I think that the player base isn't fully understanding the situation here, So I will toss out some thoughts for you to chew on a bit.

First of all you need to understand that Mehul sold the game because of the money. Not because he was tired of it or bored. He sold it because he was offered a good buck. If he had still been getting rich by owning swirve he would have found it much more interesting. Its all about the money.

OMAC bought the game because of the money. They thought they could make big bucks from it. At the time they likely had plans to sell the company, take the money and open a coffee shop but the company didnt have much in the way of marketable assets. So they bought Swirve, likely using up a bit of line of credit. I think the plan was to load up on some games, polish them a wee bit and sell out. They had zero interest in the user base. Utopia was like a can of beans on a grocery store shelf - something to be sold without even thinking of the folks who picked the beans. Utopia isnt a complicated game so they decided to recode it because a freshly re-coded game was worth more to a buyer so they hired Paddy and Shamus (prolly their real names) to do a really quick and dirty recode. Make it nice and shiny. Set up neat-o stuff like community managers. By what wild ass stretch of imagination does anyone think that a community manager for Utopia is a full time job? Anyways the spit and polish apparently worked because they were able to unload the company and its games to Gamespot. Please don't think that at any time during this process that OMAC gave a rat's ass about the players. The players just picked the beans, and the can has been sold.

Now Gamespot owns the thing. Why did they buy it? All together now... for the money. Somebody at Gamespot thinks he has found a way to make a buck from this deal. Maybe they will shiny up some of the games and sell them again. Maybe not. Maybe they will provide ongoing support for what they bought including Utopia. Maybe not. But OMAC is out of the equation now so there is no longer any real point in venting your rage at them. Hell, OMAC ownership probably doesnt bother to read the forums anymore because they are too busy counting their cash from the deal. So give it a bit of a rest.

The question is, what will Gamespot do with the games they bought as part of the deal. We know that there was a press release that named 3 games as being part of their future. The games were Utopia Kingdoms (shiny new), Playboy manager (shiny new) and one other the name of which I forget. Utopia was not on that list. Neither was Earth. My guess would be that Gamespot asked OMAC to shut down Earth as part of the deal. I also guess that they may or may not provide continued support for Utopia and that decision will be based on the value they see in the player base. Ideally they would like to port all the OMAC games to Gamespot sites and try to get as many total players as possible also playing other Gamespot games. I think it is safe to say that they also don't give a rat's ass about how many years you have played Utopia. They do however care about how many pairs of eyeballs Utopia provides to look at the advertising because in the end that is all that counts. If, when they get around to taking an in depth look at Utopia the asset to see what can be done with it they see a community of foul mouthed assholes who do nothing but curse and swear at the folks who run the game they might very well decide that they just dont want those people around to taint their other games. If that happens they could just say sorry and shut the thing down permanently. Would you want this player group haunting the forums of your other games? I wouldnt.

Some folks have suggested that Mehul might rescue the game. You need to forget that notion entirely. Gamespot will not give an asset away if it will provide competition to their other games. Utopia has a value dead and Mehul isnt gonna cough up serious coin to buy the game back. No one else will be allowed to run a clone of it either because doing so I think would be in violation of copyright laws. Forget that whole deal, its not gonna happen.

At this stage Gamespot owns the game. We have zero idea what they are going to do with it. I am pretty sure though that if they look at the forums and see the kind of bull**** that has been posted over the last few days it will not inspire them to invest more money into the game. They have the 3 games they wanted. They are happy. Utopia can be gravy or a total pain for them and much depends on whether the user base behaves like an unruly mob or like good customers. I think you lads need to back off at least until Gamespot makes their intentions known. There is no point in aggravating an already iffy situation.