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Q3 financials out: Population decline confirmed...
Slapshot1188
Member LegendaryPosts: 17,661
Yup, another quarter of losing money...
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
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yup, they keep losing money, and they still need the 500 additional players to break even. No big surprise. How long can they keep the ship afloat?
I like how they purposely release their report just with the patch so that they can blame bad results on the fact that people are waiting for the patch.
stock just keeps plunging.
In the report Henrick now says that they realize they will not break even for this quarter either and are targeting Q1 2012 as the "new" break even date. Also note that he mentioned new cost cutting coming by January... I wonder what that could mean?
Interesting note is that the report says they lost 720,790 SEK in Q3. The report also say that they had 204,548 SEK in cash left at the end of the quarter.
All that comes to mind is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoJVJpTruzg&feature=related
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
I kinda like the news reporting here, thanks guys. Dont even need to read the content, just the title and the poster to understand what it is about
Well actually if you did read the content you would relize that this only accounts for the third quarter of 2011. They did not include the huge jump in population brought about by the Territory Control Expansion. If you read the report you would also know that there is no mention of population size at all. There's nothing about the number of subs, and there's nothing on the report telling us how many players are online at any one time making the title of this thread a complete lie.
But hey, if you want to check out the new expansion StarVault has decided to give everyone who bought the game 5 free days until December 1st. Sounds like SV is pretty confident that this new Territory Control stuff will bring in more subs.
Never trust a screenshot or a youtube video without a version stamp!
This was done on purpose from SV so that they can say exactly what you are saying, which is "hey those numbers don't include the future rise of population post miracle patch."
This is quite pathetic really. TC won't change anything, every "game changing miracle" patch released was suppose to save the game and bring back a big number of players, but so far none did. I could just quote what you just said and replace the dates with the ones for Epic patch, or for Dawn etc etc.
Wanna talk about real numbers of subs or online players? why do you think SV never gave anyone those numbers and instead will simply give forums account numbers? Because reality is that those numbers are so bad it would just be saying out loud that the game is doomed and won't last much longer.
SV are screwed and they have only been surviving, they will never break even and will just keep losing money.
I think you need to re-read the report.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Exactly right.... yet everytime the fans "claim" that th epopulation is booming, the financials come out and paint a different picture. Let's be clear here... the number of folks actually PAYING a monthly subscription has decreased... again... from levels which were already losing heaps of money. Now Henrick is saying that they still only need 500 new subs (because of the next round of cost cutting) but that this will not happen until Q1 2012. Those are the words of the CEO... yet somehow... population is BOOMING... again...
I think we know better :-)
Check back in a week when the 5 day free reactivations expire.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
LOL...OWNED at his own game !
There is coming a point, and that point is very soon, where they won't have the cash in the bank to either keep the servers up, pay for their programmer (i'd say it in plural, but I think we know it's all just Sebastian now), or keep the lights on in their offices. From their own report, they don't have enough money to make it through a quarter, given that the last three quarters they lost signifigant money. What they have left in the bank to actually PAY the bills is very little... and it's only a matter of time.
Granted, a Christmas miracle could happen and we could see them fold early. That'd be a Christmas miracle for most MMO players to have one more crappy MMO out of the market. Or a Christmas miracle for Henrik, where his daddy finances the game for some more time. Gotta love keeping a loser in the race because his daddy can do it for him.
Operating losses of $-3,285,512 for the year, which works out to around $-479,133. $479,133 divided by an additional 500 subs would require a monthly sub of $958.266 each to break even.
They would have to cut their expenses by $471,633 for 500 subs at $15/month to reach the break even point.
Unless that furniture sale does really well, there is trouble on the horizon.
Because I wouldn't want SV to become an example for other developers that you can have little to no knowledge in design, use trial and error approach in development, cheat and lie to your players, release broken features and patches, never fulfill the promises, having a biased and corrupted mod team and yet STILL manage to make it through and have a successfull game.
