After hearing about this, i'd thought i check out these forums. First thing i noticed was my eyeballs searing at the colour scheme. Second thing was that the staff that worked on EHM are now working on FM.

Which i'm pretty happy about. I'm sorry lads, we know the effort you put in, but i'm always going to be an ardent FM fan, and this can only mean good things for the game i love.

Zeke - Each version of NHL:EHM sold more than 8,000 copies. The first (the best selling) sold many multiples of that and still didn't come close to breaking even.

We made 3 versions of EHM. Each lost money. The third lost too much to have any chance of recouping the full amount with a fourth. As Graeme said above, "the decision is a no-brainer".

To be fair I saw lots of banner ads, that's probably because I'd part of SEGA/SI's target audience and went to those websites.

I remember seeing banner ads on hfboards and I think tsn.ca, nhl.com...hmm

There was that partnership deal with hockeysfuture

I read a news article where they were selling it at a CHL (Central Hockey League) game as a fundraiser

http://oursportscentral.com/services/releases/?id=3416071

I remember when the first one came out they had some ads at a junior hockey league rink although I don't know what happened to them.

quote:

Originally posted by Zorbane:

I read a news article where they were selling it at a CHL (Central Hockey League) game as a fundraiser

http://oursportscentral.com/services/releases/?id=3416071

Yep, good on the Riverkings. Too bad the game is over- I would have liked to hear the Riverqueen fans blast me for screwing up their favorite players

I'm surprised people mention greed from SI and SEGA. Surely if both parties are greedy, they'd just assign Graeme/Riz to the title for a couple of months to update the competitions/start date etc and re-release each year. Slowly but surely milking any sales from the fans of the game. I can think of one such company which has done similar.

Other companies seem to be able to make games that are not pirated or very difficult to pirate. Perhaps SI could have learned from them.

I wonder if there's any chance this could become an open-source game so that anyone could try to improve it?

Damn, this really sucks.

Don't know what else I can add. I'm a huge fan of this game... seem to have been waiting my whole life for it, but never held out much hope of ever seeing such a game on the Mac.

Then, out of the blue, I saw a brief article in 2004 on a Mac game site (Inside Mac Games) and immediately dropped what I was doing to head over here.

I imported the game the day it was available from Gameplay.co.uk to the US (cost me about $80... small price to play). Left work early when my wife told me the package arrived at home. Fell in love with it immediately.

Pre-ordered and imported 2005 from Gameplay as well. Another $80. STILL well worth it.

This season, I was lucky enough to be allowed to be a tester, and I did what I could given my hectic work schedule. Loved this version even more than the others.

So much so, that even though I was entitled to a free copy, I bought it anyway to support SI and the gang who were so dedicated.

I'm deeply saddened by this... even though it's 'just' a game, and I'm an adult.

I worked in the game industry for 10+ years (Acclaim), so I understand the realities of marketing and game development costs. I had my suspicions about the health of game sales, but was still hoping against hope.

Thanks, guys, for such a wonderful 3 years. You helped carry me through the damned lockout, gave me a game that I actually loved playing for 3+ years. I'll play as long as esellerate allows me to (damn, now I wish there was a disc option so I wouldn't have to worry about activation in the future).

As for the future, if the community creates new databases, will they work on the Mac? I never had time to try the unfaking databases or any other alternative databases... how hard is it to get them to work on the Mac?

Thanks, guys. I wish things were different, and I wish you had more to show for all your efforts. Such a shame. But such is life, eh?

Best of luck in the future. I'll play EHM as long as I can. And, I'll try and support you with OOTP/Mac. If I can tear myself away from EHM!

Be proud of what you accomplished!

Riz,

I just emailed marc and like I said I'm not worried about it I think it was only $10 more. I still think it could of done a lot better in North America if it was given a proper chance but we are fat lazy bastards that has the attention span of a slap shot. We want eye candy lots of fast paced action we don't want to think about management matters.

But this eye candy on EA sports is just way too DAMN EASY TO WIN! The NFL football manager is a joke and haven't touched madden in at least six years now. I am not like most NA's I want to THINK and plan and see what happens if Crosby and Alex ARE on the same team. While the management is tedious at times, I can easily delegate it (the ai coach is better than me anyway) and build on the future. I also like to play the european leagues and will edeventually go to the younger canadien teams and see how I do there. This is what sets you apart from EA don't be like them make it a challenge.

