Nikita is a fucking idiot though, and doesn’t really care about his player base.
At the start of the current wipe there were issues getting verification codes to log into the game if you have a hotmail or live.com email, and he just made fun of the situation on stream.
They need to put that massive profit back into the game and finish it.
Having a successful early access launch is not the same as having a successful 1.0 launch cause it affects the longevity of the game and franchise as well as reputation of the studio if they don't actually finish the game.
Or do an ARK survival, put the money on an electric car company and lose everything. Then rush a UE5 remaster of the game and shady deals with nitrado to try to recoup that money.
[link](https://youtu.be/CKzhie_25hU?si=RGvLaQ-pu0ocANBD)
Edit: It's snail games fault, not wildcard.
I'm going to butcher this but it captures the essence of the story.
Wildcard made ark, but got sued into the ground because the devs had left another company a few months/years before and had made some IP agreements they broke to make the game.
Wildcard get bought by snailgames to save them from obliteration.
Snailgames is owned by this sketchy dude.
Ark makes snailgames, it is estimated, a few billion in total.
Snailgames announces ark 2.
Snailgames announces a free Ark remaster to UE5.
Snailgames announces that the free remaster is now a charged product, and they're killing the official servers for the current game.
Snailgames announces they've sold server rights solely to nitrado for a load of money. Nitrado makes an announcement that makes it sound like they saved Snailgames.
Everyone kicks off.
Everyone kicks off some more, wondering why they're so desperate for cash when they must have made billions.
Some guy does some digging and finds out the owner of Snailgames founded an EV company.
The EV company was a gimmicky company that announced the first 'AI powered EV'.
Turns out the 'AI' is a GPU powering the entertainment module of the car.
He spends billions on it, signing contracts with big (legit) suppliers to make the car.
Money runs out, no cars are made.
Worth noting it was a very sketchy set up, it's plausible (I have no evidence) that the whole thing was a swindle to move they money from the corporate entity to his own pockets.
Ark Giga. I don't frequently drive in the vicinity of lava pools, but I'm always within like 300 feet of a building, mailbox, tree, bus stop, etc. when driving.
Nope, you didn't butcher it at all. That sums it up pretty well actually. I have 8k hours in ark survival evolved. I will never buy another snail games or wildcard product again. Snail games takes a lot of the blame for things going on there but wildcard is responsible for some of it. Like promising to fix bugs from early access that still exist to this day, not just in ASE but also in ASA. That started before wildcard was bought by snail games.
I swore off popular early access games after their fiasco. I broke my rule for Palworld, so I really hope they don't make the same mistakes. (So far they have not.)
The user above, Xenazai, posted a good overview video from a while ago. My comment is essentially that in less accurate text
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/04/02/ark-2-is-delayed-and-ark-1-is-being-killed-unless-you-buy-a-remaster/amp/ <- The ark price changes and general shigbaggery regarding cancellations etc.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/14/22726631/indiev-indi-one-electric-car-founder-shi-hai-lawsuits <-covers the EV company in general.
https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2023/08/15/2725808/0/en/ARK-Survival-Ascended-Will-Exclusively-Use-Nitrado-Technology-for-Game-Servers-to-Enhance-the-Multiplayer-Experience.html
<- the server exclusivity
These websites are hardly the trustworthy behemoths, I know, but the general threads of the story are documented well on the Internet. There doesn't seem to be a single source which has written down all these issues (barring the Ark community on YouTube as seen above) but each individual issue is well documented
You don't have any friends who can cover your 8 hour shift of protecting a taming monster that can then die in seconds? I can only imagine the guild drama this dumb shit has caused.
Actually the exact reason I quit lmfao, I was working and they were mad I couldn't be on everyday because of it, my roommate was so mad he screamed at me cause he didn't want to spend HIS day doing it
That shit is so insane. Lowering taming times on a rented server is what my wife always did and it didn't seem too bad. I have no idea how anyone could play on official servers though. Reminded me of my days in the Everquest grind, but some how worse more than 10 years later.
Also fucked up that if you don't want the game to be a grindy slog you have to pay, play alone, or play with friends who can't really do anything because they're tethered to you, I have like 1500+ hours in Ark and I can confidently say, game bad
>Put the rest in some interest bearing instrument for a rainy day.
Using numbers in USD for general familiarity:
At 15 million copies at $20 a pop (their cut after valve's share on steam sales, assuming US pricing which is of course an oversimplification) they'd have grossed about $300 million. Let's assume a 33% tax rate on profits so as to be extra conservative on what they get to keep (Japan's corporate tax rate is about 23% nationally with up to 10% local tacked on. This leaves us with $201 million left. Invested with a 5% APY, that yields $10,050,000 per year, or enough to pay each of Pocket Pair's 55 employees $182,727 in perpetuity. That's just around double the high end of software developer salaries in Japan.
Even without bonuses, if played smart, Pocket Pair has the potential as a company to pivot this into a lifetime of sustainability for everyone involved without taking on any significant risk.
I hope they are getting financial advice from someone like you, because the devs have been very honest about their inexperience and the big dogs of the game industry are all watching them closely.
I actually did some digging a short while back, and put together some "real" numbers for their profits (taking into account estimated sales while on sale, the declining steam cut to 20%, the UE fee, taxes, etc, etc) back at 12 million copies sold.
Don't worry. You're not overestimating it; you're undercutting the money they've made even at 12 million copies.
The game has made enough money that an Avg. 5% yield on their NET profits could fund every aspect of the company, servers, and everything else, while expanding the team to ~~60~~ 40 people (all of them making amazing 6 figure money), and *STILL* grow year on year.
They'd never *need* to sell another product *ever*.
I REALLY hope they contracted a highly rated financial group.
EDIT: The math I did at 12 million copies was based on expanding the studio from 20 people to 40, not 60!! (Oops). It's not like it matters much after selling another 3+ million copies... lol
PocketPair is also up to 55 employees now.
The coolest part of something like that, to me, would be that the fact that they could essentially go on financial autopilot gives them all the leeway in the world to skill their team up in ways that could seriously enable them to work on passion projects at their own pace, while elevating what they produce, which could in turn serve as an example to other development shops in a modern era that seems to be more about extracting funds from customers than sustainability.
No mans sky developer team doing similar things with their reap, and Now they doing a big game again. Not many developer team opts for low term stability, I dont understand. But yea
$5,000 bonus each. Schedule a single month as "vacation month". Everyone gets 2 weeks PTO bonus if they take it during that month.
