They take all my money

[krogfan]

If 100 % is your salary before taxes then its very possible that your total costs for your employer is 132- 150 %, but you calculated with 200 % = twice your salary which seems clearly to much

If youre rounding stuff up around the net salery after taxes for the employee is doubled as a cost for the Company (slight more)

If normal salery that is and not superhigh then its more taxes

 

[Fifth]

So that means not only is the company making no money, but neither are the employees. I would say MindArk as greedy evil empire is "myth busted".

Yeah, true. There's been lot of ppl who never bother to look at the numbers and have taken this claim quite literally. I never thought it's true literally. It's obvious the situation is actually as unfortunate for the company as it is for it's customers...

When I say "MA is greedy" I only want to point out that MA has played itself into corner. Project Entropia had a huge increase in playerbase year after year, right up to the engine switch. At VU9 it was at it's absolute peak. If the decision makers would have realized this is their chance to go big, really BIG!
But regretfully at this point the ppl at the top were not the original team (ppl who had the vision and could dream big) any more. The new owners didn't realize their incredible success was not all they could have achieved.
At this point there was a very real chance to further stimulate the growth by starting to gradually decrease the average cost to play as the playerbase grows. There was a very real chance to bring the average cost down to the level of subscription based games or even lower. RCE with it's promise to withdraw and a possibility to make profit combined with low cost to play - it was a formula for going viral and conquer the market, literally.

But those ppl weren't the original team any more, they didn't know how to think big. They just saw it as success, and became sloppy... and greedy. They decided now they have enough money to buy a big ass new engine--a terrible mistake. After this disaster they never really recovered and the chance to go big was gone.

That's what I really mean when I say "MA's too greedy". It says more about the past mistakes than the unfortunate situation we find ourselves today.

 

[syntax]

Yeah, true. There's been lot of ppl who never bother to look at the numbers and have taken this claim quite literally. I never thought it's true literally. It's obvious the situation is actually as unfortunate for the company as it is for it's customers...

When I say "MA is greedy" I only want to point out that MA has played itself into corner. Project Entropia had a huge increase in playerbase year after year, right up to the engine switch. At VU9 it was at it's absolute peak. If the decision makers would have realized this is their chance to go big, really BIG!
But regretfully at this point the ppl at the top were not the original team (ppl who had the vision and could dream big) any more. The new owners didn't realize their incredible success was not all they could have achieved.
At this point there was a very real chance to further stimulate the growth by starting to gradually decrease the average cost to play as the playerbase grows. There was a very real chance to bring the average cost down to the level of subscription based games or even lower. RCE with it's promise to withdraw and a possibility to make profit combined with low cost to play - it was a formula for going viral and conquer the market, literally.

But those ppl weren't the original team any more, they didn't know how to think big. They just saw it as success, and became sloppy... and greedy. They decided now they have enough money to buy a big ass new engine--a terrible mistake. After this disaster they never really recovered and the chance to go big was gone.

That's what I really mean when I say "MA's too greedy". It says more about the past mistakes than the unfortunate situation we find ourselves today.

I agree. They have never recovered from the huge cost of the CryEngine port (IIRC, around 80mil). I think that decision was based on the desire to "go big" as you say, I just think it was the wrong decision at the wrong time. Certainly Gamebryo was spiraling the drain and in order to move forward they had to move to something else. Why they chose CryEngine is a mystery, I can only guess that at the time Unreal Engine was either too expensive or too complicated, even though it clearly would have been the better choice for an MMO. Regardless, I think they should have held out just a bit longer and built the player base more, as you said, and worked on innovating the mechanics further. Then they should have hired a competent CTO that would have been able to guide them better towards newer tech.

It's not just past mistakes either. Take a look at the rather shortsighted Compet venture. Having worked in the brutal mobile market, I can tell you that it's all about ad spend. There are mainly 4 companies that own the market, and you have to put down a very large wad of bills to get anywhere. If MindArk can't market their flagship product properly, I don't see how they stand a chance in mobile. I won't even mention all of the shortcomings in the game itself. In the end, this will have been another waste of time and resources that they may or may not recover from.

So no, they aren't sitting on piles of cash laughing at our bad loot. I see them as a struggling company trying to stay alive and recover from continuous bad business decisions.

 

[KyrismaStarsong]

I agree. They have never recovered from the huge cost of the CryEngine port (IIRC, around 80mil). I think that decision was based on the desire to "go big" as you say, I just think it was the wrong decision at the wrong time. Certainly Gamebryo was spiraling the drain and in order to move forward they had to move to something else. Why they chose CryEngine is a mystery, I can only guess that at the time Unreal Engine was either too expensive or too complicated, even though it clearly would have been the better choice for an MMO. Regardless, I think they should have held out just a bit longer and built the player base more, as you said, and worked on innovating the mechanics further. Then they should have hired a competent CTO that would have been able to guide them better towards newer tech.

It's not just past mistakes either. Take a look at the rather shortsighted Compet venture. Having worked in the brutal mobile market, I can tell you that it's all about ad spend. There are mainly 4 companies that own the market, and you have to put down a very large wad of bills to get anywhere. If MindArk can't market their flagship product properly, I don't see how they stand a chance in mobile. I won't even mention all of the shortcomings in the game itself. In the end, this will have been another waste of time and resources that they may or may not recover from.

So no, they aren't sitting on piles of cash laughing at our bad loot. I see them as a struggling company trying to stay alive and recover from continuous bad business decisions.

This is why people finally get fed up and call it quits. The same dumb mistakes over and over and over again, let alone the constant bugs, and fixes that never happen, broken promises, incomplete content, etc.