Pericles the Lion
Well-Known Member
I'm not going to try because I'm not obsessed with having every new toy that gets released. My city is generating more than enough copies of Event buildings to achieve my goals.
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Inno's money grubbing ruining the game
- Thread starter Big Snafu
- Start date
Wwwoodchuck
Active Member
Nice, I love Corporate speak when aimed at investors! Let me see if I can translate. Anyone else who speaks corporate reporting aimed at Investors, please, step right in with your interpretation also! This will be fun!!
Thank you Uber for the information!!
It seems they were also able to increase spending from “Established Players” on browsers (PC). These would be the long time players who started spending to grab these shiny new military boosts. This I would have expected. All those high ranked players now NEED to restock with the latest and greatest. The “High Margin Revenues” would probably be the shiny new buildings, Gold/silver pay rewards that cost zero to build, stock and deliver. I would think the Programmers labors are mostly accounted for in another column, this is not counting much of their labor or efforts to develop these ‘products’. I guess you could account ‘server space” in calculating revenues here, but you would need to see the actual reports for that. I would think all that had been amortized elsewhere to more benefit.
“Healthy spending levels on events” Looks like the users are grabbing all these shiny new Military boost buildings!!! GE 5 was earlier this year, right? That could account for a lot of those sales
Wait, let’s take a look at a statement here:
“Mobile represented 78% (76) of total revenues in the fourth quarter, which mainly reflected the strong growth of our Word Games franchise year over year. Browser represented 19% (19) of revenues of the quarter but were up 10% YoY due to the continued strong engagement from and monetization of established players in Forge of Empires.”
Ok. Mobile is roughly 78% of their overall revenue? Wow. I would not have seen that coming. Their “Word game franchise” must be a huge draw, lots of players. I have seen the ads for these games, lots of ‘micro-transactions’ I believe. 0.99 to 5.00 kind of things. So Browser users in FoE are a very small part of their monetary base. Interesting.
‘Strong Winter event’… I have to keep looking these up, sorry. I have no memory anymore. Ahh yes, the present things on the board! Also the calendar thing.
Yes, I would expect this to be a revenue maker. Contrary to some thoughts, it seems players prefer the ‘mindless events’ like this. Save currency and spend for a daily reward of the users choice. There were a TON of selection kits that players needed also. The upgrades had been available, now they just need toe remaining kits. So lots of decent daily rewards and a mindless game mechanic equals more spending - Who knew! (lol!)
This event also had the Gold and Silver pay levels and the Calendar that was for the most part a revenue generator.
Thank you Uber for the information!!
First Quote: Ok.. I do not have a memory anymore, so do not remember what would have been reported in October revenue. Fall event perhaps? Looked it up. Thank you for the FANDOM Wiki. This was the baking thing. It would seem players are not huge fans of this kind of event. It was a clone of the block busting thing that is currently going on. I am not a huge fan either. This was the Autumn Vineyard though, I got 4 of them and see quite a few around, so looks like a specific customer spent on this one. Even though the game sucked, it was one you could just throw money at, but not many did. Ahh. The Daily prizes were not all that exciting either. Nothing for users to get excited about spending for.
Second Quote: This one is easier. “Restructuring” in April. This means they cleaned house, fired staff and cut back on expenses. On the Corporate reporting side, they can also get ready to move revenue and expenses around with a “Restructure”. This is very common, it is simply moving money/assets from one column to another. Liabilities (negative monies) can become Assets (Positive monies) and vice versa. It all depends on how creative reporting gets and what the Corporate bonuses depend on. They will usually tailor the year end reporting to gain the largest corporate bonuses. Corporate reporting can get very creative: A loss in yearly revenue can still lead to big bonuses for executives depending on how it is reported! I have helped put some statements together.
