The head of Trion Worlds, Scott Hartsman, spoke about the partnership with the developer of ArcheAge, XLGames, and the negotiations regarding the controversial payment model in ArcheAge.
In an interview with mmorpg.com, Scott Hartsman, the head of Trion Worlds, discussed the negotiations with XLGames, the Korean developers behind ArcheAge. The focus was mainly on the payment model. Trion Worlds distributes ArcheAge in the West. In recent months, they have faced accusations from players and former players about it having an unfair payment model that strongly favors players willing to invest a lot of money: the so-called whales.
In the interview, Hartsman presents himself as an “advocate” of a particularly generous Free2Play payment model, naming their own games Rift, Defiance and especially the initially developed as Free2Play Trove as examples for a “Free, Fun, Fair” model.
When negotiating a payment model for ArcheAge with XLGames, they proposed a typical “Chinese model.” This caused a panic at Trion Worlds: “Holy crap, you need to change that. This will never work here,” was the reaction.
From this emerged a “give and take” partnership, where no one gets exactly what they want. At XLGames, they have to keep an eye on 6 regions and their own interests. At Trion Worlds, they are the advocate for the players, striving for generous solutions. Sometimes they achieve significant victories in this regard, and on other days the other side wins, then the economic reality catches up with you, the business of distributing games. Then no victories are achieved.
They are proud that XLGames has embraced the path of Trion Worlds and is now acting more generously and in line with Trion Worlds’ interests worldwide, Hartsman continues.
Our Perspective
Mein MMO believes: The partnership between Trion Worlds and XLGames has made it to our MMO Fail of the Year 2014. For some time now, there has been an impression that Trion Worlds wants to distance itself from the payment model and push the blame to Korea. But not “obviously”, rather they repeatedly emphasize how great the partnership is. However, unfortunately, it seems that this or that is not possible because … yes, Korea and so on, but they tried.
Of course, Hartsman is right: This is a partnership, and compromises must be made. However, the results were foreseeable when they entered into this deal with XLGames, which apparently did not align with their own beliefs and ideas.
The criticism of the payment model and the management of ArcheAge is so massive and severe that it also reflects back on Trion Worlds and its reputation. Time and again, the payment model of ArcheAge is used as a counter-argument in other Trion Worlds games.
Trion Worlds has learned from the crisis: In the next deal with a Korean developer, they negotiated significantly better conditions. The massive rush that ArcheAge experienced directly after its release in September to November seems to have put Trion Worlds in a much stronger and more stable financial position. Especially the costly founder packages were very popular.
