K2 Network, Inc. was an American producer and publisher of video games based in Irvine, California. It pioneered the use of the free-to-play (or "freemium") business model among North American and European MMO game publishers in 2004. [1] [2]
On July 5, 2012, the company merged with Reloaded Games, [3] and the merged entity ceased its K2 Network branded operations.
K2 Network was founded in 2001 on the belief that "the community experience of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG’s) will become one of the most significant forms of entertainment in the 21st century." [4] The company initially licensed games created by Korean development studios, and localized and serviced those games in North America, South America and Europe via its portal GamersFirst.com. In 2007, the company raised $16m USD in a Series-B financing round led by Intel Capital. [5]
K2 Network's licensed titles included Knight Online World for which it acquired the Western territory rights in 2003 and began publishing operations in 2004, [6] ceasing operations in May 2012. [7] The game grew quickly to more than 40,000 concurrent players [8] and proved especially popular in Turkey where K2 Network monetized the game using its network of ESN code resellers. [9] K2 Network also licensed and published MU Online , [10] War Rock and Sword 2 . [11]
In November 2010, K2 Network's subsidiary Reloaded Productions purchased the rights to APB: All Points Bulletin from Realtime Worlds during the latter company's administration proceedings [12] for a fraction of the game's original 60 million GBP development cost, [13] aiming to convert the game from a traditional subscription based business model as designed by Realtime Worlds, to a game called APB: Reloaded using the company's free-to-play model. In June 2011, Reloaded Productions acquired Fallen Earth from Icarus Studios planning to repeat the subscription-to-freemium business model conversion. [14]
On March 16, 2015, Reloaded Productions purchased the rights to Hawken . [15]
A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game.
Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer. Shareware is often offered as a download from a website or on a compact disc included with a magazine. Shareware differs from freeware, which is fully-featured software distributed at no cost to the user but without source code being made available; and free and open-source software, in which the source code is freely available for anyone to inspect and alter.
Michael Abrash is an American programmer and technical writer specializing in code optimization and graphics. Since 2014, he has been the chief scientist of Oculus VR, a subsidiary of Meta Platforms.
WMS Industries, Inc. was an American electronic gaming and amusement manufacturer in Enterprise, Nevada. It was merged into Scientific Games in 2016. WMS's predecessor was the Williams Manufacturing Company, founded in 1943 by Harry E. Williams. However, the company that became WMS Industries was formally founded in 1974 as Williams Electronics, Inc.
Cube is a free and open-source first-person shooter video game. It often is mistaken with its engine (zlib-licensed), the Cube Engine. The engine and game were developed by Wouter van Oortmerssen.
Free-to-play video games are games that give players access to a significant portion of their content without paying or do not require paying to continue playing. Free-to-play is distinct from traditional commercial software, which requires a payment before using the game or service. It is also separate from freeware games, which are entirely costless. Free-to-play's model is sometimes derisively referred to as free-to-start due to not being entirely free. Free to play games have also been widely criticized as “pay-to-win”— that is, that players can generally pay to obtain competitive or power advantages over other players.
Mplayer, referred to as Mplayer.com by 1998, was a free online PC gaming service and community that operated from late 1996 until early 2001. The service at its peak was host to a community of more than 20 million visitors each month and offered more than 100 games. Some of the more popular titles available were action games like Quake, Command & Conquer, and Rogue Spear, as well as classic card and board for more casual gamers. Servers and matchmaking was provided through a proprietary client. Initially, the service was subscription-based, but by early 1997, they became the first major multiplayer community to offer games to be played online through their network for free. This was done by relying on advertisement-based revenues.
APB: All Points Bulletin is an open world multiplayer online video game for Microsoft Windows developed by Realtime Worlds and acquired by Reloaded Productions, which is part of the GamersFirst company. Little Orbit acquired GamersFirst in 2018 and is now in charge of the game's development. Based in urban sprawls and featuring two factions, Enforcers and the Criminals, can form sub-groups in either faction and carry out missions. The game design was led by David Jones. It was released in 2010 in North America and Europe.
Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium", is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical (offline) goods that expand the functionality of the free version of the software. This business model has been used in the software industry since the 1980s. A subset of this model used by the video game industry is called free-to-play.
David Scott Jones is a Scottish video game programmer and entrepreneur who co-founded video game developers DMA Design in 1987, Realtime Worlds in 2002, and Cloudgine in 2012. Jones created Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto, which both spawned many successful sequels. He also created the Crackdown franchise for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles, and the open-ended massively multiplayer online game, APB: All Points Bulletin.
Realtime Worlds Ltd. was a British video game developer based in Dundee, Scotland. The company was founded by David Jones in 2002. After developing Crackdown (2007) and APB: All Points Bulletin (2009), Realtime Worlds filed for administration in August 2010.
Zen Studios is a Hungarian video game developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software with headquarters in Budapest, Hungary and offices in the United States. It is known for its game franchises, Pinball FX and Zen Pinball, as well as CastleStorm, a tower defense hybrid which received the Apple Store's Editor’s Choice award. The company is considered "synonymous with licensed pinball tables," having produced dozens of tables with characters and themes from the Star Wars and Marvel universes, films like Guardians of the Galaxy, TV series like Archer, South Park, Family Guy and Bob's Burgers, and video game franchises such as Plants vs. Zombies, Portal, Street Fighter, and The Walking Dead.
Disney Interactive is an American video game and internet company that oversees various websites and interactive media owned by The Walt Disney Company.
Virtual goods are non-physical objects and money purchased for use in online communities or online games. Digital goods, on the other hand, may be a broader category including digital books, music, and movies. Virtual goods are intangible by definition.
Founded in 2004 in New York City, Pando Networks was a managed peer-to-peer (P2P) media distribution company backed by Intel Capital, BRM Capital and Wheatley Partners. The company specialized in cloud distribution of games, video and software for publishers and media distributors and also operated a freemium consumer business for sending large files.
Gaikai is an American company which provides technology for the streaming of high-end video games. Its technology has multiple applications, including in-home streaming over a local wired or wireless network, as well as cloud-based gaming where video games are rendered on remote servers and delivered to end users via internet streaming
FreshGames was a Columbus, Ohio based publisher and developer of casual, hand-held, and mobile games. It was formed in early 2002 by a group of gaming industry gamers. This new type of video game genre soon after became known as Casual Games.
Hawken is a free-to-play multiplayer mech first-person shooter video game. The game features five game modes: Team Deathmatch, Deathmatch, Co-op Bot Team Deathmatch, Siege, and Missile Assault. It follows the freemium model of game monetization—with in-game purchases as the main source of revenue.
Marvelous Inc. is a Japanese video game developer and publisher, and anime producer. The company was formed in October 2011 by the merger of the original Marvelous Entertainment, AQ Interactive, and Liveware.
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. is a Taiwanese multinational computer, phone hardware and electronics manufacturer headquartered in Beitou District, Taipei, Taiwan. Its products include desktop computers, laptops, netbooks, mobile phones, networking equipment, monitors, wi-fi routers, projectors, motherboards, graphics cards, optical storage, multimedia products, peripherals, wearables, servers, workstations and tablet PCs. The company is also an original equipment manufacturer (OEM).
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