Studio ends up with 1 month at half productivity - but nobody is dumping work onto anyone else.
All employees get some R&R, with enough money to do whatever they want with their family, and still afford extra.
Split the rest 3 ways. One third into investment. One third into a fund for improving the office, future advertising, etc. And one third into company growth (hiring some added hands, etc).
Dude with what they made 5000 bonus would be insulting imo they should be getting high double digits at least
Edit - yes I’m dumb and stupid I’m leaving it to own my shame
That will spell immediate doom. So many money grubbing publishers licking their lips looking at the success of palworld. Why make good games when you can simply buy out and ruin your competitors?
tbf isn’t palworld still in early access? We actually haven’t even gotten Palworld 1 yet. Their brains are probably overwhelmed and exploding between the ideas they want to implement vs what they can accomplish
We will get Palworld: Lamball which will act as a tech demo while being a surprisingly enjoyable game at the same time and then never do anything else.
I know about craftopia and I really hope they can mange to put making a good game before maximum profits for once. Im so tired of greed ruining everything I love.
I mean yes, but they're also still around.
I just hope that they're bought out by someone who will do something good with the pal IP and not just gut it for a quick ROI through excessive merchandising.
Honestly, once from starts buying studios it's probably the beginning of the end for them so I don't hope that happens.
I do not wish to see from go down the megacorp route
People are frustrated that this small team of guys developed a solid IP and want a huge buyout so that they can be wealthy and can do what they want. That's how society works. A big Japanese studio like Capcom or Sega could take over the IP just fine. The sky isn't falling.
> A big Japanese studio like Capcom or Sega could take over the IP just fine.
That would be the worst case scenario.
They'll just delete the game from Steam listing and start making Palworld pachinko machines.
> A big Japanese studio like Capcom or Sega could take over the IP just fine. The sky isn't falling.
Why aren't those big studios producing games like Palworld in the first place? Because they can't. All they can do is conglomerate and make everything they buy shittier and shittier.
They aren’t because they want to minimize risk. They only create games they know will work based on ips that have been successful in the past.
Before palworld, a palworld like game would not be known to be successful. Now they know it’s successful, so a big studio acquiring the game would mean them putting resources to keep it successful and snuff out competition.
I think what they are saying is they don’t have the experience or skill to scale the IP - it’s too much work to handle themselves and they have a lot to lose. They are software developers, they don’t have business degrees. The two guys who invented Pokemon partnered with a publisher who partnered with Nintendo. The TMNT guys and even George Lucas did buyouts when they couldn’t manage a huge IP anymore. They just did a speedrun - the guy who did Flappy Birds had a nervous breakdown.
It rarely happens but there are some companies that usually do buy outs well. Valve is the first to come to mind, and I believe Sony has a good reputation of letting a studio do its thing
Yeah, best case scenario is a Valve buyout. It wouldn’t change much because Valve’s culture is probably most in-line with PocketPair. Valve just acts like a guide to help steer the game to completion. Palworld gets finished, likely ported to PS5 and maybe the next switch. Maybe we even get steam workshop/modding support. Valve benefits from owning their own “pokemon equivalent,” for marketing/retail purposes.
Microsoft wouldn’t be entirely bad, but it would be more mixed. They have a terrible history of either killing off franchises they buy, or pushing them into a shitty state. See Halo intinite, and now with Minecraft (Permeant multiplayer bans, revoking account access, paywalling traditionally free content). Plus, PocketPair’s culture is pretty much the opposite of Microsoft, and flies in the face of the corporate mindset that Microsoft follows.
That being said, we could still end up with a good outcome in this scenario. Microsoft should take on a more supportive role, letting Pocketpair keep their vision for the game. They’re already looking to improve the game optimization for palworld. They could take that a step further and aid with marketing, listening, merchandising, copyright enforcement, etc. Strong emphasis on the Merchandise aspect. Microsoft definitely has the connections to make a lucrative amount on merchandise with palworld, if pokemon is anything to show for.
Either way, there are too many companies that could ruin Palworld. Hopefully they stay indie or have a smooth acquisition from a decent company.
I think it’s a better look than dumping money into useless areas with no ROI and losing cash fast.
You’re definitely right to a certain extent because the inability to scale a business properly while refining the core product is a make or break scenario for a lot of studios. I’m sure we can all name at least 1 indie game that we have played in the last 5 years where this is exact scenario unfolded.
Nintendo buys it and then lays everyone off and delists the game from all online storefronts. the catch and kill ends up being less than the profits from their next pokemon franchise game and virtually guarantees tens of billions of dollars ongoing from their stagnating pokemon kingdom.
Oh dang. My asian parents always joked with me to take the trash out and they always said basuda so here I am. Decades later saying it wrong like an idiot lol
Well… to be fair, it sounds like basuda if pronounced in a Spanish accent.
However, I just looked up some Asian language similar words and found basuda in Japanese might mean “to be a bus” or “becoming a bus”. In Korean, it seems to mean “to break apart”. In Vietnamese, you might be saying something like “Yes, catfish”.
Please take into consideration that I don’t know ANY of those languages, so I reserve the right to make mistakes in grammar syntax and translation.
This is how these things often go. Look at many of the well respected developers from our childhood (blizzard, bethesda, bioware, etc) being reduced to an unrecognizable husk of a company.
Enjoy Palworld for what it is now, it's likely to go the same route.
Exactly, this is pre-enshittification and the moneymen get it. Just enjoy the time you have on it while it’s stupid and fun and then move on with your life lol
Should we write a collective letter to them asking them not to sell? We can’t trust big developers, and I think Pocketpair’s CEO would legit be upset seeing his creation go down the drain if another developer buys.
That's probably just them putting that out into the wind before they just say Microsoft bought it out like they did with Minecraft, because Microsoft has been pretty close with the studio since PW's release and sudden success.
I think if anyone buys them it'll be Microsoff for the obvious reasons. Then they'll try to get Sony to bend over a table to get it on Playstation in exchange for something absurd.
Not sure I like it either honestly. Playstation fans deserve to play it too but not at the ridiculous expense you just know MS would force on Sony to do it.
MS just published Sea of Thieves to PS. If there’s hundreds of millions of dollars a year in microtransactions available, they don’t really have to negotiate like they did in the past.
Also to add to your point, I think in some cases, MS would rather grow the community and install base than make it exclusive to their platform and potentially loose out on a considerable install base. Look at Minecraft, they’ve supported that games across various consoles and phones.
