De, Please Please Do Not Do Business With Perfect World (Mega/hyper/ultrathread)

[SolidSp33d]

Yeah, except when a company owns almost half of your business they're still entitled to withdraw their shares if they don't do what they ask. Thats why its a non-binding agreement. If DE wants their money they will actually listen and make the adjustments necessary to keep the money coming in. That being said, kiss warframe as you know it goodbye. It shouldn't come to be much of a surprise that something like this is happening. Warframe is coming to tons of consoles and they probably want the extra money to keep the money coming in. This is a very profitable business decision for them to be making and you can damn well bet your sweet supple Tenno butts that it will happen. Do you honestly think DE has anything that they -couldn't- want? I highly doubt it, a gaming company  sponge such as this WILL take them over its not a matter of pride or preserving their image either. 

 

They wouldn't be getting more than half of the business is what is being said. Do you really think a private company would make that much of their shares available as outstanding shares? (the outstanding shares is stock the company issues to be invested in from that I've read.) They'd might as well be a public company and get taken over outright.

[Vlayde]

Nah, their lawyers are looking at it. In which case they cant say anything.

 

You're not gonna make a deal like this in such a small amount of time. I'd assume we'll know by COB Monday at the earliest.

 

Judging from what I've seen so far, this was already planned. This was in their hotfix a week ago.

 

"Our digital certificate has been renewed and players may notice the name change from “Digital Extremes” to “Digital Extremes Ltd.”

[Arzte]

Because it seems like half the people here don't trust DE to do what's best for their company, and their game.

What's best for the company shareholders is not what's best for the customers. Businesses think one thing: Profit is the bottom line.

[Lost_Cartographer]

Panic, fear, a lack of ability to read legalese. That last one's not really expected.

 

Fear is a strong motivator. Emotions are powerful, and logic isn't very good when dealing with people who are scared and more than capable of committing  terrible and stupid acts.

 

To put this bluntly: scared people can't be reasoned with.  I'm going to let this blow over, and I'm sure DE's waiting for the coals to simmer down before laying down their meat, lest it just get burned to a crisp in the raging inferno.

 

I understand that a letter of intent =/= shares have been acquired.

 

I also understand that game development isn't a charitable organization, just one run on passion and funding.  Lots of funding.  If DE sells, the deal would keep them in full control while bringing in more funding.  If they sell but don't maintain complete control, it's the worst case scenario: they were backed into a financial corner and the game was f***ed either way.

 

Good thing I don't really mind a P2W as long as I'm having fun with it.

Edited July 3, 2014 by Littleman88

[Sidathe]

As others have stated, PWE doesn't 'invest'... they 'acquire'.  AKA Dissolving the company and bringing the assets under their complete control.

 

The DE and Warframe you know of will cease to exist once PWE aquires it. Cryptic Studios and Champions Online is a good example of 'before' and 'after' for what PWE does when it acquires a company and game.

 

James and Michael Schmalz control the fate of this acquisition.  For all we know, it's already been done behind closed doors.  And I guarantee you that if enough money is put forth, it WILL be sold.  Not many people would turn down a fistfull of millions of dollars.

...how would they even dissolve the company if they don't own it?

[Zaresin]

The pertinent information from the post that everyone keeps posting telling us to "calm down"

 

"The board of directors of the Company is pleased to announce that on 30th June 2014, the Company, Perfect Online Holding Limited and the shareholders of Digital Extremes Ltd.entered into a non-binding term sheet, pursuant to which the Purchasers intend to purchase, and Vendors intend to sell, all the outstanding shares of Digital Extremes, subject to due diligence and execution of definitive agreements between the parties."

 

 

 

"As of the date hereof [30 June 2014], the Purchasers are conducting due diligence investigations over the affairs of Digital Extremes, and the Purchasers and the Vendors have not yet entered into any legally binding definitive agreement in relation to the Proposed Investment. For a period of forty days from the date of the Term Sheet, Digital Extremes agrees not to solicit offers from any other parties for any financing and asset or share transfers without the consent of all the Purchasers."

 

Regardless of investing terms, I think people that don't know the basic terms, WOULD panic at the sight of this... besides, 40 days of not being able to solicit offers of investment from anyone else without PWE's consent sounds... thought provoking.... the terms are being reviewed, but this was agreed upon.... ok... no cause for panic or outrage.... riiight.

 

EDIT: now if we knew WHO this June 30th transaction was with http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapid=52344383 , and IF anyone actually got their hands on some shares, THEN maybe the train would slow down.

 

I think it is safe to say that this ship is sinking......welp...time to find a new game it seems...and i was only 1276 mastery from rank 16.    

