How is GGG doing financially

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Xyel wrote:

Well, let's look at the case of Lost Ark:

The beta was the size of about 12% of the launch.

It was similar for New World.

A 3-day beta is really not comparable to the launch...

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Northern_Ronin wrote:

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Xyel wrote:

Well, let's look at the case of Lost Ark:

The beta was the size of about 12% of the launch.

It was similar for New World.

A 3-day beta is really not comparable to the launch...

(Image snipped for size).

Lost Ark is an extremely bad paralell. It was pretty specialized for Asian player habits and preferences, I won't say it really even got recognized by western players until well after its western beta, which WANS'T a gameplay beta, it was a server beta, in that the game had been fully released in Aisan markets for two full years already. They had already beaten the kinks out of it.

Also those are twitch viewership numbers, not player numbers nor revenue numbers. People IN the beta are playing the game, not watching it. After they've had their fill (i.e post beta) they're going to go watch an expert to see what they're doing wrong (or because they're so into it they watch while they play).

Twitch numbers show ony market presence, not sales or player base. I watch TONS of games I don't play (or don't even have any interest in playing). Heck I watch 5 to 10 Magic the Gathering streams and I haven't been active in that for a decade.

New World is a better example, actually new to all markets it intended to sell in at the time of its beta.

https://steamcharts.com/app/1063730

And if you look at that, when is Steams player peak? RIGHT at the end of its 2021 September beta. After the beta ended, players had the chance to see if they liked it, and either stayed or left (but that choice always sees some amount of dip because no game has a 100% retention out the gate). Nearly three months in it lost over 90% of its beta numbers.

https://sullygnome.com/game/New_World#:~:text=New%20World%20Twitch%20stats%20over%20the%20past%207%20days&text=New%20World%20has%20been%20watched,peak%20of%200.3%20thousand%20streamers.

(You'll need to adjust the graphs in this one to be able to see both beta and release)

If we look at its twich numbers we see what I was saying preivous, the beta twitch numbers are somewhat low (lower than post release), people are binging the game, and having a good time looking at the new toy. But post beta, the twitch numbers go UP. It's time for the players who care to watch how to do it right, or perhaps liked it, but not enough to play a ton, but enough to keep in the loop and see if anything interesting meta or new designs crop up.

I even took a peak at Path's histrical twitch data, which is a little dirity, as twitch had only existed for 2 years at that point, and streaming wasn't like a hugely central thing everyone 'knew' about at the time. Still, we see a big spike after the beta ended and the 'proper' release happened. But their steam numbers are the same story, Beta opens, surge of players, dips down losing a chunk by the time release happens, release player numbers never overcome their beta player base (and wouldn't until 2014 with Sacrifice of the Vaal, i.e a new release to interest players again and act as an onboarding tool). However I will admit because of it's very split client, its harder to have a firm answer for path as I know I don't have all the data, I'd suspect it's roughly similar.

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MorsExTenebris wrote:

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innervation wrote:

Have you considered Chris' statements on Baeclast #75 before writing this?

Starting a little early for context:

https://youtu.be/88N4s2qxRIM?t=5039

More specific to this thread (its only a couple minutes after the first):

https://youtu.be/88N4s2qxRIM?t=5172

I did reference that podcast in the disclaimer. I don't see any contradictions to my original post - is there something specific in the podcast that bothers you?

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There's enough of a margin where it's ok to have a down league. A few in a row starts to be bad, then we have to lose PoE2 developers and everything falls to pieces.

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The strength of their fin. position is insane. If, for a second, we assumed that cash from customers is zero (ie. no mtx is sold, no other sales occur), then they would still be able to sustain their normal course of operations for at least 2 full years before experiencing any difficulties

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One thing to bear in mind is that it is very hard to make any kind of financial sense of our modern [unintelligble to me] financial statements and I'll give you examples for the accounting nerds out there....

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We use entirely different stuff to judge our internal financial metrics, so its really sad when people who don't know what they're talking about when they go through our accounts to try and decide how much money we do or don't have. Every sale is precious to us.

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innervation wrote:

...
Did you think that by stating 'I don't see any contradictions here' that there aren't any? Your whole write up is essentially exactly what Chris decried in the clip, which is why I posted it.

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innervation wrote:

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One thing to bear in mind is that it is very hard to make any kind of financial sense of our modern [unintelligble to me] financial statements and I'll give you examples for the accounting nerds out there....

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awesome999 wrote:

Some people would be sad if GGG die or close down. They like POE alot and POE existence is tied to GGG. POE would be gone when GGG goes.

GGG is fine now but how long would POE last? Isn't that the true question?