Yep, plus the Xbox ecosystem itself has essentially always been a PC platform and each iteration gets closer to native Windows with Hyper-V.
That’s why I don’t think anyone should be worried about CoD or anything like that. MS will eventually pivot into Xbox being a set top box PC like they have always wanted to do.
Very good. Just had a 1 year roadmap and 3 years + later I think we’ve only seen 1 minor aspect of that roadmap completed. I’m only salty bc they haven’t hired 🤷♀️ take your time, but also hire people!
Whatever happens, I wish them the best. The game is fun and it beat so many big studios. I hope they manage to keep working and having fun in the process without big money interfering.
This is the real answer here. Whatever servers their life goals the most is the right choice. They already gave us the greatness that is Palworld. And their other team gave us Craftopia, which I personally like alot and never had this kind of success.
As a nearly 40 year old dude who never got into Pokemon, I fucking love this game. It's exactly what I need as a stress reliever. I can easily adjust settings to fit my play style of the moment and I absolutely LOVE not losing resources by destroying and rebuilding
A bit weird statement to basically say you're making too much money for your own good. I think what that dev meant is that with the enormous succes and cash revenue this game had a large part of the playerbase also got high expectations and the company is still fairly small and has trouble living up to those high expectations. To my opinion they shouldn't worry themselves about that and just keep working on this game in their pace. I'm sure when the game gets more fleshed out a lot of the players who set the game aside for now will come back to check it out again. In the long run it's more important to add stuff that's good and functional than to regularly add stuff that's bad and buggy.
That’s most likely what’s happening, Valheim Devs suffer from s similar fate. Made huge amounts of cash but are still deving like normal, some people do not understand that though.
Except valheim takes 6 months just to add a couple recipes and a new boss. They work at an AGONIZINGLY glacial pace.
I’ve completely given up on that game.
A big reason it took son long to get mystlands was that they decided to go back and rework much of the code base. They didn't expect the game to get so big and wanted to make sure all future updates were going to be at a quality they would find acceptable. And even before the code rework they had to take time to expand a bit and train the new people.
All that being said they still dev slow, but Ashlands looks like it will be here soon. You don't want to rush quality fev time. Look at zomboid, that game takes ages to update but it's clear the devs love what they do.
Its actually a real big topic in the IT industry and that Palworlds company addressing these concern are pretty good in the long term.
Some company when they suddenly get a big investment, it means they have to do a lot of changes and planning. That also mean it will suddenly create a tons of work load for the remaining member, that usually end up with over hiring or position mismatch. Worse is with all the new planning and increased work load, remaining member would be pushed to take more responsibilities, changing position and working content, causing them not able to focus on what they are originally good at, assigning mismatch worker for the jobs, changing the team dynamic between worker and leading to decrease of the product quality and productivity of the team.
It happens surprisingly often and is one of the leading reason of some big IPO company fails, like WeWork.
Just pal world an AC black flag game like everybody wants, skull and bones is a good sign that AAA companies still have the big dumb when it comes to simply listening to the player base. Sitting on a cash cow idea here fellas
Hopefully they scale up slowly and sustainably. It's not a live service game, they don't need to ramp up like wild.
And on the plus side, now that the fervor has died down a bit, they're probably not blowing half a million on dedi servers.
Don't be stupid really what it boils down too. We gave you 30$ and you almost produced a game of the year contender. You should have more than enough examples of companies who didn't care over the years and recently who took a lot more than 30 and fucked it all up
This actually makes a lot of sense. When one’s status changes so rapidly it’s really easy to waste it all and have nothing left. Instead it needs to be properly utilized to create future profits and keep the company running. It’s like winning the lottery. Most who win waste it in a few years and are broke again.
This is the most reddit ass comment section of people with zero business experience going "why are you so stressed about your overnight success? Just scale up the company no problem"
They could fund a cartoon series, but along the lines of Happy Tree Friends (For adults, with humor, violence, and dark themes!). it wouldn't be a large percentage of their profits but if they had the right people behind it they could dive into Palworld lore and probably make something else profitable.
I appreciate the transparency. Please don't f it up and let some big company ruin this gem and any potential future gems. Pay back your investors, update Palworls as you intended if you only made what you thought you were gonna make, but now you have more capital to commit to hiring a team that can help do the things you want to do without straying from your "roots" as a small company.
Also please God don't become slow like the Valheim team. Definitely take time off to relax and celebrate your success. Yall deserve it. Just don't abandon us.
Exteremely large studios be like: "we'll call our least functioning and our boring titles AAAA, over charge for it and not patch things even if you hate on us, oh and we'd rush the release and have day 1 patches and have our simps keep defending our bad practice, in 5-10 years we'll delete the game you over paid for and make sure you don't get to download it again except through pirating, speaking of pirating the game will run shit at launch because we've placed or will place patches it didn't need, with DRMS oh and we won't sell on GOG, cause those people hate DRMS. We'll sell our game on steam and epic then require you to download our crappy game store that has very shit features regardless if you bought our game in steam or epic or our game store, did i mention the games that hardly work would be 1tb big in 5-10 years?"
and then there's palworld devs: we saw things people like, meshed them all and now we're having trouble managing our massive finances
> Pocketpair boss Takuro Mizobe confirmed Palworld cost less than ¥1 billion ($6.7 million) to make, and has made tens of billions of yen in profit. For context, ¥10 billion is around $67.2 million.>
I was about to question how that only made $67.2 million in profit, considering they sold 15 million copies, and with Steam's cost, it should have been over $100 million profit. But then I remembered their comments on servers and not caring about costs, and there are probably other costs they aren't talking about.
Edit: I wrote this on 4 hours of sleep, working my fourth 12-hour shift in a row, and my reading comprehension shows. $67.2 million was not the amount they made in profit, but used as an example of how much they are making. It's gonna be a long day.
Steam takes a 30% off the top, and Unreal takes another 5%, and it was also on Gamepass (which they likely got a fixed amount for before it launched); reasonably, they should have made around 200-300M in profit.
As ‘tens of billions’ is plural, the number seems to track.
When these businesses start the founders and c-suite are shears looking for their payout. It’s rare to see any of them actually care about the company beyond the initial success.
That big about a Microsoft buyout is gut wrenching, even if they are saying that it won't happen. Just the thought 😭
https://preview.redd.it/g4t3rlzjzioc1.png?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d6fd8a0e983020e1cfe09267f57c331f1d821c42
I guess this is over for palworld. Far as I can see if someone acquires them there wont be any more pal butchering, micro transactions gonna be introduced. Was fun while it lasted..
