Gaming Petroglyph Games and NCsoft Seattle Branch hit with layoffs they help develop GW 2 & End of Nations

[Lurker2]

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Is this a sign of a flooded MMO market, the state of the economy, restructuring within the company, something else or a little bit of everything?

I couldn't exactly fit everything into the title. NC Soft Seattle developed Guild Wars 2 while Petroglyph games developed End of Nations. Ncsoft has had declining profits though so layoffs shouldn't be to surprising.

 

[Hells Malice]

Gee, wonder why they've had declining profits. These guys need to realize that pay2win may bring in cash NOW, but unless you're Conquer Online, people realize very, very quickly that your shitty pay2win game is a shitty pay2win game, and move on and let all the kids who spent $10,000 on their characters are left to rot on a dying MMO.
Though Nexon isn't that bad, but their cash shops are really uninspired. Maplestory is likely on pretty heavy decline cash shop wise, because they stopped focusing on cosmetic content, and are instead focusing on more gameplay changing shit. Worked fantastic at first i'm sure. Blah blah I could go on forever.

Free to Play is truly a horrific model. I miss the days of Pay 2 Play...y'know, where MMOs had to at least be DECENT and FUN to see the light of day. Now there's hundreds of shit MMOs and no one to play them. No wonder WoW does so well in this dying genre, it's pretty much the only one to stick to the basics (mind you it has a cash shop...but I only ever saw pointless-but-cool-looking pets and mounts).

Wow /rant