Circle of logic

"Ckingera;d-228249" wrote:
Ps. Just want to say it didn’t sit well when they said “ it’s expensive” and “it’s still not free”. The game is now expensive to play. It has earned over a billion in revenue and is estimated to make 75k a day. That probably a team members salary a day or at least close. Makes me wonder if EA/Lucas arts gets like 85% of the money and the game is running “paycheck to paycheck” per say. A lot of money, little to show for it lately. If any one has a “reality check fact” to explain it would be appreciated, like how much it costs to run a server like they have that would make the math make sense. Thanks for reading guys, be nice in the comments, it’s a pandemic out here

Poking around, standard payroll expenses for a healthy business are somewhere between 20-30% of gross income.

Let's accept your assumption that total payroll expenses for the average employee come out to 75k and they make 75k per day. According to LinkedIn, Capital Games is a 75-200 employee studio. So let's assume 100 employees.

That would mean 100 days' gross income out of 365 days per year goes toward payroll expenses, or 27.3%, which is in the expected range for a healthy business making adequate money.

If CG has 125 employees, that means 125 out of 365 days' income goes to payroll, making 34% of gross income in payroll expenses. Above our 30% range, suggesting that their income may be below what is healthy for a studio of their size.

Mind you, this is all assumptions and napkin math, but signs suggest CG is probably doing alright, but not rolling in that filthy lucre.

And while the word "expensive" may rub you the wrong way, keep in mind it refers to more than just money. It also refers to time and labor. They can only work on so many things at once, and only so fast. To create some manner of sandbox mode would mean personnel are not working on something else. It would require its own infrastructure, mechanics, visual assets. To give us guild PvP, something else would have to be canceled, or everything would have to be delayed. Perhaps the most comparable project would be grand arena, and that was the main product for the better part of a year. Putting them side by side, what's overall more important to the game; guild PvP for no rewards that most players will muck around with for a couple minutes here and there to futz with a new team but otherwise mostly ignore, or GAC which has become one of the most substantial modes in the game with regards to gameplay?

That's what these expense questions come down to. Feature X or Feature Y. It's not, "We'd rather pocket that money." It's, "We'd rather spend that money, that time, those man hours on a different feature that we think will do more for the game."