RapidShare interested in buying Subspace o.O

[blackrazor]

I'm not staff, I never have been staff, I still play the game, and I would NOT want Rapidshare (or any other branded commercial interest) to buy us out. I've accumulated over 1K hours on two accounts, one of which I've played since 2000. I also have a copy of the original VIE Subspace CD, which I bought on the old software racks for ten dollars, back in 2000. I say this to ask some of you to please stop lumping our views into supposed blocks of: staff, non-staff, active players, retired players, etc.

My reason for being uncomfortable is simple. With for-profit corporations, there is NO FREE LUNCH. None. Ever. Corporations exist for one, and only one purpose: TO MAKE MONEY. Products exist for you to buy, because a corporation's profits depend on you giving them money. Also, corporations do not act rationally, and often make poor short-term greedy decisions that result in many fine products dying a sad death. But that's ok, the corporation didn't care much for the product, or for you the consumer. They just want to extract as many dollars from you as they can and then move on to the next idea. That is how most (not all, but most, really) businessmen think. Please consider that before you seriously think of selling out your independance for promised better ?lag servers and higher populations which will not happen.

A fellow by the name of Jeff Petersen invented this Subspace game. He's the same fellow that invented Infantry. He was a brilliant coder in network latency compensation, but unfortunately a poor businessman. His first creation, this game, was sold to VIE which went defunct. If BDE is the company that bought the rights after VIE went under, then ok. We are all lucky they let priitk maintain the game for all this time without trying to extract their slice of dollar pie. Most companies are very jealous of their intellectual property, and would rather see it rot and collect dust on a shelf, than be modified and used for free by consumers. Make money or trash it is the corporate version of "tits or gfto", I guess.

Jeff's second game, Infantry, produced by his little indie company: Harmless Games, got bounced around due to hosting issues with Brainscan (I believe that was the hosting company's name that went kaput), and so wound up with SOE (Sony Online Entertainment). They also promised better lag, free game, player loved zones, blah blah blah. One day they switched to P2P, and 80% to 90% of the players left immediately. The remaining 10% to 20% found the game a lot less fun with such a smaller population. Content also went to hell, with little of value being produced. Players were not happy, but SOE did not care, as long as they made some money from those few who stayed behind. Remember, with corps it's: fort over your cash or get lost ... tits or gtfo; they are in it to make money. Period. In the past couple years, a free Infantry community sprang up with a hacked free version of the game (sound familar?). ?Lag sucked, but all the loved zones would show up, for free, too. That forced SOE's hand, and they made Infantry free again, but not before most of the community had already left, and years of good potential development work was lost.

I think you guys do not appreciate what you already have: a free, community supported game, that YOU more-or-less control. As long as BDE is satisfied that this is a free community project, they seem to have left us alone. But trying to sell their intellectual property to another corp, Rapidshare, that would probably just take advantage of us once the honeymoon is over, is a very bad idea. Do you know how many corporate games out there have players that wish they could be ported to free community based versions? Look at all the hacked servers and shards out there; sure many players appreciate the cash-free aspect, but another strong motivation is the FREEDOM to do things your way, make modifications you want, scrap shit that you don't like. You guys are already living the dream; I hope you realize that before it's too late.

As for population, it's a red herring. The game works with 1 or 2 full arenas. Realize it's an OLD 2D toy; it's appeal is limited by todays standards. Some corporation isn't going to magically change that for you, either. Want more people? Swamp sites like MPOG .. regularly. Heck maybe even Miniclip can be persuaded to portal you. But whatever you do, please do not give up your freedom, your independance. It doesn't matter what the original contract from Rapidshare will say. They have lawyers on retainer all the time with nothing to do but stir up trouble, we don't. Never sell your freedom. And for goodness sake, don't sell what isn't even yours. It beongs to BDE (or whatever) and we should be grateful they've left us alone until now.

[Doc Flabby]

Continuum is NOT a modified version of the Subspace client. The server software that most zones use is a hacked version of the original Subgame. The client, as far as we know, is an independent effort by PriitK and Mr Ekted.