[Cpl_Facehugger]

The pertinent information from the post that everyone keeps posting telling us to "calm down"

 

"The board of directors of the Company is pleased to announce that on 30th June 2014, the Company, Perfect Online Holding Limited and the shareholders of Digital Extremes Ltd.entered into a non-binding term sheet, pursuant to which the Purchasers intend to purchase, and Vendors intend to sell, all the outstanding shares of Digital Extremes, subject to due diligence and execution of definitive agreements between the parties."

 

 

 

"As of the date hereof [30 June 2014], the Purchasers are conducting due diligence investigations over the affairs of Digital Extremes, and the Purchasers and the Vendors have not yet entered into any legally binding definitive agreement in relation to the Proposed Investment. For a period of forty days from the date of the Term Sheet, Digital Extremes agrees not to solicit offers from any other parties for any financing and asset or share transfers without the consent of all the Purchasers."

 

Regardless of investing terms, I think people that don't know the basic terms, WOULD panic at the sight of this... besides, 40 days of not being able to solicit offers of investment from anyone else without PWE's consent sounds... thought provoking.... the terms are being reviewed, but this was agreed upon.... ok... no cause for panic or outrage.... riiight.

 

EDIT: now if we knew WHO this June 30th transaction was with http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapid=52344383 , and IF anyone actually got their hands on some shares, THEN maybe the train would slow down.

 

Dude, good faith clauses like that ("you agree to not seek out other buyers until X days have past") are part and parcel for any sort of prospective business deal.

[Gurren_Dai]

What's best for the company shareholders is not what's best for the customers. Businesses think one thing: Profit is the bottom line.

And who's been giving DE their profit?

The customers.

And I beg to differ, having family been involved with business, running business, and being involved with stocks and shares.

While companies think of the shareholders, it's the customers who make it move. If the customers arn't happy, then shares will drop.

As will shareholders. So while yes, profit is a big deal, companies do tend to, y'know, care about what their customers say. 

 

Edited July 3, 2014 by Gurren_Dai

[Lilinith]

One of Warframe's biggest charms is the fact that we have three amazing things:

 

One: An amazing game.

 

Two: Great, caring, and responsive devs who expand the game and make it amazing.

 

Three: A true free-to-play system.

 

 

 

Two and Three will die with PWE. 

 

 

I love this game, and I really would legitimately drop it on the spot of PWE bought it out. I've played BL:R, I've played Neverwinter, I've gotten into SM:O beta, but could even play it because PWE's servers suck balls, they have terrible support, and they only care about one supreme thing: profit. Profit numbs the feeling.

 

Warframe will be no different.

 

Digital Extremes, I know you care. Don't even think about doing this. You'll lose our faith, you'll lose your game, you'll lose your vision of a great game. It'll all go down in flames.

 

And if it does, I won't be here to see it.

 

A small edit:

 

Until we get news, I will hold faith in you, DE. Don't sell us out, you respect us more than that.

Edited July 3, 2014 by Lilinith

[Brettsta]

I am as worried as the rest, but it doesn't make sense abandoning a ship just because you rocks in the distance.

 

We all must be patient and hope that DE plan on Warframe being a long term investment.

[iArucard]

what da sh did i just saw

[FaalKorum]

Okay, in an effort to at least curb the kneejerk a bit, here's how I understand it:

 

Recently, DE switched to DE Ltd., meaning (very roughly) that they had opened up a portion of their stocks for public purchase. The "portion" part is an important distinction from "all". How the percentages lie is unknown, and probably will never be, but it could be reasonably assumed that they wouldn't give up a controlling portion of a semi-private company.

 

For whatever reason, Chinese company PWE (Perfect World Entertainment) coupled with the larger Sumpto Foods (the logic of which, outside of just straight capital for purchase, baffles me) to issue a "Letter of Intent" to DE to buy into the public portion of their stock. A Letter of Intent is a non-binding contract where a company (or -ies) STUDY whether or not stocks in another company would be worth the purchase. This study period lasts for 40 days and the only binding clause in the letter is that DE can't go shopping their stock around until Aug. 9. At this point THERE HAS BEEN NO EXCHANGE whatsoever, it's simply PWE and its parter discussing whether or not DE stock would make a good return on their initial purchase.

 

As to the reputation PWE has apparently garnered, I can't say. I've had no experience with them personally.

 

I also feel the need to stress that I am not employed nor studied in any financial field, so some of my interpretations of how these things work could be wrong.

Edited July 3, 2014 by FaalKorum

[grillv20]

You want to know why there are nearly 300 pages of this?