It seems they were also able to increase spending from “Established Players” on browsers (PC). These would be the long time players who started spending to grab these shiny new military boosts. This I would have expected. All those high ranked players now NEED to restock with the latest and greatest. The “High Margin Revenues” would probably be the shiny new buildings, Gold/silver pay rewards that cost zero to build, stock and deliver. I would think the Programmers labors are mostly accounted for in another column, this is not counting much of their labor or efforts to develop these ‘products’. I guess you could account ‘server space” in calculating revenues here, but you would need to see the actual reports for that. I would think all that had been amortized elsewhere to more benefit.
“Healthy spending levels on events” Looks like the users are grabbing all these shiny new Military boost buildings!!! GE 5 was earlier this year, right? That could account for a lot of those sales
They made more revenue this year due to a major cutback in expenses (firing staff) strong in-game content (those shiny new buildings with the brand new military boosts) Higher proportion of browser revenues (folks spent more on events to get all those brand new military boosts).
This one I cannot speak much on. I do not know what their other products are, so cannot say how they impacted numbers, sorry. It is interesting to note that in the group of their 3 top game sales, overall there was a drop in revenue from third quarter (46%) to fourth quarter (41%). No Christmas bonus for you!
Wait, let’s take a look at a statement here:
“Mobile represented 78% (76) of total revenues in the fourth quarter, which mainly reflected the strong growth of our Word Games franchise year over year. Browser represented 19% (19) of revenues of the quarter but were up 10% YoY due to the continued strong engagement from and monetization of established players in Forge of Empires.”
Ok. Mobile is roughly 78% of their overall revenue? Wow. I would not have seen that coming. Their “Word game franchise” must be a huge draw, lots of players. I have seen the ads for these games, lots of ‘micro-transactions’ I believe. 0.99 to 5.00 kind of things. So Browser users in FoE are a very small part of their monetary base. Interesting.
Halloween event revenues sucked. Would that be the Fall Event? Ahh, no, this was the one with the rock/paper/scissors card things! It looks like the player base was not thrilled with that event mechanics. I believe the comments in the Forum were on the negative side, even after Inno “Dumbed it down” I think was the phrase used.
‘Strong Winter event’… I have to keep looking these up, sorry. I have no memory anymore. Ahh yes, the present things on the board! Also the calendar thing.
Yes, I would expect this to be a revenue maker. Contrary to some thoughts, it seems players prefer the ‘mindless events’ like this. Save currency and spend for a daily reward of the users choice. There were a TON of selection kits that players needed also. The upgrades had been available, now they just need toe remaining kits. So lots of decent daily rewards and a mindless game mechanic equals more spending - Who knew! (lol!)
This event also had the Gold and Silver pay levels and the Calendar that was for the most part a revenue generator.
Sharmon the Impaler
Well-Known Member
Then why are they treating their established , high paying customers like crap ? Everyone that I have asked is convinced that Inno is trying to purge most of the advanced players. They have said nothing to the contrary and have done everything to discourage them of late.
Pericles the Lion
Well-Known Member
The bottom line is that revenue was up YoY (partly due to increased sales of higher margin products), operating expenses were down, and these two factors contributed to an increases in operating profit (DM) and operating profit margin. I don't know where you got your MBA but, where I got mine, this quarterly report would be received as "good news".
Xenosaur
Well-Known Member
and just for the record, thank you for posting that @UBERhelp1 ....
I will put a stake in the ground now about WHY winter Event was so strong...
Many of us know why...
We got the "word" out there that the "problem solver" event was WINTER.
This was people talking to other people about that:
If you DO NOT take advantage of this chance to gain self-sufficiency in aiding your city everyday (meaning getting established to GROW a crop of Nutcrackers v1 and v2....) you're going to severely limit your collections and city growth, and even game participation.
We all told and explained to friends for MONTHS they needed this to continue, and once we knew it had an event "slotting" to fix (WINTER) they got prepared to play.
Then - once we saw it was for real in the BETA SPOILER forum, and then in BETA test play space - we created additional "word of mouth" for people to get onboard and be ready to get it live - because it's real.
Of course Winter was big - it had something every "active" player's city needs: a gameplan "solve" for MASS aiding each day.
