Dementropy posted:

quote:

SOTAICON™ is not affiliated with Portalarium, Inc

Dementropy posted:

The short list of attendees, publicly displayed.

Beefeater posted:

Boy I wish I could be there to hang out with Dirty GardenGnome and Buckaroo Banzai.

Beefeater posted:

Boy I wish I could be there to hang out with Dirty GardenGnome and Buckaroo Banzai.

Bree Royce posted:

Hey you know when’s a good time to drop potentially bad news? Underneath somebody else’s even bigger bad news. Apparently, today it’s going to be the revelation that Portalarium has sold Shroud of the Avatar to Catnip Games.

“As of October 2019 Austin-based production studio Catnip Games has acquired the operating assets of Portalarium, Inc.; primary of which is Shroud of the Avatar. Portalarium was co-founded in 2009 by Hall of Fame videogame designer Richard Garriott (aka Lord British),” Portalarium’s Starr Long announced on the forums this afternoon. “Portalarium’s most recent game Shroud of the Avatar has a large global community of players which Catnip Games will continue to develop and expand.”

So what the heck is Catnip Games? It’s apparently a studio “established by Chris Spears, who served as CTO of Portalarium for over 6 years and was appointed President of Portalarium in 2019.”


There’s a quote attributed to Richard Garriott too: “We’re immensely grateful to the community who has built this game with us. The community’s support and participation remains strong and growing, and Starr and I plan to continue being involved in the community and within the game.”

SOTA currently counts a rather tiny population on Steam; Portalarium has long maintained that the majority of the playerbase does not play through that platform, however. Earlier this year, the studio offered up a graph that showed as many as 350 new players logging in on weekends.

Over the course of 2019, the game and studio have thrown up serious warning flags. In March, Portalarium closed its physical offices, insisting it was a temporary move. Then in May, we covered several SOTA snafus: the still-missing Kickstarter rewards, missing SEC filings required by the game’s equity crowdfunding (still not filed), and the weird obfuscation surrounding who exactly was CEO of the company and when that happened.

We have reached out to the studios with a stack of questions and will update if they comment.

jabro posted:

Garriott knows he’s milked all he could from it and has found someone stupid enough to pay him for a corpse.

HungryMedusa posted:

Was Garriott never that involved?

quote:

Shroud of the Avatar: Foresaken Investors

quote:

Straight from Seedinvest; in case someone (*cough*) is claiming that Seedinvest has been notified –

“Confirmed this is the first we’ve heard of this… our legal team has been trying to reach out to the company for quarterly updates for months with no response. We’re going to work on putting together an announcement. So sorry about this!”

jabro posted:

Garriott and Starr jumping ship right after Koster announced his project is some coincidental timing. I don't know who would want Garriott on their MMO project at this point. All the goodwill his name carried is basically gone but the timing is too hard to ignore with their history.

Givin posted:

I bet the in game items will be more Unity store trash tier grabs.

Dark Off posted:

bit of old news but garriott is already working on a new mmo.
https://neverdie.com/
A Crypto Mmo.

oh also portalarium is partner for that company.

Dark Off posted:

bit of old news but garriott is already working on a new mmo.
https://neverdie.com/
A Crypto Mmo.

oh also portalarium is partner for that company.

quote:

Mobile World Congress will also serve as the debut of "I AM MY AVATAR," NEVERDIE's first campaign video. Dedicated to longtime friend 'Motorhead' frontman Lemmy Kilmister and released just days after the music legend's highly-touted Grammy© Awards tribute, the rock-and-roll, message-filled music video features Paul Inder Kilmister, son of the famed rocker, who is a NEVERDIE supporter.