gPotato has announced that following tomorrow night's maintenance the North American version of Aika will be restricted to North American users only. Users attempting to access the game through an international IP address may find that their access has been blocked. This change comes down from Aika's North American publisher, Gala-Net. Other gPotato games will not be affected.

The full announcement is available below:

Dear Aika players,

We have an important announcement to bring you tonight.  Starting tomorrow night after our weekly scheduled maintenance, we will be restricting our area of service for Aika Online to North America, given Gala-Net’s status as the North American publisher for Aika Online.  This decision may result in gPotato blocking IP addresses which originate outside of North America (for Aika only – other gPotato games will not be affected).  We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this action causes, and we encourage you to email us at aika_support[at]gala-net.com with any comments or concerns you may have.

-The Aika Team-

View the original announcement here.

UPDATE: Gala-Net has provided us with an official response to the situation:

"We are acutely aware of the situation our committed Aika players are currently facing.  We regret this situation and apologize for any difficulty our players are facing as a consequence of the new restrictions.  We realize that this decision affects a great deal of our player base and comes as quite a shock.  We will be doing everything we can to take care of our players and work towards a fair resolution.  We encourage players to continue to check the Aika news page and forums for updates on this issue.”

[Thanks go out to leumasx7, Reverant, and jayarte for the tips!]

For some reason, that site is blocked for me from work so I cant read the announcement.

Did they explain why they are blocking everyone outside NA? I don't play any of their games but I would be interested in hearing why they went this route.

its a way to cut down on gold spamers and such since most gold spamers awre from china and veitnam

Originally posted by sidfu

its a way to cut down on gold spamers and such since most gold spamers awre from china and veitnam

Hardly, gold spammers don't need good pings to stand in town saying the same thing over and over, nor do their farmers even need a good ping and as such they will just use proxies to access the game anyway. IP blocking does nothing other than stop the Europeans from playing really.

I can only assume it's being published in Europe by a different company soon?

this move was never about a ping issue(i get 286ms to china)

the issue was last week-end when the pvp  channel was full !this made the autority move because they are still early in beta

since i never saw a game add server in beta ,they went to ipblock

yes there are other issue internally between all faction(business)but nothing without ways to work it out!

will they do this? ya! gala-net was never really the type to be friendly -friendly with costumer

will it kill the game !

a BIG RESOUNDING YES! was seen in the comment tread of this news

some say there is a global version supposed to be released soon so far all i saw is what look more like a

private server then an actual one

mmosite doesnt have it listed either

and on gpotato end there is no such info anywhere that i could see about aika going global

if it does go gobal you can bet the na one will die in 48 hour flat

gamer love aika because of how it actually is ,and no amount of discussion will make them change their mind

so we ll see how things goes in about 18 hour since we ll loose the server for a bunch of hours!

then we ll know what futur gala-net chose for this game i do hope they make the right choice

well, am I glad i didn't invest much time in this, would I have been p.o.-ed otherwise.

Originally posted by Murashu

For some reason, that site is blocked for me from work so I cant read the announcement.

 

Did they explain why they are blocking everyone outside NA? I don't play any of their games but I would be interested in hearing why they went this route.

I don't believe they've officially said why but the reason is due to HanbitSoft (the developer) deciding to start a global version that appears will be running in-house. I guess the question is why and how this all happened. I think it's a safe assumption that gPotato didn't expect Hanbit would do this, but at the same time, were they that negligible to never get the stone cold facts or is it a matter of talks between the two companies going down the shitter after the initial deal was made?

Note to self: Include Hanibitsoft in your personal boycott of game developers/publishers

I emailed gPotato and informed them I would never play one of their games again.  Same applies for Hanibitsoft, however it's spelled.

the game is crummy anyway

Good, and no this won't kill the game... I personally like playing with people from other parts of the world, but I can certainly do without some of the gold sellers, botters and such that tend to come from some of the regions around the world they are IP blocking. Which I suspect is one reason for the IP blocking in the first place. I imagine the other reason is to keep bandwidth costs down... if they are making a "global" version of this game then there is no reason to allow non NA users access to teh NA version. 

There has also been an global version of Aika confirmed by hanbitsoft: http://aika.t3fun.com/Home/Home.aspx

well, i wont miss it.

gameplay is clunky and grindy.
crafting is a pain in the ass.

the only interesting feature in this game is the pran, the rest is just cheap f2p asia grind crap.

just have to LOL at grindy its easy to make 50 in a matter of days, quests make the lvling easy.