You're just seeing the capitalization of good advice by a lot of people from here - to help the player community - that then turned into game revenue for Inno.
YW Inno for the good harvest in Winter.
I will put a stake in the ground now about WHY winter Event was so strong...
Many of us know why...
We got the "word" out there that the "problem solver" event was WINTER.
This was people talking to other people about that:
If you DO NOT take advantage of this chance to gain self-sufficiency in aiding your city everyday (meaning getting established to GROW a crop of Nutcrackers v1 and v2....) you're going to severely limit your collections and city growth, and even game participation.
We all told and explained to friends for MONTHS they needed this to continue, and once we knew it had an event "slotting" to fix (WINTER) they got prepared to play.
Then - once we saw it was for real in the BETA SPOILER forum, and then in BETA test play space - we created additional "word of mouth" for people to get onboard and be ready to get it live - because it's real.
Of course Winter was big - it had something every "active" player's city needs: a gameplan "solve" for MASS aiding each day.
You're just seeing the capitalization of good advice by a lot of people from here - to help the player community - that then turned into game revenue for Inno.
YW Inno for the good harvest in Winter.
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Wwwoodchuck
Active Member
I would ask for a refund on your piece of paper and get some real world experience in the corporate world. That information is in no way an actual financial report, it is a feel good public relations statement. It contains absolutely zero information that an investor would call “Good News.” All you can pull out of it is what I relayed: speculation from and end user perspective.
Bottom line is they had to do a major layoff and restructure this year. How much of that “good News” that counts for this year, you could never gather from that news blurb. Possibly they got rid of ‘bloat”. But looking from where we are at with the latest addition to the Forge of Empires line, it is not promising. I can tell you this, that restructuring is going to give some executive that fat bonus that is in their contact for making THEIR numbers this year. Next year, they will probably be doing this again at a different company.
What does it mean for the players? I have no idea, but let’s take a look at what we got, ok?
What do you see of the initial offering of the latest addition to Forge of Empires that has been in the works for 6 months? From my standpoint, the actual delivery of it was a disaster. Bottom line is the product simply did not function – At all. It was delivered broken and there has been silence as far as communication with us. I mean… Users cannot sell a building? Isn’t that a pretty basic transaction?
To someone who has been involved in many “restructurings” in the corporate world, this tells me they likely have “restructured” a bit too much. They very likely fired the higher pay scale developers who had a clue what was going on in the code. The older, longer term employees who are at high scale are always the first to go, and with them, all their knowledge. The company gets a BIG bang for each firing versus needing to fire TWO lower paid employees for the same savings.
The remaining developers were probably very overworked trying to keep the schedule for delivery without that long time knowledge base. The project started with 10 developers with 2 very knowledgeable ones, and ended up with 5 who do not have the experience and also got thrown into other projects at the same time, kind of a situation. They delivered a product to Beta they knew did not function, but they had no choice, they had to keep to the scheduled delivery date. (I wonder if someone’s bonus also depended on getting this out on schedule???)
“Euphoria” isn’t even calculating correctly? How basic of a calculation is that?
How fast have issues been addressed? What communication did we get here? How long has it been, is anything fixed or any word on ETA of updates? I have not really followed the Beta server much, but I do not remember ever seeing this amount of issues and zero communication. It sure looks like a severe lack of staff and disorder in the organization. And sure, things will work themselves out, they always do. It is not going to be a disaster forever, we just need to get over the hump is all.
Of course, I could be wrong on all this too! Perhaps the Corporate world has gotten kinder and gentler more “woke” with warm, soft feelings in the decade since I have been retired?
UBERhelp1
Well-Known Member
First, some context I probably should have explained before posting this. MTG, the company that owns InnoGames, owns several other companies (or has some stake in them): InnoGames, Hutch, Ninjakiwi, Playsimple, Kongregate, and just recently Snowprint. As such, many of the numbers referred to are across the entire portfolio, *not* Forge of Empires or InnoGames specifically.
