I was suddenly hit by a wave of nostalgia the other day while reading the forum posts about how Gunz is dying (most posts these days contain messages from these naysayers and defeatists). In my nostalgia I remembered a game called
KwonHo. Does anybody remember this game? It was dropped by IJJI very soon after its launch because of administrative issues after its acquisition.
KwonHo History
On 8 May 2007, Ijji announced the Second Closed Beta open on 9 May at 5:00 PM (EST), and is to end on 23 May.
On 30 May 2007, Ijji announced that live service would begin on the next day: May 31. [2] The public beta has since opened and is playable to all.
On 6 November 2007, Ijji decides to close its Kwonho game after much difficult discussion. It is not the first game that they decide to drop in such way.
On 14 November 2007, Ijji removed KwonHo from their servers.
Why?
KwonHo was taken from Ijji for legal reasons. In an effort to leech more money from potential customers, Ijji severely dumbed down their version from the Korean version, hosted by Hangame, and added payment options to the game in later stages.
Ijji had signed a contract saying they'd strictly market this game for North American players. However, it stole customers from Hangame's audience, and essentially took their business.
Case Study Conclusion
There needs to be a review in the agreement between Maiet and Aeria in regards to what they have promised to do with the game once they've acquired it (in terms of development and support). I'm sure that if promises are not kept, Gunz can also be taken away from Aeria much to the protest of its community. It has been a good few months since the merge and it seems that Gunz is getting very little love from Aeria. We none of us, want to see Gunz go; but unfortunately this may well be its demise.
With recent microtransaction and real-world trading errors with the online premium item store (misleading product descriptions and prices) one cannot help but compare this scenario with that of KwonHo all those years ago...