Originally posted by Darkholme

Good, and no this won't kill the game... I personally like playing with people from other parts of the world, but I can certainly do without some of the gold sellers, botters and such that tend to come from some of the regions around the world they are IP blocking. Which I suspect is one reason for the IP blocking in the first place. I imagine the other reason is to keep bandwidth costs down... if they are making a "global" version of this game then there is no reason to allow non NA users access to teh NA version. 

 Again, it probably has nothing to do with gold sellers/botters.

There are plenty of botters in the US as well. And IP blocking gold sellers? lol They can pay very little $ a month for a GOOD proxy, or have one set up themselves for free.

Why do people still think IP block=GoldSpam block?

mm!anybody that wave this game off because its simple or clunky would be very wrong to dismiss this game

this will be a major blow to gpotato!the fact is they get lot of game very few end up the way this game ended up but then

i bet the game dev never thot it would fly very high and contrary to probably even their most optimistic views

they filled pvp channel with an ease that would baffle other

receipe is simple take one map carbon copy it 5 time link it with one portal to go to any world and you got a receipe for some of the most insane beta pvp i have seen

people rarelly react as badly as the community reacted, they move on! but this time player were very vocal

the ipblock is a safety net the game dev put in place in case the game is THE BIG ONE!

and in this case its the big one every pvp player i spoke say the same

i was bored at start same old same old says other the community s response

wait until you see your first pvp nation war before ,then judge, and everyone that did loved the game afterward

this game is very simple but when you got a pvp channel full of pvp maniac let me tell you not many battle compare

the result!try to say to them ,the pvp will be as good without the rest of the world

our collective response:NO IT WONT!pvp was good because it was global ,thats why it annoyed every faction and every nation equally that we couldnt understand the other from asia russia,france,belgium etc

but thats what made it so entertaining!is he plotting against my guild our we gona have a civil war in our nation

it kept everybody on the edge in the pvp server!so now ?what now?you can be sure of one thing most that experienced these pvp event are waiting for only one thing!for the aika global to give green light they are a go!

as for me as soon as i can get closed beta key for global aika ,i ll be in that beta

i found out in this game often its the simple receipe that give good result!

and this game is proof!and on top since its being released by dev i bet it will be more polished!

anyway see you ingame a aika.t3fun.com when it lunch!

side note:gpotato is furiously blocking every tread pertaining to the ipblock subject!it made me lol so hard

they make the situation even worst by playing the austrich(head in the sand)

Originally posted by Lukekini

 Again, it probably has nothing to do with gold sellers/botters.

There are plenty of botters in the US as well. And IP blocking gold sellers? lol They can pay very little $ a month for a GOOD proxy, or have one set up themselves for free.

Why do people still think IP block=GoldSpam block?

You're right about one thing, those dirty wastes of my oxygen will likely find ways around the IP block. However it is a fact that the vast majority of botters, gold sellers and other malcontents of the MMO multiverse come from Asian and Eastern European countries... Yes there are likely people in Western Europe and North America that deal in such activities, but they are in the minority.

Update: Even after the maintainance (after which the IP bans were supposed to begin), it seems European/Asian players can still play. At least, it seems so.

Originally posted by IdesofMarch

Originally posted by Murashu

For some reason, that site is blocked for me from work so I cant read the announcement.

 

Did they explain why they are blocking everyone outside NA? I don't play any of their games but I would be interested in hearing why they went this route.

I don't believe they've officially said why but the reason is due to HanbitSoft (the developer) deciding to start a global version that appears will be running in-house. I guess the question is why and how this all happened. I think it's a safe assumption that gPotato didn't expect Hanbit would do this, but at the same time, were they that negligible to never get the stone cold facts or is it a matter of talks between the two companies going down the shitter after the initial deal was made?

Very interesting.  Usually the developer makes an international version and AFTERWORDS sets up publishing deals.  It looks like gpotatoe is screwed here.  This will definitely cut down on their numbers.  Less numbers equal less cash.  But if the game is still a hit than they really dont have much to worry about.  Making money is still making money.

Not that I personally play the game or anything, but all this speculation crap is killing me. If people would just learn to research a little before reacting off of soundbites, they would realize that the ipblocking is just a LEGAL matter. You see, GPotato only has rights to the North American publishing. That means that they can't legally "sell" their game outside of North America. Since it is a ftp, that essentially means that until they get the rights to publish outside of North America, they must block ips that are not from North America so as to not allow transactions between their cash shop/game and Gpotato to occur outside of North America.

It has nothing to do with gold sellers, or anything else. Will some find ways around this, possibly even the asian farmers? Sure. But Gpotato is bound by law to AT LEAST try to block IPs outside of North America.