By Jim Rossignol on October 26th, 2010 at 8:54 am.
Via Massively, I notice there’s a bit of a random clue as to the fate of APB. The website and such might be dead, but for some reason the patcher is still delivering info. On the 22nd it read: “It’s looking like there might be light at the end of the tunnel for APB. The end of the administration process is apparently close and there appears to be a buyer for the game.”
A wind up? Wishful thinking on the part of remaining APB admins? It’s hard to say, but both Epic and Codemasters have been connected with the game. My money is on one of the big F2P publishers, personally.
26/10/2010 at 09:22 DJ Phantoon says:
It’s dead, Jim.
26/10/2010 at 14:07 Gosh says:
yes. please let the incredibly weak die so that the strong can shine. it’s not people were talking about after all.
26/10/2010 at 14:16 BAReFOOt says:
How would it be different with people?
Unless you want the incredibly weak to succeed, until we all are incredibly weak…
I’m with Sparta here.
26/10/2010 at 14:29 Gosh says:
people care about each other, or else we would conduct tests on the mentally retarded for science or just let them die. won’t protect a mentally retarded game tough, unless it’s a good game…
26/10/2010 at 16:56 Mac says:
Darwin had a good theory … we should deploy it more often … would be less people on benefits then too …
26/10/2010 at 17:43 Iucounu says:
Whoa, Mac, that’s a pretty ugly sentiment.
26/10/2010 at 18:54 ARMLESScorps says:
@Mac Theres not much talk in Origin Of Species about using the theory of evolution to get rid of chavs tbh Mac
26/10/2010 at 20:06 Wulf says:
Wow, some people need to watch that particularly affecting episode of TNG, with the colony of perfect people. Where Geordi found out that he’d have been killed as a baby there due to his sight defect, because apparently being defective means you have nothing to offer.
Actually, looking at what someone has to offer, be it art, music, culture, or strength, is more important than looking at weakness or strength, to protect the strong alone is to bring about the downfall of society and the extinction of our race. We really should know better. Nature isn’t hardly as one-dimensional as some one-dimensional thinkers would like to believe.
A wolf pack survives by looking out for all members, weak and strong, because they all have something to offer.
26/10/2010 at 20:39 Starky says:
Not that I disagree with your sentiment Wulf, but a wolf pack have been known to kill the weak, or lame member of the pack, either that or leave them to die. Though granted that is rare.
Alpha males have also been known to kill deformed, or damaged pups.
Given that a wolf pack is mostly made up of siblings (with the Alpha male and female their parents) they tend not to be active in the cruelty (as we would see it, obviously that word doesn’t exactly apply to animals), the weak/old eat last and eat little (often only scraps), which only contributes to their weakness.
Still, it’s not all harshness, they seem to be able to tell a injury from a permanent disorder – and will often feed the injured while they heal up. And those caring for pups are also fed.
It’s not often they actively chase off, or harm a runt – it’s more a mild neglect – so long as they don’t use up resources that healthier members of the pack need, they are tolerated.
26/10/2010 at 22:55 DrGonzo says:
@Mac
Are you sure your not getting Darwin muddled up with Hitler?
26/10/2010 at 09:27 awkward says:
According to Gamerzines, it’s not Codemasters who purchased it. http://www.gamerzines.com/mmo/news/apb-to-be-revived.html
26/10/2010 at 09:48 Tei says:
It may make some sense to take a shovel, and unbury the game. Some people say that most mmo’s generate some money, even the failed ones. This one can run with a scheleton team. I suppose.
27/10/2010 at 00:40 ascagnel says:
For a while, at least. MXO got shut down in ’09, even though it was the 3rd worst MMO (behind APB and Tabula Rasa).
26/10/2010 at 10:00 Sagan says:
The character creator and clothes customization part is probably worth some money on itself. I could imagine someone buying APB just to have the rights to that.
26/10/2010 at 10:10 Andy says:
Depends on how much RTW will have been made to sell it for.
Especially when you consider they poured something like $100M (http://brokentoys.org/2010/08/20/apb-how-to-blow-100000000-00/) away to make it.
If the investors are expecting to see any of that back it’ll need to be sold on for a reasonable sum and then it’ll have to turn a decent buck to make it back again.
Can’t see it happening but it is a real shame.
I’m sure it’s been on here before but everyone should read Luke Halliwell’s blog about the collapse. It’s a fantastic read: http://lukehalliwell.wordpress.com/
26/10/2010 at 13:48 Kadayi says:
They’re in administration. It’s about selling what they have as assets in whatever form in order to pay back their legal debts to the banks (which were at about 3 million or so). Money invested is not a debt, like any form of investment it’s a gamble as to whether there is a return. People need to understand the distinction.
26/10/2010 at 17:12 droid says:
What a shame.
26/10/2010 at 19:11 TariqOne says:
@Kadayi: Yep. The receiver’s job is to marshal assets and pay claims. The creditors are the claimants and intended beneficiaries, not the owners/investors, who are technically the ones screwing the creditors. If there’s anything left after paying the costs of administration and creditor claims, that would go to owners/shareholders/investors. With most insolvencies, creditors only see pennies on the dollar and ownership/shareholders are out of the money entirely.
If there’s any value to the APB property, the administrator is fiduciarily obligated to sell it at the best possible price. Which is why I’d be stunned if at some point it is NOT sold. To what end remains to be seen.
26/10/2010 at 10:14 Finstern says:
This game doesn’t really deserve any more attention. From anyone.
