Hey Namco, how much is one Duelyst?

[nitowa]

Hello, remaining 7 players of Duelyst, I’ve come with a proposition.

With this game being officially being dead in the water, it is fair to assume that it doesn’t generate a whole lot of revenue for Namco anymore. This lead me to a rather unusual conclusion: The whole IP must be almost worthless.

While that sounds extremely bleak it, offers a way forward: The community could probably purchase it with a little help from the remaining fans. I would be very surprised if we’d even be looking at 6-figure numbers here.

Personally I am a software engineer, and as such I’d be thrilled to host my own duelyst server, perhaps with a community-made expansion. I had too much fun with this game to see it die alone in a dark corner of the internet. This deserves a retirement as community driven open-source project just like many beloved classics have become.

However, I am not a business guy. I have no idea where to start, who to talk to, or what steps to take in order to even start negotiating a price on something as intangible as a video game IP. Neither do I have any idea about the legal steps involved in doing so. And least of all do I have any clue if Namco/CPG would even be interested in letting the IP go.

So, dear community, what do you think? Would you be on board to support this venture?
Maybe, just maybe, if we ask loudly enough, Namco/CPG will tell us a price and we can crowdfund this wonderful game back into life? Let me know your thoughts.

Also please let me know if you’ve got any skills that you’d like to contribute in case of success. We’re going to need a lawyer lol.

[halcyon98]

I think such a bold proposition would require the agreement of CPG beforehand more than anything else. Although it’s doubtful they are being honest, they did say they want to return to Duelyst someday. It’s also worth mentioning that BN does not own the Duelyst IP; they only own the publishing rights. And even if a member of the community acquires that publishing right, there really isn’t anything we can do to release more content for Duelyst.

[nitowa]

Thank you for the clarification. I added CPG into the mix for good measure.
It appears the legal situation is more convoluted than I expected. Regardless, money talks, and the situation can surely be remedied with enough cash. I genuinely just want the server/client source code open sourced to be completely honest, but that won’t fly for as long as a company holds the rights.

Sadly the game just never was popular enough to have that stuff leaked (like for example WoW’s was), so the only way to get it into the community’s hands is through a purchase. Preferably crowdsourced, as I personally am not a millionaire

Ultimately, the chances might be slim - possibly zero. But Duelyst also is de-facto dead, so perhaps the smell of some fresh dollars is enough to convince the devs. We’ll see if this thread gets any traction (The chances for that are probably also close to zero with the user numbers present )

[halcyon98]

I just wish the devs would be more vocal about what exactly is going on. There are just so many questions I would prefer we had answers to but don’t. Here are some of them:

• How is the progress on Godfall? It’s almost been a year since the last update. Also, where is CPG getting the money to take on such an ambitious project?

• Why didn’t Q4 happen? Lack of funding? Lack of time?

• In what way is CPG affiliated with BN? Is BN benefitting from this relationship? Is CPG benefitting from this relationship? Is there a way to back out?

• Who are the remaining members of CPG? Who left, who stayed, and who came back?

• If Duelyst isn’t making enough money to the point where CPG has moved on to developing a different game altogether, why should we believe that CPG will be incentivized to revisit Duelyst in the future?

[gartegna]

hi @nitowa very glad you gave us some suggestions!
Definetely they are very bold and the chances are near to zero but as i said in the other topic, what we have to lose anymore? XD and btw we are just talking at the moment, no harm in that, we can still dream, right?

In addition to your proposition i’d say something like “borrow the game until your godfalldeploy moment” , i don’t know even how to suggest something like that but we are totally sure that players/people aren’t going to support that? i believe the problem is always the numbers and not the proposition itself, like you said, money talks and players too.

Just to say, battleforge is currently sustained by other people under another name, it’s not totally playable and population is near zero but i mean, the will to do something like that is very very inspiring.

Not saying to do this thing to duelyst, not even suggesting it, duelyst has a clear mark on doing things, from the art style to the core mechanics that aren’ replicable by any others than the devs themselves.

But just talking about possibilities is better than not, it’s really something!

