Ah so many calling lockboxed evil - but do you realize without them - about 99% of the current online games wouldn't even exist?
Lock boxes keep these games alive, because cosmetic items don't sell for shit in vast majority of games.
Without them the MMO genre would cease to exist.
Also the OP mention League of Legends - a game with 50mil players where cosmetics even at a tiny % of sales can float the game - not only that - cosmetics in a MOBA are a lot more viable than in other genres.
Apples and Oranges - both in terms of design (LoL = moba) and in terms of population (what MMO has 50 million players?)
Games need money. I would rather they be up front about the money and benefits than having the payment system hidden behind a game of roulette where the same item could be 1 box or 100000. I don't need scratch off lottery tickets in my MMO.
While on one hand I can see your point and agree with you, I think they aren't "up front" about how much money they need and that they, say, need sub money because too many players today balk at paying a sub. In some cases it's understandable as there are games that charged a sub but one would play it and wonder what they were really getting for their money.
The lockboxes or any type of gambling is sort of an easy way to entice players to pay money. Telling a person they have to pay x amount of dollars every month might frighten them away. Allowing the players a "chance" to win something seems to be a bit less dicey to many as most probably think "sure, why not" and end up dropping a few dollars here and there.
I think the only way to really get players to subscribe would be to have a game and offer frequent updates and frequent events so that players think their money is actually buying them something other than access.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
The challenge I guess then becomes how does a publisher and/or developer create a healthy residual income stream to support a game that needs to always be online, needs continued development funds and needs to account for it's payroll.
The same way that thousands of other businesses do, by creating a product that people want and are willing to subscribe to keep.
You're asking where to find a good system, but it already existed. The system that was best for players was the box price, plus a subscription and then additional costs for expansions. All these companies have to do is build a game that doesn't suck, maintain that game and release expansions on a regular basis that people actually want to play.
Imagine signing up for Satellite TV, but you only get 10 channels. The only way to get extra channels is to open these random loot boxes and see what channels pop out of them. All you want are the football channels, but they are ultra rare drops and you have a buddy who spent $600 just to watch the Patriots play on Sunday. People would go apeshit. There would be rioting in the streets. But for some reason, gamers are just passive drooling window lickers and barely a hand has been raised in protest, and when it is, someone slaps it with a ruler and says they're entitled brats and they need to pay up. It's mind-fucking-blowing to me how passive the community has been.
Yet if that is the system that is best used why does no one do it anymore? WOW has a cash shop, EVE has a cash shop, FF XIV has a cash shop, is it that they are just wanting more money or is it that the costs began to rise to the point they felt the need to add addition revenue streams to compensate for lost revenue in other areas?
They wanted to make more money.
Every business wants to make money it is a business. Yet if it is such a lucrative and noble system why does no one use it? The sub prices have not changed yet everything else has gone up in price in regards to making them and maintaining them. I just don't believe ALL the companies are doing it 'just for more money' sorry I don't believe that. Perhaps I am naive to think that but I think the cost of running and developing and maintaining an MMO in 2016 is far more expensive and labor intensive than many believe it to be.
As one can see by their profit reports over the years.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
There was a time during what I will refer to as the "Golden Age of MMOs" that we all paid a monthly sub.
It provided a predictable income stream for the publisher and developers
They in-turn developed regular content to keep all of us engaged so we would continue paying that monthly sub
Life was good
There was no need for loot boxes, cash stores, paid betas, headstarts, pay to win and all of the other evils unleashed on our hobby in the quest for "free to play" content. Now look at our hobby. Better or worse?
4. and then we stopped doing that. So they had to figure out a new way to earn on us.
Both of you are correct and in a way the road that got us here really isn't any specific person or entities fault. Gross popularity led to a fount of titles that lead to a saturated market that couldn't survive on the same sub model, though most AAA titles tried at first. I know the "greed" is focused on the most with these RNG boxes but without seeing each developers inner finances none of us know if the revenue generated is a need or a want for that specific title to function.
