MonteCristo Closes

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[City Builder]

Monte Cristo employee "Greg" announced today on Simtropolis forums that they are closing the company.

The Cities XL game has been picked up by a publisher who should soon make themselves known and will likely continue to sell the game.

I honestly don't find this as any great surprise, I only find the real surprise that they kept up the farse that they were working on a Cities 2011 for the past several months when I think the reality of the situation was, they were probably planning an organized closure and planning the release of their employees,  and looking for ways to protect what assets the owners of the company might have.  Since I don't know how the French laws work I can only speculate on what they were really doing for the past couple months that they were supposedly working on Cities 2011.

Anyway, the fairwell speech is at:
http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=370&threadid=115299&enterthread=y

No great loss in my opinion.  Don't get me wrong, I hate to see anybody lose their job, but really if the programmers that worked for MC are talented they will land in another company, those that are not (like the ones that introduced the memory leak in the game and then couldn't fix it) well.... the world needs ditch diggers too.  The real thing is what crap they left the game state in, what with promises to those that were subscribers that they'd get the extra addon content that they already paid for during the planet offer and my guess would have to be, not a snowballs chance in hell that they'll get any of that now.  Plus leaving the game with that gaping memory leak is really sucky!

I guess the players that still play Cities XL will  now wait and see if the new publishers are going to hire anybody to take over and improve the game any and fix the glaring problems or if they are only going to continue selling the game in it's current condition and try to recoop the amount of money that the license cost them to purchase.

Good luck to the ex employees, I hope you all land your dream jobs real soon, be it at another development firm where you will likely go on to make great games or digging ditches for the local pbx company in downtown Paris.

I would not be surprised at all to see the principle owners of Monte Cristo simply start a new development company and continue business as usual.  Others have done it after a development closure so why not MC too.  It's not an easy task for somebody that has been the owner or principle player in a company like MC to go sling burgers at their local hash stand,  it would be like... I don't know... Let's say "Tom Cruise" quitting acting and going to mop floors at the local grade school.  No, I'd suspect MC will come back with all new players but the same principles in charge which is likely not a good thing.

Of course for all we know the principles at MC actually squirrled away a small fortune and may never have to work again.  Although I think it safe to say that for the other 80 to 100 employees that would not be the case.  As with these types of closures, it is quite likely they shopped around trying to find a buyer for MC to keep it floating along but failed to do so.  I'm not sure what IP they actually own besides obviously Cities XL and whether they would have been able to sell that IP, and if so if they had to use that money to pay their creditors or if the principles were able to keep that themselves.

Anyway, MC closes, and another chapter in the "all things CB" is now finished.

[pad11]

We all say this coming...the SECOND they abondoned the single player layer of the game. 

Sad, really...very sad.

Pat

[crowebird]

It what happens when the company thinks $$$ > consumer, because without the consumer = no money.

Wish some of the bigger companies like EA would take a hit, too... they make some great games, but the day one DLC (the stuff that should have made it in, but instead they feel like charging $10 extra for - or the stuff that is already in the game, just locked to be purchased for $10 extra) and half working games that are released for $60 is bs.  It is all about the money, the programmers might have pride in their work but the distributer sees right past the product for the money, and a lot of the stuff released today is not worth the asking price, but somehow $60 has become the norm.

Honestly I have been playing a lot of different indie games lately, and the quality of these games for small developers is amazing, and the games are fun and worth the money.  (and when something does go wrong, I'v seen these developers actually work hard to get a working patch out -- none of the fixes one thing but introduces something else patch, or the one of 20 mediocre patches to come, but never fully fix the game, patch).

Kinda went on a vent there, but I don't feel bad for MC.  I watched CXL for awhile, and it looked like it had a lot of great potential, but the moment you take out key features unless you pay a monthly fee and ignore your customers, you deserve go.

[Khalan]

Yeah, I'm glad I avoided XL as well.  There are companies that make games purely for money (as MonteCristo seemed to do), and companies like Stardock (and many indie devs like crowebird mentioned) that make them for their customers.  Please the customer, and the money comes alongside.  Shame more companies don't seem to operate like that.

[AVALONIA]

hello all

the news from the computer gaming show i was at in germany in may was that monte cristo
has closed it doors and filed for protection. this is a great blow because the game is big germany
and russia . all we can hope that the new company will bring the  next version of citiesxl to life and soon

[City Builder]

I am hopeful that the new owners will take a serious look at the game and really tear it apart, remove all the rubbish and fill in the lack of simulation and re release it as a new version (or better yet a new game if enough has changed). 

I don't know that I'd be willing to give them any of my money unless there was a deep discount to prior owners of CXL, AND they'd have to really add some game into the game for me.

Honestly, I'm not sure how well they will do on selling it just the way it is since the first run sales are long ago, so unless they managed to buy it for a tweet and a dance, I can't imagine that sales of it without reworking the title will gain the new owners much money.  But surely they must have plans to rework it before trying to sell a new version of it instead of just rebranding it with the new owners name on it.  Time will tell I guess.