Feldon 
On January 12, 2012, Sony Online Entertainment announced an exclusive publishing and distribution deal with ProSiebenSat.1, a German TV media company whose gaming division Alaplaya has previously known for its pay-to-win browser games. After 2 weeks, we raised some questions about the deal.
Yet it would be another four weeks before any official response would come. And if SOE hoped that a vague Frequently Asked Questions about the ProSiebenSat.1 deal would allay fears and reassure players, it couldn’t have had a more opposite effect. Never has the EQ2 playerbase been more united behind one issue than ensuring that ALL players have a choice of which company they wish to do business with, and that in this the 21st century, we will not stand for the archaic notion of region locking, especially on an established game with an eight year history of friendships.
The firestorm resulted in hundreds of posts being sanitized from the SOE forums, unprecedented user bannings and suspensions, and a flurry of activity from SOE’s hired moderator team (they stopped being volunteers years ago). Even Massively, SOE’s go-to for coverage of SOE-friendly news dubbed the situation a “fiasco”. EQ2Wire collected 20 Things SOE Forgot About in the ProSiebenSat.1/Alaplaya Deal which has been widely reproduced as talking points in the debate. To date, none of these questions has been answered.
SOE President John Smedley was finally roped into the situation and made a Twitter request for players to stay tuned and promised that a solution was forthcoming. Indeed he made this assurance on February 26th, 2012 to a European player:
I think we’ve got it figured out and will announce our plan Monday.
Tonight, on the eve of the one month anniversary of that promise, comes a new announcement from Linda “Brasse” Carlson requesting additional time and patience.
My friends,
I know it’s been a long haul and we haven’t had much news to share, but I wanted to check in here to let you know that we ARE working hard with ProSeibenSat.1 on the revised FAQ, which will clearly state that no one will be segregated when our games go live with ProSiebenSat.1 later this year. Players can pick their servers, and play together as they always have.
Why the delay? It’s a major and complex business deal, so revising the FAQ takes a lot of time and scrutiny from all vested parties. A lot. This is a significant business event, and we have to get it right before posting information – keeping players together added to the complexity but I am sure that we ALL agree that the goal is worth the wait.
I want to thank you personally for your continued trust and patience, and especially those who have helped us get the word out. We are really hoping to get the revised FAQ out this week some time.
For anyone still a bit hazy on the decision to let everyone stay together regardless of geographic origin, Smed has tweeted about it several times. Follow @j_smedley and check it out.
For those who do not use Twitter, here’s a brief recap:
@j_smedley @Fudgenuts we are working on the details still. We’ve already said we won’t split the community. More info soon (Mar 24)
@j_smedley We’ve come up with a plan to allow ALL players to play on any servers they want. More details to follow. (Feb 27)
@j_smedley We are working on a plan to insure we don’t split the communities up. More info to follow. (Feb 23)
@j_smedley Just wanted to make sure you knew we were listening. (Feb 23)
We have posted officially as well. Unfortunately two of the most important posts were inadvertently and unintentionally moved from the US forums (they remained on the DE/FR forums), for which I personally apologize. I am sure that some of you took that as a red flag, which was not our intent.
The information is accurate and it stands – relinking for your reference now that all three are back in the announcements section:
ProSiebenSat.1 Feedback – we’re here and listening: http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/…topic_id=515273 (Feb 22)
ProSieben – Response to Your Feedback: http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/…topic_id=515343 (Feb 23)
ProSieben and SOE Continue To Work Toward a Solution: http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/…topic_id=515484 (Feb 27)
I’ll quote the last one, from Feb 27th: “SOE and ProSieben worked throughout the weekend to develop a plan that will allow our players to access and play on any server regardless of where they are in the world. Our community is our top priority and rest assured, all of your concerns have been heard. We continue to work together with ProSieben and appreciate your patience as we work around the clock to work out critical technical details. We will share more information as soon as possible.”
The bottom line – we are still working on it, and all parties are fully committed to the solutions that keep our players together.
Dwarf’s honor.
Suddenly and without warning, a heaving dark behemoth wakes from the ocean’s murky depths, a tentacle lazily breaks the surface of the tarry water. It’s break touches no creatures other than the spawn hungrily feeding from it’s decaying matter.
Too little, too late. The former populous of this fetid wasteland, now sparse and twisted by the continued absence of anything, lie broken and damned.
The behemoth raises its snout and calls out – Calls for those that once served its needs to gather and worship as they once did – But it has slept too long and for all its glorious calls and promises there are no ears…
More huff and bluster nothing new to say as usual
Colour me unsurprised.
