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Ryzom News - The Free Ryzom Campaign
Posted by Jon Wood on Nov 29, 2006 | 24 comments in our forums
News that Nevrax, the company behind the MMOG Ryzom, had gone into recievership late last week wasa dissapointment for fans of the game. Some of those same fans are now starting a project in the hopes of purchasing the source code, artwork and intellectual property associated with Ryzom in order to continue the game as a "democratically run player project".
Learn more about the Free Ryzom Campaign here.
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Until now, Nevrax has produced Ryzom, as a typical commercial software company. Nevrax, not the players, decide what direction the virtial world of Ryzom takes. We want to turn this model on it's head and give players control over the virtual world their character's inhabit. We want to purchase the source code, game data, and artwork, so that we can further develop it by placing it under a Free Software license. Once this is accomplished we would reopen the universe of Ryzom to players and have it function and further developed under democratic controlled basis. How can we hope to purchase a large software package which took millions of dollars to develop? We must be crazy, right? Not exactly, what we are attempting isn't without precedent, and we look to make it happen again! Blender, a powerful 3D modeling package cost millions of dollars to develop. In 2002, when the company behind Blender went into liquidation. The community surrounding Blender came to the rescue and raised 100,000 Euros to purchase the software package from its investors. To this day, Blender is a highly successful and actively developed Free Software project, maintained by its community of users. This is the success story we seek for Ryzom. We are now working feverishly on a proposal, which we will present to the official presiding over liquidation process. The gist of this proposal is that we would seek to repurchase Ryzom, financed by a donation campaign, as was the case for Blender. The principal difference is that, we would likely not be the only party who would wish to purchase Ryzom. Also, any repurchase that occurs, will be carried out by the liquidators, not the shareholders. So far we do not know the conditions the liquidator may impose on the sale, nor the exact sum of money that will be required. We estimate that the amount will be, at least, tens of thousands of euros, and in the worst case, hundreds of thousands Euros. Regardless of the exact amount, it is an large sum, but far from being unattainable. When taking into consideration millions euros necessary to the development of a MMORPG, this is a golden opportunity. If we get 500 donations, each contributing 20 euros, we would already have 10,000 Euros, easily attainable and well on our way to repurchase Ryzom. For this relatively small price, the community would obtain a game, which as of the time of writing this was tied for first place on MMORPG.com, as rated by the players. Developers would be able to build their own worlds and servers, based on the code, artwork and tools used in a #3 rated MMORG on MMORPG.com. |
This is what makes the Ryzom community so great. I plan on donating.
Secondly you have the problem of hosting the game which wouldn't be cheap with all the support associated with such a project.
Thirdly if anyone was to commit a seroius amount of money then contracts would need to be drawn up which would take time which would affect the amount of money the venture could bid (you can't really bid unless you know for a fact how much you have to bid with!)
It would probably be better for the game if it was sold onto a company who wanted to run the game commercially with experience in this area.
It's a shame this happend. This game had allot of potental. I hope that things work out so that it can be futher developed and the players of the game can continue to enjoy it.
a game ranked as high as ryzom in mmorpg.com
and a game that has turned so many corners to become a playable game!(not my cup of tea but playable all the same these days) will go to another game company it will deffo not just die!
hence this is all fruitless..if there wasnt going to be any other offers..it may have been realistic but as it stands
its a pipe dream
and lets also not forget it ws the wank launch and the year after that which killed this company!
not the lack of subs at present..as i have seen with my own eyes lots of ppl play this now!
a fresh company without the debts can turn this game around easily!
this = player bids against big company bids doomed to fail im afraid :(
Assuming any company on Earth could make this game profitable. This game was never very good - having 'potential' is not the same as delivering good, entertaining game play. I tried it, hardly found it playable and the art style was weak and tepid to put it politely. If this game actually was any good, it wouldn't have gone bankrupt, frankly I'm amazed it lasted this long.
But if there really is a loyal fanbase out there, they certainly can't do any worse than the original company. My question is exactly how large a fan base for this mediocre game could possibily be. Creating the Ryzom Ring to generate interest from this fan base didn't seem to do much. Nonetheless, it would be an interesting experiment to watch at the very least if they pull it off.
I tend to agree here. Ryzom is a solid game with an excellent community. I expect that a major company will pick it up (and leave it as it is if they know what's best for the game/community). I like the idea of a community determining what happens with the game, but let's face it - there are just as many drooling, slack-jawed idiots playing MMOs as there are creative & intelligent people. I'm not comfortable with donating and leaving the future of a game up to the masses without some guarantee that there will be good quality work put into it.
I'm hoping that another publisher picks it up - leaving the current dev and support teams intact.
EDIT: Apparently this group made up a number of former Nevrax employees. If that's the case, maybe it could work. Still unlikely, though.
Being gamers , one that comes to mind is http://www.childsplaycharity.org/ . Which was started by creators of Penny Arcade.
Scholes
According to their site, they already have 53 000 Euros from donations.
I would be gladly donating. But only in case of some positive reply from Nevrax..
