What Culture: "Since the fires of WoW have now tempered themselves, people really haven’t heard much in the vein of MMORPGs on a blockbuster scale. One reason is because it is very difficult for an upstart title to overtake a game’s brand loyalty and consumer base. How many other first-person shooters can you name that have a truly competitive nature with Call of Duty or Halo? Many of these games fall into a roadside ditch, never to be thought of again. Others try to replicate the design, but through a lens that doesn’t really understand why the major title was famous in the first place."
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EK Cooling allegedly has slipped itself into a hot soup of seemingly endless financial woes, where it has not paid its staff, suppliers, and contractors for many months as the company is facing liquidity problems and a surplus of inventory left unsold, stuck in the warehouse for a more extended period. Gamers Nexus investigated these claims made by former and current personnel, where he found trails of unpaid bills lasting as long as three to four months and unpaid raises that accumulated for almost a year.
EK Water Blocks has two entities—a Slovenian-based headquarters and a US-based subsidiary, EK Cooling Solutions. Steve narrated the series of events in detail, stating that the company was reportedly irresponsible and negligent regarding payment. Consequently, partners and employees are forced to share the burden of alleged mismanagement. It all begins with its extensive range of products, leading to a surplus of goods. EK has over 230 water blocks, 40 liquid cooling kits, 85 reservoirs, 40 pumps, 73 radiators, and 212 miscellaneous accessories.
Yes this is not about video games directly but indirectly this will impact the pc gaming/workstation space hard.
This company is massive one of two in the water cool space so if it goes poof then thousands out there have no spare parts or half built computers.
SO yeah i know not about a video game but think of it as amd leaving the pc space but this is ekwb that could be leaving water cooling in the pc space
Jayz2cents a supporter of there products also has issues
https://www.youtube.com/wat...
As someone that has built a watercooling rig. EK is big, but there's so many numerous watercooling part companies out there. EK's stuff isn't exactly amazing quality for the price compared to others either, it's just ok. Much like Corsair. The impact would be negligible long term. For perspective the majority of my parts are XSPC, at most I use EK for my gpu waterblocks and fittings. Both easily replaceable.
The problem is that WoW became the template for success - and every other MMO company just pasted a new theme on to similar mechanics.
No one has done anything new or innovative in the genre for years.
So to compensate, company's have tried different business models. The problem with Free to Play is that usually it means pay to win or be bored to death grinding to unlock basic stuff. Micro transactions are still seen as a money suck. The subscription model works, but people expect a basic level of content / features to support that subscription - and too many MMO's are launching with incomplete features sets, or get exposed for their generic mechanics and can not build abig enough player base.
Many MMO's should never get past concept stage. But because Blizzard created this massive money pie, every developer / publisher wanted a slice. So we have an over saturated market of mediocre games which hurts the credibility of the genre.
Layer on top that MMO's are hugely expensive to produce and maintain and we have a situation where ambition outstrips ability and budget - so there's little point signing up to an MMO as a player when it will either disappear in a few months, or switch business model to the detriment of the player.
Star Wars KotR is a good example. A subscription based game that promised a lot. Switched to a mixed model of F2P and subscription and gained subscribers but started delivering smaller scale expansions. I signed up as F2P, but after level 10 it become a chore to play as progress was slow and the limitations kicked in. So I subscribed - progressed faster, but that just revealed how generic and boring the game was - so I quit. The devs / publisher may have got a few quid out of me - but I don't think their model is one that can be sustained.