By Kieron Gillen on September 8th, 2010 at 10:23 am.
While there’s no news on APB, the BBC broke news yesterday that the administrators of Realtime Worlds have found a buyer for MyWorld. Staff had been kept on MyWorld in hope of them doing exactly that, so you have to chalk this up in the pro column for them. Who’s the buyer? It’s a secret. “One hundred per cent confidentiality has been imposed by the company.” said the administrators about this mysterious American company, “MyWorld has been sold and unfortunately we cannot disclose any further details of the sale.” Who is it? Well, the obvious guess would be someone working in the social-networking sphere though sources speaking exclusively inside our heads tell us it’s the Bavarian Illuminanti. We must ignore the voices, else we kill again.
08/09/2010 at 10:44 Fred Wester, Member of the Bavarian Illuminanti says:
Right.
08/09/2010 at 12:38 Meat Circus says:
Do you ever feel you’ve missed a joke somewhere?
I do.
08/09/2010 at 12:44 stahlwerk says:
@Meat Circus it originated here.
08/09/2010 at 10:46 ExRTW says:
The rumour is that Ian Hetherington (RTW chairman) is involved, though isn’t the only investor, though no one I speak to seems to know for sure.
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/Living/Digital/article/4796/former-realtime-boss-ian-hetherington-linked-to-mystery-us-firm.html
08/09/2010 at 12:30 Peter Radiator Full Pig says:
Whats Rome: Total War got to do with this?
08/09/2010 at 10:50 Emphursis says:
Facebook, it *has* to be Facebook.
09/09/2010 at 07:19 Matt says:
Facebook doesn’t buy games, they just sign exclusive deals with “game”-makers to price-gouge.
08/09/2010 at 10:54 Dexter says:
Or google or Microsoft looking at integrating it into their maps.
09/09/2010 at 18:37 TXinTXe says:
I would bet on google. They are buying a lot of games and things related to social networks…
08/09/2010 at 10:55 AndrewC says:
Once the voices get their kill-lust sated, they can tell you some awesome souffle recipes. Very knowledgeable about Russian mythology too, which is much more interesting than you might think. Seriously, give them a go.
08/09/2010 at 10:57 Tei says:
The idea to “own the world” is what fuel people creating “Internet 2.0 in 3D”. Stuff like Second Life.
Most of these attemps fail because even the most simple videogame has better graphics and usability than Second Life.
“Owning the world” is that fuel these investors ( dream of taxing everything, ala Microsoft XBox Live access ) but now have taste the power of networking and social sites. The urge to do it again, and succed this time has to be gigantic. I hope we don’t have another gold rush, because the one to make another WoW is really sad.
I don’t know how MyWorld can fit in this puzzle, but judging by the videos is about 60% already there, with nice graphics and all. Make it work in Silverlight sandbox, and put it on Facebook, and see if it float. It may not float, … all the old waves of Web 3D failed because even 1992-standard graphics are hard to render with not hardware acceleration. Today we have a lot of people with netbooks, and these machines have really crappy GPU’s. And, if you make MyWorld need a full installation, … will this atract the people you want?, maybe you are limited to share public with Sims or other crap like that, and never achieve FarmVille numbers and public.
08/09/2010 at 13:04 Oozo says:
It was most definitely not the Gnomes of Zurich. I attented I party they threw last week, and it was clear that the financial crisis hit them hard. Instead of giving away free platinum bars of chocolate and Cristal champagne (served in bottles made out of real rock crystal collected in the Swiss Alps) like they used to do, it was all just cheap Meat Spritzers and Grosfurters. I tell ya, they couldn’t have afforded it, even if they had wanted to.
08/09/2010 at 13:39 killingbutterflies says:
EA
08/09/2010 at 14:02 ExRTW says:
After their experience publishing APB, I’d be surprised if they came near MyWorld with a barge pole, to be honest.
08/09/2010 at 15:21 golden_worm says:
Ewige Blummencraft!
08/09/2010 at 15:37 The Sombrero Kid says:
This kind of secrecy stinks of Apple or Activision, I’d say Microsoft if it wasn’t for the fact that Microsoft wouldn’t touch RTW with a barge poll by all accounts.
08/09/2010 at 15:49 ExRTW says:
Personally, I don’t think it’s any kind of a big name company, but a newly formed company centered around a group of former RTW investors.
08/09/2010 at 17:14 KindredPhantom says:
RTW still has investors? :p
08/09/2010 at 17:51 ExRTW says:
Some people clearly just have money to burn! :)
On a side note, whilst MyWorld had numerous production problems of its own, with the much reduced team size and the razor-like focus that the experience of redundancy brings, I’d expect them not to churn through too much cash before getting something out there.
By my back-of-a fag packet calculations, they can probably fund development for a good year with not too much more than a million dollars, leaving aside data license costs (which I believe were considerable, to be fair, but perhaps have already been purchase) Which is probably chump change to this lot.
08/09/2010 at 17:40 toni says:
bought by Uwe Boll’s pension fund.
08/09/2010 at 18:29 Tim "The Enchanter" Taylor says:
I bet it’s Google.
08/09/2010 at 19:29 ZIGS says:
Will the money they got from selling MyWorld go to further improve APB?
09/09/2010 at 08:03 Rane2k says:
I think I´m playing too much Mass Effect… I actually read “Batarian Illuminati”, despite actually living in Bavaria. (Not an illuminati tough ^^)
I bet the game was bought by an AI, who needs it to spread it´s consciousness throughout the internet.
09/09/2010 at 19:05 Araxiel says:
Oh look, its a Bavarian Iluminati selling…shoes…