The announcement yesterday that Cryptic is to become a Gearbox Studio has left many questions unanswered. Let's start by recapping what the community manager told us:
Hey folks! You may have seen the press release that just went out, and I wanted to create a post here and get ahead of any questions you may have. Below is all the information I can currently share, but feel free to ask more questions in the thread below, and if I can answer them, I will.
So what does this mean for Star Trek Online?
It's an exciting new opportunity for us to work with a new and very talented group of people. We've all seen the previous work Gearbox has done, and it's cool to get to be a part of that. But in terms of the day to day operations of STO, very little will change, if anything at all. The team is not changing, the leadership of both STO and Cryptic Studios is not changing, and the team who was previously at PWE, now Gearbox, is unchanging as well. Basically, you should see very little difference once this deal goes through in how our game runs.
Will Star Trek Online be sunset because of this deal?
There are no plans to sunset Star Trek Online right now. We are hard at work on continued development and remain committed to providing our players with the best experience possible.
Will I still launch the game through Arc?
If Arc was your preferred way to launch the game, that won't change. You'll also still be able to launch it through Steam, or just the Cryptic launcher itself.
How will this affect my account?
Your account should experience no changes as a result of Cryptic joining the Gearbox family. If there are any changes, we'll let you know in a separate forum post.
This is an exciting time for us, and I hope we have even more details to share with you soon.
SRS Reaction
Personally, I have played many Gearbox games over the years since they were founded in 1999 and most have been excellent, some that stick out to me is Half-Life Opposing Force, most of the other Half-Life expansions, James Bond 007 Nightfire, Aliens Colonial Marines (after the config file fix), Halo, Counterstrike etc. To my knowledge, they have never been involved or produced an MMO before and no doubt this is one of the reasons they sought to acquire Cryptic and PWE. Star Trek Online and Neverwinter are successful and profitable. Calculations reveal that STO and Neverwinter make around $50 million per year in sales, their other games account for the other $27 million, with a forecast $77 million per year by 2024. We know Cryptic has 127 employees, and the majority of those will work on the two most profitable games. With that information to hand, and bear in mind these are just estimates mined from the Embracer press release, let's look at what this could mean for STO.
Will Gearbox sunset Star Trek Online?
I find it extremely unlikely that a profitable company would be purchased for $125 million and then be shut down. There are very few assets that would be worth stripping from a game with a 15-year-old engine. From Glassdoor reports from previous employees, we know that their editing and 3D design software is ancient and horrific to work with. The value in STO is in the people who work there, their knowledge of the IP and how to survive in the modern world of gaming, Cryptic have proven they can weather the storm over the last 12 years and still make money. There is no logical reason for STO to be shut down that I can work out, so I would be confident in stating that the game will continue for the foreseeable future.
Will this mean more content and investment in the game?
You can be certain that at the meetings Cryptic will hold with Gearbox they will be asked what do they need to a) continue to be profitable and b) increase profits annually. The board at Cryptic will express their desire for newer tech, more staff and generally more investment, as long as they can satisfy Gearbox that the return on investment is going to be forthcoming then I would expect this investment to go ahead.
When will we see changes to the game?
All the above has just happened. There will no doubt be many months before any agreed investment trickles down into the game, I would expect that STO remains as it is now with the slow content release over the next few months. By Q4 2022 I would expect to see announcements regarding more content, new systems, perhaps new factions and generally the entire game ramping up in terms of QA and content.
I've heard disturbing stories about the Gearbox Software President Randy Pitchford
I will not go into details here regarding the issues that Randy has found himself in, you can search online for those, however it may now be something of a moot point as Randy is no longer President of Gearbox Software as noted in this press release:
Gearbox Software has announced that former chief technology officer Steve Jones will now serve as the new president of Gearbox Software following a leadership shuffle. Gearbox Entertainment co-founder Randy Pitchford will still serve as CEO and President of the Gearbox parent company and shift his focus towards film and TV as the president of the newly-formed Gearbox Studios. Read more ...
So what will the future bring?
Obviously, I have no idea, however, if we take the optimistic viewpoint...
Star Trek currently is seeing a massive resurgence in activity with Star Trek Discovery in its 4th season, Picard about to start Season 2, Star Trek Strange New Worlds slated for release in 2022, Lower decks also released, a possible Starfleet Academy series, a possible Section 31 series and all Star Trek media moving over to Paramount + which is being released in the EU and UK in 2022 and a new movie to be released in June 2023. Interest in Star Trek has never been as high with a younger generation becoming as absorbed as us older folks were in the 80s and 90s. There probably has never been a better time to have an established Star Trek themed MMO, Cryptic already have the license from CBS and work closely with them, there is no reason why, with some investment from Gearbox, that Star Trek Online couldn't go on to become one of the premier MMOs in the marketplace and the first choice for Star Trek themed games. If managed correctly the future for STO should be very bright indeed.
My personal hopes for STO
If we assume the optimistic viewpoint stated above is correct, then I would absolutely love to see a return of the foundry. From our fleet's point of view, the opportunities for new tailored adventures the foundry brings are second to none and will massively increase the content available in-game for all of us. I would like to see work done on STO's databases so that we are not kicked from the game on map transfers so that your ship loadout doesn't drop continually and ground loadouts including spec trees can be incorporated.
I'd like to see a first-person perspective for ground combat, Gearbox has a lot of experience with this and should be something that could be added to the game fairly easily.
I want to see a general polish of the game, removing long-standing bugs and irritations.
The ability to team KDF and FED together has been one of the longest-standing issues and prevents many events from taking place, this is a big ask due to the way the game is coded, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility.
I want to see a full exploration system added to the game, in the same way, it's been done in Elite Dangerous and No Man's Sky.
There needs to be a lot more content, a lot. In other games I play like The Elder Scrolls Online I can barely keep up with the content there is so much, sure Zenimax has hundreds more employees and a vastly larger budget than Cryptic, but perhaps with this acquisition that investment to bring them closer to the Zenimax content release schedule could be achieved. The UI in STO is ancient and looks poor, the entire thing needs to be made more modern and far less CPU dependent.
The tailor is a mess, there are different palettes for different species and genders, that needs sorting.
A move away from lockboxes to more high-value items in the C Store. Embracer, the holding company of Gearbox and now Cryptic are a Swedish company and the laws in the EU are moving towards banning lockboxes and whilst Cryptic is still a US company they may well have to follow any corporate governance and ethical standards set by the holding company or at least be strongly encouraged to change their methods of making cash. This could mean more items in the Mudds store or another different way of acquiring the most sought after items.
The dilithium exchange was and is a great idea, but it needs serious work to make it functional again. Perhaps a fixed rate of Dil:Zen which you can just buy from a store.
I would love to hear actual Star Trek musical themes within the game, even Facebook browser games have the Star Trek theme, so why not STO?
I'd like to see some of the big Star Trek actors joining the team, we have still not had a single captain's voice in the game other than a sound clip of Sisko in the Gamma arc. Extra investment here could help achieve that aim.
There are many other factors I can think of, in fact I could probably write a short novel on all the things that could be improved in STO suffice it to say these are some of the big changes I would love to see.
Conclusion
I think this acquisition by Gearbox should be good for STO and therefore for us the players, time will tell if I am sorely mistaken, I hope not, I really think things will work out for the better and this time next year we will be starting to reap the rewards, fingers and toes are crossed.
Live Long and Prosper
Matt Johnson
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