Because people decide to let their paranoia get the better of them and assume the worst.

Because people can't seem to get past their severe pessimism

Because half the people in this thread decided that suddenly they know more about business than actual companies.

Because despite saying that they "loved" this game that they are so eager to jump ship instead of actually trying to make it better.

Because the forums are quick to hype/panic something whenever they can.

Because it seems like half the people here don't trust DE to do what's best for their company, and their game.

I don't care if I get immense hate for this post, or quoted by people who want to pick apart every sentence to feed their paranoia. All of this has just gotten out of hand.

 

 

theres really no point in complaining or to having optimism. if they have or are looking to sell their company then there are zero reasons to have any hope for anything good in the future >_> simple as that. theres no reading between the lines. what you see is what you get. these actions clearly show where the community stands with their developers. SO glad I never bought into that whole "founders" thing lol

Edited July 3, 2014 by grillv20

[ROSING]

Really hope we're all jumping the gun.

On another note, this is getting close to exceeding the "last post wins" game in Off Topic.

[SolidSp33d]

As others have stated, PWE doesn't 'invest'... they 'acquire'.  AKA Dissolving the company and bringing the assets under their complete control.

 

The DE and Warframe you know of will cease to exist once PWE aquires it. Cryptic Studios and Champions Online is a good example of 'before' and 'after' for what PWE does when it acquires a company and game.

 

James and Michael Schmalz control the fate of this acquisition.  For all we know, it's already been done behind closed doors.  And I guarantee you that if enough money is put forth, it WILL be sold.  Not many people would turn down a fistfull of millions of dollars.

 

Except with the facts we see that is impossible for them to do with DE. PWE can't magically acquire DE because of their track record or "acquiring" companies? DE is a private company and all they are doing is saying they wish/plan the buy their outstanding shares (the stock DE set aside for invested to buy). That doesn't mean they can buy the whole company or have any significant influence unless DE actually wants to negotiate that, which I doubt and we have no evidence of.

 

There's reason to be rustled I admit, but chill. It's not what everyone thinks it is when you take the time to look up this stuff.

[Ishki88]

So are there players who actually want PW/PWE to take over?

 

I'm just confused because I don't see any more White Knights?  Are they off slaying dragons?  Where did they go?

 

There has to be one person that can explain why this might be better?  If that person can care to explain, it might help others understand what DE is/are potentially doing.  Until we get final word of course.

[optyk]

Well considering that from what we know, nothing has actually happened yet. All we have is a "notice of intent" and that's it. The ensuing panic and complete overreaction by the players here has caused other websites like MMOBomb and Joystiq to put our articles that use rumors as facts--and people then take these articles as further proof when really they are 100% rumor mill and cannot be confirmed by anyone except DE.

 

Here's an incredibly objective analysis of the information we have so far: What We Currently Know About the PWE Deal (Reddit).

 

Basically, nothing has been sold yet as far as we know. DE has only agreed to review PWE's intent to purchase shares. The shares that PWE is looking to purchase may not be 100% because "outstanding shares" and "authorized[(unrestricted/floating)] shares" are not the same. To quote, "...even if DE sells all outstanding shares, they can hold the majority of authorised shares in their treasury to keep the controlling amount of shares." However, we don't know the how much DE has in authorized shares so it is uncertain whether it's possible for PWE to become the majority shareholder.

 

tl;dr people overreacted, panicked and then other people took their panic as a sign or proof that bad things have happened, despite the fact that nothing has likely happened yet.

 

 

I'm sorry, but this is the same exact rhetoric that Cryptic put on the forums before PWE came in to play. The same exact crap. "Old-School" gamers who have been through the SOE Star Wars Galaxies NGE event, Cryptic selling CoH, Cryptic again selling STO/CO and going from subscriptions to F2P. Funcom and AoC and TSW, even Everquest 2 and SWTOR. What getting said is nothing and thats to protect both parties interests. Its not conspiracy, its business.

 

What other copy/paste standard statements come later?

"This will provide us a better way to offer you customer support."

"This will provide us to continue to develop the game you all love and have put so much time and effort into."

"This is why we promise to continue to keep updating on a regular basis and nothing will change."

"We will keep the lines of communication open as we always have, you the players are the most important, without you we have no game."

 

You sir, sound like you just simply lack the experience I speak of perhaps or youre simply indifferent. Not your fault, but to call out others as overreacting and pankied is silly. People here are worried about the partner that DE is even considering to entertain and with good reasons. People are listing those valid reasons and letting other players know just who DE is having dinner with. Nothing wrong with that and no one has said anything false or over exaggerated when speaking about PW/PWE and its business models and games.