Lets keep our fingers crossed...
Worst case scenario, a genious scam.
Best case, all assets are purchased, everything goes smooth for 1-2 months then money runs out for servers. No new patches are released. Who says who gets access to the "official" server? Where is said server located? Who appoints gm's? A startup company takes the code, and creates a new mmo from it, who has legal claim? This is a very overseas thing, us laws can't do jack.
So many variables... All leading to one conclusion, The end.
And I did an out loud "Haha what the fark?" at the line I quoted in green.
So, what does "This is a very overseas thing" mean exactly mstic? Haha. There's no such thing as laws in any countries apart from the USA? After all, yours are a shiiiining becon for the rest of the world follow.
Ugh.. haha, nice quote though.
I'm voting for another company to buy it out too. I like the commitment and dedication shown by this project (perhaps it was done purely to make potential companies/investors realise there's a solid playerbase anyways?) but I doubt I'd bother going near it again unless it was another MMO company taking it on.
Good luck with whatever happens though, fans of Ryzom.
Everyone is forgetting that these are pledges and not actual cash donations in hand.
Whereas any corporate bids for Ryzom would be backed by actual and not 'virtual' financing.
Then there are the contracts for service (support/hosting and the like). What company is going to want to deal with a group that cannot guarantee timely payment of the bills? Plus who can be pursued if bills do not get paid?
I am sure that whomever is overseeing the receivership case would take these things into account when the various bids are considered.
The 'owned by the community' concept is a noble idea but does not work if you want to have fee for play. This is not a discreet piece of software that can be bought and then dumped into the public domain and be expected to survive like Blender.
as someone else pointed out, I dont like the whole "donation" thing without becoming partial owner of the purchase.
They don't stand a chance. Ryzom was mainly a tool to sell their engine anyway. Only problem was nobody wanted their engine most people choose to purchase the rights to the unreal engines. Ryzom is a good start to a game. The community is wonderful and it has alot of potential. Unfortunately the game needs alot of work to pull in the masses and either Nevrax never understood this or they just didn't have the resources to accomplish it. In any case this game will be snapped up by a much larger entity so a group of gamers doesn't stand a chance. I'd really expect SOE or David Bowman to go after it.
Heck, I don't even play Ryzom and I will donate. If a community has this much love for their game, and it is special to those players, and they will maintain the spirit of SoR, then it's the least I can do as a mmorpg gamer.
I know the feeling, I love my game, and I would hate to see this happen to it (there's no chance, because after SOE totally screwed up after the NGE, they still deliver a kick ass mmo with EQ2, and are still very competitive in the market).
I hope this project succeeds, and if it does, I would be interested in seeing what types of things developers add to the game.
I play the game and I'm not donating. I would rather see it die than be turned over to players. If it were to be turned over to players it would lack any sort of centralized decesion making. So while the Ryzom community is a great one, it's also one that has players that beleive the game should be taken in different directions (one with pvp, the other without).
I still think that it would be a logistical nighmare though.
Holy crap, I thought the people were overreacting when they said this community had a dark view on things.
But seriously, on average? VERY negative attitude.
"Community plans on a joined effort to get water boiling through means of fire"
- mh, would be nice if they managed, but I think ICE will form instead.
- Never gonne work, it's a scam to get free water.
- They will fail and will be consumed in the hydrogen blast which will CONSUME them all!
SHEESH people!
Linux and related software is maintained and supported by it's users. There is a company behind it that hold patent to the product. If you use linux for a commercial product, you pay for the use of linux.
If they can keep Ryzom going by keeping it away from liquidation, they can generate a steady income. The users that want to develop for Ryzom will do so because they:
No income, just hobby work. So if the subscription fee was able to pay for:
Then surely removing point 2 from the equation must mean a reduced subscription fee.
But perhaps you're right, how could a worldwide community of rabbid coders with an interest for games/ryzon possible out-preform a group of payed coders. Mind you, coders are payed by the hour so they aren't allowed to just 'create whatever they think might be nice'. It's like saying you could create a free encyclopedia if you let everyone add to one online.
ludicrous!
i had a good laugh over this. i agree with you - people are overly negative here and there is a chance this could work. i don't think it's a great chance, but it's not as slim as many seem to think. Ryzom is never going to be a game the size of WoW or EQ, but it has a loyal international fanbase that wants to help keep the game around. it's obvious the community is behind it considering the 77,417 euros (103,000 $US) pledged thus far.
additionally, the project is made up primarily of former Nevrax employees and members of the NeL (Nevrax Library, the engine for Ryzom) community. it's basically the same group of people that have been developing the game asking for donations in order to keep on developing it. i hope they succeed - if for no other reason than i'd enjoy being able to set up my own MMO (using the free software) for my friends and family to play.
i will, however, be just as happy if another company picks it up and keeps it running (especially with the same dev team, etc). this is much more likely. Ryzom is still tied for the highest rated MMO here - and it has been for several months (if not longer). that has to be attractive to a publisher. hell, SOE or NCSoft could pick it up for all care - just as long as they don't change anything.