Official: Stillfront Q2, Record Gemstone Profits

[Methais]

Full priced game + microtransactions is Origin/EA territory!

A $15-40 ($50 for Plat) per month subscription + microtransactions is even worse than Origin/EA, is it not?

And who thought some small time bullshit like GS could out-worse Electronic Arts?

[Whirlin]

A $15-40 ($50 for Plat) per month subscription + microtransactions is even worse than Origin/EA, is it not?

And who thought some small time bullshit like GS could out-worse Electronic Arts?

More of an expectation difference when you're buying a physical (albeit, that's a bit antiquated at this point), supposedly completed game, versus paying a subscription to play. Less of a concrete $ difference.

[Stumplicker]

A $15-40 ($50 for Plat) per month subscription + microtransactions is even worse than Origin/EA, is it not?

And who thought some small time bullshit like GS could out-worse Electronic Arts?

The model is not really terrible until you consider where and how prevalent the microtransactions get. More and more paywalls go up, more and more gambling systems. That's where it gets bad. Subscription+ is not a terrible model even when compared to MMOs, because MMOs generally get quick infusions of cash by charging for expansions, which Simutronics has never done. Their sole income other than the Microtransactions is the subscriptions. The problematic model comes in where they take pages out of the books of all the worst microtransaction systems to take advantage of addled gambling addicts while alienating over time the bulk of the playerbase with paywalls.

[Methais]

More of an expectation difference when you're buying a physical (albeit, that's a bit antiquated at this point), supposedly completed game, versus paying a subscription to play. Less of a concrete $ difference.

Until you remember that there are still basic things, like spell lists, that are still incomplete after 30 years with little to no priority put on them, while pay2win dev is nonstop and manages to get everything completed on time.

The model is not really terrible until you consider where and how prevalent the microtransactions get. More and more paywalls go up, more and more gambling systems. That's where it gets bad. Subscription+ is not a terrible model even when compared to MMOs, because MMOs generally get quick infusions of cash by charging for expansions, which Simutronics has never done. Their sole income other than the Microtransactions is the subscriptions. The problematic model comes in where they take pages out of the books of all the worst microtransaction systems to take advantage of addled gambling addicts while alienating over time the bulk of the playerbase with paywalls.

Yeah. I was referring to Simu's model in particular. I should have specified that.

[Alashir]

More of an expectation difference when you're buying a physical (albeit, that's a bit antiquated at this point), supposedly completed game, versus paying a subscription to play. Less of a concrete $ difference.

What does this even mean? GSIV has the largest sub requirement of any game I've ever heard of with paid events AND expensive microtrans events. By nearly any way of measuring GSIV/Simu seem far more despicable than the likes of EA/Origin and even someone like Bobby Kotick.

[Alashir]

Well, no... it's not JUST semantics.

Now that Whatley is out of the payroll, We know at a bare minimum Wyrom and Chris are still there. The rest are volunteers per everyone's assertions. However, I'd be surprised is Wyrom + Chris together were making between 480k and 1.1m a year. Per their operating model, and per their financials, we would see an increase in spending and allocation towards the payroll to Gemstone support to meet the group's objectives. Even on the low end, we still see sufficient leftover capital for at least one well paid full time Dev, and/or increasing pay to existing volunteers.

Don't misunderstand, I would love to see a full time, dedicated development person. However, based on just a profit number, there is insufficient information to state whether or not that is occurring. What you're looking to understand is their expenses, but based on the group modeling now that Stillfront is in charge, it looks like we are getting MORE capital reinvested into the game than we were enabled to under Whatley's "oversight".

I don't want to go too in depth here because I think by the time most people are arguing line by line they've lost each other. I originally responded with "semantics" because you appeared to be arguing that simu is still investing while turning a profit. This is technically true but I would argue only by the slimmest of margins. To be honest I had a hard time following your breakdown of the revenue report with your numerous extrapolations, anecdotes, conversions, and assumptions. Without looking at any numbers at any time, I don't think it's unfair to say that GSIV isn't getting its due diligence in the form of money being put back into the game in order to make it something substantially greater tomorrow than it is today. Do I really have to point out basics like unfinished spell circles, classes that have been advertised but not released for years, and perhaps most important of all; the forums and the main website itself.

It's odd to me to hear you defending simu/stillfront because they've done such a horrible job at investing in GSIV but I guess it could be worse so therefore they're not all that bad? I guess it technically could be worse but not by a whole lot.

[Amerek]

Until you remember that there are still basic things, like spell lists, that are still incomplete after 30 years with little to no priority put on them, while pay2win dev is nonstop and manages to get everything completed on time.

This is the very thing that kills me. Simu is efficiently turning Gemstone into a richly text-edited casino game. Their idea of game development is to change the stat names and add a few more meaningless races to the roster.

As an aside, can someone explain to me how the fuck we ended up with Aelotoi and Erithrians in my Tolkien genre video game? What brilliant mind squeezed out this gentle fart of an idea and thought it was an improvement? More than that, who the fuck agreed with them?

They should seriously discontinue these species altogether. Yeah, just go ahead and call me racist.

[Gelston]

This is the very thing that kills me. Simu is efficiently turning Gemstone into a richly text-edited casino game. Their idea of game development is to change the stat names and add a few more meaningless races to the roster.

As an aside, can someone explain to me how the fuck we ended up with Aelotoi and Erithrians in my Tolkien genre video game? What brilliant mind squeezed out this gentle fart of an idea and thought it was an improvement? More than that, who the fuck agreed with them?

They should seriously discontinue these species altogether. Yeah, just go ahead and call me racist.

At least they don't talk in broken common anymore.

[Tgo01]

I also wonder how much of that "investment" back into GS comes in the form of compensation from pay events/microtransactions. What I mean is we know the GMs get a cut of these paid events/microtransactions so it incentivizes them to work on those projects in lieu of other projects. So if these paid events/microtransactions never existed I wonder what Simu's overhead would look like compared to what it is now, something tells me the percentage of their overhead would be lower. So it's not so much they are investing more back into GS, it's probably more like they are paying their GMs more now but that extra work they are doing is going towards pay events/microtransactions.

[Godsanvil]

You're misinterpreting profit... Reinvestment comes as an expense, which is calculated BEFORE profit. So by turning a profit, that's the leftover cash AFTER any investments.


If you can keep selling shit, and if people keep paying for shit, you'll keep making shit, why invest in shit +1 if they're happy buying shit? If the market continues to bear any changes that you've implemented, you're fine.

So they go tell their friends. "hey this is good shit come try it!" Then the friends come and say "hey this is good shit! I am going to tell my friends!" Then you grow your business. You don't grow by just feeding mediocre shit to people for as long as they will eat it. Then just letting your business die. Thats like the stupidest business model ever.