Every day for weeks now, I put "NCSoft Reuters" into Google, and pull up the current stockwatch. it's been illuminating as heck.
Because of timeshifting, S. Korea's trading day is mostly finished when I check, so the current price reflects the most recent day's trading. It's been trending down for months now, ever since the CoH shutout. But today may have been the final nail in their coffin. Their stock plunged off a cliff and settled at 147,000 Korean Won. They've been holding above 151,000 for about a month now, but have finally plummeted below 150K in a big way.
This means their stock is worth less than half of what it was when Nexon bought 14.7% of the company's stock. It's worth noting that since that purchase, NCSoft's stock has been fairly reliably trending down. Even the brief boost when Guild Wars 2 came out didn't change that much.
The worry here isn't that NCSoft will go toes up and be forced to sell us the IP we want. It's that Nexon will just buy up a controlling interest, thumb their noses at us, and do what they've been doing, which is focus on the Asian market to the exclusion of all else.
I suspect this will be what happens. NCSoft will become a division of Nexon, and they'll tune out everyone who isn't living in that part of the world. I also suspect they'll tweak Guild Wars 2 so that it becomes more Pay to Win than it is now, in keeping with the S. Korean gaming model.
I hope I'm wrong. But I doubt it.
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Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.
Because of timeshifting, S. Korea's trading day is mostly finished when I check, so the current price reflects the most recent day's trading. It's been trending down for months now, ever since the CoH shutout. But today may have been the final nail in their coffin. Their stock plunged off a cliff and settled at 147,000 Korean Won. They've been holding above 151,000 for about a month now, but have finally plummeted below 150K in a big way.
This means their stock is worth less than half of what it was when Nexon bought 14.7% of the company's stock. It's worth noting that since that purchase, NCSoft's stock has been fairly reliably trending down. Even the brief boost when Guild Wars 2 came out didn't change that much.
The worry here isn't that NCSoft will go toes up and be forced to sell us the IP we want. It's that Nexon will just buy up a controlling interest, thumb their noses at us, and do what they've been doing, which is focus on the Asian market to the exclusion of all else.
I suspect this will be what happens. NCSoft will become a division of Nexon, and they'll tune out everyone who isn't living in that part of the world. I also suspect they'll tweak Guild Wars 2 so that it becomes more Pay to Win than it is now, in keeping with the S. Korean gaming model.
I hope I'm wrong. But I doubt it.
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.