Clarification about Astrum Online “takeover” by Mail.Ru

[galethbg]

@goronian

Thank you for your input, our mutual goal here is to find the truth. If it is a common knowledge, then it shouldn't be too difficult to verify that information. Please post if you have any sources confirming this, and I will edit my post accordingly.

@everyone

You're welcome.

I'm actually from Allods EU, but since the US forum has given me so much information in the past, I wanted to give something back in return.

Anyway, I really believe the we, the players, are concentrating on wrong things here. Consider the following:

1. Any professional and competent developer team will work in such a way that their work can be continued by someone else if it becomes needed. People change, and its normal to assume that the work is organized in such a way that newcomers can simply and efficiently join the production process.

2. DST already owned both Astrum Online and Mail.Ru, and then they simply merged them. So the top owners were always the same, they just reorganized their assets, with top people from both companies taking new functions within the new entity. There was no huge, evil corporation buying the developing company, they already owned them.

What we should concentrate on, is clearly and strongly letting the powers that be know that we are unhappy with the current state of affairs and disturbed by the signs of the things to come. How? Make argumentative, thoughtful posts on these forums, other related forums, blogs and social sites. Write e-mails to Mail.Ru, Astrum Online, and why not, even DST telling them they are losing potential customers, and more importantly, people who really like Allods Online.

And, please, stop abusing the poor Scholars. Even if I recognize that they are bound to receive most of the flak, the fact remains that there is nothing they can actually do about the current situation.

Regards,

T.

[goronian]

Found it, on Russian Wikipedia, of all places.

"В декабре 2009 весь холдинг Astrum Online Entertainment был куплен крупнейшим российским интернет порталом Mail.ru, и Сергей Орловский передал оперативное управление компанией Дмитрию Девишеву."

"In the December of 2009 Astrum Online Entertainment were bought by Mail.ru and Sergey Orlovsky handed the director's post over to Dmitry Devishev"

Source.

He's still the head of Nival, but they call themselves Nival Network and are working on another game, called Prime World (something DOTA-styled, as far, as I know). Link.

I've heard, that he stopped actually working on the project sometime after the merge, but the information is iffy, doubt it'll be possible to prove.

[jacobt26]

Found it, on Russian Wikipedia, of all places.

"В декабре 2009 весь холдинг Astrum Online Entertainment был куплен крупнейшим российским интернет порталом Mail.ru, и Сергей Орловский передал оперативное управление компанией Дмитрию Девишеву."

"In the December of 2009 Astrum Online Entertainment were bought by Mail.ru and Sergey Orlovsky handed the director's post over to Dmitry Devishev"

Source.

He's still the head of Nival, but they call themselves Nival Network and are working on another game, called Prime World (something DOTA-styled, as far, as I know).Link.

Its not all that unusual for someone who's running a project for a company to switch over to something else ones things are nearing completion, especially someone very valuable who might not be needed to micromanage the final tweaking of a game who can help launch something else.

[goronian]

Found it, on Russian Wikipedia, of all places.

"В декабре 2009 весь холдинг Astrum Online Entertainment был куплен крупнейшим российским интернет порталом Mail.ru, и Сергей Орловский передал оперативное управление компанией Дмитрию Девишеву."

"In the December of 2009 Astrum Online Entertainment were bought by Mail.ru and Sergey Orlovsky handed the director's post over to Dmitry Devishev"

Source.

He's still the head of Nival, but they call themselves Nival Network and are working on another game, called Prime World (something DOTA-styled, as far, as I know).Link.

Its not all that unusual for someone who's running a project for a company to switch over to something else ones things are nearing completion, especially someone very valuable who might not be needed to micromanage the final tweaking of a game who can help launch something else.

MMORPGs, however, are rarely "near completion" and for the most part are ongoing projects. Lead Designers and Directors usually tend to stick around for at least a year, or two.
Also, this has been his "pet project" for quite a while - Allods 1 (known as Rage of Mages in US) were supposed to be an MMORPG, but the company lacked funding and experience at the time, so they just made it into an RPG, that controlled like an RTS. He's been the head of Nival from the start (1996), so it's weird for him to leave all of a sudden and just to plain up start working on something else.

[jacobt26]

He does seem to still be at Nival though, not like he up and left. Leaving a pet project is kind of strange, but as apparently head of Nival he should still have quite a bit of say.

[galethbg]

This press release http://www.nival.com/eng/news/1406/document2190.shtml, from July 2009, about the Nival Online becoming Astrum Nival (And already a part of Astrum Online Entertainment), shows that Mr.Dmitri Devishev was already the CEO of the renamed Astrum Nival company.

Mr. Sergey Orlovsky was the founder and the president of Nival Online (later Astrum Nival), as well as founder of the Nival Group (separate company, 1996, which also encompasses Nival network), which has a minority stake in Astrum Nival.

The wikipedia article states that "Sergey Orlovsky handed operational control of the company (to) Dmitri Devishev(u)". but it doesn't really give any details about the circumstances of this move, or any change in his function.

Since Mr. Devishev was already the CEO of Astrum Nival, he would be a logical choice if, for example, Mr. Orlovsky simply decided to focus more on the activities of his other companies (for example Nival Network, the member of Nival Group), since "operational control" should already be a CEO's job. Plus, in November 2009, he already presented his new project, as the Wiki article states, so perhaps he just needed to focus more on it, figuring the work on Allods was mostly done.


However, since the article states that he did relinquish the operational control to Astrum Nival CEO (Mr. Devishev) I'll put the note in the appropriate post.

[sentinel_]

galeth

Can you report us the EU item shop prices when they come out

That'd be much appreciated

[galethbg]

galeth
Can you report us the EU item shop prices when they come out
That'd be much appreciated

Sure, I'm watching like a hawk!

They already added an "Allods shop" stickied thread to the EU forums, asking for feedback, so I don't think it will be long.

We shall see.

EDIT: Although I'd imagine you will be able to hear our cries across the ocean, the same way we heard yours.

[madden003]

To echo what others have stated, it is not unusual for the original developers of a game to move on to newer projects once the core game is completed. This is how it was at Blizzard as they released expansions for The-MMO-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, and this is how it is for most Eastern game development companies.

This should not be anything to get too worried about; let's not assume the current developers at Astrum Nival are incompetent before they get a chance to truly prove otherwise (FoD notwithstanding ).

[palpi]

When the Blizzard changes happened, large in-game changes happened too. Not to fight, but I don't see that as a comforting comparison.