If there is a focus to the blame, the epicenter of what got us here, it's simple:
Its easy to say: lootboxes are evil. And I dont support them either but, please tell me how else they gonna support their game financially? If you can not answer this, your story is a lot of smoke and no fire.
I don't mind so much in F2P games or if it's just for cosmetic items. I feel in those cases I can easily ignore them. In the case of games like Call of Duty that have now started putting game changing gear into them, or a game that I've already given $70+ or have to subscribe too, that's another issue and shouldn't be happening.
These make it seems like someone is trying to gain a "Mark" not a customer. I would like to be a customer, pay for the game sub and not see these at all.
Why don't we bring in this type of system in for everything.
Hey... Kind of hard making money in the grocery business. I know... how about we sell you RNG grocery boxes and you just hope for the best. Maybe if you're really lucky, there might be a piece of meat in there for you.
You know.... There's no cash prize... it ain't gambling.
What a good way to teach our children how to earn things.
And yes a very significant number of the people playing these games are children and the gaming industry is just shoving this shit down their throats.
This kind of win epic loot crap entices children more than any other age group. Keep this garbage out of games where kids play.
You can do a lot more than vote with your wallet. If you feel strongly, contact your local member of government and let them know how you feel about it.
This shit is like the wild west right now, They all going for a piece of the action. Even the Multibillion dollar conglomerates are in... you know the poor ones that buy up everything.
Industries incapable of regulating themselves is nothing new. Someone always ends up having to step in and clean it up.
Very good article.
I would like to see another that goes into the history of lootboxes and the idea behind it. I'm not a historian of all games, so i don't really know when and where it all started.
It's like at some point someone thought "hey, RNG is a gamble with every boss and people repeat it over and over. There must be a way to monetize this behavior".
The only good thing i can say about lootboxes is that selling the keys made me a small fortune back in Rift
This is what most of game industry turned into. Gambling.
Games are made by people that love games but are financed by people that love money. They seen that gambling is absolutely the best way to drain money from people. And there we go.
I never thought we will remember subscription based games as the good cheap times ...
I hope that everyone who so roundly castigated @BillMurphy in his article last week, appreciate and understand that our staff has a diverse set of opinions and we're not afraid or reluctant to present both sides of the issue.
So much for the tin foil hat supposition that we're paid by developers, wouldn't you say?
In that other thread, @Iselin pointed to a tendency to prefer low hanging fruit discussion--'very easy to counter, ridicule, and dismiss'. Sadly, I'm unsurprised that is where attention remains focused.
As far as this thread's article goes, and I'm not suggesting it was intended as such, I'm certainly not experiencing this as any sort of satisfying reply to Bill's article--rather only to point five. A good reply to point five though.
The challenge I guess then becomes how does a publisher and/or developer create a healthy residual income stream to support a game that needs to always be online, needs continued development funds and needs to account for it's payroll.
The same way that thousands of other businesses do, by creating a product that people want and are willing to subscribe to keep.
You're asking where to find a good system, but it already existed. The system that was best for players was the box price, plus a subscription and then additional costs for expansions. All these companies have to do is build a game that doesn't suck, maintain that game and release expansions on a regular basis that people actually want to play.
Imagine signing up for Satellite TV, but you only get 10 channels. The only way to get extra channels is to open these random loot boxes and see what channels pop out of them. All you want are the football channels, but they are ultra rare drops and you have a buddy who spent $600 just to watch the Patriots play on Sunday. People would go apeshit. There would be rioting in the streets. But for some reason, gamers are just passive drooling window lickers and barely a hand has been raised in protest, and when it is, someone slaps it with a ruler and says they're entitled brats and they need to pay up. It's mind-fucking-blowing to me how passive the community has been.
Yet if that is the system that is best used why does no one do it anymore? WOW has a cash shop, EVE has a cash shop, FF XIV has a cash shop, is it that they are just wanting more money or is it that the costs began to rise to the point they felt the need to add addition revenue streams to compensate for lost revenue in other areas?
