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What SOE is really doing (Katrina "relief")
cabalist
Member Posts: 162
They figured out how to claim a huge tax deduction on certain customers (the ones they can claim as being in the gulf area) lost since late 2005 by using the pretext that they all haven't been back due to the Katrina disaster (and not because of the NGE).
The proof that this is what SOE has actually been doing is in this:
Despite all the claims of SWG having more subs than they've had in a long time, and that it's "growing", you've not seen ANY tangible proof of it, not in quantifiable numbers released, or more importantly IN INCREASED RESOURCES for game development.
Indeed, over that period, you've seen the publish cycle slow to a rate even slower than the slow rates of 2006. To the point that so far, 2007 has only had TWO major publishes in 9 months!
Note that a number of my recent suspensions and bannings over there came from pointing this fact out, so clearly they are sensitive to it. You know you are over the target when you start receiving flak...
Were the numbers legitimately up (as in actually giving them additional revenue rather than this smoke and mirrors tax scheme to claim extra losses to offset other income) you are damn straight SOE would have put more dev resources into SWG. They'd be crazy not to given the precarious state their whole company is in. You know they'd LOVE to be able to claim that in the end, they were right, and the NGE did get them more subscribers and revenue.
What has actually happened is that they've used the Katrina disaster as a scam to actually claim a portion of their NGE subscriber loss as a tax deduction for charitable activity! Take 13,000 and multiply that by $14.99/month since August 2005 and you have a serious chunk of change SOE is realizing as a big tax savings as a "charitable" contribution.
It doesn't get more cynical than that.
Comments
the IRS shall hear of this!
You know, cabalist, I enjoy your posts. You are incredibly rabid and unapologetic in your hatred of SOE, but much of what you write shows some real consideration and thought. But I think this is over the top, even for you
You are suggesting SOE has committed federal tax fraud. And you wonder why you've been banned from the official forums? Do you even have one tiny piece of evidence to support this supposition?
Not that I care if you do, exactly. But you should be aware you are crossing into libel territory. I'd bet MMORPG.com wouldn't want to be associated with that. I'd hate to loose your entertaining posts.
Wow Cabalist - that sure is a whole lot of fancy speculating going on there. You raise a great point about development resources though. I think it's a good indication of the health (or lack thereof) of Galaxies. It's not like the title is so completed that there's little else to do with it. It needs work, and it clearly is starved for development resources. There's no way that would be true for a title that was doing great.
SWG Team Mtg.
Except, like stated above, such a charitable contribution would be tax fraud. Claiming a donation of that magnitude as charitable would require it be to a federally registered charitable organization, which something as nebulous as "Katrina victims" is not. Nice "I spend too much time thinking about how much I hate SOE" post though.
Would you like your order of tin foil hats in paper or plastic bags?
Honestly who cares if they claimed tax deductions on it or not every signal company or individual that donated to Katrina relief all would claim it under charitable tax deductions. Though the idea that they did is somewhat strange considering they didn't donate money to anything by allowing victims to have free accounts. Are you sure they even did this or are you just speculating out of your dislike for SOE?
By the way we sell our tin foil hats plain or custom painted!
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!
Tinfoil hat aside, is the number of people they claim from katrina related area to be 13,000 subscribers? Somehow I can't see that many active subscribers from such a small area considering the overall state of the game. Now or back during katrina.
It could make for some creative accounting if they could write off the loss of those subscriptions/additional expense somehow though. I bet it could be wrangled to make the whole game show as a loss to offset revenues from other parts of the company or some such. If the game was tanking already then showing it tank by an additional 13k people cost/loss would be an overall revenue boost.
I'm not saying it is true and certainly not a charity, but it doesn't sound to far fetched to be 100% honest.
It's not tax fraud. It is an accounting trick. It's unethical though, especially how they are spinning it in PR, both as increased sub numbers they claim but won't substantiate, and as charitable Katrina "relief" without substance (ie: the guy who found out the hard way).There is a lot that is unethical that isn't illegal.
A training course in that is probably required for all new Sony employees.
Regardless of whether this true or not, some of you are acting as if companies are oh so trustworthy. Stuff like this happens ALL THE TIME and guess what? The companies get away with it.
Just because it SOUNDS like some kind of vast conspiracy theory, doesn't mean it doesn't occur. Truth being stranger than fiction and all...
One "rumor" leaked awhile back (early 2006) was that LEC was auditing SOE's Dev logs... That they felt that SOE was using SWG Devs for other things (such as the DCMMO) yet charging their time to SWG.
All sorts of things are possible when you don't have to disclose details of your operations. Since SOE is part of Sony, which is a publicly traded company I am surprised that they get away without having to release breakdowns of expenditures, balance sheets, and profits and loss in that division... I work for a public company, and we have to release breakdowns of all our subsidiaries every quarter.
It seems to me that Sarbanes-Oxley would require a LOT more transparency at SOE than actually exists... NCSoft, for example, has to release ACTUAL sub numbers, because they are a public company. Since SOE is part of one, I'd think they'd have to do the same.
Then again, Sony frequently flouts the law and gets away with it (rootkit scandal, their part in the CD price fixing scams, etc).
As Sony moves closer and closer to bankruptcy, shareholders will eventually hold their feet to the fire (the US legal system) over stuff like this.
SOE does something nice to some people distraught and you guys flame them for ending it two years later?
I'm a firm beliver in ranting when ranting is due but I also stop to see the good things that these companies do.
SOE changed some game play, get over it they're not any more evil or corrupt than any other mmorpg producer.
SOE didn't do a darn thing nice for Katrina victims. They just claimed they had in a press release.
SOE didn't make or claim to make a donation to any Katrina victums. They stopped the reoccuring monthy charges until the account was logged in after katrina. I'm sure that IF they did infact lose 13,000 accounts as a result of Katrina that they would have claimed it as a loss. I'm also sure they would have had to show that they had that many subscribers that were possibly effected by the hurricane. Keep in mind that Katrina hit on the Mississippi/Louisiana line but reached from Alabama to the middle of Louisiana. It's possible that 13,000 accounts were effected. I was able to log onto my accounts about three weeks after Katrina and cancle them about three months later when the NGE hit.
I don't claim to be right, I'm just posting.
My theroy is that they simply counted every account on the gulf coast they had in 2005 that never logged in again as "Katrina victims" and wrote off their charity in "maintaining their accounts until they logged in" as corporate "goodwill" and hence tax deductable.
In other words, they recovered in a tax deduction 13K of the lost subs for 2 years that most likely left because of the NGE.
It's simply incredible how hypocrite and ignorant people can be. Please stop posting nonsense on a game site , the following should also not be on a game site but it seems some of you really need to get some perspective !!!!!!!
Government Failed The People http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/06/opinion/schieffer/main818486.shtml
Lawsuit alleges feds failed Katrina victims http://www.equaljusticesociety.org/press_2005_dec1_baystatebanner.html
Lack of leadership has failed Katrina victims http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Aug/29/op/hawaii708290367.html
FEMA fails Katrina victims http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-09-05-fema_x.htm
THAT is your problem right there. All you people still stuck in the past think SWG is all SOE ever did. It's 13k subscribers are for ALL it's games. Not just SWG. And to the OP.. my god.. seriously go harass Kerry with your conspiracy theories.
THAT is your problem right there. All you people still stuck in the past think SWG is all SOE ever did. It's 13k subscribers are for ALL it's games. Not just SWG. And to the OP.. my god.. seriously go harass Kerry with your conspiracy theories.
Couldnt agree more its NOT JUST SWG stopped the katrina payments where stopped for it was ALL soe games all of em..the lot..do you see???????
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=168257,00.html
Form 3949-A
You can remain anonymous.
Instructions are on the back of the document.
Information you will need for the form can be found here:
http://www.sandiego.bbb.org/commonreport.html?compid=11000350
and this as a guide:
An estimate on tax deductible charitable donation:
Based on a monthly fee of $12.00 per account (which is $143.99 divided by 12 months)
TY2005 Sept-Dec approximately $624,000 USD
TY2006 Jan-Dec - approximately $1.872million USD
TY2007 Jan-Sept - approximately $1.248million USD.
All approximates, not all 13,000 accounts may have been active, the actual monthly fee may have been higher if month by month.
Total estimated tax deductible of SOE for Katrina Victims over this 2 year period since
4.368 million USD (on the low end of an estimate)
If you do not stand-up for what you believe in... No one else will.
BBB=Useless see why:
http://www.sandiego.bbb.org/sponsors/major.html
THAT is your problem right there. All you people still stuck in the past think SWG is all SOE ever did. It's 13k subscribers are for ALL it's games. Not just SWG. And to the OP.. my god.. seriously go harass Kerry with your conspiracy theories.
I stand corrected as I thought it was just SWG, thanks for clearing that up.However, please stop confusing me with "people" who are stuck in the past. Just because I had a misconception on something doesn't mean you are free to make them about me. I have sadly tried every title they have put out for the PC.