It may interest you to know that BDE have/had a business relationship with kazaa (i think they made adware for it), which means they are more related to PriitK that you might realise. If all the zones switched to ASSS and we created new graphics (ie content, anything that was in the original subspace is remade (tilesets, sounds, graphics etc) the game could easily remove any association with BDE. Thus it would be relativly easy to create a version of continuum that used no BDE content at all, continum is designed infact to make it easy to replace the subspace graphics, i assume precicely for this reason. Plus if you orginally bought SubSpace (way back) is already legal for you to use the content.

I personally didn't like the thinly veiled threat about "creating a new client". many people have tried with varying degrees of sucess, but i think this could be a good opertunity for both rapidshare and us. My concern would be if they got too involved once they realise this game makes no money (and never will) they would simply drop it.

[Blocks]

No, seriously, this isn't gonna happen. This isn't cause I'm a power-hungry staffer either. I'd love to have this game taken over by a higher power and give me more time to ez newbs in elim. But, the e-mail is so bullshit it's not even funny. DoCk> did an April Fools where we got bought out by Electronic Arts, that was funny though.

The game client of Continuum is a modified version of the Subspace client as we all know, and which is why we still refer to this game as Subspace. The original "SS" was created by the now inactive Virgin Interactive as a retail PC game in the late 90's.

As far as I know, Priitk never went to VIE and bought the rights to Subspace to make Continuum. They should technically still own all Intellectual Properties associated with this game (title, ships, gameplay, design, etc). If a real ass company like RapidShare would wanna make a big boy business decision, they'd at least do their homework and not email some server moderators to buy a free game off of for God knows what reason.

Unless the rights to this game actually do belong to Priitk by some purchase he made that I didn't know about or the game being more or less "public domain" lemme know. If not, my story stands and </wild ass thread>.

Dameon, you type well and you like Battlestar Galactica, so I'm sorry that I'll have to shut you down here.

This is not a joke. PoLiX has been serious about this, as have some of the SSC people.

Continuum is NOT a modified version of the Subspace client. The server software that most zones use is a hacked version of the original Subgame. The client, as far as we know, is an independent effort by PriitK and Mr Ekted.

VIE, if it still exists in any form, does not own the rights to Subspace. The rights were bought by a company called Brilliant Digital Entertainment. We (the community, the zones, SSC) operate on the fact that we don't make money on this and they don't care.

I'm going to sell it to them quickly before they change their mind. Whoever wants a piece of the take must pledge allegiance to me right now.

Sign me up. We both get 50% and we'll give the rest to charity.

[Lock]

What I said was not addressed to the coders in anyway shape or form. I'm very aware of the work they do and that it is good work to boot.

[Noah]

From what I've seen as an ex-staffer and heard from several others uppers takes advantage of willing coders without giving them much in return. You guys deserve alot more credit than what you generally get for your work, it's pretty damn certain that this zone would be dead without your efforts.

Unlike managing bullshit staff politics writing code is real work.

Players can be excused because they are ignorant and they generally have no clue about who does what when someone makes an effort for the zone, this is an excuse not all staffers have.

I'd gladly trade away the entire current staff than to lose our hardworking devs.

[RiiStar]

Exalt basically stated it correctly. It was where I was going I just did it in a harsher way. The reason I wanted to hear from some people who actually PLAY the game is because we will be the ones who hold everything together. Hardly any of these staffers play anymore and they are all saying OMG DONT DO IT.

I like how 2-3 Staff members give their point of view and that brings
you to the conclusion that "they are all saying OMG DONT DO IT"...
is all-enclusive of every staff member...

In reply to the lazy staff comment...

Heh, the staff that do "the hard work" that alot of you take for granted
or shit on spend alot more of their time on getting those things done to
the best of their ability and less time playing... and to some of you we're
expected to do this for you?

I've said this before, it's prolly why some of our greater developers for
this game either left or stop doing anything for the sole reason that alot of
ppl shit on that effort... might also be the reason newer skilled ppl
don't step up for that kind of treatment either...