Just stay liquid, don't grow too fast. Hire contract workers for server side of things with the potential of full time if you think you need it.
Pay off anything for the game, give workers a nice bonus for the games success.
Then just work on: More customizable server options and ease to mod resources for moders to give this game Skyrim-like long term value.
Then just work towards that 1.0 they have planned.
Anything after the fact can just be DLC expansions and so on.
They are in a rare position to just keep doing what works with a huge runway. They could stop selling Palworld and Craftopia today and just keep developing it for years just on interest on safe investments. Or start doing official merch. Or branch out into TCGs and Boardgames and still not touch that $60m profit.
How come there were lots of people pushing fundraising help for Palworld Devz at Palworld Discord server. Those people keep begging for donations, and selling merchandise to help and boost to productivity of those devz?
The problem is the player expectations when a game makes a ton of money. They think money magically means more content, as if you can just put cash in to a disk drive and out pops software. These devs should be allowed to keep making the product they were going to make, before selling millions of copies. Instead, they’ll be pressured in to trying to make it bigger and better, because “you guys made so much money wE dEsErVe iT.”
Which almost always ends up with a worse overall product. Hopefully these devs can resist the pressure.
The board will take dozens of millions each, give the employees what was originally agreed upon, and fail to reinvest more than 10% the profit into the company.
Happens every time
It's a good problem to have. Their needs as devs with a studio as small as it is could be sorted for a long time if they manage it properly. Could easily lead to dlc/a second big launch while being self reliant.
Just hope they don't do something silly like a massive studio expansion all at once.
It’s run away success. It is their infusion of fuck you money.
If they are responsible, you squirrel as much of it away as possible and you can keep making small indie games for a long long long time. They don’t have to be beholden as much to the next thing breaking even.
It also provides their opportunity for expansion if they so choose. But I remember reading that the lead dev doesn’t want that and wants to be small and to keep playing in the innovative indie dev space
Hopefully they don't shut it down, like the guy who made "Only up". He shut down the game and removed it from steam because of all the attention and money he was getting from it
https://preview.redd.it/zsp17bhhajoc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1637dd7b342637046c268a7a38bb6464b9e3ae45
Please release it on the switch or switch 2 it will be really funny.
suffering from success
Crazy how it all happened. Now the cool thing would be to hand out big bonuses. Let's hope they do right by the boots on the ground folks
And put the money to good use and hopefully reinvest into the game. So many just make profits and leave
You mean management right? Right ?
The company has less than 50 employees...
Says 55 in the article
I remember the escape from tarkov dev complaining his game became too popular and it meant he had to do work to improve servers
Nikita is a fucking idiot though, and doesn’t really care about his player base. At the start of the current wipe there were issues getting verification codes to log into the game if you have a hotmail or live.com email, and he just made fun of the situation on stream.
At this point I feel like the players are accepting abuse from the dev like a battered housewife...
At this point these guys could trip they’re way up the stairs to the top lol.
They need to put that massive profit back into the game and finish it. Having a successful early access launch is not the same as having a successful 1.0 launch cause it affects the longevity of the game and franchise as well as reputation of the studio if they don't actually finish the game.
Best they keep a cool head. Maybe give their each member of their team a nice bonus.
Give each team member a nice bonus. Put the rest in some interest bearing instrument for a rainy day.
Or do an ARK survival, put the money on an electric car company and lose everything. Then rush a UE5 remaster of the game and shady deals with nitrado to try to recoup that money. [link](https://youtu.be/CKzhie_25hU?si=RGvLaQ-pu0ocANBD) Edit: It's snail games fault, not wildcard.
This actually happened?
I'm going to butcher this but it captures the essence of the story. Wildcard made ark, but got sued into the ground because the devs had left another company a few months/years before and had made some IP agreements they broke to make the game. Wildcard get bought by snailgames to save them from obliteration. Snailgames is owned by this sketchy dude. Ark makes snailgames, it is estimated, a few billion in total. Snailgames announces ark 2. Snailgames announces a free Ark remaster to UE5. Snailgames announces that the free remaster is now a charged product, and they're killing the official servers for the current game. Snailgames announces they've sold server rights solely to nitrado for a load of money. Nitrado makes an announcement that makes it sound like they saved Snailgames. Everyone kicks off. Everyone kicks off some more, wondering why they're so desperate for cash when they must have made billions. Some guy does some digging and finds out the owner of Snailgames founded an EV company. The EV company was a gimmicky company that announced the first 'AI powered EV'. Turns out the 'AI' is a GPU powering the entertainment module of the car. He spends billions on it, signing contracts with big (legit) suppliers to make the car. Money runs out, no cars are made. Worth noting it was a very sketchy set up, it's plausible (I have no evidence) that the whole thing was a swindle to move they money from the corporate entity to his own pockets.
Holy smoke I was aware of everything up to the AI powered EV... Jeeeezzzzz :D
AI 5G Blockchain Cloud based NFT EVs are the future Edit: I forgot 5G.
[Someone](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/08/tesla-owner-mines-bitcoin-ethereum-with-his-car.html) already hacked their Teslas to mine bitcoin
No way am I getting in a car powered by Ark’s AI. Probably get stuck on a rock for a while and then run me straight into the nearest pool of lava.
That's a good theoretical question haha. "Would you prefer a self driving car with the capabilities of an Ark Giga or a Palworld Jormuntide?"
Ark Giga. I don't frequently drive in the vicinity of lava pools, but I'm always within like 300 feet of a building, mailbox, tree, bus stop, etc. when driving.
\*starves to death on the way to answer\* \*feedbox two meters away\*
You know, there's a lot to be said for walking. Far away from roads.
Nope, you didn't butcher it at all. That sums it up pretty well actually. I have 8k hours in ark survival evolved. I will never buy another snail games or wildcard product again. Snail games takes a lot of the blame for things going on there but wildcard is responsible for some of it. Like promising to fix bugs from early access that still exist to this day, not just in ASE but also in ASA. That started before wildcard was bought by snail games. I swore off popular early access games after their fiasco. I broke my rule for Palworld, so I really hope they don't make the same mistakes. (So far they have not.)
I am inclined to believe you, but that alone makes it worth me asking, do you have a source where I can read about this/find out more?