Oh also for the fans on here looking for another excellent sports simulation Title Bout Boxing has well exceeded my expectations plus the fans there are like they are here editors, new boxers hot discussions (and in fact I think TB and OOTP are in some kind of a joint development)

And like I said before BUD SELIG HAS TO GO! We all KNOW that Barry Bozo will not get suspended for 25 games (unchallenged positive test on amptheamines I think it was) so he can have his tainted record. Selig is a moron and has ruined baseball in my eyes for good (which is why I will not play the roidball ootp offers but it is a decent game though when I liked baseball)

wow I'm extremely devastated.

Is there anything that we could do? Things like a donation drive etc.?

I just wanted to put in my thanks for all of the amazing work, dedication, and passion that was put into this game by all of the developers. The fact that EHM got as far as it did, from freeware to now, is amazing. I have treasured each version of this game and have gotten more entertainment from it than I like to admidt. And I will continue to.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Horrible news, even if not wholly surprising.

Thank you to everyone who's made one of my little dreams come true (hockey management!), and inspired me to actually try coding again... now I'm a green half-decent vb.net coder (as a part of my regular job) for my windows workstation support team, instead of having to hire consultants.

Anyway, here's hoping that sales trickle in enough over the next couple of years that someone greenlights EHM 2009 or 2010.

In my opinion, something who could help the sales(not save it, but help somehow) would be to put more attention to online leagues.

EHM is a cult, not because of the game itself, but what it could allow online. Count how many online leagues there is on EHM. I know some people who are in four, five, even seven online leagues with EHM.

People in leagues tend to recruit friends in their league, so they can compete with them and in the same time, try to "full" the league. I've bring a lot of friends this way in the EHM world and I think it's the same thing for a lot of EHM players.

The big problem with NHL EHM was the lack of online leagues. On fhockey.com, there is only ONE NHL EHM league listed, and it is with EHM 2005. And that's the only one I know.

Playing alone is fun, the game is so deep. But after a while, all you do is trying to be better than the CPU. Playing with friends, with real people, THAT'S the heart of EHM. That's why EHM was so popular, it was not just about managing a team, but beat real people, negociate with real people, you had to manage a team with real people. I don't know many people who play EHM alone, because everybody I know play online.

But with NHL EHM, it is hard to know that you can do that. Almost nothing is written in the manual about that. Yeah, there is a multi-player mode, but in my opinion, it sucks. It is not the good multi-player mode to promote the game. With EHM, it was easy, send your lines, send your instructions via e-mail, bingo! A commisionner will take care of this, simulate and put the gamefile on the web site. For newcomers, it was easy to understand and fhockey.com was full of informations.

Just putting a "How to start an online league?" and "How to play in an online league?" in the manual would helped a lot. Managing is fun, but alone it get boring after a while for many people(like me). With the demo, 6 months was enough for me. I didn't hit the end of the demo(stopped playing when the game was around Christmas). If I didn't found that it was possible to play online like EHM, I would have scrapped the game like I've done with NHL EHM 2004 and 2005.

I'm the president of a EHM league with the fifth season just completed. At the draft last saturday, after I found that EHM 2007 could be played online, I proposed the idea and the demo and you know what? We scrapped the draft, we are scrapping the league, and we are starting a new one with NHL EHM 2007. Voilà! Around 15 new buyers of your game(7 of us already bought the game and the others are looking to buy it).

Go for the old EHM leagues, print them in the face how you can have a lot more fun with NHL EHM. Create NHL EHM leagues, because the urge to have 30 DG will incite DG to recruit, and when somebody is interested, that's mean a new buyer. Many people are in online leagues, not to manage a team, but to have a competition with people, have fun with real people. It is first for the social side, managing a team comes second. Aim for the social side.

Finally, I'm not so devastated, because this type of game take years before having success. If NHL EHM leagues become popular, you're gonna have your sales.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention.

I was curious about the story of piracy ruining the sales, but I found that is false.

It's simple, NHL EHM has not been cracked to this day. Sure, there is 2 crack existing, but they only remove the Try and Buy window. When you hit the 6 months in the game(I tried an auto-simulate), it still ask to purchase the demo, even with the crack.