I don’t know the current user base on this forum but in 2 days that i’m here i was very well welcomed and answered to! even if numbers are not “enough” we have to start from somewhere anyways.

@halcyon98 very good questions, mostly the last one where i personally believe that the only scenario for them to be back on duelyst will be if godfall will fail somehow, but even then we are talking about years, duelyst will be long gone before that and i think even if there will be still someone, they just prioritize something else entirely becouse it’s easier to cancel something, sell it and start anew, sadly.

And that’s the very reason i, like others, are concerned about the “we will be back after godfall” so it’s like a race against time, trying to do something before duelyst will be gone forever.

[gsvalhalla]

Also, where is CPG getting the money to take on such an ambitious project?

I believe it was funded through some project fund thing. Can’t remember the exact details but it was basically a pot of money and they shared it between game projects with Godfall being one of them.

(a few minutes later)

https://godfall.gamepedia.com/Godfall

Funded by these people - https://www.kowloonnights.com/

I highly doubt the Triple A part of the wiki, probably more likely to be a higher budget indie game.

[ThanatosNoa]

Hey dude, so allow me to try to answer some of these questions (in a manner that’s player friendly but also still ‘PR compliant’ because there’s, of course, always things that can’t be said).

How is the progress on Godfall? It’s almost been a year since the last update. Also, where is CPG getting the money to take on such an ambitious project?

No one said game development is easy (and if anyone did, please give me their contact info I would love to sink into their amazing brain! )

So the game is still very much in development, sometimes rapid iteration as we cycle through ideas, concepts and combat flows. Other times we’re doing polish on what we consider a core feature, making sure it’s up to today’s gaming standards. That being said, we’re not ready to reveal any type of beta to the public soon.

To directly answer the “why no updates” has to stem from the way our (gaming) industry has… performed these last few years. I’m sure we’ve all seen some amazing Triple A titles at things promise huge and amazing games only to not deliver close to what was demo’d. Something along the lines of this being the cost of transparency, and things change, well part of it is true, games often do undergo massive transformations during development!

So until we’re happy and know we can deliver what we want to show everyone, we’re basically keeping the game under the radar. That way we can avoid creating any false hype, removed features or promises on things we can’t commit to, we just want to showcase the (close to-) final product.

Why didn’t Q4 happen? Lack of funding? Lack of time?

The short and simple answer is indeed time; my understanding was that we’d be a lot further along with Godfall than we initially expected, or that we’d have more professional hands around to offer some leniency for side projects, in truth neither was the case.

We’ve had plenty of deadlines to fulfill (we do, after all, have to showcase our progress to our supporting parties) and the game is beginning to demand more life to fuel its demands which meant Q4 came around and everyone was just too busy to be able to set aside time for a Duelyst update.

This basically brings us to the “now” everyone knows, we’re extremely busy working on Godfall, and until that’s been released it’s unlikely we can pivot towards giving Duelyst more attention.

In what way is CPG affiliated with BN? Is BN benefitting from this relationship? Is CPG benefitting from this relationship? Is there a way to back out?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sorry dude, this is one of those questions I simply can’t answer

• Who are the remaining members of CPG? Who left, who stayed, and who came back?

Our team has grown quite a bit over the last few years as we’ve filled our ranks to meet the demands of Godfall. At the top of my head, the names you might remember are Ryvirath, JuveyD, RHacker and myself. (There are few others but I value their anonymity, if they wish to speak up they can)

If Duelyst isn’t making enough money to the point where CPG has moved on to developing a different game altogether, why should we believe that CPG will be incentivized to revisit Duelyst in the future?

Truly you don’t have a reason to, it’s just our words against your perception. There’s literally nothing I can say at this point that would hold any weight to make you believe we would return, besides that hey, we really liked Duelyst for what it was, and we wouldn’t mind coming back to it when we can.

Until then? Lights are on and servers are up so the game is here for you guys to play whenever you’d like to.

[isbee]

Lights are on and servers are up

Yep, basically how I’ve been rolling…

[atd09]

Thanks for the response!

[boronian]

Love seeing you here, Thanatos