@Winkie Awesome. Just awesome 🙂
That entire worked though the week end for weeks on end yea right just more bs and spin. That is all we got today, hey please don’t cancel hang on we got more info coming. Think they got it figured out we heard that before.
The deal is done, the devil will be in the details. cant wait to see what they will be this time. I refused to do business with alaplaya.
Oh yeah having to deal with Alaplaya is a total dealbreaker for me i just dont trust them at all.
The way I read it, the entire deal was probably signed off somewhere above Smed. No-one at the exalted level where the deal was conceived and completed gives a flying fig about EQ2 or even SOE.
The month since it all blew up has been about SOE from Smed down trying to get someone, anyone to do something, anything to mitigate the fallout from a business decision they had no say in whatsoever.
Sony is a big player, albeit one long past its prime and in deep financial difficulty. SOE is a very minor part of the Sony portfolio. I count every day that SOE’s MMOs even still exist as a plus. The PSS1 deal stinks but I don’t blame anyone at SOE for that. I imagine they are just fighting to keep the lights on.
I wish you would stop running that cartoon. Its obvious the cartoonist is portraying SOE as selling children to a pedophile in a Van, and that is just disgusting even as satyr.
As for the issue at hand, I hope things are worked out that best serves the players over SOE.
Considering the executives at SOE has described us “credit cards with legs”, do you honestly believe they are going to care what any of us think?
Technically, it’s your POV that the van owner is a pedophile. Granted, he may well be, but maybe he’s just a simple slave trader or a cultist looking for a new sacrifice.. In all seriousness, it’s a cartoon about the selling of a child, period. There is no inference of pedophilia, so stop implying it.
The cartton sums this mess up in fact i’d say it utterly nails it,to read ANYTHING else into a cartoon is frankly beyond a sense of humour bypass its a bit sad to be honest.
I thought the cartoon was funny and described the situation perfectly as the faq had it.
I think whats happened is SOE is out of time. the 1st of April is almost here and well, I am thinking that they were hoping the original thread would be dead by now. Its not; so now they are still posting more of please wait, please give us a chance.
I go a sneaking feeling that when we get the new faq, not much will have been changed. I hope I am wrong an feldon can hand me the tin foil hat award, however I been around to watch swg get nuked, so I think I got this one dead on. I hope I am wrong.
@Bhagpuss Yep I think you have it right.
@Aethn Sorry I think the cartoon is exactly right.
For myself: I have gone to the sidelines to watch and wait. At this time I expect that SOE will no longer exist by Christmas, it may be the “US Design Studios of Alaplaya games”, it may have been sold to someone else, or it may simply have folded.
Milliebii – that might be the best thing that has ever happened to the SOE games we have come to love, at least from a potential round of new players added to the game aspect. The absolute main reason that EQ2 does not have more players than it does right now is because SOE still owns it. If they ever sold it all the people I talk to that say they will never give SOE another dime will have to come up with a different excuse.
(from the forum thread in response to Brasse’s tripe)
“I don’t really understand this treatment customers are getting from SoE.”
(Brasse) “..that is why I am posting here. I realize I am not as tall as Smed, but believe me when I say we do not make official posts on such important topics without Smed’s approval. He specifically asked me to post here this morning to address some ongoing concerns folks had.”
*cough* *blinks*
So..Smeg is driving the press releases and customer communications. Yeah, we knew that. Can I pull that string that’s dangling out of your back as well, Brasse?
Nothing new is added here. The only thing this confirms is my predictions that communications wouldn’t commence again until the FAQ was about to be released, and then it was going to be a done deal.
What do you think is going to happen when the revision is published? That there will be another month and a half or more of re-revisions? Ah, no. It will be the same as before, but this time there will be a date given for when the transition will happen. There will be an uproar, fallout, blah blah blah..and then SOE will do what they want to. Feedback at this point is completely irrelevant.
Brasse’s post was a complete waste of time and effort. Well, maybe not utterly, as we now have a heads up for this week’s impending drama. Really, I cannot wait for that bomb to drop. There are metric tonnes of people who have been waiting for this revision, and I think the poo storm is going to be freaking epic. Epic.
Milliebi wrote I expect that SOE will no longer exist by Christmas, it may be the “US Design Studios of Alaplaya games”, it may have been sold to someone else
And that may not be a bad thing, the Germans can not be worse businessmen than SOE that is simply impossible. I guess that Sony messed up the sale so bad so Pro7 simply have them by the throat. I think there is a big chance that Sony will sell the gamestudio to Pro7, and it may be a good thing.
