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Mojang's Scrolls closing June 2016, no new content being added.

Cryxo93

Banned
not like this

tDXwZIY.gif
 

BokehKing

Banned
Seems like Microsoft's business model is very much about creating one franchise studios.

343: Halo
The Coalition: Gears
Turn 10: Forza
Mojang: Minecraft
Lionhead: Fable
4 of the 5 come out in the same 3 month window


They definitely need more one studio franchises to branch out to other parts of the year
 
That's kind of a misleading headline. It's getting another update and people will still be able to play it. It makes sense since only a small number of people played it to begin with.

Oh wait, sorry, I was using my head, let me try again.

Rabble rabble Minecraft factory rabble M$ rabble rabble studio gonna be gutted.

Hi everyone,

After much deliberation, we’ve come to an important decision that we’d like to share: Echoes will be the last major content patch for Scrolls. We won’t be adding features or sets from now on, though we are planning to keep a close eye on game balance.

Scrolls will still be available to purchase for the time being, and our servers will run until at least July 1st, 2016. All future proceeds will go towards keeping Scrolls playable for as long as possible.

The launch of the Scrolls beta was a great success. Tens of thousands of players battled daily, and many of them remain active today. Unfortunately, the game has reached a point where it can no longer sustain continuous development.

We’ve had a great time working on Scrolls, and appreciate every last player who’s downloaded our game. Extra big thanks to the most dedicated members of our community; some of you have logged in almost every day since release and dedicated a large portion of your time to dominating the leaderboards and taking care of new players. We salute you, honourable scrolldiers.

We will do our best to answer any questions you might have on the standard channels.

Thanks for reading, everybody.

The Scrolls team <3

The game is done, sucks though cuz hearthstone needs some competition.
 

Krakn3Dfx

Member
One trick pony of game development.

One might be generous, Secretariat galloped away with $1.4 billion, so the stall is full of unproven racers, iterating on the same product. Of course, it's probably not the worst idea given how much Minecraft still sells across multiple platforms. But yeah, I can't imagine we'll see anything coming out of Mojang other than Minecraft updates/ports/sequels in the foreseeable future.
 

Drek

Member
Seems like Microsoft's business model is very much about creating one franchise studios.

343: Halo
The Coalition: Gears
Turn 10: Forza
Mojang: Minecraft
Lionhead: Fable

Even though they aren't owned by MS (yet) you could probably add Playground Games to that list as well.

Their first party strategy baffles me. Like how they're still trying to win the holiday season. All they're achieving with that strategy is emptying out the rest of the calendar year to go heavy on a time already rife with games, in the process likely hurting 3rd party software sales on the system and therefore making the PS4 look (marginally) better for 3rd parties in comparison.
 
I think the issue with any development studio that creates a giga-hit game is that it becomes hard to justify doing anything other than investing further in that property, because it's very unlikely you'll get the same return on investment with a new IP. This goes double in the "games-as-a-service" space where it's easier to get more money out of a property by putting more money into it (Squeenix would probably have burned out pretty quickly if they tried to make nothing but Final Fantasies after VII hit the big time.) One of the only reasons why Blizzard didn't become a WoW factory is because they already had two other successful IPs before striking gold with WoW.

You either need to be a developer with an unusual amount of autonomy or you need to have made something else that's moderately successful before hitting the big time. If your first game (or at least your first game that isn't relatively niche, see Bungie) is one of the biggest games ever, you're probably going to be stuck making it for the rest of your life.
 

Tetraeon

Member
This is a shame. Mojang had a lot of potential as a company with a new IP. Looks like it's Minecraftland from here on out.
 

Instro

Member
I wonder if MS will even keep Mojang intact. It's fairly small staff wise, and I'm sure MS's goals for the IP will require a studio that is better suited to AAA development.
 

Gurrry

Member
bought this game when it came out

it was alot of fun

but wow, cant believe that its ending like this.. pretty sure that since it launched they only had 1 significant title update...
 

Cmagus

Member
I don't understand why they fought to keep everybody employed there. Minecraft is basically supported by like a small handful of people.
That was probably part of the deal and with the amount of money they spent I'm thinking we will see Minecraft come packed in with either Hololens or even Occulus which would make sense.

That being said while I hope they don't mess with Minecraft too much the game could use a bit of new stuff. I'd be happy if development moved ahead a bit faster and we get some new improvements.
 
I believe you asked

In regards to the thread title and people attributing this decision to Microsoft.

And the answer is because they are owned by Microsoft.

Exactly.

They'll never admit it, but it's because they're owned and pressured by MS to do it.

Just like how Blizzard was ruined by Activision, or Titanfall by EA.

They may SAY their publishers/owner doesn't affect them, but let's not be stupid.
 

alstein

Member
Well, honestly, why would you waste your time with something else when you have a money printer in your basement?

Because you genuinely enjoy games? I mean, one of the first things Notch did with his Minecraft windfall was put a decent chunk into making sure Age of Wonders 3 was fully funded and then some.
 
Exactly.

They'll never admit it, but it's because they're owned and pressured by MS to do it.

Just like how Blizzard was ruined by Activision, or Titanfall by EA.

They may SAY their publishers/owner doesn't affect them, but let's not be stupid.

Off topic: how was Blizzard ruined by Activision? The real money auction house in D3? From what news came out, I thought D3 was originally going to be a F2P MMO and they scrapped that idea but left vestiges in there. Plus it looked like it was the team at the time as since those players left the game has gotten exponentially better. What other ways did Activision make Blizzard terrible as I thought Blizzard was pretty autonomous in the relationship as the Blizzard portion of revenue is such a large part of the pie at Activision (though that might have changed as that was back when WoW had 10m+ subscribers).
 

