We don’t know if that’s the case. It has to happen first.
I for one cannot foresee the future, even if pattern recognition makes it seem for some like I seemingly can… but I can tell you… I cannot 
I’d personally be somewhat surprised if they managed to “finish the game” (campaign, all skills for all masteries & whatever else they’ve said is core content) in the next ~1 season (so that they’d finish everything else off & then be able to focus fully on the expansion/DLC class/etc). That said, we don’t know how many work streams they have running at any one time. 
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Not quite true.
EHG has been paying probably high-ish salaries to an increasingly vast team for over 6 years.
Business wise, it is a big success.
The failure is that this big team has been unable to complete their game in such a long time, mostly because they try and do everything at once with no direction, and they somehow managed to put themselves in trouble.
Two seasons away. Less than one year.
Chapter 10 alone took them four years.
So yes, they MIGHT finish the campaign before the expansion. But I can see why many observers have serious doubts about their capacity to do that.
They are indeed more on track to finish the company than the campaign (sorry, I assume that was a typo, but it was an amusing one).
If by “somewhat” you mean “extremely”: so would I.
‘We have to sell since we would go bancrupt otherwise’ → This is all the info needed, business failed.
There is no discussion further possible even. That’s the decider. Bancrupty is a failed business plan.
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Going to have to disagree with you here. What you’re describing here is their ability to run a business & a big part of that is being able to do that profitably because that profit allows you to keep on doing whatever it is your company does. Haemorrhaging cash since you were formed & being unable to turn that around to a net cash infliw is most definitely not the definition of a successful business.
Start ups do often run at a net cash outflow for a period of time, possibly an extended period of time, this is normal & that’s why you see some start ups (especially tech start ups) go through multiple rounds of funding because those rounds provide the cash the company needs to keep paying their bills until they can get sufficient regular revenue to pay their own bills. You could say, “but Llama, isn’t that what’s happening here?” & yes, it does look quite like that to be fair.
I’d argue that that is a trifle disingenuous as they wouldn’t have been working of chapter 10 for 4 years, they’d have been doing everything else for most of that.
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Fair enough, but where do you see bankruptcy?
The servers are running, the staff is still there, and the shareholders are richer than they have ever been…
Selling is only a failure if you do it kicking and screaming. Judd comes across as very happy to sell, I don’t see any failure there in a business sense. They didn’t go into administration, they decided to sell. Willingly.
To answer Llama at the same time:
True, I mispoke, as a BUSINESS it doesn’t look successful.
But it is highly successful on a personal level, for all involved.
You mention tech start-ups. Many are (were?) just about having a fantastic idea, vaguely beginning some half-assed implementation, and selling the idea as early as possible for a gigantic sum. The people doing that are generally considered extremely successful (on a personal and not business level, I suppose).
Guilty as charged, it was disingenuous. I was there, I know what they were working on.
But it does raise the question, if they couldn’t manage for years to dedicate a small part of their 100 strong team to the campaign, will they be able to get a bit more organised now?
Maybe if Krafton helps them, otherwise I am not optimistic
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‘We have to sell, otherwise there is only bancrupty’.
‘We haven’t made profit since 1.0’.
Just because something is ‘crawling along’ doesn’t mean it’s a successful business. The father of one of my acquantances owns a clothing shop franchise. 20 years ago he had 7 shops, today he has 2. He downsizes steadily because the rent was outpacing income.
The franchise still exists and is open today… but is it ‘successful’?
I would argue ‘no’.
Which EHG did. ‘We have no other choice’ is the ‘kicking and screaming’ part.
Sure, go ahead and say ‘we really didn’t want to, but we had to’ when you’re working together with your new boss basically. I’m sure the boss will have a very good view of you, you’ll make it big rather then suddenly ‘retiring our of your free will’.
Did they want to sell? Was it their plan not to be independent anymore?
No?
Then it is not willing but forced through circumstance.
I willingly eat and drink every day as well after all, that’s very ‘willing’, right? The alternative would just be dropping dead.
Doesn’t mean I would enjoy avoiding it entirely, nothing better then fixating more on the stuff I love to fixate on instead of having to do other stuff.
Not willing at all 
Not for all.
But the owners definitely! That cannot be denied, you’re 100% right with that part.
And hence the business plan was successful.
Was the plan to sell from the beginning for EHG? Or was it a fallback plan because your initial plan failed?
The first two is for the moment until they run out of cash because they’ve been running at a loss for a very long time now. The latter has nothing to do with anything.
I’m not surprised, he’s likely made a shitton of cash, but that doesn’t mean the business is doing well.
Because the alternative was to go into administration.
Absolutely!
The term used when I was at BT was “exploring opportunities outside of the business”.
If the “business plan” was just to make a shitton of cash & ignore everything else.
Exactly.
Obviously, that is the question. And that is where we have different perceptions.
You think no. I think yes.
Your friend slowly downsized his franchise throughout the years. Down to two shops instead of seven. That is sad for him, but he did what he had to do to keep it HIS franchise.
EHG kept on hiring and hiring at a really fast pace despite losing money, while Judd by his own admission spent years demarching potential buyers (that is an important distinction. Krafton didn’t make an offer first. EHG contacted them.). It doesn’t make sense if the plan was not from the start to sell as soon as the paycheck would become big enough.
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If it’s ‘no’ it’s incompetence.
If it’s ‘yes’ then it’s deceiving the community for years, hence utterly disgusting and they deservere to shut down for that alone without reprise.
