Quote:Currently, Spellborn NV still has the rights


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Spellborn NV holds the rights and Acclaim(Playdom/Disney) was only publishing for most European countries and North America. Forgster and Mindscape were covering the original release in a select number of European countries. At that time an IP-ban was imposed so that people living abroad couldn't join in for the fun. This hurt the game badly.


After Spellborn Works BV, a daughter company of Spellborn NV and taking care of the patches of TCoS, went bankrupt, all the devs were fired, EU servers were closed, and Frogster announced that their daughter company, Frogster Asia, would take over development of the game. They would turn the game into a F2P MMORPG with a cashshop. However recently it became clear that the game's redevelopment had stopped due to Spellborn NV and Frogster not being able to reach an agreement:

Quote:The 64% Frogster subsidiary Frogster Asia Co. Ltd. could yet again not reach an agreement on further cooperation with the Dutch licensor Spellborn NV regarding the intended enhancements and publishing of the free to play version of the MMO Game 'The Chronicles of Spellborn' in Asia and is thus forced to close down the development studio and to dismiss all staff who dealt with the free to play version by order of Spellborn NV. Herefrom arises an extraordinary negative P&L effect for the subsidiary which will have a negative impact to the group result in a small to medium six digit Euro amount. The Frogster Interactive management had informed the public several times before about the uncertain outcome of the ongoing talks. On the other side, Frogster Interactive will reclaim the paid prepayments for the product of a seven-digit Euro amount while it is unknown whether the developer could make such a payment. The company has already fully written off all prepayments on Frogster's balance sheet regarding the game so that no noteworthy negative impacts from the balance sheet are impending.


Frogster Interactive will finance the further, not yet break-even operation of 'Runes of Magic' in Korea and, as already announced, the market launch of the MMO Game 'Ghost Fighter' which was recently newly licensed by Frogster Asia from the Chinese market leader Shanda and is scheduled for launch in autumn. This funding will be done per a shareholder loan to Frogster Asia in a medium six-digit Euro amount. At the same time, the holding company will receive a call option on for the acquisition of further stakes in Frogster Asia at face value.

And we're all aware of how the story continued...