Dega

Eeny Meenie Penis
Exactly.

They'll never admit it, but it's because they're owned and pressured by MS to do it.

Just like how Blizzard was ruined by Activision, or Titanfall by EA.

They may SAY their publishers/owner doesn't affect them, but let's not be stupid.

Is that so...


smh
 
Off topic: how was Blizzard ruined by Activision? The real money auction house in D3? From what news came out, I thought D3 was originally going to be a F2P MMO and they scrapped that idea but left vestiges in there. Plus it looked like it was the team at the time as since those players left the game has gotten exponentially better. What other ways did Activision make Blizzard terrible as I thought Blizzard was pretty autonomous in the relationship as the Blizzard portion of revenue is such a large part of the pie at Activision (though that might have changed as that was back when WoW had 10m+ subscribers).

I've heard the same, but somehow seeing Starcraft II come out as this episodic title screamed like Activision wanted the fucker released this century.
 

Castef

Banned
Because you genuinely enjoy games? I mean, one of the first things Notch did with his Minecraft windfall was put a decent chunk into making sure Age of Wonders 3 was fully funded and then some.

People usually enjoys good games.

Scrolls is not one of them. Easy.

I wonder how many of the Gaffers in this thread criticising Microsoft for killing Scrolls actually tried the game.

I'm an avid card-games and run away screaming after just three days...
 

inm8num2

Member
Hm, I think I got a key for Scrolls from a Humble Bundle sometime last year but don't think I used it. Might have to check the game out even if there won't be new content.
 
Seriously people what did you expect? Microsoft buys studio including all off it's IP for $2.5 billion dollars, so that they can work on new IP lol.

herp derp microsoft factory joke.
 
Off topic: how was Blizzard ruined by Activision? The real money auction house in D3? From what news came out, I thought D3 was originally going to be a F2P MMO and they scrapped that idea but left vestiges in there. Plus it looked like it was the team at the time as since those players left the game has gotten exponentially better. What other ways did Activision make Blizzard terrible as I thought Blizzard was pretty autonomous in the relationship as the Blizzard portion of revenue is such a large part of the pie at Activision (though that might have changed as that was back when WoW had 10m+ subscribers).

WoW lost 3 million subscribers in latest quarterly report. The latest expansion just seems like a money grab, it was the most expensive expansion pack and had the least amount of content compared to previous ones. No new classes, no new races, least amount of dungeons at launch, either WoD went through massive development hell or god knows what happened. So many features were cut from release. The story line makes zero sense, a story that made zero sense to start with (it's not time travel it's alternate universe) somehow ends in an even more unfinished state.

Then you have things like them saying flying will probably not be there for this or future expansions (since reversed) when people spent real money on flying mounts. Oh yes and the best mounts are now bought and not obtained in game generally.

The BIG rub here was that Blizzard had stated how they have expanded and now have the biggest team working on content than they ever did before. And what this team did was turn out an expansion that people are rating worse than Cataclysm. In fact, the big zone in the latest (and last) major raid patch for expansion is a zone that was supposed to initially be playable at launch. What they showed at Blizzcon (when majority of us are paying attention to expansion details) vs. what launched was laughable.

Now whether this is Activision's influence or Blizzard just really being fucked by Metzen's orc love I have no idea.
 

Ferrio

Banned
Seriously it is for the better. It wasn't a very good or popular CCG, and that was *before* Hearthstone was on the scene.
 
Mojang is such a weird thing. Notch struck gold with Minecraft. There's great design behind it, but it seems partially like a right place/right time success. Beyond that, what have Mojang done? The games they've released have been decent but they both released into obscurity. So beyond Notch's lightning strike is there any sign that Mojang is even a good dev studio? If they only had Cobalt and Scrolls to their name they would have likely already closed due to their lack of success. As insulting as it may sound, they might end up as a Minecraft factory just because they're not good enough for anything else. They seem like a middling indie studio that struck gold. I hope they eventually get to try their hand at something substantial none-the-less.
 

Joco

Member
I wonder if Notch would throw money at the project if he'd like to see it continue. He certainly has more than enough to keep the game supported for decades.
 

Pizza

Member
[...]They seem like a middling indie studio that struck gold. I hope they eventually get to try their hand at something substantial none-the-less.


That's always been my impression, when they hired that one guy to make horses for their game but then just kind of... Idk, not continue that? The community would have gone nuts if they got the chance to make their mod into an integral part of mine craft forever.

Like, this tiny studio has billions and didn't expand? Or expand their game much? Or... Idk?

I know notch "never wanted" the game to be huge but... It was? Like idk what the team was doing for years, they could have made mine craft into something monumental.

I remember at one point they were saying they didn't want to add a ton to the base game because "mods already did it" but then they just bought horses from the horse guy. and that always seemed like a bs excuse to me

/shrug.
 

alstein

Member
People usually enjoys good games.

Scrolls is not one of them. Easy.

I wonder how many of the Gaffers in this thread criticising Microsoft for killing Scrolls actually tried the game.

I'm an avid card-games and run away screaming after just three days...

Yeah, I played the game. Game had a pretty boring meta.
 

Mrbob

Member
I wonder if MS will even keep Mojang intact. It's fairly small staff wise, and I'm sure MS's goals for the IP will require a studio that is better suited to AAA development.

I thought not messing with the Mojang team was part of the buyout terms. Still, they can allocate resources to a project which is profitable versus something which isn't.

I can't think of anyone I know who plays Scrolls.
 

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
I don't understand why they fought to keep everybody employed there. Minecraft is basically supported by like a small handful of people.

Because MS didn't want to look bad with the mass exodus. I wonder if in the next few months we'll see people leaving.
 
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