Sony Online Entertainment has announced that Pirates of the Burning Sea will be leaving its stable of MMOs on January 31st. PotBS will be developed and republished by Portalus Games, a new company made up of former Flying Lab Software employees. Characters will be carried over if a Portalus account is linked to the currently existing SOE account.

First I would like to reassure all of our players that the game will remain free-to-play, and the transition should be seamless. Both the Antigua and Roberts servers will be maintained and all of your existing characters will be available as long as you complete the migration process for each account before January 31st.

However, Portalus Games is not Flying Lab Software. We have witnessed the results of our choices since the move to free-to-play, both for the game and for FLS as a business. It would be a disservice to the game's loyal fans if we let it end as a result of those decisions, and we are currently evaluating necessary changes to keep the game seaworthy.

Find out more on the Portalus Games site.

This really was a great game.  Incredible PvP system.  But they did a lot of things horribly wrong.  And they really have to address those things (never listening to even the clear majority of testers, never a consistent design, horrible avcom and open sea mechanics, bad port conquest system, etc.)

I still see no indiciation that they understand what went wrong before.

People still play this?  Had no idea...hmfff

Wish it the best, although, when I played it, which was years ago, the game was pretty un-impressive.

SOE is removing themselves from any bad media by closing down another game.

This sounds like maybe Flying Labs is about to claim bankruptcy and is reopening under new management but some of the same employees.I mean if Flying Labs was the partner,they are not all of a sudden removed or out of the picture with no talk of mergers,sell offs,basically nothing.

IMO this is all about money tinkering,i am 99% sure they know this is not a money maker,so they are up to no good.You know how it works,give themselves some nice pay cheques ,run the debt up then claim bankrupt,close down the corporate number.

Just the way this whole thing is worded tells you something is not right. "Leaving it's stables".

it was always a sleeper game for me.

a good game with some bad implementation here and there. but some really great ideas too.

I hope the new company really does "develop" it as i am sure there's a damn good MMO somewhere in there.  it's one of the very few MMO that have had me sub for over a year.

Originally posted by itchmon

 

 

I hope the new company really does "develop" it as i am sure there's a damn good MMO somewhere in there.  it's one of the very few MMO that have had me sub for over a year.

Its not a new company.  Same company, different name, self publishing now.

Yup If your interested as I was I D/Led the game from sony and in jan. they will post a number to switch to the new company no cost and they say it will be more like pirates 101 style for paying to play. It is definatly three of the flying labs guys in seattle that bought it back from $OE.

Originally posted by Wizardry

SOE is removing themselves from any bad media by closing down another game.

This sounds like maybe Flying Labs is about to claim bankruptcy and is reopening under new management but some of the same employees.I mean if Flying Labs was the partner,they are not all of a sudden removed or out of the picture with no talk of mergers,sell offs,basically nothing.

The publishing company is the FL crew. You're posting there's no news of the transition in the news item about the transition. You realize that, right? 

IMO this is all about money tinkering,i am 99% sure they know this is not a money maker,so they are up to no good.You know how it works,give themselves some nice pay cheques ,run the debt up then claim bankrupt,close down the corporate number.

Do you have inside info on secret investors that no one else knows about? If not, where is FL getting this alleged pile of cash to make off with?

Just the way this whole thing is worded tells you something is not right. "Leaving it's stables".

"stable of games" is a very common term for the collection of online titles a developer or publisher has. 

That was one heck of a reach to find some kind of fault in otherwise good news.

I actually went back to it as a subscriber last month.

Its ship combat is great. Its AV-Com (avatar combat) is much better than it was. Better choices, more responsive.

It still has some of the best quest/mission text of any game Ive played.

And the background conversations you get while standing in certain places can be hilarious. "Come at me again and I will slash your throat!" says the man in a very posh British voice.

It is fun game, it really is. But it sufferes from being 1 1/2 dimensional. The "1" being is great ship combat, the "1/2" being its somewhat lackluster avatar gameplay.