They wanted to make more money.
Every business wants to make money it is a business. Yet if it is such a lucrative and noble system why does no one use it? The sub prices have not changed yet everything else has gone up in price in regards to making them and maintaining them. I just don't believe ALL the companies are doing it 'just for more money' sorry I don't believe that. Perhaps I am naive to think that but I think the cost of running and developing and maintaining an MMO in 2016 is far more expensive and labor intensive than many believe it to be.
Really? WTF do you think these casino loot boxes are there for? Some developer generosity to the players or some other hogwash?
They are cash grabs.
Or it is there to provide an additional revenue stream to a lagging business that has fallen woefully behind other genres in the gaming world. If WOW can lose that many subs what does that say for the rest of the field?
Well personally it's a reason not to even play the game for me. Screw casino loot boxes. I think they are crap and will not support them.
They don't need to put this crap in to make money and they are driving players away with it.
I remember a decade worth of time when I paid box, sub, expansion and the genre wasn't looking for every possible way to get players to spend money. Game development was about making awesome games not about profit first, item malls that are pretty much just there to get as much money as possible in a turn and burn shameless cash grab where they care more about your credit card and the spending habits of whales.
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
A few years back some Blizzard employees or Employee made a statement about it costing Blizzard around $140,000 a month just to keep the servers running. Just for WOW. Not including SC or Diablo or now HotS. That does not take into account the networking side. That was just servers running. Not even the bandwidth which was another 6 figures. Or payroll which is another 6 figures. Some had it more of around $50K a day to keep the servers running. They had around 14,000+ servers running 24/7 handling things like:
Y'know a few years ago they also had ~7.1 million subscribers which at $12 a month was an annual revenue of $1,022,400,000.
Obviously a good chunk of that goes into the operating costs of the game and the business, but even stacking multiple six-figure dings to the sum is not going to remove the notable margin of profit that would still exist through the sub alone.
The reason things like the cash shop was added was not out of necessity, but experimentation on what could be done and how much of the game could be monetized. It's also part of the reason WoW's cash shop is minor compared to many MMOs, it's an experiment that has it's niche, but not something Blizzard leans on as a crutch for profit.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Why don't we bring in this type of system in for everything.
Hey... Kind of hard making money in the grocery business. I know... how about we sell you RNG grocery boxes and you just hope for the best. Maybe if you're really lucky, there might be a piece of meat in there for you.
You know.... There's no cash prize... it ain't gambling.
What a good way to teach our children how to earn things.
And yes a very significant number of the people playing these games are children and the gaming industry is just shoving this shit down their throats.
This kind of win epic loot crap entices children more than any other age group. Keep this garbage out of games where kids play.
You can do a lot more than vote with your wallet. If you feel strongly, contact your local member of government and let them know how you feel about it.
This shit is like the wild west right now, They all going for a piece of the action. Even the Multibillion dollar conglomerates are in... you know the poor ones that buy up everything.
Industries incapable of regulating themselves is nothing new. Someone always ends up having to step in and clean it up.
I don't like lootboxes, but isn't this argument dangerously close to the "video games teaches our children violence" argument?
Are we going to ban trading cards now too? Cereals that have a chance to contain a rare prize in the box?
The challenge I guess then becomes how does a publisher and/or developer create a healthy residual income stream to support a game that needs to always be online, needs continued development funds and needs to account for it's payroll.
A MOBA like DOTA or LoL is not nearly as expensive to maintain as an MMO
and adding content is not a priority for that genre. A new map here and
there and a champion or two a year and your done. Most of the folks I met at Riot were working on other things while only a core team maintained LoL. (At least in the LA office)
A sub model alone does not seem to provide enough income by itself with the way the development and maintenance costs have risen dramatically over the years while the price of buying a game has remained unchanged. Look at nearly all sub based games on the market. They still have a cash shop. I do not believe it is because they are just greedy. I think it is born out of necessity for a good ROI.
