60178
The reason LU is going to close down was because they weren't making much money and it looked like they'd probably be losing money soon.
-Cookieo
60181
Not quite. One of the mods posted on Lunibook the real reason. The clever wording of the official press release backs up the moderator's claim (and some other statements I haven't had time to find). It wasn't a matter of losing money, and even if it was ANY manager of ANY competence would see that just one year is not enough time to test the financial viability of a subscription based service, and if it were really about money they would have let it go through for Christmas to take advantage of the upsurge in sales. The statement says,
"Unfortunately, we have not been able to build a satisfactory revenue model in our target group, and therefore, have decided to close the game."
This matches with what a LU mod posted on Lunibook:
I'd like to clear the air a bit.
1.) LU DOES have enough subscribers, LEGO just didn't know how to run an MMO service, so they had all kinds of unnecessary expenses.
2.) LEGO is not willing to sell the game to another company that could run the game, even if they could profit from it.
LEGO wants this game to disappear and never have to think about it again. Not sure if this has been publicly announced yet, but I've heard rumors that LEGO is shutting down most of its digital division, and dropping support for design-by-me, and LDD, cancelling LEGO education, and more. LEGO wants out of the digital realm, and that means they don't want to deal with LEGO Universe. It seems LEGO could really care less about the 100k subscribers and millions of other free players enjoying their products, they won't even let other willing companies run the game so it doesn't have to shut down.
(In both quotes, emphasis mine.) Bottom line: LEGO doesn't want us. They want little kids who don't have the brain power to question their decisions--forgetting that this also means they don't have the money to buy their products.
60177
lolwut
CONSPIRACY THEORY IS GO
-カナマ
As much as I disagree with that, I'm still chuckling at your response.
