Kakao Games To Take Over Publishing Of ArcheAge In December

Since the launch of ArcheAge in the West in 2014, ArcheAge has been published by Trion Worlds and later gamigo. It's those two entities that players have largely blamed for the troubles with the game, which seemed to show a great deal of promise during its early stages.

While Trion wasn't perfect in its stewardship, and got sued as a result, I think that a lot of the issues with the game come from its place of origin, developer XLGames, and how it thinks the game should be run, both in its native Korea and elsewhere. I had multiple interviews with Trion staff over the years where they said, in essence, that they did everything they could to reduce the RNG and other elements Western players couldn't stand, but there was only so much XLGames would allow.

Soon, though, you won't have Trion, or gamigo, to kick around any more. Former Black Desert Online publisher Kakao Games will take over the publishing duties for ArcheAge in Europe, North America, and Oceania next month, and there's already a Kakao website heralding the change.

Right off the bat, the letter announcing the change acknowledges that there have been "both highs and lows" while still calling ArcheAge "one of the greatest MMOs in the history of the genre." The letter goes on to state that ArcheAge will use one build, with new content being added at the same time worldwide, though ArcheAge Unchained will still be a separate game.

While this no doubt will have some players cheering and dancing over the graves of Trion and gamigo, I'd advise you to go back and look at those earlier interviews I did. In terms of the gameplay and mechanics, there's no reason to think anything will change once Kakao is in control; it's still XLGames that holds the cards, and for as "successful" as it feels the game has been, there doesn't seem to be any reason for it to change what it's doing.