Psst... did you check?

[Loveless]

Well, if they have enough regular CS buyers then they may eventually be able to hire their own dev team to fix bugs. Hey, it might happen y'know?


*trying to be optimistic about cs* .__.

[Ulrike]

I filled it out. Hopefully it will expedite the shift of our cash shop towards BK's or Shine's

[Pritcher]

People keep saying that people have to support them by purchasing from the cash shop so that they can afford to make the game better. Then you also turn around and defend Outspark for the lack of game content saying that they actually have no power to make the game any better, or make any changes at all for that matter. It's a bit of a mixed messege.

So basically then no matter how much money you pump into them it isn't going to affect the actual gameplay at all since the changes will come how and when they come either way. All the players should feel responsible for is covering all the costs of keeping the game up and running, but those prices don't indicate that to me. They're trying to squeeze as much out of payers as possible, (naturally it is a business), but it's still not fair and seems a bit greedy seeing as all the profit they get doesn't reflect on the game the payers are playing.

Those prices are high, way too high if you ask me. For the price of a few items I could buy a new pay to play game with much more content and a few months of play time. Does it really cost that much to run this little game? I highly doubt it. More likely the cash shop players are just paying to help them launch and host other games that they don't have any control over and so take no responsibility for content-wise. Pretty nice racket really.

Also don't forget that Outspark isn't exactly rubbing pennies together. They've received pretty significant funding. I think I read it was like 4 million dollars for the startup and then they received another 11 million dollars in a second round of funding last month. What are they gonna do with all this funding and any cash shop profits if they can't actually improve the games they host?

[Ulrike]

I've often wondered about that as well, about just how much it costs to run a MMORPG, and just how much is profit for companies like Outspark and Nexon. Back when Everquest was all the rage (which was what? 10 odd years ago? xD), I predicted to my friends that eventually, monthly subscriptions for MMOs would be a thing of the past. Of course back then they all laughed at me, quoting high figures that were definitely not backed up with any source whatsoever, but whatever, we were all middle schoolers.

Fast forward to 2008, and while WoW is still pretty healthy games like Guild Wars and certainly all the "cash shop" style games have kind of made my prediction come true. Maybe if one were to sift through economy journals one would find actual figures on how much these companies require and how much revenue they really generate.

[Ralath]

^Sifting through economy journals trying to find out how much revenue companies generate??

...That sounds fun.

[Ulrike]

lol, I only mention that because when I used to play Maple Story I belonged to a community on livejournal, and one of the users did exactly that and found a paper on Nexon's revenue from MS xD

[Spirit]

The thing, Outspark still has to pay for overhead, payroll, benefit packages for employees, utilities, rent on a building, and other business type expenses. We do not know what the funding is earmarked for. However, there may be requirements on how that money is spent and what it is spent for. I worked at one company, that would receive grants from the government in massive amounts, more than enough to run the company. However, the money could ONLY be spent on certain things. This still left all the other business expenses to be paid for. Our cash shop purchases may go to funding the other things that the funding does not cover.