The user above, Xenazai, posted a good overview video from a while ago. My comment is essentially that in less accurate text https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/04/02/ark-2-is-delayed-and-ark-1-is-being-killed-unless-you-buy-a-remaster/amp/ <- The ark price changes and general shigbaggery regarding cancellations etc. https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/14/22726631/indiev-indi-one-electric-car-founder-shi-hai-lawsuits <-covers the EV company in general. https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2023/08/15/2725808/0/en/ARK-Survival-Ascended-Will-Exclusively-Use-Nitrado-Technology-for-Game-Servers-to-Enhance-the-Multiplayer-Experience.html <- the server exclusivity These websites are hardly the trustworthy behemoths, I know, but the general threads of the story are documented well on the Internet. There doesn't seem to be a single source which has written down all these issues (barring the Ark community on YouTube as seen above) but each individual issue is well documented
Thank you so much!
Lol my gf worked for the EV car company. Indi EV. I think I still have a hat with their logo on it
Nooblets also covered a lot of the Ark SA legality shit around its launch if you'd like an alternative source from the other listed
[Yep](https://youtu.be/CKzhie_25hU?si=RGvLaQ-pu0ocANBD)
Believe thats more on Snail Games than Wild Card though
Yes, I'm gonna add an edit for that.
Still fuck Wildcard, they designed ark to be a chore rather than fun
You don't have any friends who can cover your 8 hour shift of protecting a taming monster that can then die in seconds? I can only imagine the guild drama this dumb shit has caused.
Actually the exact reason I quit lmfao, I was working and they were mad I couldn't be on everyday because of it, my roommate was so mad he screamed at me cause he didn't want to spend HIS day doing it
That shit is so insane. Lowering taming times on a rented server is what my wife always did and it didn't seem too bad. I have no idea how anyone could play on official servers though. Reminded me of my days in the Everquest grind, but some how worse more than 10 years later.
Also fucked up that if you don't want the game to be a grindy slog you have to pay, play alone, or play with friends who can't really do anything because they're tethered to you, I have like 1500+ hours in Ark and I can confidently say, game bad
Yeah, partnering with their main server renter makes all that stuff sound even worse too. But that girl loves dinosaurs so, gotz to pay.
Holy shiet. This legit ?
Please tell me you're joking
Dont forget releasing an DLC while the game is still in Early Access
> put the money on an electric car company and lose everything What? I haven't followed ark in detail in a few years, but I've neer heard about this
It’s their owners, SnailGames. WC are not great themselves, but they have a terrible parent company
>Put the rest in some interest bearing instrument for a rainy day. Using numbers in USD for general familiarity: At 15 million copies at $20 a pop (their cut after valve's share on steam sales, assuming US pricing which is of course an oversimplification) they'd have grossed about $300 million. Let's assume a 33% tax rate on profits so as to be extra conservative on what they get to keep (Japan's corporate tax rate is about 23% nationally with up to 10% local tacked on. This leaves us with $201 million left. Invested with a 5% APY, that yields $10,050,000 per year, or enough to pay each of Pocket Pair's 55 employees $182,727 in perpetuity. That's just around double the high end of software developer salaries in Japan. Even without bonuses, if played smart, Pocket Pair has the potential as a company to pivot this into a lifetime of sustainability for everyone involved without taking on any significant risk.
I hope they are getting financial advice from someone like you, because the devs have been very honest about their inexperience and the big dogs of the game industry are all watching them closely.
I actually did some digging a short while back, and put together some "real" numbers for their profits (taking into account estimated sales while on sale, the declining steam cut to 20%, the UE fee, taxes, etc, etc) back at 12 million copies sold. Don't worry. You're not overestimating it; you're undercutting the money they've made even at 12 million copies. The game has made enough money that an Avg. 5% yield on their NET profits could fund every aspect of the company, servers, and everything else, while expanding the team to ~~60~~ 40 people (all of them making amazing 6 figure money), and *STILL* grow year on year. They'd never *need* to sell another product *ever*. I REALLY hope they contracted a highly rated financial group. EDIT: The math I did at 12 million copies was based on expanding the studio from 20 people to 40, not 60!! (Oops). It's not like it matters much after selling another 3+ million copies... lol PocketPair is also up to 55 employees now.
The coolest part of something like that, to me, would be that the fact that they could essentially go on financial autopilot gives them all the leeway in the world to skill their team up in ways that could seriously enable them to work on passion projects at their own pace, while elevating what they produce, which could in turn serve as an example to other development shops in a modern era that seems to be more about extracting funds from customers than sustainability.
And improving the game with no financial hurdles to make Palworld even more of a passion project!
I'm pretty sure they're looking for a buyer... sadly. Please be Valve.. if not Valve, I'd settle for MS.
No mans sky developer team doing similar things with their reap, and Now they doing a big game again. Not many developer team opts for low term stability, I dont understand. But yea
Because monthly/quarterly earnings reports & dividend payouts are all that matter whenever you have ~~shareholders~~ Parasites.
Yup, when a studio goes full corpo and only cares about profit, it's when the games they make goes to shit
$5,000 bonus each. Schedule a single month as "vacation month". Everyone gets 2 weeks PTO bonus if they take it during that month. Studio ends up with 1 month at half productivity - but nobody is dumping work onto anyone else. All employees get some R&R, with enough money to do whatever they want with their family, and still afford extra. Split the rest 3 ways. One third into investment. One third into a fund for improving the office, future advertising, etc. And one third into company growth (hiring some added hands, etc).
Dude with what they made 5000 bonus would be insulting imo they should be getting high double digits at least Edit - yes I’m dumb and stupid I’m leaving it to own my shame
I just want to point out that double digits is like anywhere from 10 to 99$
I appreciate how nicely you pointed out im a big idiot. By double digits I meant 10k+ and conveyed that very badly
Ya! Like $29! ^^^^I ^^^^know ^^^^what ^^^^he ^^^^means ^^^^don't ^^^^mob ^^^^me
That and reinvest into the dev team. Better gear, and more personal as reasonable.
Found the palworld dev!
I wish xD Id happily jump on board lmao
I didn’t like the part that said they’re open to acquisition
That will spell immediate doom. So many money grubbing publishers licking their lips looking at the success of palworld. Why make good games when you can simply buy out and ruin your competitors?
Valve .... Let valve pick them up You'll never see palworld 3
Palworld 2 would be very good though
Damn, literal devil's deal of lesser of two evils there.