For a free to play game like the base game of GW2 or TF2 how do they monetize? What is the solution? As was highlighted by Mr Hartsman in Bill's recent interview, cosmetics alone does not 'pay the bills' so other ways of monetizing have become a need rather than a want. They seem to be going a more ESO or LOTRO approach by allowing you the option to buy content in packs. Which is great but is that a viable long term method?
For a B2P game like ESO or Overwatch it is fine out of the gate with a box sale but as the game matures on the market and box sales begin to stop flowing in and begin it's trickle the servers must continue to be on and the development of new content must be on the budget sheet.
So saying a Lootbox is not the answer is fine but the better topic is what is the solution over a lootbox? How should a free to play or buy to pay game monetize itself since it has proven that 'just cosmetics' don't seem to 'pay the bills'
The solution is simple, instead of selling a gambling box sell the cosmetics, mounts, etc... at decent prices. I could see selling mounts for 25 dollars a pop and be fine with that. I am even OK with not making cosmetic armors or weapons account so long as it isn't more than 5-10 dollars a pop. It isn't something you have to have but a lot of people will buy it. Reskinning things doesn't take a lot of people to do and not really a lot of time either. An there will always be those people that have to have the new shiny.
The cost of making an MMO is up but the cost of running a released MMO is down not up. I say that because 10 years ago to host a server was 10 times higher than the price today. The pay for IT professional is not really going up much because there are actually more people flooding to the market looking for work. You don't keep that one high priced guy when you can replace him with 2 new people for the same money that have just as much experience. IT is a volatile market in the gaming industry.
As far as the entire F2P goes, I personally don't care one way or the other about them. Worst thing to happen to this industry. I prefer all games be B2P at least so developer gets back some investment up front.
Not the only game they have to pay to develpop, but also not the only game they gain revenue from especially with a lot of their titles carrying very heavy box sales as the means of income.
As for the rest of your claim, I have not seen any content evidence of an expanded cash shop marketplace for the battle.net or WoW that varies per region in how much of the game has been broken apart and sold. Circumstantially you might be correct about the bang commentary, but that also just coincides with a point averse to your claim when it comes to where a majority of revenue ultimately comes from. Even if there is a higher user count in asian countries, they are not where the primary source of revenue is given the supposed lack of subscription and the idea that they are recouping that cost via any form of a marketplace is obviously not happening to any degree that you can use to justify the idea that the cash shop is a major supporting element of their income.
Or to put in short, the dominant source of income is still from the regions that do not fall under the implications you wish to claim. They are instead the European and NA territories that contribute the vast gulf of the game's profit, and in turn are exemplified by that fact that across those regions they are very much driven by the subscription model foremost and a very finite cash shop.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Actually it says 94% came from EU and NA (47% from each, not 47% for both). So there's the rest of that billion you missed right there.
What you did was try to say how the eastern market was the majority userbase and that their model was not built on subscriptions, where the revenue must then be from shop sales. My counterpoint is the fact that the scale of the market in one region is largely an inconsequential metric if you compare it to the global marketplace for the product and it's major sources of revenue.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
If you want to use 2010 as the benchmark then that still is going to hit a major hiccup in what you want to claim because we can look at the annual reports for the company's income.
Most notably we can look at the 2009 year in accordance with the income breakdown I mentioned and it's annual revenue of ~1.24 billion.
And then we can look at 2010 and your sparkle pony claim and it's income of 1.23 billion.
So, exactly where is this massive spur of income or banking on the cash shop making any noticeable difference here? It didn't, Instead we see that the revenue stream for the game stabilized relative to it's user count with the majority of income coming from the subscription numbers to support the game's operation as well as extended revenue for the company.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
What was WoW's population between 2009 and 2010 ? I just checked the two PDFs 2009 had 11.5 million and 2010 had 12 million. The drop in revenue could be because of the costs of launching Cataclysm. Don't think you can attribute that to a lack of sums generated by the cash shop. I doubt it could be as simple as that .
