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Originally Posted by Angerz It's still a business sure, but they could have just localized the game in Europe too. They didnt need to mess with one of (if not the best) story arcs, groups and lore the game had at the time. |
They would have to be really careful. In one of my law classes (mind you it's an MBA program and not law school), we studied a case just like this. I will be going off memory here, which is a bit faulty. In this case, not only could they confiscate any local company servers and equipment, but the way some of the US-France treaties are written, they could potentially do the same here (if any of the French managed to somehow play on US servers). Some of our century old treaties with them might apply.
At the very least, France could shut down Coh in their domestic market. At the very worst, if France was feeling a bit froggy, they could ask the US to enforce one of these old treaties and shut down all NCSoft games in the US.
The latter seems unlikely, but does show that the presence of Nazi's in the game could tie up NCSoft in years of a costly court battle. I am sure if you are a dev, you have your corporate lawyers yelling and screaming at you about the risk of launching in Europe as is, so you just pull the Nazi's out. You have other things to worry about, llike a declining sub base and at the time, a probably pretty expensive lawsuit with Marvel.
Its a pretty complicated subject, and one for the international business lawyers to argue. I am not sure we have too many of them posting on this board, however.