ArcheAge Changes Publisher – Kakao Acquire Publishing Rights

Here’s news I didn’t expect to wake up to. As you guys are no doubt aware, Gamigo has been the publisher for ArcheAge and ArcheAge Unchained for years, now. And Gamigo has proven, repeatedly, that they’re absolutely, 100% incapable of publishing an MMO.
They promised Unchained would be a single-purchase, and we’d get updates in the future ENTIRELY FREE – then decided “JK, you gotta pay for every large content update now.”
Either way, fast forward to today’s revelation: ArcheAge has been acquired by another publisher – yes, FINALLY, someone other than Gamigo will be in charge of publishing the game. The only issue is… it’s Kakao.

Yup. According to their social media pages… “ArcheAge gets a new publisher! In December, the publishing service of the game will solely be managed by Kakao Games.”

Navigating on over to the official ArcheAge website, we can see a small blog post made earlier today titled “A New Publisher.”

“It is with lots of emotion that today, after 7 years of ArcheAge, and 2 years of ArcheAge: Unchained, we announce that the franchise will move to a new publisher in December.
gamigo games and its affiliated sub-companies will no longer be in charge of or involved with any live operation concerning ArcheAge and ArcheAge: Unchained. All of the rights and related duties will solely be with the new publisher Kakao Games directly.
Be at ease though as all your items will be transferred! And every item acquired while our shops are open will also be transferred together with all of your characters as well.
We are aware that the announcement leaves you with a lot of open questions. We will answer all of them to the best of our knowledge.”

So, next month Gamigo will lose all rights to the game. They will no longer be in charge of the game in any capacity – completely unaffiliated with neither ArcheAge or ArcheAge Unchained.
They confirmed that there will be a transfer of all data to Kakao between now and December, however, if you recall, when Kakao transferred publishing rights back to Pearl Abyss with Black Desert Online, things didn’t go over entirely.. smoothly.
Which is understandable. No company is infallible. Issues are sure to arise. Issues that are unexpected. So while theoretically the game will be migrated to Kakao’s own servers in December, it could take quite a bit longer, especially given how close we are to Christmas.

Now, this should be good news. Gamigo is a cesspool of… just absolute incompetence. And I know me talking shit about them like this loses me any paid opportunities to work with them in the future, but I can’t hold back how much of a garbage publisher they are when it comes to their games.
They – for all intents and purposes – scammed players with the paid DLC. They make their games horrendously pay to win… yet at the same time, is Kakao really any better? Kakao aren’t known for their friendly business models.
Not only have players called Black Desert pay to win for years, even before Pearl Abyss re-acquired publishing rights to the game, but just look at Elyon. Weeks after launching, Kakao are already contemplating how to introduce pay to win into their game.
Will changing publisher do anything for ArcheAge or ArcheAge Unchained? Unlikely. For all we know, this could be the final nail in the coffin for the game.

What I believe they’re doing – and you’re welcome to give me your opinion here as well if you think I’m wrong – is that they’re trying to expand their portfolio. Add more MMOs to their list of games they have control over.
Given that they’re working on developing ArcheAge 2 with XL Games, it makes sense that they would want to add its predecessor.

But what do you guys think? Is this a good move or bad? Do you think it’ll save ArcheAge or further push it into obscurity?