Actually it says 94% came from EU and NA (47% from each, not 47% for both). So there's the rest of that billion you missed right there.
What you did was try to say how the eastern market was the majority userbase and that their model was not built on subscriptions, where the revenue must then be from shop sales. My counterpoint is the fact that the scale of the market in one region is largely an inconsequential metric if you compare it to the global marketplace for the product and it's major sources of revenue.
No actually my point was made clearly and you confirmed it with a 7 year old link. When did Blizzard's sparkle pony hit the servers? early 2010. Their cash shop was a way to bolster their lie. I never for a second thought Blizzard had 12.5 million subscribers. They didn't say that many playing the game. They said subscribers. I don't believe it.
Then you don't have much of a point. The links that proves the vast sum of revenue and profit for the company comes from box sales and subscription rather than cash shop proves your argument that sparkle ponies are important, how?
It's not adding up at the moment and you're not really connecting the dots in this leap in logic for us either. We can see that the market revenue breakdown favors the sectors that rely on the subscription model, we can see the reported income from these sectors and the income reported from subscriptions in the annual financial statements.
The reasonable conclusion to draw from the evidence provided so far is the fact that the subscription model is providing the considerable bulk of the game's revenue, as evidenced itself by the annual financial statements and the market breakdown. Subscription drops down and cash shop takes it's place? We don't see any notable increase in revenue. Sparkle ponies hit the market and you say they supposedly launched a broader cash shop in the likes of Korea? Yet the annual income didn't grow. Instead, we saw a retained pattern and market breakdown from the prior year continue.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Comments
The lockboxes or any type of gambling is sort of an easy way to entice players to pay money. Telling a person they have to pay x amount of dollars every month might frighten them away. Allowing the players a "chance" to win something seems to be a bit less dicey to many as most probably think "sure, why not" and end up dropping a few dollars here and there.
I think the only way to really get players to subscribe would be to have a game and offer frequent updates and frequent events so that players think their money is actually buying them something other than access.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Both of you are correct and in a way the road that got us here really isn't any specific person or entities fault. Gross popularity led to a fount of titles that lead to a saturated market that couldn't survive on the same sub model, though most AAA titles tried at first. I know the "greed" is focused on the most with these RNG boxes but without seeing each developers inner finances none of us know if the revenue generated is a need or a want for that specific title to function.
If there is a focus to the blame, the epicenter of what got us here, it's simple:
World of Warcraft's success.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Why don't we bring in this type of system in for everything.
Hey... Kind of hard making money in the grocery business. I know... how about we sell you RNG grocery boxes and you just hope for the best. Maybe if you're really lucky, there might be a piece of meat in there for you.
You know.... There's no cash prize... it ain't gambling.
What a good way to teach our children how to earn things.
And yes a very significant number of the people playing these games are children and the gaming industry is just shoving this shit down their throats.
This kind of win epic loot crap entices children more than any other age group. Keep this garbage out of games where kids play.
You can do a lot more than vote with your wallet. If you feel strongly, contact your local member of government and let them know how you feel about it.
This shit is like the wild west right now, They all going for a piece of the action. Even the Multibillion dollar conglomerates are in... you know the poor ones that buy up everything.
Industries incapable of regulating themselves is nothing new. Someone always ends up having to step in and clean it up.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
I would like to see another that goes into the history of lootboxes and the idea behind it. I'm not a historian of all games, so i don't really know when and where it all started.
It's like at some point someone thought "hey, RNG is a gamble with every boss and people repeat it over and over. There must be a way to monetize this behavior".
The only good thing i can say about lootboxes is that selling the keys made me a small fortune back in Rift
Games are made by people that love games but are financed by people that love money. They seen that gambling is absolutely the best way to drain money from people. And there we go.
