http://www.burningsea.com/forums/showthread.php?t=86000

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/314638/General-SOE-Admits-Data-Stolen-by-Hackers.html

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/314605/Sonys-Compensation-Details-Is-it-enough.html

http://www.burningsea.com/forums/showthread.php?t=86042

What I want to know is what compensation SOE is giving Flying Labs Software (Pirates of the Burning Sea) as a result of all this?

You see, PotBS is not an SOE game.

PotBS is merely hosted by SOE who handle billing.  But PotBS remains an FLS game.

In fact (unless the details have changed?) FLS is a client of SOE in this regard.

IOW FLS pay SOE for this service.  A service which they have completely botched (This is just the latest screw up).

So... what will FLS get?  What will FLS do?  I bet they lose a ton of players over this - even the "F2P" ones are worth something.

(FWIW - I bet probably nothing - since FLS haven't shown themselves to be exactly the brightest business sparks either and I bet the contract gives SOE an 'out clause' on this...???)

SOE handle all of our billing, not just for subscriptions, but also for BSN purchases. In order to charge you, you have to be logged in. We do not have your login info - only SOE do. Your in-game characters are tied to your SOE login even if you have never or will never buy anything. This is why we haven't simply flipped a switch and gone over to a different login system - we can't. Not without a TON of work to implement a different system and convert over to it. Instead of doing that, we're busily working on polishing 2.5 and getting 2.6 underway.

SOE are posting to Twitter and on their website faster than they are updating anyone else in so that they may reach the broadest audience quickly. We know what has been shared there and that's the best information we have to provide you. We haven't heard an ETA from SOE. We recommend you keep an eye on the SOE site for the latest news. If we have additional info to share, we will but so far we haven't had any. - Misha [FLS Staff and Forum Admin] {FLS Boards}

http://www.burningsea.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1159083&postcount=325

wow talk about a game killer

heard about this going f2p and wanted to try it out.. now even a week later it is still completely offline.

goes to show SoE has no business at all being in the gaming business. Just another game they seem to have completely  messed up.

If Flying Labs signed a proper SLA (Service Level Agreement) with SOE, than SOE will have to pay up to Flying Labs for the time the service is offline.

Simple as that!  And if Flying Labs did not, than that is their stupidity and not SOE.

One of the things that interests me about all this is that PotBS players are urging FLS to dump SOE.

There are two parts to this;

One is contractural - legally FLS may not be able to dump SOE without a legal battle.

The second is technical and the requirement for a launcher / patcher.

Rhaegar [FLS] had this to say:

Bear in mind that SOE provide more than authentication for the game - they also provide the launcher and patching infrastructure, and the billing back-end that we use for Treasure Aisle. There isn't a switch we can flip that disables all of that, you're talking about a serious amount of work that would take several months (at least) before we even got to testing.

http://www.burningsea.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1159406&postcount=406 {FLS Boards}

Hmmm... okay.  It's kind of interesting because I have heard this argument before from FLS.

And yet they managed to do this (or something similar?) with the Australian Subscribers.

Firstly GameArena had never hosted an MMO before and yet they managed to produce a launcher / patcher very rapidly... (must be the awesome Aussie programmers I guess?)

Then, when the Bigpond / Game Arena deal ended they managed to recover all that user / subscription data and transfer it to SOE.

???