Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Official: 415k customers as per Aug 14
octa
Member UncommonPosts: 245
So I decided to write an e-mail to investor@funcom.com asking them to clarify when the customer numbers were polled. They responded fairly quickly:
Hello-
Apologies for any misunderstanding regarding this. The 415k customers is per
August 14.
Best Regards
Olav Sandnes
CFO, Funcom
Mobile: +4792225540
Direct: +4722925962
Skype: osandnes
My original e-mail:
Hello,
I'm looking for information regarding the 415k customers that was noted
in your Q2 '08 financial report. The report does not make it clear if
this number was polled on June 30th or August 14th.
Any clarification would be appreciated, thank you.
Comments
Im sure its just another lie they put out to you mate. We should all know by now that you can not trust Funcom by any means.
As I posted before it is completely obvious that the 415,000 customers was for August 14th. So this comes as no surprise.
Lit
I very highly doubt it, but then again, that is only my personal opinion.
First of all, it is a common practice when forming any kind of report, to take a certain period, being a month, a quarter or a year. I highly doubt they did any numbers "per august 14th".
Second of all, the 2nd quarter financial report lists those exact numbers per june 30th, reported on aug14th when the report was probably audited. I find it highly unlikely that the numbers from june 30th untill aug 14th havent changed at all. Best case I presume is that they are projecting the same number untill they get a new one. Not that whoever is doing the planing and analisys isn't capable of establishing the most likely numbers for the next months, its just that 415k looks better on paper and that will continue to be their official number untill they do another report. We can ask them as much as we want, the official policy is most likely that those numbers are official and that is all we are going to get.
Last of all, as always, FC spins everything arround. Look how they successfully spinned the fact that they lost 50% of their subs in 1,5-3 months (wether we take june 30th or aug 14 as the date) into a success mantra and how good it is. If they never had 800k, then 415 would be a great success. However since they had 800k, that changes the story alltogether - it means 50% of their players find the game bad enough to cancel under 3 months, which should be sounding the alarms all over the place.
We already established FCs word isn't even worth as much as to get you to the toilet and back.
It's rather odd that they used the word customers, which includes way more than subscribers.
I mean, considering they charged people to download the buddy pass trials. All those people are customers. But even Proteus is doing server polls now.. at prime time, there were only 300 people on his server.
But subscriptions are irrelevant at this point. Funcom lost 8M dollars in the 2Q despite 800k box sales. Even if they hold onto every single subscriber they are never going to have that big of a quarter again. Funcom is going to run out of cash by January at the latest.
Well if the word of the CFO is not good enough then I don't know what could convince you. At any rate your last point is the most important and what everyone should consider. Losing so many "customers" in such a short period is not a good thing.
At this rate, if the percentage of attrition holds, you'll see a leveling off of about 80k instead of the 200k it could have been had the number been from June 30th. That's not taking into consideration outside forces like WAR.
Did you ask them to define "Customers"? The OP really missed the point of the whole investor word game these companies play.
The key word is "ACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS".
We know there are not that many, but then you have to take into account what they feed you combines all the countries it has been released in, including North America, Germany, France, UK...ect Basically Europe.
Furthermore, gold farmer accounts made on a daily basis are accepted by funcom as numbers to throw around. Even if you are banned from the game, you are still considered a "customer".
There are loop holes upon loop holes in which funcom is trying to find the highest acceptable number they can get away with.
Look, there is 3 HUGE reason why this can't be right
1- If they had 415k customers (including free month) on august 14th why would they post that on the Q2 report of June 30? It would mean they would have MORE PEOPLE on June 30th, probably around 600k! Why wouldn't they post that to hype it as a success even more? No company in their right mind would post the lowest number of the 2 without being forced! Especially not Funcom
2- They have said themselves that they would NOT post number of subs for Q3. Why would they change their mind and modify a Q2 report at the last minute???
3- How come all the servers are empty or almost empty? How come some of them have only 200 people on at the same time if there is 400k sub? I don't know if you know this but 400k is a very healthy number and no server would drop below 1k even in the less played time of the day if this was true
It's one of the reasons the stock is getting beat up. Investor's don't like companies that play word games. Funcom has been doing it all along. Blizzard goes out of it's way to not include people in their free trial period, and to only use asian players who actually paid money in the last 30 days to play the game.
There is just no telling what Funcom is counting as 'customers' since they didn't define it anywhere.
Noone (even Funcom) is disputing that there are a lot less than 400k people actually playing the game, we have no real idea about who they consider a customer. To give you an example, I've been in since Early Access and my billing period for this month ends on August 28th. I haven't logged in since the 2nd of August though, and that was for 20 mins as I gave everything I owned away in Old Tarantia. But guess what? I'm counted in that 415k number.