I never thought we will remember subscription based games as the good cheap times ...
As far as this thread's article goes, and I'm not suggesting it was intended as such, I'm certainly not experiencing this as any sort of satisfying reply to Bill's article--rather only to point five. A good reply to point five though.
They don't need to put this crap in to make money and they are driving players away with it.
I remember a decade worth of time when I paid box, sub, expansion and the genre wasn't looking for every possible way to get players to spend money. Game development was about making awesome games not about profit first, item malls that are pretty much just there to get as much money as possible in a turn and burn shameless cash grab where they care more about your credit card and the spending habits of whales.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/Obviously a good chunk of that goes into the operating costs of the game and the business, but even stacking multiple six-figure dings to the sum is not going to remove the notable margin of profit that would still exist through the sub alone.
The reason things like the cash shop was added was not out of necessity, but experimentation on what could be done and how much of the game could be monetized. It's also part of the reason WoW's cash shop is minor compared to many MMOs, it's an experiment that has it's niche, but not something Blizzard leans on as a crutch for profit.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Are we going to ban trading cards now too? Cereals that have a chance to contain a rare prize in the box?
The cost of making an MMO is up but the cost of running a released MMO is down not up. I say that because 10 years ago to host a server was 10 times higher than the price today. The pay for IT professional is not really going up much because there are actually more people flooding to the market looking for work. You don't keep that one high priced guy when you can replace him with 2 new people for the same money that have just as much experience. IT is a volatile market in the gaming industry.
As far as the entire F2P goes, I personally don't care one way or the other about them. Worst thing to happen to this industry. I prefer all games be B2P at least so developer gets back some investment up front.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
As for the rest of your claim, I have not seen any content evidence of an expanded cash shop marketplace for the battle.net or WoW that varies per region in how much of the game has been broken apart and sold. Circumstantially you might be correct about the bang commentary, but that also just coincides with a point averse to your claim when it comes to where a majority of revenue ultimately comes from. Even if there is a higher user count in asian countries, they are not where the primary source of revenue is given the supposed lack of subscription and the idea that they are recouping that cost via any form of a marketplace is obviously not happening to any degree that you can use to justify the idea that the cash shop is a major supporting element of their income.
Or to put in short, the dominant source of income is still from the regions that do not fall under the implications you wish to claim. They are instead the European and NA territories that contribute the vast gulf of the game's profit, and in turn are exemplified by that fact that across those regions they are very much driven by the subscription model foremost and a very finite cash shop.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
What you did was try to say how the eastern market was the majority userbase and that their model was not built on subscriptions, where the revenue must then be from shop sales. My counterpoint is the fact that the scale of the market in one region is largely an inconsequential metric if you compare it to the global marketplace for the product and it's major sources of revenue.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Most notably we can look at the 2009 year in accordance with the income breakdown I mentioned and it's annual revenue of ~1.24 billion.
And then we can look at 2010 and your sparkle pony claim and it's income of 1.23 billion.
So, exactly where is this massive spur of income or banking on the cash shop making any noticeable difference here? It didn't, Instead we see that the revenue stream for the game stabilized relative to it's user count with the majority of income coming from the subscription numbers to support the game's operation as well as extended revenue for the company.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
It's not adding up at the moment and you're not really connecting the dots in this leap in logic for us either. We can see that the market revenue breakdown favors the sectors that rely on the subscription model, we can see the reported income from these sectors and the income reported from subscriptions in the annual financial statements.
The reasonable conclusion to draw from the evidence provided so far is the fact that the subscription model is providing the considerable bulk of the game's revenue, as evidenced itself by the annual financial statements and the market breakdown. Subscription drops down and cash shop takes it's place? We don't see any notable increase in revenue. Sparkle ponies hit the market and you say they supposedly launched a broader cash shop in the likes of Korea? Yet the annual income didn't grow. Instead, we saw a retained pattern and market breakdown from the prior year continue.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin