ok.... I feel a headache coming.... -.-
"And you are going to tell me that their current pay model is not "sustainable" or legal" - learn how to read.... I never said that it isn t legal. Simple questions for u.... why should any lif-player pay for subscription for month/years ? what do they gain ? Or what does the ingame-shop have to offer to create a CONSTANT cashflow ?
If I have to guess, I would say pretty much 70%+ of bitbox income is still coming from the steam sales. That would be fine, if their steam reviews would be great, and if they would have tons of new players, but they have not. Probably 80%+ of the new players quit the game after a few weeks, meaning most of the players won t buy much in the in game shop or pay for subscription. Old players will sooner or later leave too - without a constant flow of new players the player base will shrink. Old players won t have any reason to keep on spending money on the shop or subscription.
One of the biggest features of the game, terraforming/changing the landscape, is also one of it biggest problems. Imagine the game runs for years- how will the map look after all the terraforming, and how will u sell that ?
"Ok... first read the games disclosure, it is a carbon copy of 90% of ALL MMO end user agreements (EULA). You as a player do not OWN the game, you do not own ANY part of this game, you are paying to play this game. Any additional money put forth as a subscription, item shop, or additional characters, is for the service of using their (Bitbox) game to play on their servers." - copy and paste pls. Normally this works with something like paying for a software license to use... btw. the same goes for most developers, paying for the software licenes (maya, max, mudbox, zbrush, speedtree, the engine ect.) This still means that the access to the software/game/whatever is guranteed
There are pretty much 3 ways used to finance games (You have to focus onn ONE model because it will affect ur game development):
- Pay one time, no extra costs (for example games with alot of story. once u finished the story u will probably switch to another game)
- subscription (keep the player playing= keep the player paying. constant flow of new content is needed)
- (free to play +) in game shops ( skins, xp booster ect. they can not
change the game balancing and since the impact in game is low the price is normally also low. This concept works with quantity. Get lots of players to the free-to-play game and some percentage of them to pay for it all)
old games (eve online is 15 years old by now ?) where u don t need to pay any money anywhere (haven t seen that so far) are probably a voluntary service by the publisher.
If u are into that topic, go visit some game developer conferences in europe or the states (dunno if u will get access though). They discuss the financial stuff and technology behind the games for days
"If you bought a Pagan Trinket, the value of what came out of that trinket was always MORE than what you paid for it" not true, and not the point. The discussion about the pagan trinkets is pointless since it is not illegal yet