On January 25th, merely a week ago, the HoMM community (which quaintly calls itself the ‘HoMMunity’) started a petition drive to delay Ubisoft (disclaimer: ultimately my employer) from launching Heroes of Might and Magic V in it’s current beta state. The gaming community was still smarting in the shorts from “HoMM IV: Ship It, 3DO Needs Cash NOW”. HoMM IV was considered a pale shadow of HoMM III (still considered by many to be one of the finest turn-based strategy games of all time).

The people who ran the notable HoMM community sites felt that the HoMM V beta (which is currently up on FilePlanet) did not bode well for HoMM V’s imminent release. So they not only collected signatures and started email campaigns of press releases to the gaming press, but they also employed an interesting tactic I don’t think I’ve seen used in a game community before: news suppression.

As of 2pm GMT today (Sunday 29th) administrators of the major Heroes of Might and Magic fan sites around the world have signed a News Suppression Pact in protest to a premature release of Heroes of Might and Magic 5.

The pact was signed by Age of Heroes (International), Archangel Castle (France), Behemoth’s Lair (Poland), Castle Gobs (International), Celestial Heavens (International), Drachenwald (Germany), The Genie’s Lamp (International), Guardian’s Grove (International), Heroic Corner (Russia), La Torre de Marfil (Spain) and The Oracle League (International). All other HoMM websites are also invited to join this pact.

As representatives of the online HoMM Community, we, the pact members, strongly believe that Heroes of Might and Magic 5 will not be of sufficient standard and quality if the release is rushed for March 2006. As admirers of HoMM series and supporters of the current Heroes 5 potential, we will not tolerate a blow delivered by the release of an incomplete and unbalanced game.

Apparently, the loss of the support of the Community sites was enough to make the developers rethink their plans, less than 24 hours later.

The producer of Heroes of Might and Magic V, Fabrice Cambounet, has announced today on the official forum that Ubisoft will delay the release of the game.

Ubisoft’s decision means that the development team will have more time to finalize the game, add features and remove bugs. The publisher will not repeat the errors made by 3DO a couple of years ago, but instead deliver a product that is on par with the other Ubisoft games that were released during the past few months. It also means that the voice of the community has been heard, thanks to over 2500 signatures and numerous mentions on gaming news sites. We wish to thank you for the tremendous support you have given us over the past few days. Your feedback about the controversial News Suppression Pact was also very important: it showed us that the community is mature, dedicated to its franchise and able to debate the choice of action that was chosen. We hope you understand that time was running out, that there was still a strong possibility to see Ubisoft confirm the March release date that is still showing on various Web sites, and that it was extremely important to make sure that the Might and Magic series didn’t get another unsuccessful game. Ubisoft also deserves our gratitude. They listened to our requests, understood the reasons behind our petition and committed themselves to creating a game worthy of the Heroes name.

The part that is of interest to me is not, actually, whether or not HoMM V was actually saved, and whether or not it will conquer the world. No, the interesting thing to me is the news suppression tactic. Marketing games nowadays depends so heavily on word of mouth and creating buzz. In network theory terms, reaching centrally-located customers with long reaches to other potential customers is important. What’s interesting here is that those customers all realized it, and used their power as leverage.