No matter how innovative or niche the game is, I dont want SV to be something others can take a look at and say "Hey, if they can treat their customers like crap and still have a game running, so can we". After all they've done, in my eyes, they don't deserve success. I have some standards, kty.
Looking to the payment numbers on the suscription payments, they were about 2600 around the beginning of the third quarter, surged to 5000 in July /August and have dropped to ~2200 at the time of my last payment (11/3). I know some people discount these numbers as meaningless, since they don't want to ackowledge even that many subscriptions. That being said, it does agree with the reported decline in paying subscribers and indicates a paying population between 2,000 and 3,000.
@ Hercules: Some people have been saying Starvault would be closing "soon" for about 1 1/2 years now. Would you care to be more specific, since you seem to know how much money they have in the bank ?
According to your own statement Sebastian is one of the three most crucial people at SV (along with Mats and Henrick). If they have to cut staff further there are several people who are more likely to be cut before him.
I do agree that is only a matter of time before financing needs to change more, but that does not necessarily mean shutting down. Revenue can increase, costs can decrease or the game could shut down. Obviously cutting costs further limits the pace of changes in the game, but if they finances stabilize at a point where they can continue to work on the game there is no reason that MO can't keep going indefinitely.
@ Cronitelore: I agree with 99% of your post. As long as SV is trying something out of the mainstream, even their failures allow other developers to look back at what didn't work. Obviously, I'd prefer that it be an example of what does work.
I presume "Why not help?" is meant to say "Why shouldn't I (as a fan of MO) help?" and not "Why don't you critics help?" Toferio is apparently answering the second version.
Regardless, you probably need to recognize that some posters take it as an article of faith that MO is the worst MMO ever made and an inspiration to every other MMO that fails to live up to expectations. Mortal Online clearly has something special. Forums for other games that are in equally bad states (or worse) don't have people waiting and hoping for their failure (at least not to nearly the same degree). On those other forums the tone is generally just disappointment, even when discussing life time subscriptions for games with 3 months worth of content.
It would be nice to see MO's critics put a fraction of the effort into posting about games they do like
While I can't answer for Hercules I can at least help you out here. See, what is contained in the financial report is EXACTLY "How much money they have in the bank". There is no estimating, or opinion giving. It's in black and white in the report. This might be hard to believe because it doesn't involve wild fantasy and speculation but as of this report they have EXACTLY 204,548 SEK in cash and in the bank. That is as per the line item called (believe it or not) "Cash and Bank".
For the record, that equates to around $29k USD.
If you have any other questions about the actual Financial Report which I can help with please feel free to ask!
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
oh... very well played SIr.
"In MO, even the haters are hardcore!" - ltank
Wait...ppl pay to play that broken open beta? damn thats harsh.
I need someone to point it out for me then. The only number I saw was registered forum users - this is not subscribers.
Seems to me they don't want to admit their sad number of subs. Although, honestly, I'd be amazed if it had more than 1000 at this point.
The only thing I come up with is:
Net sales = 315,709 USD
Number of months = 9
Cost of sub = 15
$USD 315,709/9 = $35,500 This is net sales divided by months
35500/15 = 2366 Net sales per month divided by $15
This does not account for sales of boxes or anything else. So, at most they have averaged 2366 thoughout the first nine months. The number is no doubt smaller, because of box sales and whatever else they happen to sell.
@ Slapshot:
Point taken. Hercules was referring to being able to "have cash in the bank" so I probably should have used a different term. ( liquidity ? ) That being said, the link you provided in the OP provides a link to those numbers but doesn't include them itself, so it took me a moment to sort out.
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=sv&tl=en&twu=1&u=http://www.aktietorget.se/pressdocs/StarVault/60422/Star_Vault_STVA_B_20111124_25.pdf&usg=ALkJrhik8RnKoIi4-jH6zaOhsd0cIL7h9Q
@raff:
Hipster? In real life, that's a pretty meaningless label. In reference to MMOs it's a meaningless and irrelevent.
