Gamers plan to buy their flailing MMO
Ryzom hasn't been profitable in the MMO market, struggling against competitors like EVE online and WoW.
Ryzom, an MMO that fuses fantasy with science-fiction, is currently owned by the French studio Nevrax. The failing game has forced Nevrax into receivership which has sparked up The Free Ryzom Campaign.
The campaigners, who have managed to collect €60,000, hope to buy the source code for the game. They would then make it openly available so that fans could then create more content, similar in some ways to Second Life. Founder of the campaign, Xavier Antoviaque, told the BBC:
"The game won't change, its more the way people will use it. Rather than just consuming the game, everyone will be able to contribute to it."
The future of the game will be decided later today, when a Judge rules whether the company has to go into liquidation or not. If, as is expected, the Judge rules that the company must sell off its assets then The Free Ryzom Campaign will be able to pick the code up for €10,000. Where the other €50,000 will go is anybody's guess. If the code has more than one bidder though this case could end up as a bidding war, if other developers want to own the code the price could go as high as hundreds of thousands of Euros.
Are there too many MMOs in the world? Or is this a genuinely worthy cause? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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17 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyHope they manage to keep it up and running though failing that i hope that the fans can gain control of it.
My impression was always that in the initial beta it had more sandbox stylings and after it came out of the "focused testing" it went into for 6 months most of the things that had been wrong with the sandbox were still there, but the leveling etc had been moved over towards grinding (yuck) so I didn't buy in.
Trialed it not all that long ago, didn't quite have the old magic it had in the initial beta.
Even after all that though, it was still one of the more original MMO's on the market and it is a shame to hear it is failing.
Good luck to them but it'll be much harder than they think
I doubt very much that the people trying to buy the code are aware of just how much work would have to done to keep the game running. However, if they do, I wish them best of luck.
Personally I'd like to see offline versions of most MMOs. The only one I play is Guild Wars (tried Star Wars Galaxies - was meh / ok until they nerfed it) and I usually quest alone or with a group of local friends (total of only 5 in my guild). You'd have to add a few NPCs and modify the economics a little but with a little work you could head towards the standards of most stand alone RPGs.
Flailing: as in what your arms do if you loose your balance (picture a cartoon character at the edge of a cliff trying not to fall)
Also, in "A group of gamers, worried that their favourite MMO will soon cease to exist, has come together to try and gather enough cash to buy the code themselves." It should be "to try to gather enough cash." :p
The best thing that could happen to them is that they get outbid. That would mean somebody out there sees comercial potential in the game and is willing to bid strongly for the code. If they bid, they must be expecting to get a return of the investment...