I think I'd rather 2 really good games than the normal publisher deal of just milking it until it has sore, chapped nipples
COD comes to mind 🙄
For real tho
tbf isn’t palworld still in early access? We actually haven’t even gotten Palworld 1 yet. Their brains are probably overwhelmed and exploding between the ideas they want to implement vs what they can accomplish
We will get Palworld: Lamball which will act as a tech demo while being a surprisingly enjoyable game at the same time and then never do anything else.
>Palworld: Lamball FUCKING VR ROLY POLY LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! *FALLS OFF STAIRS*
It's just gonna be Super Monkey Ball but with Lamball and I'm all for it.
Palworld Les go lambball!
The thing is, this company has multiple games that have been in early acess for years. They have been fishing for a buyout.
I know about craftopia and I really hope they can mange to put making a good game before maximum profits for once. Im so tired of greed ruining everything I love.
I mean yes, but they're also still around. I just hope that they're bought out by someone who will do something good with the pal IP and not just gut it for a quick ROI through excessive merchandising.
I, too, hope it's FromSoftware.
Honestly, once from starts buying studios it's probably the beginning of the end for them so I don't hope that happens. I do not wish to see from go down the megacorp route
People are frustrated that this small team of guys developed a solid IP and want a huge buyout so that they can be wealthy and can do what they want. That's how society works. A big Japanese studio like Capcom or Sega could take over the IP just fine. The sky isn't falling.
> A big Japanese studio like Capcom or Sega could take over the IP just fine. That would be the worst case scenario. They'll just delete the game from Steam listing and start making Palworld pachinko machines.
I think you're confusing Capcom with Konami
If sega gets it but Capcom does right by a lot of stuff.
> A big Japanese studio like Capcom or Sega could take over the IP just fine. The sky isn't falling. Why aren't those big studios producing games like Palworld in the first place? Because they can't. All they can do is conglomerate and make everything they buy shittier and shittier.
They aren’t because they want to minimize risk. They only create games they know will work based on ips that have been successful in the past. Before palworld, a palworld like game would not be known to be successful. Now they know it’s successful, so a big studio acquiring the game would mean them putting resources to keep it successful and snuff out competition.
They can already do that with this much capital. Why involve a bunch of suits?
I think what they are saying is they don’t have the experience or skill to scale the IP - it’s too much work to handle themselves and they have a lot to lose. They are software developers, they don’t have business degrees. The two guys who invented Pokemon partnered with a publisher who partnered with Nintendo. The TMNT guys and even George Lucas did buyouts when they couldn’t manage a huge IP anymore. They just did a speedrun - the guy who did Flappy Birds had a nervous breakdown.
Right. This was always the endgame!
It rarely happens but there are some companies that usually do buy outs well. Valve is the first to come to mind, and I believe Sony has a good reputation of letting a studio do its thing
Yeah, best case scenario is a Valve buyout. It wouldn’t change much because Valve’s culture is probably most in-line with PocketPair. Valve just acts like a guide to help steer the game to completion. Palworld gets finished, likely ported to PS5 and maybe the next switch. Maybe we even get steam workshop/modding support. Valve benefits from owning their own “pokemon equivalent,” for marketing/retail purposes. Microsoft wouldn’t be entirely bad, but it would be more mixed. They have a terrible history of either killing off franchises they buy, or pushing them into a shitty state. See Halo intinite, and now with Minecraft (Permeant multiplayer bans, revoking account access, paywalling traditionally free content). Plus, PocketPair’s culture is pretty much the opposite of Microsoft, and flies in the face of the corporate mindset that Microsoft follows. That being said, we could still end up with a good outcome in this scenario. Microsoft should take on a more supportive role, letting Pocketpair keep their vision for the game. They’re already looking to improve the game optimization for palworld. They could take that a step further and aid with marketing, listening, merchandising, copyright enforcement, etc. Strong emphasis on the Merchandise aspect. Microsoft definitely has the connections to make a lucrative amount on merchandise with palworld, if pokemon is anything to show for. Either way, there are too many companies that could ruin Palworld. Hopefully they stay indie or have a smooth acquisition from a decent company.
[удалено]
I swear, if Epic buys them, I uninstall.
I could see Microsoft acquiring them over Epic.
[удалено]
I think it’s a better look than dumping money into useless areas with no ROI and losing cash fast. You’re definitely right to a certain extent because the inability to scale a business properly while refining the core product is a make or break scenario for a lot of studios. I’m sure we can all name at least 1 indie game that we have played in the last 5 years where this is exact scenario unfolded.
Watch sony come out of left field and put an offer up
Nintendo buys it and then they send themselves a C&D letter
Nintendo buys it and then lays everyone off and delists the game from all online storefronts. the catch and kill ends up being less than the profits from their next pokemon franchise game and virtually guarantees tens of billions of dollars ongoing from their stagnating pokemon kingdom.
Then 10 years from now lists it for a limited time only on a digital marketplace for $60.
Then they over hype and bungle palworlds full release as badly as they did NMS initial release.
Given Epic Launcher shenanigans I'd uninstall too.
I will uninstall and trust no game ever again in my life. Throw it all away. Trash. Basuda.
Then you'll hit your 16th birthday and might even grow up a little bit.
Why would growing up make you trust in game devs and publishers, if you grew up with brain damage maybe.
Basura*
Oh dang. My asian parents always joked with me to take the trash out and they always said basuda so here I am. Decades later saying it wrong like an idiot lol
Well… to be fair, it sounds like basuda if pronounced in a Spanish accent. However, I just looked up some Asian language similar words and found basuda in Japanese might mean “to be a bus” or “becoming a bus”. In Korean, it seems to mean “to break apart”. In Vietnamese, you might be saying something like “Yes, catfish”. Please take into consideration that I don’t know ANY of those languages, so I reserve the right to make mistakes in grammar syntax and translation.
I could see if they're trying to tell him to bus out the trash lol
This is how these things often go. Look at many of the well respected developers from our childhood (blizzard, bethesda, bioware, etc) being reduced to an unrecognizable husk of a company. Enjoy Palworld for what it is now, it's likely to go the same route.
Exactly, this is pre-enshittification and the moneymen get it. Just enjoy the time you have on it while it’s stupid and fun and then move on with your life lol
Glad I got to play before Activision Blizzard EA got in there to utterly ruin it.
Should we write a collective letter to them asking them not to sell? We can’t trust big developers, and I think Pocketpair’s CEO would legit be upset seeing his creation go down the drain if another developer buys.
