Palworld Developer Pocketpair is Spending Nearly $500K a Month Keeping Servers Online | MMORPG.com

Comments

• Angrakhan Member EpicPosts: 1,839

  February 6

  That's a good problem to have. Also, to all of you that think that cloud hosting has suddenly made server costs go away meaning there's no reason devs shouldn't charge a sub ... yah... not so much.
• IceAge Member EpicPosts: 3,203

  February 6

  Well, they made hundreds of millions of $ in less than one month so .. this shouldn't even be made as News.

  Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
  Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
• JeroKane Member EpicPosts: 7,098

  February 6 edited February 6

  IceAge said:

  Well, they made hundreds of millions of $ in less than one month so .. this shouldn't even be made as News.

  It's also their choice to run so many Official Multiplayer servers on their own and spend that kind of money per month on server running costs.
  
  And seeing all the usual problems with cheating and ganking on Official servers, this game is best played by hosting your own dedicated server and play with friends.
  Just like with other survival games, like Ark:Survival Evolved, etc.
• Champie Member UncommonPosts: 191

  February 6 edited February 6

  Is this supposed to be the cost of Public Multiplayer Serveres hosted by the Dev/Publisher? Last I heard those servers relied on Client Authority and not server authority. Is Uptime the most important consideration when the discussions on on the interwebz is "Don't play Palworld Public Servers, they are plagued by cheaters"

  Post edited by Champie on February 6

  
• richrem1 Member UncommonPosts: 198

  February 7

  Sounds like a path to bankruptcy. If they had any brains, they'd drop 98% of their servers to cut costs before it destroys them, financially. We'll see how successful they remain in a few months, when they run out of money.
• TiamatRoar Member RarePosts: 1,689

  February 7

  Those servers aren't bringing in much new money I imagine since there aren't any microtransactions or subscription costs.  Eventually all the money they made from the big initial sales of the game will run out at that rate Oo

  
• Kyleran Member LegendaryPosts: 44,058

  February 7

  Agreed, but server demand will likely slack off in a big way so problem solved.

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• cheyane Member LegendaryPosts: 9,404

  February 7

  Kyleran said:

  Agreed, but server demand will likely slack off in a big way so problem solved.

  Well the hacking is definitely helping them because people are dumping the official servers because of it. I'd say they are a blessing in disguise for the developers.
  

  
  
• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,499

  February 8

  Can't you people do arithmetic?  8 million sales at $30 each is enough to spend $500k per month on servers for 40 years before you run out of money.  And that's assuming that you never get any additional sales, players never leave once initial rush is over, and servers never get cheaper for a given level of performance, all of which are wildly false.
  
  Sure, you don't want to spend all of your revenue on servers.  But they're probably spending well under 1% of it.  That's easily sustainable for a very long time.

  
• Brainy Member EpicPosts: 2,206

  February 10

  Blizzard with battlenet did the same thing and that helped make them very popular.  Warcraft, SC, Diablo all buy to play, with for decades after the release, they still are existing.
  
  Treat the customer right, and maybe they will begin to trust you for the next game.
  
  Even if you get a small fraction of those customers back it would be worth it.  Soon those servers will be empty and the cost will be very small.

  
• richrem1 Member UncommonPosts: 198

  February 11

  Quizzical said:

  Can't you people do arithmetic?  8 million sales at $30 each is enough to spend $500k per month on servers for 40 years before you run out of money.  And that's assuming that you never get any additional sales, players never leave once initial rush is over, and servers never get cheaper for a given level of performance, all of which are wildly false.
  
  Sure, you don't want to spend all of your revenue on servers.  But they're probably spending well under 1% of it.  That's easily sustainable for a very long time.

  
  

  I don't have all the variables, like cost of doing business, etc.; but just the cost of steam and taxes (assumed 40%), they can sustain the servers for 336 months (28 years) before running out of money. The actual number would be much less, but I do see your point. 

  
  

  My previous comment was based on the idea, not the actual numbers, that they'd run out of money sustaining so many servers. From a business point of view, they should be conservative; though I understand they want to provide most, who bought their game, with the ability to play multiplayer.
  
• JeroKane Member EpicPosts: 7,098

  February 11

  richrem1 said:

  Sounds like a path to bankruptcy. If they had any brains, they'd drop 98% of their servers to cut costs before it destroys them, financially. We'll see how successful they remain in a few months, when they run out of money.

  No it won't.  The beauty of running servers in the cloud like Azure, AWS or Google is that you pay per minute/hour.
  
  When the population drops, you just start shutting down servers to instantly reduce costs.
  
  It's not like the old MMO days anymore, where they ran their own data centers and had to buy all the server hardware and got stuck with them, when your population dropped and had to write them off.