@ Golelorn: Precisely 2212 subscription payments between October 7 and November 7
I would be careful about making such statements of fact. You have a hypothesis based on transaction numbers. Now, I will certainly agree that by this time the correlation seems strong that transaction numbers and sub numbers are related, but there are obviously other transactions that can occur in a month so I would be wary of using terms such as "precisely". The only thing we know for sure is that, no matter what the number may be, monthly payments (subscriptions) decreased according to the Financial Report. This flies in the face of the multiple posts made by some proclaiming the population to be "booming" during that same timeframe.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
No complaining there, just a question
This is a typical post on these boards 'population decline confrimed'
When in reality - the game is extremely busy.
I've been carefully recoding links on these threads - ppl saying the game is going down / running out of money. When it goes massive - I will be back - to remind each and every one of you of the negativity and well sour grapes.
There's nothing like the glow of self-satisfaction and being right all along, eh? Why not back this horse instead of trying to turn it into dog food?
We've been hearing this on this board now for 18 months (SV will fail, they're going bust) - and the grears of SV carry on turning regardless of the views of posters here. Ai is coming next which means new Mobs and dungeons opened properly for the first time - will the patch have a bumpy release? Almost certainly. Will it contain freking awesome stuff - yes, that as well too.
I don't know why you guys hate on MO so much - I would have thought as an MMO community we would be behind this in as psoitive a way as possible.
Perhaps if SV had gone with a themepark-clone you'd all be happy and satisfied with it (personally I wouldn't).
"In MO, even the haters are hardcore!" - ltank
I am confused after reading your response. This thread is based on actual documented evidence (the Financial Report). Yet you state that reality is different. Are you saying the report is wrong? The report clearly shows that the population is declining. Even Osmunda's transaction numbers prove this. As a matter of fact if you look at old threads lke this one (http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/65407-big-spike-subs.html#post1190305) and then compare to Osmunda's 2200 number you will see that not only has the population declined, but it is at the lowest recorded level.
So this thread is not about someone's opinion. It is a discussion about the financial report linked in the OP. Some of the facets of that is the admission by SV that they are losing monthly payments,that they continue to lose money, and that they do not have much cash left in the bank.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
I don't see which part of 'these docs don't tell the whole truth' is confusing.
Since I am a real business man making a real living in business and have submitted these kinds of things in the past -= they never tell the whole story.
{mod edit}
I am well aware of the 'history' between our two forums and well aware of what's driven this viriol.
meantime I'll continue collectinve evidence. And tryiong to correct some of the blatant mis-truths that are spun iver here as fact.
You even have a thread entitles 'Surely MO isn't as bad as you say' or soemthign like that....
Not iving up or going away any time soon.
CL
'truthyness'
"In MO, even the haters are hardcore!" - ltank
So you are a "business man" (36 year old female from Englandium..) who places more emphasis on the sujective view points of individual gamers and a handful of people arguing on internet forums over and above company reports and financials?
Reports show what potential investors, banks, VC's and high net worth individuals will be looking at. If SV ever needs financial backing, said backers will not be popping in game to mooch about and check that the financials are not "telling the truth".
The game may shut down soon, it may not shut down for 5 years or more, for me it doesn't matter eitherway. I think the game is run badly but then I don't care enough to spend all my time on these forums bashing on it that is for sure. It just seems that your rebuttal of the OP in this thread was somewhat weak. The OP may constantly bash on the game but then using that alone as a point of conjecture in order to try and discredit the value of a report doesn't really hold up.
If people want to have a poke around (for free and in English): http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials/financials.asp?ticker=STVAB:SS&dataset=incomeStatement&period=Q¤cy=native
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
It would be the part where you provide no facts to refute the report. The report clearly states that the company lost 720,790 SEK last quarter and that they had a total of 204,548 SEK in the bank and in cash at the start of this quarter. Please feel free to explain which part of that was not telling the whole truth, also please feel free to do so with facts as opposed to some vague opinion or observation.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Well according to your expert team the game should have closed doors 18 months ago.
yet it's still here!
"In MO, even the haters are hardcore!" - ltank