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Sunday Comics: Dead Island Despite the massive devastation of China’s recent earthquake, CDC Games, headquartered in China, said today that its revenues for its online games have rebounded almost immediately. Judging by the images on the news, it’s easy to doubt that any Chinese are in the mood to play – but CDC says that’s not so, despite the fact that its game service was suspended for three days due to the tragedy.
“In fact, on May 24, 2008 daily revenues for CDC Games were 1.3 million RMB, or approximately (U.S.) $187,000. In addition, the company has seen strong revenue growth from Shaiya, a massively multiplayer online role playing fantasy game (MMORPG) launched by CDC Games in December 2006.”
China’s online RPG culture dwarfs online gaming anywhere else in the world, and it’s interesting to see that even (or especially) in the wake of a tragedy, gamers are making room for their favourite pastime. The image shown here, from CDC’s Shaiya Online, is certainly much more comfortable to look at than this gallery of Seattle Times images from the centre of the devastation.
I think I still have handfuls of Digimon cell phone charms given out by some Taiwanese convenience store chain lurking in a suitcase, but in case you prefer your Digimon experience to be on your computer and not dangling off your cell phone, CDC Games has gotten the licence to bring the Digimon MMOs to North America and the PRC. CDC hopes to launch the extremely creatively named Digimon RPG in North America sometime this year, and Digimon RPG2 (that name’s supposedly temporary) should be hitting the Korean market by the end of ’08, as well. Full release after the jump.
CDC Games, one of Mainland China’s heavy hitters, sent out a press release last week detailing some metrics for their Mainland games, plus info on how Lunia has been doing in the US. Lots and lots of metrics to be had, but I guess that’s why CDC’s Ron Williams talked about how to compare apples to oranges. Williams says that CDC is “excited about the game’s potential to be a top online game in North America this year” and is hoping to leverage Lunia fans for future releases. Pertinent parts of the release after the jump, plus a link to the full release:
Last year, CDC Games (China) and Mgame (Korea) got into a heated legal battle over the status of Yulgang in Mainland China: CDC sued Mgame for breach of contract, and Mgame said they dropped CDC since they weren’t paying per the terms of that same contract. But, just as was predicted last November, the two companies have kissed and made up:
It’s hard to find an article on MMOs that doesn’t include metrics of some stripe: registered users, peak concurrent users, et cetera et cetera ad nauseam. With the expansion of free-to-play and ad supported games, it’s not as easy to compare games as it was when everyone operated on a subscription basis; but Ron Williams of CDC Games (the Chinese company that has a stable of wildly popular games in Asia and is expanding into the West with Lunia). While this set of metrics may not have any impact on the average user (as long as you like the game, what difference does it make if a bunch of acronyms are being converted into other acronyms – or not), but they do provide a good base for companies figuring out how to tweak their offerings:
Lunia戰記 is an “action arcade MMORPG” from China’s CDC Games (developed by Korea’s ALLM Co.) – and they’re bringing the brightly colored, free-to-play model to the US early next year (just what we need!). They describe it as “much like an action arcade game, allowing players to move around using arrow keys rather than a mouse. The game can be played with a console ‘D pad’ style controller which makes the game familiar and easy to use for the millions of Xbox users throughout the U.S.” Does this qualify as ‘new and improved’? It just looks like a colorful, manga-style game to me, but I’m hardly an expert on the many incarnations of Asian free-to-play MMOs. Full press release after the jump.
My weekends these days aren’t complete without a helping of the week’s Chinese game company lawsuit goodness (hey, it beats grading papers), and it looks like – despite China-based CDC Games and Mgame tossing around heated legalese the past few weeks – the companies are primed to kiss and make up. The CEOs from both companies met in Seoul to sign an agreement to ‘negotiate in good faith’ to reach some sort of mutually agreeable resolution to the battle over popular MMORPG Yulgang. Just last week, CDC Games was still claiming breech of contract and Mgame was screeching about non-payment, but the tune has definitely changed:
The parties agreed to work together to find a mutually satisfactory result and signed an agreement to agree to negotiate in good faith over the next several weeks to resolve all differences between the parties and reach an amicable solution.
“We are happy that the parties have agreed to negotiate and we are confident that we can reach a win-win solution for all in the near future,” said Xiaowei Chen, Ph.D., president of CDC Games.
Apparently CDC doesn’t feel like being the next Chinese company to rip off a Korean company’s IP (doesn’t look so good when you’re trying to combat low-level piracy) and Mgame doesn’t want to lose their piece of the lucrative Chinese market. We’ll see how this pans out.
CDC Games and Mgame Agree to Negotiate to Resolve Differences over Yulgang [Yahoo]
Who’d let a few lawsuits and the threat of losing the licence of your most popular game stop company expansion? Not China’s CDC Games, that’s for damn sure: despite being currently embroiled in two suits with South Korea’s MGame, they’re taking their show on the road and heading to Japan with Minna de Battle [Gemfighter in Korea and the US] , which started its closed beta last week. Will CDC crash and burn, or make a successful entry into the Japanese market? Only time will tell. Full release after the jump.
The MMORPGs may all be clones of each other, but at least pan-Asian game related legal battles are entertaining: MGame, a South Korean company, responded this week to the two lawsuits filed last week by CDC Games (as we mentioned last weekend), which cited breached contracts and lack of technical support (among other things) as a basis for their suits. This legal battle is quickly devolving into a ‘they said, they said’ battle. MGame alleges that they dropped CDC Games for non-payment of licence fees for the wildly popular MMO Yulgang; CDC hasn’t responded to these allegations, and it looks like there might be even more heated battles soon:
In a lawsuit filed by CDC Games last week, the company claims MGame has not been providing adequate technical support for “Yulgang” and that it has not been supporting CDC in its efforts to combat piracy.
In response, MGame said it has “hired and dispatched key personnel to sincerely provide support to address those issues.”
MGame Chief Executive Yi Hyoung Kwon said in a statement the company “will provide constant and stable services for ‘Yulgang’ in China with a new partner sometime soon,”
I love reading this stuff – it’s like a soap opera, but way better and with a lot more money at stake. You can’t make this stuff up. I can’t wait to see what happens if MGame and CDC don’t manage to iron this out, and MGame goes shopping for a new Chinese operator.
MGame Responds to CDC Lawsuits [Forbes]
Well, the Chinese gaming world is certainly turning into a sue-happy place as of late: CDC Games, the same company that has launched an assault on piracy, is now suing South Korean-based MGame Corporation in both South Korea and Hong Kong. Earlier this week, CDC leveled charges at MGame of providing really crappy tech support for Yulgang, a popular MMORPG, and failing to back up CDC in their quest to end piracy; after filing those suits in Hong Kong, CDC moved on to South Korean courts, alleging MGame breached a contract and failed to provide financial data. While MGame hasn’t commented on these charges, CDC notes that MGame has terminated their contract with the company, citing non-payment (oops):
Earlier this week, CDC’s online gaming unit, CDC Games, sued Mgame in a Hong Kong court claiming Mgame has not been providing adequate technical support for its “Yulgang” online game and that it has not been supporting CDC in its efforts to combat piracy.
CDC Games said Wednesday that Mgame terminated its contract with the company, citing nonpayment. CDC said on Friday its games unit has “continued to make obligatory royalty payments to Mgame for its operation of ‘Yulgang,’ which continues to operate in China today.”
I’m not sure how CDC’s status as the largest outside shareholder in MGame ties into all of this, but I do know that even the brief news reports have given me headaches.