This may be the most rediculous thread I have ever read. Some of you guys have stooped to an all-time new low with your pathetic hate for a company.
You are making yourselves look worse than SOE....
As you guys always say " WHERE'S THE PROOF?" w/o anything to back up your idiotic claims it's nothing more than watercooler talk.
Do any of you work in the accounting or tax department for SOE?????
Yep did'nt think so. Have a nice day.
Cabalist smells like Wildcat
I think cabalist brings up a very interesting point in all this, quite aside from the Katrina "relief" program.
That it's possible SOE was using dev time charged to SWG for other projects. One of SOE's habits is to move developers around from one of their game properties to another, seemingly at the drop of a hat. We know that there's been nearly complete turnover in SWG developers over the last four years.
Moving developers from property to property to put out fires is a sign of very poor management. Allowing devs to be with one project and work it through, providing some institutional memory (the reason this works the way it does is because...) can strengthen the overall project tremendously, but SOE seems to move people around fluidly. It may very well be that developers are "on the books" for one project, but their actual work output is for another. This would not surprise me a bit. It might also be that there is no "internal billing" for dev time, when someone in marketing wants something done for their own purposes, they don't bear the cost, if you will, of moving a dev from not so hot property to hot property, creating a situation where the true costs of hot property project are not reflected in the billing of developer time. I've seen this happen in small companies where technical workers' time is diverted to deal with some sales guy's pet project away from their ostensible duties and the organization as a whole suffers because their is no internal accountability. Fighting the fires of the marketdroids and suits overcomes actually dealing with the needs of ALL customers. Again, this is an indicator of poor management.
SWG has revised its web page how many times, while bugs in the game have gone unattended to? The fact of the matter is that SOE management is far more concerned about the facade than the structure, it seems to me. I strongly suspect that Smedley's background is in sales, not engineering...because the resources that went into prettying up the web pages could have been poured into the product itself, but were not.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
It is not an interesting "point" but an interesting "idea." It would be a point if it had any sustainability. And I admit the idea is logical - given what can be observed from the outside and not having any verifiable information to counter those observations. This is why cabalist's stuff is so entertaining and thought-provoking.
But speculation is easy. I submit it is equally probable, with what is known, that, in fact, there has been very little "firefighting" and that dev rotation is a company strategy meant to create a more well-rounded work force, with developers being given time working on many different platforms. Eventually, these developers will be able to move freely among the various projects without so much of a hiccup. The supposed LEC audit was simply part of the normal business functions spelled out in the contract. An audit itself is not a sign of trouble but a common part of any business agreement.
/shrug
Your a Sith!
Good points.
I agree that we're definitely in the realm of speculation here...SOE isn't about to expose its internal practices to outsiders to confirm or deny our speculation. Best to just let us speculate and ignore that we're doing so.
I still think that project management was sorely lacking at SWG, and that Koster, while a great creative guy, is a technical and managerial guy only so far. He could have used a deputy who focused on those areas to bring a discipline to the dev team that Koster might not have been able to. Of course, it's my contention that when SOE kicked Koster upstairs it was probably done for two reasons; he was in the way of some of LA's concepts (playable Jedi, anyone?) and that his technical managerial skills were not adequate for the operations, as opposed to the creation, of the product. The problem was they didn't replace his design leadership skills, and the project lost focus, fast, with no central vision.
However, I think that 'well rounding" employees in the face of seeing your subscription numbers drop precipitously implies nerves of steel. The CU and NGE struck me as quite the opposite of this...more like blind panic to make the game more like WoW as LA was chafed something fierce that their premiere worldwide IP was having the pants beat off it in the MMO arena by those Blizzard guys. Not to mention that Smedley was embarassed that he was no longer #1 in MMOs.
From the in game results, it's obvious to me that moving people around hurt the product. Having a "Smuggler dev" or a "BH dev" makes sense to me...someone who is well versed in the ins and outs of a particular aspect of the game. SOE seems to move people from product to product, which means that the gruel becomes thin. Having jacks of all trades doesn't help much with a complicated product like SWG. It's not like they can't afford to specialize.
Or, it could have been a case of developer burnout. Some of the devs just got too much SWG and needed a change of pace. The catch was bringing in new guys who didn't know what was going on, and it showed when they disregarded existing systems and replaced them outright with very little concern for the consequences. This is why I think code change management is lacking. It seems now like the developers will do anything to avoid bringing back the old ways as they were...they'd rather do brand new things of the same general idea (like Beastmaster) and plop it on top of what is already there, rather than delve into the existing code and make changes. There's no telling what they'll inadvertently break if they do that.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi