MetaCreations | Press Releases

America OnLine Abandons Loyal Subscriber Base. 80,000+ MetaSquares Fans Soon To Be Gameless

Carpinteria, August 14, 1997 (NAB)-- Yesterday, AOL posted a notice of discontinuation on the splash screen (containing a glaring typo) of the MetaSquares Game area announcing the abrupt termination of MetaSquares effective September 1, 1997, unilaterally without any contact or consultation with MetaCreations officials.

MetaCreations wishes to apologize for the thoughtless way in which our loyal fans and followers were notified about AOL's decision, not ours, to discontinue the MetaSquares game area for approximately 80,000 Mac and Windows-based subscribers.

Furthermore, AOL's decision to begin charging MetaCreations excessive fees to maintain our online, free support forums and creative chat rooms will result in the company moving all forums, chats, techniques & tips, etc. to our soon to be launched web site [www.metacreations.com] which is currently being revamped and expanded as a result of the recent merger between MetaTools and Fractal Design.

As early supporters of AOL, MetaTools and Fractal Design helped to attract tens of thousands of new subscribers for the fledgling online service within the computer graphics pros and general artistic community. Our support of AOL also included distributing thousands of free AOL enrollment disks to our own customer base. The development and placement of MetaSquares on AOL was done at MetaCreations' expense, while generating hundreds of thousands of hours of subscriber online fees for AOL.

We are dismayed that AOL has chosen to notify our customers that it is dropping MetaSquares in a non-consultative manner which has been disruptive to our friends and colleagues who have enjoyed the game. In addition, AOL's demands that we begin to pay excessive fees when none were previously charged, has accelerated our drive to migrate our entire virtual community of computer graphics enthusiasts to our World Wide Web environment as quickly as possible.

All other options for how to keep MetaSquares available for loyal fans in other virtual game environments are being explored. AOL, this simply is no way to treat the companies and customers who have helped to build your business.

     John Wilczak              Kai Krause            Mark Zimmer
Chief Executive Officer  Chief Design Officer  Chief Technical Officer
     and Founder               and Founder           and Founder
     MetaCreations             MetaCreations         MetaCreations