Today in a response to the Codemasters community, David Solari posted the reason why Codemasters has experienced the delay with Free to Play.
As many of you correctly surmised, the issues have been contractual rather than technical. As they were contractual issues, we are bound by confidentiality and you will understand that I can’t give you any further detail.
This is the reason why we have been unable to provide you with any substantial information as to when we will go Free-to-Play, despite the desire to share this with you. Unfortunately a contract was required in order to go Free-to-Play and this has taken much longer to conclude than expected.
So a lot of people who guessed it wasn’t technical in nature were 100% correct! There still is no official date of launch but it appears we are very close to knowing when now.
I can’t give an exact date at this time as there is still some preparatory work to do, but rest assured everyone involved is giving 100% to bring Free-to-Play to Europe, and there will be more definitive information hopefully later this week.
We can confirm the launch is imminent and we should be able to announce the dates later this week/early next week.
So hopefully very soon our Codemaster’s friends will be enjoying the new store, Enedwaith and all the updates that comes with Free to Play.
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October 19, 2010 at 10:39 am
Fingers crossed
October 19, 2010 at 11:17 am
And it seems like every CM are posting happy tweets so we can hope the end of the crisis is really near *_*
October 19, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Thanks Goldenstar.
It says something good about your site that I found out about this communication from CStM first, not the forums!
October 19, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Thanks for the updates on the european front. Fells good to know that we are not forgotten
October 19, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Thanks for the post, Goldenstar. Hopefully they have the technical aspects in place so that when the contracts are signed they can do a quickie promotion and flip the switch.
October 19, 2010 at 5:00 pm
I’m hopefull and glad for the EU players that this debacle is coming to a conclusion. It’s not that we don’t want you here on the Turbine servers because I for one and probably many others are more than happy to have you.
But I’m sure many of you would rather play in your own back yards where pings are probably better and no hassles trying to get a Moria box to upgrade your soon-to-be extra accounts
Good luck to all the EU crowd and feel free to come back anytime you have a mind to.
October 19, 2010 at 6:13 pm
As much as I’d love to be relieved or excited… I’m mostly just disappointed that we apparently came close to Turbine taking over LotRO and it didn’t happen. Oh well.
October 19, 2010 at 6:39 pm
well they have lost both myself and my wife as customers. so sick of all the legal crap with codemasters. especially since I heard that the US servers have more Fall Festival content.
October 19, 2010 at 7:25 pm
I don’t think such a senior member of staff would put their professional reputation on the line, unless the matter had been pretty much well resolved.
So I take this press release as a clear indication that F2P will arrive soon in Europe. May be on the 29th of the month.
However, this does not address the issue of the revenue and customers that Codemasters have lost. By the time F2P does goes live in Europe, nearly two months will have elapsed. I cannot see players abandoning alts at level 30/40 + just to play back in their local region.
There is also the issue of “good will” and Codemasters reputation. Even if the delay was not directly their fault, the PR has been handled in a shocking manner. Some head of department will have to take a fall over this.
October 20, 2010 at 2:42 am
Xusia, please say what CM could have done differently, seeing that the issue was a legal and contractual one. If you are in a situation like that, you just don’t talk about it, as not to make negotiations even more complicated.
If CM admitted contractual reasons for the delay before resolving them, the other party (Turbine) could have understood that as a move to put pressure on them in the (obviously not easy) negotiations. Bad idea.
As bad as the situation was for us EU players, in retrospective I think they handled the situation in the only way they could.
And remember, it always takes two to have a conflict. Putting the blame for the mess on Codemasters alone does not seem fair to me.
October 20, 2010 at 10:13 am
I am not blaming Codemasters entirely for the delay of F2P in Europe. There are factors here that we are not privy to. But I am instead pointing out the failure of their subsequent PR campaign to deal with it.
When Codemasters failed to launch EU F2P on the 10th September, they new exactly what the community reaction would be. Steps should have been taken immediately to defuse the matter.
A simple, generic statement could have been made, but from a more appropriate source, rather than the community liaison officers. Perhaps a response from the head of PR or the legal team team would have been more appropriate. The content would not have necessarily compromised ongoing discussions.
The source of a message or who makes it, often carries more weight than the message itself. David Solari’s statement shows this, as it has definitely calmed the EU forums. It should have come earlier.
So, I beg to differ. I think the situation could have been handled much better. But this in itself highlights another point. Just because a company is big and successful, does not mean that every aspect of their business is well run.
October 20, 2010 at 3:43 am
It strikes me as odd that having many months between the announcement that LOTRO was going F2P and the launch date, that Turbine and Codemasters were unable to come to a contractual agreement in that time. I can’t imagine this was a last minute “Oh, by the way… Sign this new agreement or no F2P for EU!”
Surely someone stalled way too long, or dropped the ball so badly that it took nearly two month after launch to get this worked out. (And don’t call me Shirley)
October 20, 2010 at 6:36 am
Those of you on the Codemaster merry-go-round have my heart felt sympathy!!!! Here’s hoping you get the goodies incredi-soon.
October 20, 2010 at 10:12 am
Too much too late. We can’t tell who’s to blame for this delay, we can however say that the community is the one to suffer from it. Lots of potential players have already started on US servers and will not be coming back.
If this was turbine’s intent, than it’s definately a brilliant $$$ move. A very foul one too, but brilliant nonetheless.
Me however… I’ve lost interest in this great game. Lowlvl content is very dead and at the same time hard to solo. I’m pretty sure highlvl content is a blast, but for me it’s getting a little too much of a chore to get there.
October 20, 2010 at 2:59 pm
I think that what happened here was that Turbine started F2P much quicker than Codemasters thought they would. Turbine originally stated that F2P would start “In the Fall” and they actually started it technically earlier than that. I think most people thought that F2P, even for Turbine, would start around now and were surprised when it started earlier. I imagine that Codemasters was caught with their pants down when Turbine stated that they would be starting as early as they did.