krafton? The same thing that happened to Subnautica and the Callisto Protocol will happen to them, they will be pressured or fired at the first time and replaced by one of their managers. They will ruin the online store with some pay2win or pay2fast nonsense. And if not that some new thing they will do to ruin LE. I guess the check was big enough.
You might be able to alleviate players concerns if you tell us what control they have, is it just helping hiring, direction of gameplay, monetization? What do they have besides “aligned in our mission” directly impacts the game and its playerbase?
I appreciate the response, and I assumed you probably were the ones who initiated things, but I still seriously distrust most publishers. I have seen many, many, many of my favorite games ruined by deals such as these, even if it goes well at first.
I really hope that does not happen here, but public opinion surround Krafton is very poor which doesn’t do a lot to keep me confident. The Subnautica 2 situation in particular has got a lot of us distrustful, not to mention past Krafton games like PUBG being aggressively monetized in problematic ways.
Again, I really do wish you all the best. My initial post was largely frustration with the entire industry and the way money has a habit of ruining all the best games. I hope that doesn’t happen here, but I remain extremely skeptical.
I wish you the best of luck with Krafton and their present situation and hope you’ll find yourselves only in positive situations. LE is an amazing game that you can feel was created with pure passion and it would be pretty sad to see it fall to publisher greed. I’m writing this while playing it and want to see this game reach new heights.
As an acquisition they have ultimate authority but they’re trusting us to continue growing like we have been. They don’t want to direct the game, monetization, hiring, or anything if we can handle it as we have been. Now I assume if we ended up falling off a cliff in terms of sales or growth they’d have more interest in correcting failure, but so would we. But they’re not looking to come in and throw wrenches into what’s working, they’re looking to enable growth under our direction which is to their benefit.