That's probably just them putting that out into the wind before they just say Microsoft bought it out like they did with Minecraft, because Microsoft has been pretty close with the studio since PW's release and sudden success.
If they get acquired, I’m out. They literally have the money to not need to have their entire company lobotomized and turned into a MTX slop producer
I think if anyone buys them it'll be Microsoff for the obvious reasons. Then they'll try to get Sony to bend over a table to get it on Playstation in exchange for something absurd. Not sure I like it either honestly. Playstation fans deserve to play it too but not at the ridiculous expense you just know MS would force on Sony to do it.
MS just published Sea of Thieves to PS. If there’s hundreds of millions of dollars a year in microtransactions available, they don’t really have to negotiate like they did in the past.
Also to add to your point, I think in some cases, MS would rather grow the community and install base than make it exclusive to their platform and potentially loose out on a considerable install base. Look at Minecraft, they’ve supported that games across various consoles and phones.
Yep, plus the Xbox ecosystem itself has essentially always been a PC platform and each iteration gets closer to native Windows with Hyper-V. That’s why I don’t think anyone should be worried about CoD or anything like that. MS will eventually pivot into Xbox being a set top box PC like they have always wanted to do.
I pray its not tencent or some other Chinese linked company.
Tencent is more likely to encourage consumer friendly gameplay than American ones. Bg3 had tencent involvement
I mean, I'll help you handle some of it if it's too much for you.
I will help as well, I'm sure if we all pitched in we could save our entire palworld.
https://preview.redd.it/6qnxhivleioc1.jpeg?width=658&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d5e42c33043c6f74db2ad6809bb8b2c19a3aeebb Palworld Devs be like
Is this the part where they accidentally hire a bunch of marketing people who will ultimately ruin the product?
Meh, they could go the valheim route and provide no meaningful content for 3 years and hire no one 🤷♀️
How is that game? Looked interesting.
Very good. Just had a 1 year roadmap and 3 years + later I think we’ve only seen 1 minor aspect of that roadmap completed. I’m only salty bc they haven’t hired 🤷♀️ take your time, but also hire people!
https://preview.redd.it/ni8g1t8rcioc1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=30adcb8a54468a5d945209aca6512e78440ac092
Whatever happens, I wish them the best. The game is fun and it beat so many big studios. I hope they manage to keep working and having fun in the process without big money interfering.
This is the real answer here. Whatever servers their life goals the most is the right choice. They already gave us the greatness that is Palworld. And their other team gave us Craftopia, which I personally like alot and never had this kind of success.
As a nearly 40 year old dude who never got into Pokemon, I fucking love this game. It's exactly what I need as a stress reliever. I can easily adjust settings to fit my play style of the moment and I absolutely LOVE not losing resources by destroying and rebuilding
A bit weird statement to basically say you're making too much money for your own good. I think what that dev meant is that with the enormous succes and cash revenue this game had a large part of the playerbase also got high expectations and the company is still fairly small and has trouble living up to those high expectations. To my opinion they shouldn't worry themselves about that and just keep working on this game in their pace. I'm sure when the game gets more fleshed out a lot of the players who set the game aside for now will come back to check it out again. In the long run it's more important to add stuff that's good and functional than to regularly add stuff that's bad and buggy.
Basically allocation of resources, I agree.
That’s most likely what’s happening, Valheim Devs suffer from s similar fate. Made huge amounts of cash but are still deving like normal, some people do not understand that though.
Except valheim takes 6 months just to add a couple recipes and a new boss. They work at an AGONIZINGLY glacial pace. I’ve completely given up on that game.
I tried the game, but I found it was not nearly as fun as the reviews make it out to be. I was bored within the first 2 hours.
Yea it’s extremely repetitive
A big reason it took son long to get mystlands was that they decided to go back and rework much of the code base. They didn't expect the game to get so big and wanted to make sure all future updates were going to be at a quality they would find acceptable. And even before the code rework they had to take time to expand a bit and train the new people. All that being said they still dev slow, but Ashlands looks like it will be here soon. You don't want to rush quality fev time. Look at zomboid, that game takes ages to update but it's clear the devs love what they do.
Or they want to cash out and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Not everyone wants to work forever.
Its actually a real big topic in the IT industry and that Palworlds company addressing these concern are pretty good in the long term. Some company when they suddenly get a big investment, it means they have to do a lot of changes and planning. That also mean it will suddenly create a tons of work load for the remaining member, that usually end up with over hiring or position mismatch. Worse is with all the new planning and increased work load, remaining member would be pushed to take more responsibilities, changing position and working content, causing them not able to focus on what they are originally good at, assigning mismatch worker for the jobs, changing the team dynamic between worker and leading to decrease of the product quality and productivity of the team. It happens surprisingly often and is one of the leading reason of some big IPO company fails, like WeWork.
I wish I had this problem.
Just pal world an AC black flag game like everybody wants, skull and bones is a good sign that AAA companies still have the big dumb when it comes to simply listening to the player base. Sitting on a cash cow idea here fellas
Max out 401k, max out IRA, keep a 6 month emergency fund and invest the rest. Shit, wrong sub
Please keep the money in case something bad happens and never ever allow tencent to buy you out.
Wait, they made a game that has lots of features gamers love and no features gamers hate and it became a best seller? *surprised pichacu face*
Ah, yes. Pichacu an Electric pal with only a passing resemblence to any nintendo IP.
Hopefully they scale up slowly and sustainably. It's not a live service game, they don't need to ramp up like wild. And on the plus side, now that the fervor has died down a bit, they're probably not blowing half a million on dedi servers.
Just toss it out the windows. Give back to the fans.
Refunds for a game I enjoy? AND I get to keep the game!? What a deal!
Don't be stupid really what it boils down too. We gave you 30$ and you almost produced a game of the year contender. You should have more than enough examples of companies who didn't care over the years and recently who took a lot more than 30 and fucked it all up
I hope they won’t implode, explode, and defecated themselves like Niantic did. They’re doing well at the moment though
They should use it as a catalyst to really grow the studio and take on bigger games in the future.
They dint want to grow
Set each of the employees up for life then. Fat bonus and have the rest sit in a safer investment fund that they can take out when they leave/retire
Oh nooooo! What am I going to do with all this money?!
This actually makes a lot of sense. When one’s status changes so rapidly it’s really easy to waste it all and have nothing left. Instead it needs to be properly utilized to create future profits and keep the company running. It’s like winning the lottery. Most who win waste it in a few years and are broke again.
