Yesterday, we covered the distressing news that Gamigo had suffered layoffs – including the loss of RIFT’s last remaining community manager, which is already exacerbating the weakened comms issue with the game – as well as the news that Gamigo is shuttering its Aeria Games portal and dispatching four of its MMOs (Aura Kingdom, Grand Fantasia, Shaiya, and Last Chaos) to other publishers. We’ve got a few updates to the story that merit their own entry.
Whither went Fractured Online?
Yesterday we noted that Fractured Online, for which Gamigo took on publishing rights a year ago, was still on the list of games Gamigo would continue to host. That’s now been thrown into question as the game has vanished from Gamigo’s own website just in the last 24 hours, prompting the game’s admittedly small Discord to debate the future of the game. Unfortunately, the game’s admittedly small Discord was already debating the future of the game thanks to its even smaller early access population, its slow development cadence since the early access launch, and its eerily quiet communications from both Gamigo and Dynamight Studios. We’ll be keeping an eye out for an announcement there one way or another, as regardless of whether Gamigo continues its publishing duties, this was a Kickstarted MMORPG and its testers, backers, and EA buyers deserve communication.
What the heck is Fawkes Games?
MOP tipster and prolific blogger Clowd pointed out to us that while two of the games Gamigo is cutting loose are returning to their home developers, two others are not; they’re being sent to Fawkes Games, which we assumed was a Nexon partner or subsidiary, but it turns out it’s not.
In fact, it’s a brand-new Bulgarian games outfit, and nobody seems to know anything substantive about it. Its Linkedin calls it an “indie studio and game ops” company with a “unique and radical end-to-end approach to game development [and] operations.” In its new Discord, Fawkes announced that it was created in June 2022 “primarily as a service company” and that “with the licensing of Shaiya and Last Chaos [it is] shifting into full operations” – in other words, it’s never done this before. Its website says it’s a remote company, but there’s a whole lot of tech and corporate jargon and no details about who these folks are or what their experience with MMOs is, and it just points back to Discord. The download link to the Fawkes “hub” is also busted, and just to cap it all off, the website uses an image from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla for some reason. The hiring page is a hoot too.
For what it’s worth, the migration document the company is linking does refer to both Shaiya and Lost Chaos and does appear to accurately explain how to migrate your account for these two games from Gamigo. “We are a fairly new company running for 6 months so far,” the FAQ states. “This is the first time that we will operate games entirely, hence we are building our backend to support it.” The studio also tells players it doesn’t know when it will end the migration period and so they should “hurry up” to handle the linking process. We do note here that at the end of the FAQ reiterates that it isn’t transferring currencies from Gamigo because it would be “almost technically impossible for [Fawkes] to restore those due to the pricing and value disparity between [its] Fawkes’ Gems and those other currencies” – emphasis ours.
The company’s Discord also says that it plans to develop the game and keep the same server structure: “We are getting a full operational agreement, including development. We are free to make the changes we need, obviously respecting the IP. Gives us time tho, changes are not going to happen from one day to another. First things first, making the service stable.”
What about X-Legend?
X-Legend seems a bit more prepared to take up the Aura Kingdom and Grand Fantasia mantle. As of this morning, the company was in the Aura Kingdom Discord touting its own application for transfer from Gamigo. “We are doing our best and aiming to launch the site for account transfer on the second week of January, 2023,” the developer says. X-Legend, of course, is the original developer of Aura Kingdom and Grand Fantasia and currently develops and operates Sprite Fantasia. So hey… maybe this won’t be a nightmare for some former Gamigo players after all.