26/10/2010 at 20:02 Martin Coxall says:
Perhaps not, but the gross fiscal recklessness RTW exhibited and the innocent victims thereof deserve some kind of succour.
26/10/2010 at 10:19 panther says:
I forget, did people who bought this get compensated for buying something that died so quickly in anyway?
26/10/2010 at 10:51 jon_hill987 says:
If they specifically asked EA they were given some store credit.
26/10/2010 at 20:19 gerafin says:
I got a copy of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. TBH, it would be excellent to have BFBC2 and be able to play some APB again :) For all its flaws, larger-scale PvP could be excellent – until the end, where people had exploited the unbalances to the point where a fair game was unheard of.
26/10/2010 at 11:44 Nallen says:
Stuff happens as wave of ambiguity spreads.
26/10/2010 at 12:47 beefchief says:
jesus, the hoodie the woman on the right is wearing had me confused for a while
26/10/2010 at 14:56 Dances to Podcasts says:
I just want to know what’s in that can.
26/10/2010 at 17:21 PleasingFungus says:
Wow, yeah, that hoodie is… disconcerting. (Only figured out where her actual face was after I read your comment.)
26/10/2010 at 13:38 Kadayi says:
Albeit an advocate of the core game (not necessarily the company) I’d find it hard to imagine the game itself being resurrected as was. A tech raid makes a lot more sense as the customisation tools were pretty impressive.
26/10/2010 at 15:26 clownst0pper says:
APB does still have potential and is ripe for the pickings. It just needs a competent team and 12-15 more months in development.
26/10/2010 at 17:09 pupsikaso says:
APB would have made sense to be F2P from the start, what with all that fashion in there.
But the thing about there being a buyer for this game… it doesn’t mean that whoever buys it is going to restart the servers and let people play. It just means that someone is interested in the tech of the game.
26/10/2010 at 18:29 TariqOne says:
It’s a fantastic opportunity for someone with capital and some business sense. For pennies on the dollar you can buy the bare bones of an AAA title on which 10s of millions of dollars was lavished. A wonderful character editor. Amazingly robust customization. Not a bad overall game in some senses (a shooter with permanent customizable unlocks like cars and clothes).
Spend a few more bones gussying up the gameplay, and you’ve got a title more polished and interesting than most of the F2P games out there for a fraction of the price. You’ll need to seriously tweak a few things (driving and shooting, unfortunately), maybe add some semi-functional PVE content for the carebears (like me), and address what I think was APB’s major achilles’s heel: cheating. Honestly, I’d build in an aimbot to the game, and run a separate “hardcore” server for those guys who want to go on about skill. For those who want to drive around in cool cars with sweet clothes and shoot at each other, you may as well eliminate cheating from the game and let everyone do it.
I’m hard pressed to see how someone doesn’t at some point grab this asset out of receivership. Fire sale on flawed-but-somewhat-innovative multiplayer game! There’s got to be a pricepoint where serious people have to jump in.
26/10/2010 at 19:28 Kadayi says:
@TariqOne
The problem at the moment is money is tight everywhere in the industry so it seems.
26/10/2010 at 19:46 pupsikaso says:
For pennies and dollars? You, sir, are mightily confused.
26/10/2010 at 21:47 TariqOne says:
@Pup: Pence on the pound then, my nitpicking amigo. A small percentage of its “purchase” price. DAMN YOU!!
@Kadayi: True, however a receiver is obligated to liquidate any and all assets for the benefit of creditors. At some point, it becomes a trivial cost. I doubt they will wind up the receivership having left the APB asset unsold. They have to get whatever they can for the creditors, even if creditors wind up taking a massive haircut. At what price point does it become a trivial matter for a going company, or even an ambitious speculator? $1M? $500K? Against debts of $3M or thereabouts even that relative pittance is a fairly significant infusion of capital into the RTW estate.
26/10/2010 at 19:56 KindredPhantom says:
It is interesting that the person who is updating the patch notes now has a job in Codemasters or so i am told.
26/10/2010 at 20:29 Kronyx says:
Does that guy in the middle have… Nail polish?
Jesus Christ, I know he wants to stand out but WHY NAIL POLISH
26/10/2010 at 20:53 RakeShark says:
The problem with the prospect of the resuscitation of APB is that a major amount of customer damage has been done. I don’t see a majority of the previous fan base wanting to touch necro-APB with a 10 foot pole, F2P or not.
26/10/2010 at 21:15 pupsikaso says:
If they include SOME kind of anti-cheat protection I’d gladly come back. Most of the match-making and mission problems had been patched during that last month.
26/10/2010 at 21:51 TariqOne says:
I still say build in an aimbot/mild autotarget for the majority of servers. Eliminate cheating by incorporating cheating. The aimbots were killer. I could have lived with the wallhacks, but the legions of absolute deadeyes picking you off with SMGs at long range were unbearable.
27/10/2010 at 17:03 GenuineEntropy says:
Curious isn’t it?
On the one hand:
‘Oh God, ANOTHER formulaic WoW/EQ/DaoC/UO/DnDO/AO/WH/LOTRO/Aion/FF/CoH/CoL/AoC/Runescape/FreeRealms/Et all clone, why have all these companies spent millions and over a decade reiterating the same tired old ideas, problems and tropes?!?!…’
And then on the other:
‘APB is different. Its not enough like other MMO’s. Its not enough like AAA shooters. It deserves to fail horribly and never be spoken of again, bile bile hate hate…. Oooooooh, new yellow floating exclamation marks and fresh grinding to do in cataclysm!!!!! *fangasm*’
….
I just don’t get it.