I just read over at ICv2 that Gleemax, WotC‘s ambitious social-networking/hobby gaming site, will be shut down sometime in September. The announcement was made by Randy Buehler, WotC’s VP of Digital Games.
Wizards of the Coast has made the decision to pull down its Gleemax social networking site in order to focus on other aspects of our digital initiatives, especially Magic Online and Dungeons & Dragons Insider. We continue to believe that fostering online community is an important part of taking care of our customers, but until we have our games up and running at a quality level we can be proud of, it will be the games themselves that receive the lion’s share of our attention and resources.
Our plan is to shut down Gleemax completely sometime in September. (I can’t give a more exact date because the timing depends on what’s going on with other projects.) To those of you who have posted to Gleemax, I thank you for your contributions over the past year. It is community members like you that made this project worth trying, and it is your efforts and words that gave it heart. You should save your blogs by copying that text somewhere else. Meanwhile, I encourage you to head over to the Wizards forums. The Wizards online community continues to thrive, and there should be lots of fun stuff to talk about over the coming months, including our digital offerings.
ChattyDM has some commentary on the matter.
In related news, WotC is also “discontinuing their novel lines that do not relate directly to D&D or Magic“.
Wizards of the Coast today announced the decision to refocus publishing efforts on the company’s two core brands — Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons. As part of this strategy, the Discoveries imprint will be discontinued after the end of the 2008 catalog year.
“There is still so much more to discover in the rich fantasy worlds of Magic and D&D,” said Casey Reeter, VP of Marketing for Wizards of the Coast. “Refocusing our publishing resources allows us to tell those untold stories and expand the reach of our core brands.”
Beginning in 2009, any novel or series that does not support these core brands will be removed from the publishing schedule. The 2008 publishing schedule will remain unchanged.
Even though I thought that the Gleemax project was a bit too big, I was really hoping it would succeed. Given D&D Insider (the success of which based on its current plans are still iffy to me), as well as the number of issues that still need to be fixed in MtGO, WotC does need to focus in its digital endeavors. Unfortunately, as the months went by, I didn’t see Gleemax moving along as quickly as it should have based on that it wanted to accomplish. So, the fact that the master plan of an online hobby gaming hub is being put on hold for now wasn’t that big a surprise.
With all the brands it carries, WotC itself huge. MtG and D&D are probably their current revenue makers, so I can see why they would want to focus on those. I just hope their boardgame section (Avalon Hill) won’t suffer because of this focus.
Related links:
- Gleemax Farewell – official announcement
- Wizards to Refocus Publishing Efforts – official announcement
- WotC Pulls the Plug on Gleemax (ICv2)
- Gleemax is dead? (Critical Hits) – points to chatty
- Gleemax is Dead (ENWorld)
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