Perfect World completes Cryptic Studios acquisition

@Z3R0B4NG

Exactly, I'm a CO lifetimer and the team desperately needs bulking up, it looks like more people have joined since F2P's launch but it still feels like a skeleton crew.

@Z3R0B4NG

I heard China banned star trek, so I doubt a Chinese company will have an incentive to let Cryptic continue work on STO.

Cryptic will have other projects to work on now.

@Z3R0B4NG Actually it was Craptic who was doing all the boning to you. You'll see, nothing will change and STO will still focus all of their resources on creating more microtransactions that make absolutely no sense for the timeline the game is supposed to be taking place in.

@Faith
first: Cryptic has nothing to do with TDU. (which is half of what i was talking about)

i don't care about a few *Microtransaction DLC* thinigies
some are worth it, others aren't
(no i will not buy a sparkling Horta!!! TOS Bridgeset Replica? more please!!! )

I know the few DEVS that are actually working on the game are doing a good job, they just have a way too small team to actually deliver the things they keep talking about.

Schedules, PR, Support are all Publisher things -> ATARI
The PR stuff was one of the worst things in STO.

ATARI also was responsible for the translation of the Game, needless to say that the translations to German and France were stopped some time ago, the game is now unbearable if not set to English.

And that is only the tip of the iceberg.

conclusion: f000 ATARI

@Evi1Genius Perfect World didn't buy Cryptic to make games in China.

They bought it for two reasons:

1) They want the engine sourcecode to make better games in China with Chinese dev teams.

2) They want to do more business in the U.S. and recognize that the Chinese model doesn't work as well here and Chinese MMO IPs don't sell as well here. So they probably want Cryptic to make MMOs targeted at English speaking and European MMO markets, not Chinese audiences (where Perfect World is already much bigger than WoW).

They bought a western company to produce games for westerners, not the Chinese market. They already dominate in China. What they want is non-Chinese markets. Technically, I believe Cryptic falls under Perfect World International which is an American company owned by a Chinese company. They produced Torchlight with their other company Runic Games. They've been trying, unsuccessfully, to make MMOs targeting Americans and the acquisition of Cryptic is a set towards that.

To everyone else, I agree about the size of Cryptic's dev teams. I think Atari bought Cryptic thinking that an MMO is like a console game that people pay a monthly fee for and have had unrealistic expectations. Cryptic brought in more capital than they'd seen in years, going by financial statements, but you have to reinvest all of that back into an MMO for the first couple of years, particularly when you launch games with a short development cycle like Cryptic does. You have to be prepared to sink the money back into the game for 2-3 years and I don't think Atari could handle that or had an interest in spending money to build marketshare and prestige.

Perfect World seems more interested in that.