There are a lot of people just not playing but are still paying the monthly fee hoping that some patch comes in to fix everything. These people will eventually give up and quit as well. Hell they probably already did when the PvP update didn't materialize in July.
The game is hemoraging big time and it doesn't help that everyone is spread across so many servers.
Just as a point of note.
I work in a retail chain. I have noted similar behavior of cell phone companies and their customer base, in the fact they will take a polling at a certain time, for a quarterly report, and legitimatly use it for a period of time. That time being from a month to a quarter.
Since I doubt MMO finacials are regulated even close to cell phone companies, I think I can make an educated guess they took a polling for the Q2 report and will be using the number until the next Q3 report, then remain silent and not update the number and leave 400k+ lingering in any investor's mind from here on out as the last validated number.
So I can guess that if you ask any Funcom spin department that you will get the 400k+ number until the next quarterly as a "valid number" because until they take another measurement, it is valid to them. I doubt there is any additional regulation in this department outside the quarterly requirement.
I wish you luck!
I emailed one of their lawyers and he told me they only had 50k customers and most of those were related to someone in the development team.
See how easy that was?
Sorry but some random poster saying he did this isn't going to change a thing, especially since I don't trust the company in the first place so even if the response is real it might not be truthful. The only way they have 415k customers is if way more people got stuck with a cancelled 3 month subscription than I would have guessed because they dont' have anywhere near 415k active players even if you add in buddy accounts.
By the Q3 report I expect to see less than 150k.
Considering every company spins information in their favor , using your logic they're all lying. Why should we trust blizzard to give real sub numbers , Or CCP ? What you expect really doesn''t matter , What I expect doesn't matter. The only information we will receive is what the company wants us to hear , In all cases. The bottom line is they can't lie to those funding their endeavors , If they are you can bet on it being public knowledge.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The argument for it being August 14th:
a) The present tense used in the report
b) The explicit language of the presentation (and the legal liability that arises from that).
c) A Norwegian financial newsite quoting the CEO as saying "Funcom currently has 415,000 subscribers." And of course, the legal liability that arises from that... http://e24.no/boers-og-finans/article2595624.ece
d) Funcom's Q3 revenue forecasts mimic the type of attrition I've seen on the forums and on the servers. The numbers add up for August 14 and not for June 30. If the number is for June 30 then Funcom will miss their Q3 revenue guidance by half. Anyone really think that is going to happen? Not even screwed up companies screw up that badly.
e) 415,000 subscriptions as of June 30th means they had ~300,000 people cancel after their first month, given a pool of ~700,000 subscriptions (100,000 were still within their first month). This is way too high of a number and I didn't know very many people who cancelled at that time. Our guild retention was amazing at that point. It was only in early July that people in my guild started cancelling. From experience I have an empirical notion that 2/5 of the people playing in mid-June did not unsubscribe from June 17th-June 30th.
f) 415,000 subscriptions August 14th means (given the points below) that Funcom has been losing approximately 10,000 customers a day, which seems just about right. Realize that Funcom has shred 300-400k subscribers in the last 6 weeks. That is a MASS exodus. Also realize mitigating factors.
i) They are including buddy key subscriptions
ii) Anyone who cancelled and has their subscription running out between August 15 - August 30 is still considered a subscriber (a HELL of a lot of people, probably another 100,000).
iii) A surprising amount of people are lazy about cancelling. They don't play but let their subscription run. Do not forget about 3 month and 6 month subscriptions.
Lit
The argument for it being August 14th:
a) The present tense used in the report
b) The explicit language of the presentation (and the legal liability that arises from that).
c) A Norwegian financial newsite quoting the CEO as saying "Funcom currently has 415,000 subscribers." And of course, the legal liability that arises from that... http://e24.no/boers-og-finans/article2595624.ece
d) Funcom's Q3 revenue forecasts mimic the type of attrition I've seen on the forums and on the servers. The numbers add up for August 14 and not for June 30. If the number is for June 30 then Funcom will miss their Q3 revenue guidance by half. Anyone really think that is going to happen? Not even screwed up companies screw up that badly.
e) 415,000 subscriptions as of June 30th means they had ~300,000 people cancel after their first month, given a pool of ~700,000 subscriptions (100,000 were still within their first month). This is way too high of a number and I didn't know very many people who cancelled at that time. Our guild retention was amazing at that point. It was only in early July that people in my guild started cancelling. From experience I have an empirical notion that 2/5 of the people playing in mid-June did not unsubscribe from June 17th-June 30th.
f) 415,000 subscriptions August 14th means (given the points below) that Funcom has been losing approximately 10,000 customers a day, which seems just about right. Realize that Funcom has shred 300-400k subscribers in the last 6 weeks. That is a MASS exodus. Also realize mitigating factors.
i) They are including buddy key subscriptions
ii) Anyone who cancelled and has their subscription running out between August 15 - August 30 is still considered a subscriber (a HELL of a lot of people, probably another 100,000).
iii) A surprising amount of people are lazy about cancelling. They don't play but let their subscription run. Do not forget about 3 month and 6 month subscriptions.
