The end of WG is near?

Online games news Tedious Retro Gamer, 27-10-2022
Online Games Bay

Is Wargaming collapsing? Unfortunately no, but the situation in the company might not be as great as they want you to believe.

Recently two news about Wargaming, company behind World of Tanks and World of Warships, has surfaced, both of which seem a bit grim. At least for those, who care about that company, and I’m not one of them. For years Wargaming deserved to go down in flames, for their arrogance, for their complete detachment from reality, for the mistreatment of clients, for their predatory business practices, for the troll farms they created, for many other things. And hopefully right now they are heading in right direction.

After (supposedly) leaving Russia due to war in Ukraine, Wargaming was hit by steady decline in number of players in both games, mostly on Russian servers, but the overall tendency is quite similar. But recent events suggest that there is something more going on behind the scenes. First there were rumours that WG was downsizing its staff in North America branch, but now it is an official announcement that Riot Games, company behind League of Legends, just bought Wargaming Sydney to improve their live service games.

On surface it doesn’t sound like a big deal, until you learn that Wargaming Sydney was the studio which created Big World, the engine that is used in both World of Warships and World of Tanks. It is an old engine, it has its problems and limitations, it was improved throughout the years, and now people who knew how it works are gone from Wargaming. What could go wrong, right? If they still gonna use the same engine (and it doesn’t seem like they have much choice) it would take months, if not years, for new programmers to learn it and adapt to work on that engine. If they gonna build a new engine it will take years.

But since it is Wargaming, all I can offer is sarcastic clapping. Looks like karma finally is catching up with you.

09-11-2022