EVE General Discussion

Original poster (sorry for not memorizing your name,) this right here explains at least a big portion of what White Tree was being vague about. While CCP might not be facing imminent meltdown, there is certainly a huge pot on the table. Assuming that the CSM knows this, it would go a long way towards explaining the brazen actions of the CSM, most prominently by far those of The Mittani. I have to say that the CSM's chosen course of action, while meritorious, does not go far enough. Seems like they could use a little support, and if only someone could do something about that pesky NDA ... not saying that I'm going to do something myself to get around the NDA, I can't do much, I'm just a nobody around here. It would be nice if things could go from muddy to crystal clear, though.

We are just going to have to agree to disagree. I have been gaming for over 25 years and I've never met anyone that buys a game without reading up on it first. I agree that trials work in a way that allows you to ignore reading up (since their is no cost) to just try a game but even on a trial I think the majority of players are going to pop on the internet and read up on a game. At least every person I have ever met has.

I agree that internet jiberish isn't a defining factor, but just to give you an example Star Wars Old Republic is being reported as "sucking" by beta testers. For me that game went from must have to wait for the trial. So jiberish or not, to me if people playing the game report it as sucking my credit card becomes very shy and doesn't want to come.

Bad press hurts.. a game gets a bad review ... less people will buy it. Its just how it works. Im sure there are people who walk into a game store, grab a game of the shelf and buy it based on the cover art, but does people are not likely to do that for very long as the sting of buying a crappy game a few times is usually sufficient to get most people to bring up a browser and read up on a game before spending money on it. Its especially true for MMO's. I mean I wouldn't perosnally even bother with a trial until I have thoroughly reviewed what the game is about and the general reaction to the game. I suppose Im frugal, but I don't buy anything EVER based on screenshots, thats just crazy to me.

They had 11M in the bank on January one. They also had a 10M a year burn rate. Should everything stay the same they would have maybe 3M left in the bank come the time to repay the loan on October 28.

Then we heard of no layoff etc so their expenses should stay the same or increase, while it seems subscription numbers took a plunge (if logged in players are correlated, which they always have been) so their burn rate may have increased as their revenue fell. Loss of subscription revenue could be offset by the :awesome: success of the monocle store OTOH.

No way to know still we get their 2011 annual report during the 2012 summer I guess , since CCP chose not to communicate on the issue (which is fine for a company that's isn't publicly traded).

Well Iceland has the same laws as we do here in Sweden when it comes to financial records, so come January we will get a look at those financials and we will know how it wall went down. Until than its mostly speculation. Hopefully whatever it is won't result in any lay off or downsizing or anything. Things are bad enough in the economy, i would hate to see my favorite MMO fail.

At some point after sleeping (and not now because I'm getting a bit punchy) I will probably go back to the OP and adjust my language on the financials point because that seems to be where I'm taking the most flack.

My experience with "burn rate" terminology is confined largely to project management (EVM), which is significantly different (but fundamentally the same thing). I appreciate your pointing out to me where exactly burn rate is being derived from in IFRS parlance.

The accounts have been gone over repeatedly by people who do this for a living.

The consensus amongst them was that Eve was stunningly profitable; CCP were burning cash on dev work (and the resultant issues with counting it as capex); CCP are cash-poor and being an internet company based out of Iceland does not help (for example they had to start paying staff in Euros after the crash - that required a loan too).

We're not making this stuff up you know?

I'm still not sure you're getting what Iceland is like now but you're on the way....

We don't whinge for the sake of it - well some do - but because we are bloody annoyed. If we didn't give a toss we wouldn't be here.

My personal opinion is that CCP will (eventually) pull the plug on WoD. Pulling the plug on Dust would make more sense long-term (WoD will sell better) but they got into bed with Sony on Dust so there's bound to be some dev cash repayable if they pull that and they can't afford that now.

We'll see.

Very nice post, if a bit lengthy. As others have mentioned, the tl;dr crowd is missing out on a worthwhile read.

I do find it interesting that, unless a person is intimately familiar with the mechanics and politics of nullsec first hand, said person is considered to not really be able to have a legitimate opinion on the behavior of those who are involved. While I may or may not agree with the OP on every point concerning CCP and CSM, his ideas seeeeeem to be emphasizing the behavior of the playerbase a little more than the behavior of the others (though yes, he has spoken quite a bit on CCP/CSM).

But the prevailing attitude of "you can't talk, b/c you're not personally involved in xyz ingame" is silly, imo. This ideology would mean the termination of jobs for counselors of all kinds, since they speak directly of the situations of their patients without themselves being directly involved. I'm not speaking here of relative education or certification; only the idea of speaking on a matter out of observation without direct participation.

It's best to judge the argument based on the merits of the argument alone, and give the reasons why you can or cannot be in favor of it (unless, ofc, you are legally bound to remain vague). BTW, if/when someone tells me something incorrect about a given type of nuclear reactor, I can tell them they are incorrect, but I am legally bound to remain vague on certain things. Just sayin'.

I love the avatar. 8. owait, wrong thread.