 

A 1% interest is not enough ROI for a publisher. Especially PW and its many different regional tendrils. Just because nothing has officially happened yet does not mean it will not. And by then, its done and over with so who cares; new players > veteran players. Were TIRED of getting blindsided by these kind of deals. We ALWAYS leverage the overhead costs -always; we have never seen any savings since Digital Distribution -ever.

 

All I know is that this time around, I'm documenting all the posts by Devs and Community moderators. Wish I did it with past games that have fallen, because those posts are either lost or have been deleted on purpose(which was the case with STO and PWE).

 

And not trying to sound like a badass, but I still communicate with an ex-STO developer that left Cryptic when PWE took over because "This is, I think, is the inevitable result of a business strategy that sees customers as resources to mine rather than, well, customers." All they did was request time-gated, money grab P2W development solutions. THATS who PW/PWE is.

 

I'd rather be labeled a tinfoil hat, overreacting lunatic that can still log into DE's Warframe than be right. I'm down with that. Flame away.

[Aggh]

The 281 pages are people mostly freaking about misinformation. Freaking out is understandable, but after a while we have more than enough time to look up the definition of this stuff and realize we are freaking out over something that is far more miniscule than we thought.

 

Please. If you disagree go to that reddit post and argue against what is presented. Because after explaining the definitions everything is quite clear. Well, up unto the point of knowing what DE's response is.

No, the misinformation that is going on here is that assumption that two large companies like PW and Sumpoo foods would be just making an investment to have influence.  PW alone has bought studios (Cryptic studios) and has bought controlling interests in studios (runic).  The assumption that they would need to make a joint purchase of stock with another large company merely to have influence in another studio is silly.

[Kurokoz]

All of the people commenting about how people need to stop panicking... Most people are not panicking because they think DE already went through with the deal, they are panicking at the possibility. Also,it actually helps some people to get it out of their systems like this...

[Cpl_Facehugger]

Judging from what I've seen so far, this was already planned. This was in their hotfix a week ago.

 

"Our digital certificate has been renewed and players may notice the name change from “Digital Extremes” to “Digital Extremes Ltd.”

 

If this was "already planned" then they would've had a statement ready to go if they have anyone even remotely skilled in PR.

 

theres really no hope in complaining to having optimism. if they have or are looking to sell their company then theres zero reasons to have any hope for anything good in the future >_> simple as that. theres no reading between the lines. what you see is what you get. these actions clearly show where the community stands with their developers. SO glad I never bought into that whole "founders" thing lol

 

Selling shares is different to selling the whole company dude.

[Arzte]

And who's been giving DE their profit?

The customers.

And I beg to differ, having family been involved with business, running business, and being involved with stocks and shares.

While companies think of the shareholders, it's the customers who make it move. If the customers arn't happy, then shares will drop.

As will shareholders. So while yes, profit is a big deal, companies do tend to, y'know, care about what their customers say.

So this thread is good, yes?

[Zaresin]

If this was "already planned" then they would've had a statement ready to go if they have anyone even remotely skilled in PR.

 

 

 

 

Selling shares is different to selling the whole company dude.

 

Sweety, you should know better than anyone that they kind of suck at playing the PR game.  

[Gurren_Dai]

So are there players who actually want PW/PWE to take over?

 

I'm just confused because I don't see any more White Knights?  Are they off slaying dragons?  Where did they go?

 

There has to be one person that can explain why this might be better?  If that person can care to explain, it might help others understand what DE is/are potentially doing.  Until we get final word of course.

If there are white knights, then I'm pretty sure they've been drowned out by the extreme amounts of hate and pessimism in this thread. I've seen a couple, and I'm personally trying to take the stance of "trust DE to know what the hell they're doing" but it seems like that's kind of an unpopular opinion.

[Ehco-Bravo]

Just remember this you guys....

Our devs which art in ontario

Hallowed be thy names

Thy deep space come

Thy missions be done

On Earth as it is in Sedna

Give us this day our daily log in rewards

And forgive us of our spamming in global chat

As we forgive those who speedrun ahead of us

And we protect the noobs we assisted

But deliver us from boredom

For yours is the galaxy, the orokin void, and the devstream couch

Forever and ever...

Amen

[OdinHighwind]

Dude, good faith clauses like that ("you agree to not seek out other buyers until X days have past") are part and parcel for any sort of prospective business deal.

 And even in that sense, this "good faith" clause that you speak of, is with a known company. A company that a good bit of this community is speaking out against.