Aika service restricted with some unintended consequences

As much as I have no love for Gpot these days, its not all their fault they have contractually bound themselves into a corner. It was probably largely the developers putting pressure on them and threatening to pull their contract all together under pressure from the other pressure from the other companies it had licensed out the game to.

Can't really fault them when its most likely some other companies gone crying to the developer..... I mean I really doubt Gpot would intentionally randomly cut off revenue because they wanted to.

Actually Scuffles, it IS their fault.

gPotato has known right along that they were going to have to put in IP blocks by the time the game went live. We've talked about it on the forums for some time too, and I've made multiple posts talking about how International people were going to be blocked by the time the game was live. The thing is they get by on some technicality during betas where they don't have to block the other countries yet, and they pretty much use them for free testing labor, knowing they are going to have to block them later. I find that to be a cheesy thing to do (let people play in beta that they KNOW they are required to IP block by release), but they're not the only ones that do it.

But now they messed up. They opened the Cash Shop while the game was still in Beta, and they hadn't put the required IP blocks up yet because they had been waiting to do that at release.

Honestly, I'm not that sorry for people who spent money in the game. We've said over and over how the game was going to have IP blocks. I've lost cash purchases in a number of games. I spent an absolute ton on Deco and then poof, someone else is running it, the servers are wiped, there goes all the money I spent. I've spent money on games in Southeast Asia which eventually put up blocks and I was blocked out. I knew it could happen, being that it wasn't my region, just like anybody who purchased stuff for Aika should have known too.

If a game says it's for a specific region, and you're not from that region but are able to temporarily connect, you really know the chance you're taking if you spend money on it.

But to make like it's not gPotato's fault, that's just not the case. They have known right along since they first got rights to the game that they only had rights to run it for North America and they were going to be required to have IP blocks.

Generally if you have the rights to run a game in NA or EU or wherever you are free to leave the rest of the world unblocked and accept traffic from every other point on earth. Its only when another company has come along and procured rights for their area that they will start demanding IP blocks if they feel that their playerbase is playing on another licensed non regional server.

As far as using other countries for testers knowing or not knowing that there will be an IP block ..... couldn't care less when it comes to testing, Its just like Blizzard letting people Beta test Starcraft knowing that they will be charging people for the game, Its just something that happens.

There are a few instances where MMO from competing entities go for years if the ever even butt heads. Generally the IP block comes at the request of one or more publishers who have a beef with another publisher. The publisher in question typically had the rights to the game and got out the door first so everyone jumped on their bandwagon.

Now as far as I'm concerned with the CS is personally the second they bring the CS online the game is LIVE, unfortunately all the MMO publishers will drag "Beta" out as far as they can since its their blanket "Whoops, but you can't blame us it was Beta!" get out of idiocy free card. I'm sure if they could get away with it they would never come out of beta, not that they ever really announce that invisible line that is the transition to live. Usually its a "Oh we have been live for moths" that is dropped in some casual forum post....

Like I said originally I don't really have any love for Gpot at the moment but my point still stands, you can't blame the scorpion for stinging you, its the nature of the beast and the beast extends well beyond simply Gpot. You have to look at the company that requested the IP blocks and the developer who contracted the game out with just as much screutiny.

Poor localized players in general

If you start playing a game on a foreign server and a company gets a bur in its knickers in your region and gets the distro rights anyone could find themselves on the receiving end of a regional IP block with little warring.

"bur in it's knickers"????.....I guess this is a personal issue for you. :)

meh not really just playing devils advocate and pointing out its not like its Gpot intentionally cutting off its nose to spite its face, more that its the larger bureaucratic distribution and localization of games in general.