Game Over: LEGO Universe Joke Stop

The press release is dated November 4, 2011 and informs us in all sobriety that the LEGO Universe joke will permanently shut down its servers on January 31, 2012.

I announced the end of this online game from February 2011, by slightly mistaking the date ..... You didn't have to be a guesser to imagine that this MMOG (massively-multiplayer online game) was not going to go the distance. Too expensive, at least initially, ugly, slow, boring, full of activities all more infantilizing than the others, this universe could not seduce many people, even when it became free ....

LEGO claims to have been able to bring together 2 million players (registered?, Active?) And to have decided to close because of the non-profitability of the whole. There is a paradox here: How can a game that has become free be profitable? Why make it free if it is necessary to invest elsewhere to welcome all the players who come to register because of this same free? Are there enough MMOG AND LEGO fans? Wasn't the game just way below the current standard when compared to other online games of the same type?

But it is not the end of the game that bothers me the most: LEGO is laying off 115 people in the process, who were employees of "Play Well Studios" in the United States and the marketing department of Billund (Denmark) and simply announces them to be insured. reclassification assistance at LEGO or elsewhere .....

A great mess, which will not mark the spirits, and which sets the limits of what can be done by trying to follow too closely and too opportunistically current trends in leisure and entertainment.

 The official press release:

LEGO® Universe to close in 2012