CCP abandoned all trademarks on 13 April. Not only do I no longer see any live trademarks filed with the U.S., containing the phrase "EVE Legion", but a search of the EU trademark databases also failed to find anything.
Perhaps I need to cast a broader net. I hear that Blizzard files is remote trademark offices to avoid instant attention to its future plans. But with CCP abandoning all of the trademarks filed in the U.S., I have to ask the obvious questions. Is Project Legion dead and has CCP given up on the idea of bringing a first person shooter to the PC?
EDIT: In response to the comments, I perhaps missed the most obvious question. Does CCP plan to port DUST 514 to the PC as DUST 514? If so, what a difference a year makes.
EDIT 2: Biomassed pointed out that the EVE Legion is still trademarked with the World Intellectual Property Organization until 11 March 2024. The trademark received protection within the European Community on 6 March 2015.
I would suggest you to try and look at CCP's financial information on their corporate site, if you haven't checked it in a while.
ReplyDeleteOr they stick with the DUST name or they have another name or ... there are a trillion of possibilites.
ReplyDeleteYou're the second person to send me that link in the past 12 hours. You might notice that the page is blank. I assume that is because CCP pulled their bonds off of the Iclandic NASDAQ on 28 April and no longer has to post financial information as a result of the move.
ReplyDeleteAnd it was just over a year ago that the Rouge wedding occurred at Fanfest, DUST was put on life support, and the future belonged to Legion. Things do change, don't they?
ReplyDeleteWell, DUST has gotten like 12 updates since then.
ReplyDeleteIt appears blank now? I know it was normal as of like a month ago.
ReplyDeleteThey didn't mention Legion at the last fanfest ... so that was an obvious sign that the project is dead. If it were still ongoing, CCP Games would have continued to build hype for it.
ReplyDeletethey have been on update overdrive in the last 6 months, it's been great.
ReplyDeleteCCP has removed that information since they paid back their bonds as of April 28th:
ReplyDeletehttp://web.ccpgamescdn.com/ccpgames/assets/Notice%20TO%20NASDAQ%20OMX%20on%20delisting.pdf
After delisting those bonds, CCP no longer haves public stocks and don't need to publish their financials. The funny part is: those bonds were worth some 4.5 million $, apparently. Would be quite a lump of money to spend just to avoid publishing their financials, wouldn't it...?
Content updates only. CCP no longer has the programming staff to do any substantial code updates.
ReplyDeleteopening player trading, skins, new maps, new game modes. That seems substantial to me.
ReplyDeleteActually, there were $20 million in bonds.
ReplyDeleteLegion is most likely effectively dead, although there has been no official announcement yet. Remember that it took CCP quite a while to admit that WoD was dead, too.
ReplyDeleteLegion just isn't worth developing. Porting DUST to the PC would require a major investment in upgrading the graphics, and it is highly unlikely that the investment would ever pay off. DUST simply isn't that good of a FPS, and there is too much competition in that market. There are also ongoing doubts about the future of PC gaming, anyways, as new PC sales continue to drop worldwide.
The upcoming changes to EVE Online are also likely to require most, if not all, of CCP's limited coding resources. As sub numbers and revenue continue to fall, CCP desperately needs to revitalize their core product, if they want to stay in business. Distractions like Legion, and Valkyrie, are not going to save the company; they will only bleed out whatever cash reserves are still remainng.
So CCP bought back 20 million $ in bonds? Why would a company do that? Can someone explain, please?
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't helps neither that CCP may be spending all their efforts preaching to the choir rather than do anything that could bring in fresh blood from the outside.
ReplyDeleteIt is sad that you people have to come to fan blogs to get proper information about CCP. Given the extremely tight lid CCP moderators have on any truth about CCP's financial situation showing up on CCP's own site.
ReplyDeleteWell, they might not have a huge team, but they do have income in chinese currency from the Serenity server, so it makes sense to spend it on offshore developers, given the difficulty extracting it into USD can be.
ReplyDeletePorting Dust to the PC would actually be a good option at this point, in that Dust is actually a really solid game and getting better every release at this point.
ReplyDeleteThere's more background over at TMC. Once you see my connection to the story, you'll understand why I didn't say more. Didn't want to scoop Dirk. But I'm impressed Bill, we didn't find the doc on CCP's site.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.themittani.com/news/ccp-goes-dark-company-financials
I found it through NASDAQ Nordic OMX's page ( www.nasdaqomxnordic.com/ ) while I tried to figure how much money were worth the bonds, and after stumbling with the second announcement at CCP's site.
ReplyDeleteThis was the original notice from March 27th:
http://web.ccpgamescdn.com/ccpgames/assets/CCP%20announcement%20-%20Reykjavik%20270315.pdf
Actually, that's normal behavior for every game company. Complaining about that is like complaining about water being wet.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to rail on anyone, rail on the games journalists who just live on the press releases issued by the game companies.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but recent years have given us reports from CCP that they are required to file with Icelandic authorities, no? We should still be getting those. Just because they have retired a chunk of their debt doesn't mean the entire flow of information goes dark. Does it?
ReplyDeleteJust gonna throw this out here... the bonds CCP just redeemed were originally issued in July of 2012. I have a copy of CCP's 2010 consolidated financial statements that pre-date that bond issue. Those consolidated financial statements will still be filed every year, bonds or no bonds.
ReplyDeleteSerious question; did any of the CCP higher echelon management went to business school ? Someone should do a LinkedIn search report imho.
ReplyDelete