Lit
Thorough post. Rare find on this forum. Can I keep it?
I wouldn't care if 415 MILLION people were playing it. It still is a bug filled mess released without many features promised with pathetic customer service from a company feeding us many lies.
SHOHADAKU
I like the matter of fact email, but I don't believe there is a chance in he!! that AoC has 415,000 players subscribing and actively playing.
Absolutely no way. All things considered it is possible that people are just not playing but still have subscription time left.
Hopefully the MMO world has learned a harsh lesson from this -- Stop screwing us consumers with 1/2 finished products.
Tecmo Bowl.
If there were 800k subscribers at the start but only 415k by August 14th then as calculated this would give a quit rate of approximately 10k per day after the initial trial period, but as everyone knows averages can be misleading because they can give a false impression of gradual behaviour.
It is much more likely that a large proportion of players quit during the trial period, in which case the projected attrition rates would have to be far lower but that just doesn't make sense. Even if only half of the people that quit did so before the end of the trial period that would still mean that 75% of players initially went on to become active subscribers. Does that sound right to you?
The wording in the report seems intentionally vague because if the quoted subscription figures were somehow supposed to be official & legally binding at August 14th they would have been presented in a more formal table rather than as an 'off the cuff' remark in the introduction.
It isn't just people here that are querying the validity of these figures, just try googling '415k' & see how many other news stories come up. If they didn't have something to hide then why be so vague?
Just to clarify. I don't actually hate the game, just bad use of statistics!
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Take the Hecatomb? TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.
If it's truly from Aug 14 then it would mean that between 70% and 75% of people actually subbed after the free trial. Sorry but I don't find that possible, I doubt even WOW has such a high retaining value
Well remember though that is 415,000 customers. It doesnt count those who quit between July 20th and August 14th (by and large) and it doesn't include buddy keys and it doesn't include new game subscriptions and it was probably polled at least a week before that.
So consider that they sold 800,000 box units. They have managed to retain as of right now probably 300,000 of those. As for the first 700,000 units, they probably retained 450,000...combined with another 100,000 in box sales and that is 550,000. That is 65% retention...or 2/3. I know this sounds high but realize that as of late June people were still pretty happy with Funcom. People were expecting substantial improvements. However over the next month the game just bombed...like nothing most of us have seen before (at least I haven't).
Lit
Well remember though that is 415,000 customers. It doesnt count those who quit between July 20th and August 14th (by and large) and it doesn't include buddy keys and it doesn't include new game subscriptions and it was probably polled at least a week before that.
So consider that they sold 800,000 box units. They have managed to retain as of right now probably 300,000 of those. As for the first 700,000 units, they probably retained 450,000...combined with another 100,000 in box sales and that is 550,000. That is 65% retention...or 2/3. I know this sounds high but realize that as of late June people were still pretty happy with Funcom. People were expecting substantial improvements. However over the next month the game just bombed...like nothing most of us have seen before (at least I haven't).
Lit
It doesn't count those that quit between July 20th and August 14? Why? Then its actually from July 20th, not august 14. (If your right I mean)
How many buddy keys were handed? Do we know?
New game sub from that time period was probably below 30k, so not really worth mentionning
Edit: If it's July 20th then NOW I believe you because it means that there is one less month of sub (unsub) in the data.
Because MMORPGs charge you for the month ahead, so anyone billed in late July for August playtime would be counted as customers. This also goes for anyone who registered in July and August.
Good point! many players may have paid thier sub for the following month then quit a week later. Actually thinking about it i quit but am still subbed lol.
Huh? In Ultima Online, AC1 I've never been billed for the month ahead. Is that a new practice?
Edit: oh, I get what you mean... you need to be more precise, I thought you meant that people were charged before actually starting the month.
That makes no sense as to not count them then, they have paid and count as sub. It's just logical
Huh? In Ultima Online, AC1 I've never been billed for the month ahead. Is that a new practice?
Edit: oh, I get what you mean... you need to be more precise, I thought you meant that people were charged before actually starting the month.
That makes no sense as to not count them then, they have paid and count as sub. It's just logical
I hope you realize now after our previous skirmishes that I'm as much of an AoC hater as anyone around.
I just think the Aug 14th number is right...no matter how badly they massaged it to get there.
Lit
I do, I just find arguing fun
I still think it's June 30th the most likely so I guess we'll have to wait and see the Q3 report to finally know