Why are the developers leaving their office? Chris Spears, technical director and Starr Long, producer of the MMORPG SotA, announced in the last livestream that from now on the entire team works from home. It’s an experiment and a good thing.
The landlord has apparently a few months after the last move last year, the rent increased sharply and wanted to bind the company for four years to the new lease. Since the team was not satisfied with the office anyway, they moved out.
How are the developers working now? Everyone now works in the home office and logs into the system, which has been outsourced to a data center. The team exchanges information with each other via e-mails and Skype. According to Starr Long and Chris Spears working works now not really different than before. But you just do not share office anymore.
The work continues
Why is Portalarium saying that this is a good thing? Portalarium says it is now saving between $ 8,000 and $ 10,000 a month in rent. This money is now flowing into the development and marketing of MMORPG’s Shroud of the Avatar. In addition, the way to work falls away for some developers. You save on travel costs and time.
Does this affect the MMORPG? According to the developers, work on SotA continues as usual. Every month updates with new content, bug fixes and other changes appear. And by the end of 2019, the release of Episode 2 is planned with the continuation of the story and a new landmass.
How is SotA? The Free2Play MMORPG Shroud of the Avatar has an average of about 134 concurrent players according to Steamcharts, 234 at weddings. However, this represents only about 35 percent of the total population in the game, as many play on their own launcher and not on Steam. Portalarium averages less than $ 100,000 a month in selling in-game items and donating players.
How do the players react? SotA has a heavily divided community. Those who are disappointed with the game make fun of working from the home office and consider it the last nail of the coffin for online play.
But there are still loyal fans who also like to donate money each month for further development. They think the step was right and a home office offers many benefits.