And to be completly honest some really shitty game mechanics.

Its a fun game to throw $15 at for a few months, or not if you want to play free, but sadly not much longer than that. It get repedtitive fast.

hmm i have always been interested in this game when it was pure sub. but never bothered to try it, still not sure if ill find time to, but switching publishers.. wont that effect the game it self?

patches or localization ect..??

Originally posted by Ichmen

hmm i have always been interested in this game when it was pure sub. but never bothered to try it, still not sure if ill find time to, but switching publishers.. wont that effect the game it self?

patches or localization ect..??

Now I cant say Im an expert at this. But from what I got from the FLS and SOE partership was that SoE handeled the "advertising" the customer support and maybe the hosting. But Flagship Studios was their own company and SoE got to skim some of the profits for services rendered.

Cant back that up with anything more than what Ive heard over the years and the fact that PotBS is being allowed to go independent instead of SoE sinking it like it does its other under-performing games. And Im sure under-performing is very much open to interpretation.

It seemed to have a fairly active community on its two servers, it sure wasnt a ghost town. But out of the people I seen how many were free players and multi account players, that Im not sure of.

Say what you want abot SOE but at least they let the rights to this game go it's own way to a company filled with people who used to work on it.

Thousands of CoH fans are wishing right now NCSoft would have given them the same courtesy.

Nice to see that anyone that still plays it won't be affected and being in a place that will give the game undivided attention and resources, I hope the game expereince gets improved for them.

Originally posted by DashiDMV

Say what you want abot SOE but at least they let the rights to this game go it's own way to a company filled with people who used to work on it.

Thousands of CoH fans are wishing right now NCSoft would have given them the same courtesy.

Nice to see that anyone that still plays it won't be affected and being in a place that will give the game undivided attention and resources, I hope the game expereince gets improved for them.

I agree with what you say here, but I will add that I wish that they had done the same thing years ago with Vanguard instead of letting it hang on life support for all that time.

Flying Labs is somewhat unique in thet they still owned all the rights to PotBS. It's a small company wholly owned by three or four investors. I'm guessing their five year contract with Sony ran out and they "mutually agreed" not to renew it. If they go bankrupt it's because something has gone wrong wth Upper Deck and the browser game they were making. It would be pretty silly for them to raid their own company for cash. After all it's theirs to do with as they please. What they pleased is apparently to spin it off as Portalus Games. Vanguard is unfortunately wholly owned by SOE and they'll likely never let it go. The same is true of CoH and NCSoft.

I wish them good luck. They're one of the last truly independent gaming companies.

AHOY MATEYS!!! HIDE YOUR SCUPPERS AND BURY YOUR STEAL!!! cof cof cof!.......Sorry!.....

I always sub to this around christmas, It's that stupid song about the wren. It gets me all in the christmas spirit and tings. Anyroad I hope that now it's out of the hands of S.O.E it can get some much needed updates. A song about a wren in a christmas event will only carry your game so far ;)

Their Christmas themes were awesome.  best was the one guy who bemoaned how Christmas had lost its meaning with many people.  And what does he do to explain this?  Belt's out Veni Veni Emmanuel in the Latin.

I found that kinda epic.

Originally posted by Wizardry

SOE is removing themselves from any bad media by closing down another game.

This sounds like maybe Flying Labs is about to claim bankruptcy and is reopening under new management but some of the same employees.I mean if Flying Labs was the partner,they are not all of a sudden removed or out of the picture with no talk of mergers,sell offs,basically nothing.

IMO this is all about money tinkering,i am 99% sure they know this is not a money maker,so they are up to no good.You know how it works,give themselves some nice pay cheques ,run the debt up then claim bankrupt,close down the corporate number.

Just the way this whole thing is worded tells you something is not right. "Leaving it's stables".

SOE was only publishing the game, Flying Labs was the sole developer, SOE didn't have anything to do with development.