If they're not making money, I don't see how pissing off their current player base in favour of garnering an unknown number of a hypothetical different player base is a good move. Heck, they could have split the product into classic-league MWO (no coolant, no 3rd person view) and modern-league MWO and captured both markets. It really boggles the mind.
It's a shitty situation. Presumably the company is not sustainable on their current income. They may be able to shrink the company to survive on that income, but that sucks. So they probably need to increase income. They could increase income from the current player base, but that basically means milking which sucks. So they need to increase the player base.
It may be that the existing game is great as is, they just need to find players who want to spend money on that game but don't know it existing. User acquisition is a big deal these days. It's very difficult to do well. That assumes it can be done. If a game is too niche then the potential audience just may not be big enough.
So they went with the next option, change the game to try to increase the size of the potential audience. This has a high risk of alienating your current base, which is what happened here.
Like I said in another reply, it's a shitty situation all around. Shitty for players. Shitty for devs. Shitty for company owners.
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If they're not making money, I don't see how pissing off their current player base in favour of garnering an unknown number of a hypothetical different player base is a good move. Heck, they could have split the product into classic-league MWO (no coolant, no 3rd person view) and modern-league MWO and captured both markets. It really boggles the mind.
It's a shitty situation. Presumably the company is not sustainable on their current income. They may be able to shrink the company to survive on that income, but that sucks. So they probably need to increase income. They could increase income from the current player base, but that basically means milking which sucks. So they need to increase the player base.
It may be that the existing game is great as is, they just need to find players who want to spend money on that game but don't know it existing. User acquisition is a big deal these days. It's very difficult to do well. That assumes it can be done. If a game is too niche then the potential audience just may not be big enough.
So they went with the next option, change the game to try to increase the size of the potential audience. This has a high risk of alienating your current base, which is what happened here.
Like I said in another reply, it's a shitty situation all around. Shitty for players. Shitty for devs. Shitty for company owners.