The saga of the Saga of Ryzom: Not over yet
by Tateru Nino 
Mar 11th 2008 at 9:00AM
Filed under: Ryzom, News items, Legal
The Saga of Ryzom (or just Ryzom for marketing purposes), has had a pretty rocky time in the market, struggling and never quite taking off. Poor Ryzom, even spiffy advertising on Penny Arcade could not save you.
As we posted back in early February, things were starting to fall apart, and servers beginning to close. The last of them finally did in mid-February. Game over, right? Well, maybe not.
You see, while Gameforge is bankrupt, the assets that Gameforge still owns need to be auctioned off to pay creditors. Chief among those assets, of course, is Ryzom itself.
The French courts have been taking bids on the property and a company called Spiderweb International Limited has placed a bid for 223,000 Euros. Who is Spiderweb International Limited? Nobody's quite certain. No web-site, no real history, and their address appears to be a serviced office in London by all reports. Very likely a holding company of some sort -- albeit one that can afford to stump up 223K Eu for a failed MMOG. It's possible that SIL is composed of ex Ryzom developers, but that's just speculation at this point. Maybe they want to render it down to a pure MMO engine and market that. Who knows?
However that's not all that is going on. Previously, Ryzom users and fans attempted to bail out the game, with the intent of maybe releasing the source code and restoring it as a public project. Due to some procedural irregularity in notifications, it looks like they'll have a chance to bid against SIL -- they just don't have the cash to do it.
Our crystal ball doesn't give us any more than the murkiest omens about the future of Ryzom, but the saga of the Saga of Ryzom certainly isn't over. Not yet.
[via lagOrama]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Lox said on 9:44PM 3-13-2008
Poor Ryzom.
What to say? Its a marvel of a world, with living, flowing, fantastic art. What's going on now is really saddening. Players grow attached to these virtual worlds, we treat them as our escapes from a dull grey boring reality. When companies go bankrupt, when liquidation starts, when entire universes change hands... what rights do their citizens have at the end of the day? None. Our aspirations and dreams are simply... unplugged.
I hope spiderweb will give this place the respect and attention it deserves. I hope they will realize that citizens (subscribers) are not commodities that simply come with the game no matter how much crap you put them through. Treat Ryzom with respect, treat its customer base with respect. Don't leave us hanging and be good to this game. It needs some TLC.
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Tateru Nino said on 11:15PM 3-13-2008
My major regret was that despite having the free client on my hard-drive for... well, quite a long time, I never actually quite got around to installing it.