NCSoft's Continuing Slide Into Irrelevance and Bankruptcy

Speaking of bullshit moves, NCSoft continues its corporate doublespeak and is reaping the whirlwind for their efforts.  To whit:

The Save City of Heroes Campaign Reveals NCsoft’s Firewall of Silence | EGMNOW

Quoting the juicy bits (and you really should go read the whole article),

However, it was all in vain as on October 2 the publisher issued a statement saying that it had “exhausted all options including the selling of the studio and the rights to the City of Heroes intellectual property, but in the end, efforts to do so were not successful.”

Of course this is where the twist occurs, the Save City of Heroes community claim to know of at least two investment groups who wished to purchase the license, but NCsoft never replied to their offers. This led the group to contact NCsoft regarding these offers, [asking certain questions].

After around two weeks of no response Lincoln Davis, director of corporate communications at NCsoft’s Seattle Office, offered this reply, “I wanted to let you know that we will be declining your interview request as it relates to the sun setting of City of Heroes.”

So they've lied about not having any buyers and/or exhausting all options. It really does boil down to "We don't want to operate it, but we don't want anyone else to make money from it either."

But it gets better. Fans of City of Heroes have been leaving messages on NCSoft's Facebook page, and I am hearing reports that not only are those messages being deleted, but NCSoft has reverted their page to Korean to prevent non-Korean speakers from leaving comments.

What's more, they are engaging in more futile corporate BS in an attempt to staunch the bleeding.  Patrick Osbourne, a member of "Save City of Heroes," reported the following:

I just got this reply after posting on ther page:

[∵] Dear NCSOFT Facebook Fan,

We feel immense gratitude towards your love and enthusiasm of 'City of Heroes'. It has been quite the privilege and we would like to thank you all. 'City of Heroes' is the world's first and best Super Heroes MMORPG. It has received unconditional love for more than 8 years and it is like a family member of this company.

However, to provide a better game and service in the future, we have made the tough decision to discontinue the game. It was very hard on all of us here at NCSOFT.

NCSOFT will strive for a better game and superior service and anticipates the day that we will meet again. We are confident that we will not look back towards today's choice with regret.

Lastly, for the users who enjoy other games of NCSOFT, we would greatly appreciate it if you can hold back the negative and hurtful comments.

Thank you very much.

Now this is normally where I'd translate this as "Please stop poking me with the truth, it hurts and we want you to go away," but another member of this group, Logan Darklighter, has a much better take on it:

TRANSLATION OF NCSOFT BULLSHIT SPEAK:

"We feel really bad for setting that puppy on fire. We want you to know that we loved the puppy too. But once we doused in in gasoline and lit it on fire, we just couldn't put it out."

"We even tried waving a fan at it to put the flames out and everything, but sadly all options are exhausted. Now let's please stop trying to put the puppy out, and instead hug and share happy memories of the puppy while it burns to death."

And also please stop mentioning to everyone how we set puppies on fire."

Oh NCSoft, I'm trying hard to see things from your perspective, but try as I might I just can't get my head lodged that far up my ass.

But wait, it gets better.  Take a look at this graph right here:

See where it peaked? September 7th.  Know what happened on September 8th?

Why, that would be the massive Unity Rally held within the game.

We are heroes. This is who we are. This is what we do. 

Huh. Who would have thought that excluding Europe and North America from your market would have resulted in fiscal backlash?

Oh, right: We did.

I am very, very eager to see what happens in the coming months.