Yeah, there is a lot of copy of NHL EHM on pirate sites and torrent sites, but they are all copy of the demo without the try and buy screen. The game has not been fully cracked yet.

I don't say this to promote pirating, but just to say that piracy is not a cause of the poor sales because no illegal copy exists!

...the hell? No more?

All I can say, guys, is thanks an extra million. You must have known this was going down long ago and you still sweated through 3.0.2 and 3.0.3, to leave us with the best possible game. That's above and beyond.

Pirates may not have cracked the whole thing open, but those torrent sites still hurt sales because people looking for the easy way out aren't going to buy an activation package for a stolen demo copy. !@%&%# bozo thieves killed our game. Aw, hell, it's worth the yellow card - ****ing stooge pirates.

**two minutes, unsportsmanlike conduct** But I'll go to the box proud.

I'm severely disappointed by the news... but business is definitely business. I guess when I get tired of 2007 I'll get my life back and forget about it.

Its really too bad... Hockey is a fascninating world and EHM was a great start at a management series. Undestandably, management titles aren't that popular in the world of gaming.

I agree with Doublefruit about the lack of online play.

If we could have gotten even a 30 GM limit for all NHL teams that would have helped EHM grow so much

p.s. not wanting to get into a fight about why it was set to 16 I already read about it

Well, i got home from school today and got the bad news, i think the best word to describe my feelings is "shock". I simply can't believe that it's ending. I kinda assumed that the game would always continue.

More than anything else i wanna say "THANK YOU!!". This game has been amazing and i have had some great times playing it. It really sucks that it's getting shut down but Thank You! Thank You so much to everyone who ever contributed to this game. I'll have to find another procrastination tool i guess next year but i guess there's always the hope that one day it starts up again.

Once again, Thank You for creating the greatest game that i've ever played. I'll definitely miss it.

Just read the news over at Ars Technica, I have to say I'm shocked... I've played the freeware on PC and now that I switched to Mac, I was glad to be able to buy that game in September. I haven't played that much since then, maybe 4 seasons, because of lack of time, but I knew I had already my money worth. Looks like I'll have to play with that game for a long time... I'm really sad for you guys, I wish you the best for whatever you'll be doing next. EHM is dead, long live EHM !

Oh! Well the development cost are staggering than... if more than +8000 copies are needed to be sold more.

Considering how small the developing team is that amount of copies is at least 250 000 euros short of breaking even! .

This just makes me sad!
I've been playing since Riz's freeware version and bought all 3 games at first day I could.

As a finnish person hockey is much more interesting than football, so I really feel shamed that sale numbers dropped in scandinavia so badly.

Can't find anything positive about this day...

quote:

Originally posted by GMO:
Other companies seem to be able to make games that are not pirated or very difficult to pirate. Perhaps SI could have learned from them.

All games are pirated heavily, as Miles said FM has almost as bad ratio as EHM, but the size of the base is still enough to be profitable, for EHM this is not the case

quote:

I wonder if there's any chance this could become an open-source game so that anyone could try to improve it?

No, that won't happen.

quote:

Originally posted by Doublefruit:
I don't say this to promote pirating, but just to say that piracy is not a cause of the poor sales because no illegal copy exists!

Fascinating. Those 'Russian versions' of EHM 2005 that kept popping up on eBay were just empty boxes, then?

quote:

Originally posted by JeffR:

quote:

Originally posted by Doublefruit:
I don't say this to promote pirating, but just to say that piracy is not a cause of the poor sales because no illegal copy exists!

Fascinating. Those 'Russian versions' of EHM 2005 that kept popping up on eBay were just empty boxes, then?

I would assume that he is preferring to EHM2007

Doublefruit you are wrong, there are ways to pirate 07, but not in the traditional sense of downloading a crack like you would with a CD copy.

quote:

Originally posted by B. Stinson:

quote:

But I'm said to say that I never ONCE saw an add for EHM. I never once saw a story about EHM or review about EHM unless I LOOKED for it.

Unfortunately for EHM, I have to say this is the case for me, too. The only reviews I've seen were one's that people on here linked to. And the only ads I've ever seen were all on this official SI site. ...Never saw a single EHM mention anywhere in the mainstream world.

Perhaps a little unfair, we had decent coverage in a few Canadian newspapers and our stuff via the Canadian Press association went out across the wires into every website possible.