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+---- Thread: Financial Report (/thread-28379.html)
Financial Report - Doctor Internet - Mar 14, 2021
Unfortunately, this will have to start with an apology. I wanted this to have fancy graphs and shit, but uh. paypal bad lol.
If and when I finally get my god-damn reports, instead of the peice-o-shit dashboard, I'll get a v2 of this up.
So, our finances, some key facts.
Since the decrease of membership price, payment processor fees jumped from ~10% of income, to ~25%. Obviously, this combines with the reduction in overall income to severly limit out incoming funds.
In the last 30 days, we've taken in £6.50. This is a major reduction in income, with <=5 incoming payments in December, vs ~40 in January. Combine this with a major decrease in sales for L2 Plates (averaging around $25/m), has contributed to the major decrease in overall income levels.
In contrast to this, is the ~£150/month avg expenditure on servers. However, thanks to some good work with the Business and Security teams, this has been reduced, though we're waiting on the expenditure to stabilise before commenting on new pricing.
However, along with this has been a ~80% reduction in expenditure for all development costs. While there has been some increases in specific areas, such as in pre-written scripts and external development, the development team staffing costs have massively decreased, along with the cancellation of a number of development services, such as GitHub Teams.
Overall, this hasn't been a good period for Limelight as a business, income is down, and expenditure had to go down to match. However, this is not the end, as a number of options have been considered.
TTT's untapped potential.
TTT on launch was slept on. The Community were interested, staff were eager to go on and play, and the quality of content was good. However, the delay between Open Beta and release proved to be too long. Focusing more resources into this area could be a good idea, providing a short-form fun experience to players.
CityRP's monetisation
Despite the number of issues that CityRP has, it still has a large potential for monetisation. Currently, content is spread, locked behind a multitude of gates, and a low quality and quantity of RP currently present obsticals to recovery.
Ares Defence Services
ADS has a great team, good content, and a dedicated playerbase. However, monetisation for this style of Arma gameplay is tricky, to say the least. More thought needs to be put in here.
Funding of Individual Projects
An idea raised by both myself and others within the team is a change of funding. Instead of selling membership or moneypacks, instead directing funding towards individual projects. This would allow people to pick areas they felt better for supporting, whilst not having some of the drawbacks of membership, such being reliant on economic gain.
More GModStore Projects
These are profitable, stable over the long term, and often fun for the developers. They take a lot of time and resources, and always risk being denied. We should consider this, especially for developers who aren't being utilised as often.
RE: Financial Report - Taylor - Mar 14, 2021
Arma MilSims are almost always net-losers, even the biggest communities cost more to upkeep than they make from “kindness” donations.
There’s literally nothing that can be done to make ADS profitable.
RE: Financial Report - Cole - Mar 14, 2021
(Mar 14, 2021, 02:24 PM)Faustin Wrote: Arma MilSims are almost always net-losers, even the biggest communities cost more to upkeep than they make from “kindness” donations.
There’s literally nothing that can be done to make ADS profitable.
Good luck running a business with that attitude. The reason most Arma servers aren't profitable is due to Bohemia Interactive's TOS regarding donations. However, it doesn't necessarily have to be profitable if it can bring in players to the community as a whole, if those new players then play on the other servers then there's potential for them to purchase products on, for example, the CityRP server.
RE: Financial Report - Taylor - Mar 14, 2021
(Mar 14, 2021, 02:51 PM)Cole Wrote:(Mar 14, 2021, 02:24 PM)Faustin Wrote: Arma MilSims are almost always net-losers, even the biggest communities cost more to upkeep than they make from “kindness” donations.
There’s literally nothing that can be done to make ADS profitable.
Good luck running a business with that attitude. The reason most Arma servers aren't profitable is due to Bohemia Interactive's TOS regarding donations. However, it doesn't necessarily have to be profitable if it can bring in players to the community as a whole, if those new players then play on the other servers then there's potential for them to purchase products on, for example, the CityRP server.
Re-read what I said. "Arma MilSims are almost always net-losers".
There's nothing about MilSims that can be monetised, you can't have donator packages, if it was Altis Life it would be a different story, but not with Milsim.
RE: Financial Report - HeavyWolfPL - Mar 14, 2021
I have one question, why is CityRP actually dead. How is it possible that such a community just died immediately?
RE: Financial Report - Taylor - Mar 14, 2021
(Mar 14, 2021, 03:19 PM)HeavyWolfPL Wrote: I have one question, why is CityRP actually dead. How is it possible that such a community just died immediately?
It didn't die immediately, it was a combination of a number of factors.
RE: Financial Report - Doctor Internet - Mar 14, 2021
(Mar 14, 2021, 03:20 PM)Faustin Wrote:(Mar 14, 2021, 03:19 PM)HeavyWolfPL Wrote: I have one question, why is CityRP actually dead. How is it possible that such a community just died immediately?
It didn't die immediately, it was a combination of a number of factors.
This.
A lack of quality updates.
A lack of events.
People moving on.
People getting bored of the available quality of RP and content.
A lack of quality RP.
Performance issues.
Crashing.
Large content downloads.
Poor map choices.
And I'm sure there's more.
A large combination of factors, which weren't acted upon fast enough.
RE: Financial Report - Cole - Mar 14, 2021
(Mar 14, 2021, 03:19 PM)HeavyWolfPL Wrote: I have one question, why is CityRP actually dead. How is it possible that such a community just died immediately?
CityRP has been on its downfall ever since 2016/17, definitely didn't immediately die. However, the playercount will obviously dramatically drop, it has a domino effect, people stop playing because of a low(er) playercount and then the playercount drops even more.
RE: Financial Report - bimkx - Mar 19, 2021
![[Image: 1JENLp2.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/1JENLp2.jpg)