Sigtyr, have you really scrutinized the company we’re being fobbed off too? Dodgy pay-to-win browser MMO games, security holes the size of Australia…yeah they may pump some new blood into EQ, but will it still be the game we love after they get their hands on it?
“continued trust and patience” …patience has long run out and I don’t trust SOE or Alaplaya.
Nice words, saying nothing, focusing on the region lock, ignoring the rest of our concerns…as usual.
What I find most interesting is that they had no problem deleting posts on the U.S. thread regarding this deal, yet it took them a month to figure out that their posts on the other forums were not on the U.S. forums. Twitter was the only resource for that carrot of info!? Not everyone uses Twitter. I’ve always used Wire, Zam, Forums, and Massively for info….Just the same convoluted crap.
Aethin says, I wish you would stop running that cartoon. Its obvious the cartoonist is portraying SOE as selling children to a pedophile in a Van, and that is just disgusting even as satyr.
I agree. Satyrs are pretty disgusting … those half man, half goat things in mythology always creeped me out.
However, I think the word you are looking for in this instance is satire. 🙂
As for the issue at hand, I hope things are worked out that best serves the players over SOE.
This is a lovely sentiment, but I don’t believe that there are many (if any) who think that SOE is in any way, shape or form concerned with the players.
I posted some critique in that thread, feels like ages ago already, now, I don’t really care anymore what they do and what they announce and when.
EQ2 Endgame is seriously broken, and feels more like a fest for platsellers and SLR exchange. I doubt I will continue my reg once my gold account expires and my SC is spent.-
Pro7 is a major media company in Germany they bought the game company Alaplaya in 2010 link below. Alaplaya is a bad company yes but I have found little that says that Pro7 is a shady company and there is nothing that says that it impossible to change the corporate culture of Alaplaya if Pro7 wants too. And I also point at the fact that Pro7/Ala really has tried to give information here and be in contact with the customers Sony has not.
http://en.prosiebensat1.com/en/activities/germany/prosiebensat1-digital
I am not saying this whole deal isn’t bad, because it is, but maybe just maybe it might be the time for Sony to let its online games division go.
After all the trust in SOE was about 0 before this mess and now many is treating SOE as the best thing ever. Is noone interested in seeing what a motivated and creative development team could to with an at least capable owner?
Dwarf’s honor … I like role playing as much as the next person, but a dwarf is a mythical creature, last I heard. I think invoking the honor of a mythical creature to describe your truthiness in a business deal is rather strange.
She does do a lovely job of apologizing, however.
Necromancer said:
I don’t think they will ever care what we THINK . . . but they will care what we do. Wait for the details, if we don’t like it, we stop paying. If enough people STILL pay no matter what the result, then it was a good business deal in their eyes regardless of what we think. The only thing they’ll understand and respond to, really truly respond to, is if they go ahead with the deal and they lose more money than they gain.
@Bhagpuss–your read matches up with mine entirely. Just when they need their playerbase to be patient and cooperative, their long, sordid history comes back to haunt them.
@Aethyn–sorry, don’t agree. Keep running the cartoon, Feldon. (Heck, someone should print it as a flag–it’s been the de facto rallying banner for the pushback in this whole sorry affair!)
@Sigtyr–that’s pretty much at odds with every other source I’ve heard from about alaplaya. Thankfully I won’t have to deal directly with that crap, but my guild’s already taken a hit losing long-term Euro players because of it.
@Sigtyr – Sorry but the impression you have of PSS1 and their online experience is exactly what they want you to believe.
When you read the information you linked it sounds great…but it is them telling you about their company…they wouldn’t paint themselves in a favorable way, would they?
When you take a closer look at their sites “active for over five years in the online games sector” you should wonder if they are really capable of dealing with a real MMO and if they are prepared to handle a decent community like the one of EQ2
sat1spiele.de: overview over all the games:
http://www.sat1spiele.de/alle
SevenGames.de: overview over all the games:
http://www.prosiebengames.de/alle-spiele
I don’t believe they can handle a game like EQ2.
The experience with the games they handled before does not help and if you take a look at the Alaplaya forums, the players of the 3rd rate MMOs there complain about how Alaplaya handles the games.
Sorry, but I don’t believe this deal will do any good for any of the SOE games going to PSS1.