[/rant]

-_-

[Kontrolz]

Playing the game doesn't mean someone knows whether or not this will be good for subspace or trench wars in the long run. In fact most of the people who still play the game probably haven't played the game for more than 5 years. They wouldn't even know what this game looks like with more than 200 people on at once for the majority of the time (not counting the ridiculous number of bots).

Bottom line is, they need the current population to convert or this will flop. This means quite a few of the current staffers too. If they don't get TW/EG settings and/or if they make it pay to play then this will fail.

Regardless of any supposed e-mails (which I did read), like wit said, their free games require an account. That's not free.

I have no objections to the take over, in fact I'd prefer it, as long as it's free and they get trenchwars settings. Oh and also as long as my lag doesn't change too much.

Edit: Dameon, I think they contacted our community to try to get us on board. Assuming this is real at all, having us all on board would help a lot.

[Dameon Angell]

No, seriously, this isn't gonna happen. This isn't cause I'm a power-hungry staffer either. I'd love to have this game taken over by a higher power and give me more time to ez newbs in elim. But, the e-mail is so bullshit it's not even funny. DoCk> did an April Fools where we got bought out by Electronic Arts, that was funny though.

The game client of Continuum is a modified version of the Subspace client as we all know, and which is why we still refer to this game as Subspace. The original "SS" was created by the now inactive Virgin Interactive as a retail PC game in the late 90's.

As far as I know, Priitk never went to VIE and bought the rights to Subspace to make Continuum. They should technically still own all Intellectual Properties associated with this game (title, ships, gameplay, design, etc). If a real ass company like RapidShare would wanna make a big boy business decision, they'd at least do their homework and not email some server moderators to buy a free game off of for God knows what reason.

Unless the rights to this game actually do belong to Priitk by some purchase he made that I didn't know about or the game being more or less "public domain" lemme know. If not, my story stands and </wild ass thread>.

[dads revenge]

rofl I make jokes and other ppl carry it too far

as far as power hungry heh I am just your friendly neighborhood map uploader and thats all.

[TagMor]

[Lock]

Exalt basically stated it correctly. It was where I was going I just did it in a harsher way. The reason I wanted to hear from some people who actually PLAY the game is because we will be the ones who hold everything together. Hardly any of these staffers play anymore and they are all saying OMG DONT DO IT.

[not in game]

Exalt makes sense. I like it. Props mate, was very well thought out.

Oh, and I agree. Was about to write a long post, but he covers everything I was going to say. Why post then? To further support his assertion.

[Witness]

3. By advertising the game with their massive amounts of money, they promote both rapidshare and continuum, like said before. People who enjoy this game would most likely get on rapidshare, and people on rapidshare might enjoy this game.

Has anyone tried downloading any of the "free" games on rapidshare, anything over 200mb you need a premium account lol.

I'm wondering if your forced to view adds before you can enter the game?
nothing more annoying then being forced to do that.

Polix-
"I have yet to reply to him, as I wanted to wait for a more general consensus before I sign us up for a online "battle". As it sounds they will proceed cloning us if we don't just hand our shit over to them. Which as we all know, Uh, NO. Though it may be worth finding some middle ground, I dunno."

Let them, we'll just goto the magazine, and online sites and make it a publicity stunt for the underdogs! Just think how many more people will come
here just for support!. 1 , 2,3? people maybe

It'll just end up another xbox360 flop shrednebula . go go go.

I want rapidshare to control it!

Subspace is dying.Gotta try it.

[Exalt]

I doubt anyone is ever going to earn money moderating this game without having some sort of ownership. Why pay for staff when you can easily get one for free?

Personally I think they would be interested in keeping as many current staff members possible, as they currently are those who actually has experience in doing this. If this somehow actually gets through and we get a new stream of players in I'll go back to staff, and I think some of the other good ex-staffers will be interested in that too.

Well, the email states they would probably pursue "hiring" a full time staff to help impliment their ideas/rules/structure. I would assume they WOULD try to keep a majority of the staff, at least the good ones that are useful, and possibly could pay them a small amount to keep doing what they are doing. They would always want an inside guy though, and if they took the game over I would see it as them wanting staff to be employees of rapidshare, not the other way around.