I’ll hence lean to ‘no’ unless proven otherwise, which is milder for the results. Pleasure of the doubt at least.
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That emotion is fair. It’s a broken promise and lost trust. But it is an emotional reaction nonetheless. Rationally thinking, every other life-service isometric ARPG has an even worse monetization system than payed classes alone in a moral sense. PoE1/2 included, no need to talk about D4 or TLI. It’s the same saying we have with politicians: “Watch what they do, not what they say.”
Absolutely! To a degree.
I went into PoE knowing full well the monetization system they provide and what it’ll boil down to.
I as a customer was aware. I decided ‘for me personally it’s worth it’ despite some aspects of it being something I dislike… but the upsides outpaced the downsides. So a net-positive in my mind.
In LE I went in with the same baseline… but not that baseline is changed. And now? The balance between upsides and downsides doesn’t hold up anymore. I don’t have any idea about the expected price-point for the future and I have no idea if the pace of updates will increase substantially compared to now to suddenly be in the same position as PoE price-wise for me over time.
It definitely doesn’t uphold in quality… some interesting mechanics but overall a very messy game still, be it the unpolished and unfinished story, the middling graphical fidelity, the rag rug style of mechanics being thrown together or even the functionality of the existing content at times.
That simply doesn’t have the same value as a very polished game which also provides several times more content and plays quite similar in the end… with a few details of difference since I got no learning curve in either game anymore… which would be a net negative for PoE… but that’s not there by now.
I look at it differently. Granted I’ve not been there since LE’s kickstarter and only since EA, so I don’t “feel” the betrayal. I don’t care what they said 7 or what it was years ago. I payed less than 30$ bucks and got 500h out of it. Almost all of that time I had fun. My “investment” has more than returned value. I won’t mind dishing out a bit more for another 100s of hours. Of course I’ll balance pro’s and con’s before buying it and I’ll still voice my criticism for things I don’t like. Season 3 for instance.
My “investment” in PoE2 has failed on the other hand. I had almost zero fun with it.
In LE I went in with the same baseline… but not that baseline is changed. And now? The balance between upsides and downsides doesn’t hold up anymore. I don’t have any idea about the expected price-point for the future and I have no idea if the pace of updates will increase substantially compared to now to suddenly be in the same position as PoE price-wise for me over time.
I’ll see the content and the prize once they announce it. Then I’ll see if it might be worth my money or not. It will be at the end of 2026 or 2027.
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The ppl are speaking. LE is getting absolutely demolished on recent steam reviews. If this keeps up the overall will go to mixed.
I just added my take with a negative review as well.
Congratulations. So what do you want to achieve with it? Teach the devs a lesson? You actively want them to close shop and gloat about it? Do you feel good about it and empowered?
What a poor person you are.
I payed 50 bucks for PoE for the thousands of hours I got out of it. For what PoE is offering it’s kind of a ripoff. I life on a budget if not I would’ve payed more. I bought PoE2 EA and will never spend another dime on it for the same reason.
I bought LE for 50 bucks and right now I feel like i wasted my money and want it back. That’s just a feeling and I had lots of good hours with the game. None the less I feel betrayed and I don’t react well to this.
I don’t think we can quantify this for everyone or for every game because a lot of taste is involved here. I could kick myself for buying the D4 expension… I bet I want to kick myself when the next D4 expension is arround the corner because I buy it because I hope things get better and D4 fun again.
I will not buy anything from EHG anymore. Blizzard never betrayed me. They offered a dumped down gaming experience that is a complete joke to milk as much money as possible while delivering a game that looks and plays nice and have nothing else positive to say about it.
EHG promised so much stuff or emphesised it so i would speak of a promise or a goal they want to achive. All they did was letting me down again and again and again. I once had the hope with EHG everything will be different and I felt understood. Now I rather would buy an Ubisoft game then LE.
EHG has a lot of work to do to regain my trust and most liekly they will not even after GTA VI.
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Which is fair.
I’m the type of person which buys a product because of very very specific reasons.
I bought some games without ever playing them, solely to support the company as I’ve had top-tier experience with the interaction of the developers towards their community and the products they provided were in my opinion worth more then I paid for.
I bought ‘non-ethical’ microtransaction stuff or DLCs from some since while that aspect is bad the overall experience is so good that it makes up for it, as well as the security of the future support of the product which makes me think my value is returned.
And then I get products like LE where I buy specifically into it to have a fallback game if stuff goes to shit. Since it’s enjoyable but not ‘as enjoyable’ for me as the alternatives available. And now… this specific point of buying in switched. So now it has ‘no value’ for me anymore, it doesn’t uphold the initial buy-reason for me anymore.
The same as any proper review does? Showcasing the stance towards the product you bought?
You don’t even understand this basic premise?
What a poor person you are.
He’s not showing a stance. He wants payback for his oh so betrayed feelings.
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Can we all take a deep breath? This leads nowhere anymore as other topics arround the same issue. It’s sad to see people are at each others throats while EHG should provide answers to clear the mess up they created. That’s just my point of view for sure but people getting hostile in here and all that ill intend (at least i learned something 
) isn’t helping anyone.
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Helping others avoid the mistake of buying this game until they fix it. Literally fixing it. ITs so buggy right now. You never know if anything you pick in skill or passive tree is working.
The krafton thing is one thing but I think just as big an issue is that LE is broken game. They need to fix all the skills and passives and items.
It shows my support packs now so thats gud!
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