Well yes Alaplaya is a bad company, Pro7 bought it in 2010. An owner can turn around a company if they want. You do not get to be a major media company in Germany/Austria by being stupid and being bad businessmen. Sony have had the common “we are to big and powerful to fail” thought pattern for years now. I think it is highly likely that Pro7 has very powerful clauses in the contract protecting financially against any possibility of SOE non performance if the contract that the options are gone for SOE.
Pro7 have successfully bought several companies these last year and we can assume that they are skilled in company purchasing agreements, are Sony that skilled selling rights to a business that they really do not care about and do not understand? Unlikely. Anyway we will all see what happens. I will not discuss this thing anymore.
@sigtyr all you got to do is read some of the rants that coldur , and protagonist have had on the alaplaya faq thread to realize that nothing has changed for alaplaya. I think both of those are high up in the chain of command.
I will point at the one post from coldur “haters going to hate” when somebody asked him a question.
Yea really classy, but then we been called forum trolls and credit cards with legs.
I also have doubts that Alaplaya can handle a real mmo, they have no clue what eq2 is and how can you expect them to handle the advertising when they don’t even realize what eq2 is and has to offer.
@Sigtyr, you are looking at a very strange phenomenon that a lot of people flat out reject PSS1 and doubt that a company like that can handle a mature audience that comes with EQ2 and that a company with a reputation to destroy games would leave the core of EQ2 alone as we know it. Therefore signing up with alaplaya/PSS1 is an absolute “nono” for a lot of people who much rather stay with SOE, the company that brought us SWG-NGE, the company that virtually has not put up any advertising for the game ever. SOE who gave us SC after saying that this will never happen. And you can go on and on.
always annoys me to see Brasse the dwarf. seems like a scam to appear funny and “one of us”. anyway, I’d prefer anyone else but an old woman dressed as a dwarf with a ridiculous dwarf voice as a community agent.
Heh, good undistilled point @Crescent–what does it say when SOE, the incompetent, money-grubbing, fan-disrespecting SOE, is actually the preferable option?
@ Anaogi – hmmm, that people will always come back to the hand that hurts them?
Great New Service! Remove the region lock on your account!
Only 9900 $C!
Haha @tygarys! Makes sense, sadly.
Just got an email — Fan Faire is now called SOE Live, and it is being held in October. as suspected.
It’s an end of an era, folks, when SOE’s flagship titles were fantasy based, and a “renaissance faire” kind of theme/idea was appropriate. Now, the “name change represents a deeper meaning behind our annual event,” says a marketing person at SOE — see, they do have a marketing department, after all…”we wanted to better represent our diverse player base and games.”
Which is probably why all the hesitation on announcing Fan Faire, since it is now probably way out of the hands of any EQ2 people.
Just to mention: The bad things that hit S4 League happened AFTER Pro7 took over alaplaya. You will want to check out the comment marked “#2” at http://mmohuts.com/editorials/alaplaya-how-to-ruin-an-arena-shooter/comment-page-1
Furthermore.
The people in charge of the SOE part at Pro7 are right those that ran alaplaya before it was bought by pro7. You just need to check alaplaya’s history and the history of the people in charge now.
This needs to be said, because it is the pro7 staff that continuously repeats that they didn’t have anything do to with what happened to S4.
@Crescent–or that alaplaya may actually be worse…
Thank you for your continued trust… Really? Wow, Linda you overestimate any amount of trust much of the community has for SoE.
This is a complex business deal because suddenly, due to the voice of the many, the deal for ProS 1 has changed dramatically and they want different terms.
Now SoE has to find a way to make it profitable for all parties and it just isn’t that easy. Good Luck.
I bet the deal went completely “pear shaped,” as they say, when suddenly they couldn’t region lock and have a rigidly defined customer base.
So now, they are back to the bargaining table because it’s certainly possible PSS1 didn’t want SOE Europe without the region locking.
It’s probably worth less to PSS1 now that they have lost customer confidence, see evidence of mass cancellations, and they can’t market exclusive things to a locked Euro customer base. Thus, back to the table.
Sure, the engineers figured out how to do it, but then the question becomes, do they still want to buy it that way?
Just my musings.
I was hoping that with all the account cancellations that pss1 would go away and forget about it, when I read brasse’s post I was like well drat. It is very apparent that the deal is going though weather we like it or not.
And that “one of us statement” scone when. Lol she is a company spokesperson I no longer consider her part of the player base. Sad but true.
I’m glad I quit a several months ago.
@Aphac — Not exactly. You’re still here…