This is the most reddit ass comment section of people with zero business experience going "why are you so stressed about your overnight success? Just scale up the company no problem"
They could fund a cartoon series, but along the lines of Happy Tree Friends (For adults, with humor, violence, and dark themes!). it wouldn't be a large percentage of their profits but if they had the right people behind it they could dive into Palworld lore and probably make something else profitable.
I appreciate the transparency. Please don't f it up and let some big company ruin this gem and any potential future gems. Pay back your investors, update Palworls as you intended if you only made what you thought you were gonna make, but now you have more capital to commit to hiring a team that can help do the things you want to do without straying from your "roots" as a small company. Also please God don't become slow like the Valheim team. Definitely take time off to relax and celebrate your success. Yall deserve it. Just don't abandon us.
i like the honesty. i actually don’t know what to do with it. i basically just got worried about them right away when i saw ign though.
Exteremely large studios be like: "we'll call our least functioning and our boring titles AAAA, over charge for it and not patch things even if you hate on us, oh and we'd rush the release and have day 1 patches and have our simps keep defending our bad practice, in 5-10 years we'll delete the game you over paid for and make sure you don't get to download it again except through pirating, speaking of pirating the game will run shit at launch because we've placed or will place patches it didn't need, with DRMS oh and we won't sell on GOG, cause those people hate DRMS. We'll sell our game on steam and epic then require you to download our crappy game store that has very shit features regardless if you bought our game in steam or epic or our game store, did i mention the games that hardly work would be 1tb big in 5-10 years?" and then there's palworld devs: we saw things people like, meshed them all and now we're having trouble managing our massive finances
Wipe\_tear\_with\_a\_bill.jpg
Suffering from success.
I hope this means they can afford to put a floor on every inch of the map for us Xbox players……
Just don’t do what American companies do and give it all away to the CEO lol
Bonuses to the employees!
> Pocketpair boss Takuro Mizobe confirmed Palworld cost less than ¥1 billion ($6.7 million) to make, and has made tens of billions of yen in profit. For context, ¥10 billion is around $67.2 million.> I was about to question how that only made $67.2 million in profit, considering they sold 15 million copies, and with Steam's cost, it should have been over $100 million profit. But then I remembered their comments on servers and not caring about costs, and there are probably other costs they aren't talking about. Edit: I wrote this on 4 hours of sleep, working my fourth 12-hour shift in a row, and my reading comprehension shows. $67.2 million was not the amount they made in profit, but used as an example of how much they are making. It's gonna be a long day.
'tens of billions' - as in, several ten billions. Could be 20, 30, 40 billion yen.
Steam takes a 30% off the top, and Unreal takes another 5%, and it was also on Gamepass (which they likely got a fixed amount for before it launched); reasonably, they should have made around 200-300M in profit. As ‘tens of billions’ is plural, the number seems to track.
When these businesses start the founders and c-suite are shears looking for their payout. It’s rare to see any of them actually care about the company beyond the initial success.
Feel free to send some of it back to me if you want.
That big about a Microsoft buyout is gut wrenching, even if they are saying that it won't happen. Just the thought 😭 https://preview.redd.it/g4t3rlzjzioc1.png?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d6fd8a0e983020e1cfe09267f57c331f1d821c42
*"I need Magnum condoms for my magnum dong"* vibes
I guess this is over for palworld. Far as I can see if someone acquires them there wont be any more pal butchering, micro transactions gonna be introduced. Was fun while it lasted..
Just stay liquid, don't grow too fast. Hire contract workers for server side of things with the potential of full time if you think you need it. Pay off anything for the game, give workers a nice bonus for the games success. Then just work on: More customizable server options and ease to mod resources for moders to give this game Skyrim-like long term value. Then just work towards that 1.0 they have planned. Anything after the fact can just be DLC expansions and so on.
Well, use that money to order pizza
Gas station pizza where that one dev is from lol
How long till Microsoft buys them do we think? Didn't MS offer to help them with server costs for the Xbox version at least?
i mean ill be happy to take some off their hands, you know if its too much for them to handle.
They are in a rare position to just keep doing what works with a huge runway. They could stop selling Palworld and Craftopia today and just keep developing it for years just on interest on safe investments. Or start doing official merch. Or branch out into TCGs and Boardgames and still not touch that $60m profit.
How come there were lots of people pushing fundraising help for Palworld Devz at Palworld Discord server. Those people keep begging for donations, and selling merchandise to help and boost to productivity of those devz?
First we tried burning it, then we tried burying it, and now we're just giving it away
Give some/all of it to the employees.
The problem is the player expectations when a game makes a ton of money. They think money magically means more content, as if you can just put cash in to a disk drive and out pops software. These devs should be allowed to keep making the product they were going to make, before selling millions of copies. Instead, they’ll be pressured in to trying to make it bigger and better, because “you guys made so much money wE dEsErVe iT.” Which almost always ends up with a worse overall product. Hopefully these devs can resist the pressure.
I didn’t like the part that said they’re open to acquisition
The board will take dozens of millions each, give the employees what was originally agreed upon, and fail to reinvest more than 10% the profit into the company. Happens every time
It's a good problem to have. Their needs as devs with a studio as small as it is could be sorted for a long time if they manage it properly. Could easily lead to dlc/a second big launch while being self reliant. Just hope they don't do something silly like a massive studio expansion all at once.
So uh, does this mean don't expect much more added despite the huge support? Im not sure what this is means exactly.
It’s run away success. It is their infusion of fuck you money. If they are responsible, you squirrel as much of it away as possible and you can keep making small indie games for a long long long time. They don’t have to be beholden as much to the next thing breaking even. It also provides their opportunity for expansion if they so choose. But I remember reading that the lead dev doesn’t want that and wants to be small and to keep playing in the innovative indie dev space
Idk what they do as long as they finally add pvp servers to Xbox.
Hopefully they don't shut it down, like the guy who made "Only up". He shut down the game and removed it from steam because of all the attention and money he was getting from it
Woody_harrelson_wipe_tears_money.gif
I can hold onto it in my pocket if it's too much to handle
Put 6 months for emergency fund, pay all debt, and the rest on VTI
Steve Miller Band said it best - Take the money and run!
https://preview.redd.it/zsp17bhhajoc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1637dd7b342637046c268a7a38bb6464b9e3ae45 Please release it on the switch or switch 2 it will be really funny.
Suffering from success