Per the context, this doesn't mean there was a drop in revenue. That percent is the revenue of the top 3 games in MTG's entire portfolio against the total revenue. In essence, this just means that those other, non-top 3 games are growing. In fact, I would characterize this as a positive (from MTG's/an investor's perspective): it means their wider portfolio is getting better established and reaching more users, rather than having the majority of the revenue coming from a small group of titles. It's more diversified.
Again, this is across all games in the portfolio, which the majority are mobile games. I included this for the point that FoE was specifically called out for its browser players spending, which due to the way players' reactions have been to certain choices (removing GvG), one might not have suspected browser revenue for FoE to actually be doing well.
I would argue this isn't the case. It's not that players prefer "mindless" events - in fact, when I did a survey at the end of 2023, the Winter event was voted as the worst event by far. Players want events that involve more than just sitting and waiting. However, what the Winter Event did well is enable spending on a whim. In most events, spending is vastly more beneficial by spreading out your spending across the entire event to gain consistent progress. In the winter event, you could immediately spend as much as you wanted and the price would not change.
--------- topic change ----------
And for this, I'm assuming you're talking about Incursions? We have no indication that they plan to bring this feature to the live servers as it currently is. If anything, it feels like we're actually participating in a beta test for once. Generally, features arrive on Beta already finished, with what amounts to just balancing changes before live servers. With Incursions, they've launched it early to get feedback, improve core systems, and include the players in the development. Turns out that players can only complain. Now, if Incursions launches on live servers in its current state, then yes, it deserves complaints. But it's on the beta server, not the live servers, the place you want it to be so it can get tested.
It's not been "delivered broken" as it hasn't even been delivered yet.
Pericles the Lion
Well-Known Member
jaymoney23456
Well-Known Member
You can tell that Quantom incursions (guild raids) was a hastily put together product (they didn't even bother designing new buildings and just reused Iron age ones along with iron age troops lol) that was designed to try to milk as much revenue out of players as possible on the cheap. This is what you get when you lay off experienced staff/developers. It seems quite lazy to so blatantly introduce a pay to pin product complete with a pass one can buy to gain a significant advantage by doing nothing more than spending $$$$$. Wouldn't doubt that they cut back on their server capacity either given how much worse lag at GbG start has gotten compared to how it used to be and the fact that even fighting in GbG for more than 5 min (est.) leads to lag that can only be fixed by backing out of the game and going back in.
jaymoney23456
Well-Known Member
Also, the news release about INNO earnings points to the increased obsession by wall-street to put short term shareholder benefits ahead of all considerations, which is not only harmful for everyone else, but is often not even in the best long-term interests of these publcily traded companies.
Wwwoodchuck
Active Member
Bless your Heart.
Dukester69
Member
Well said! ^^^
Xenosaur
Well-Known Member
Maybe I missed it, but the title and theme coming from many posts in this topic is decidedly negative (pessimistic). I've kinda racked my brain for year on how Inno, a medium to large size company with at least 6 big games much like FoE, can pay for what they do, without building some kind of game structures that allow them to make revenue to fund them.
I don't think anyone got a perfect model for this. Someone here posted they think Inno should charge everyone fairly, a monthly fee, etc and personally doesn't like to compete with others that they consider purchasers of "infinite" game power correlated to an excess of disposable income - because they have disposable income they can hurl at the game, and others choose not to do that.
So how do we take FoE, a traditionally and strongly F2P game (and by the strictest definition I can think of, they STILL are F2P because your game may take 10 years of time to take it to where you want it to be, but you haven't spent a dime to do it - just gobs of time...).
I can't think of a good business model to fund ALL of what Inno does in their business, other than the model we use here. I believe they will continue to refine it, possibly moving some things we pay for now to free (or less costly), and adding new things where they cost money for time acceleration, or power acceleration.
I think there is still a financial wakeup call occuring, too. Wait until you see what QI is - and what it costs. It might be galvanizing and might even portend future trends.
Does anyone have an example of a successful (competing) model to blending F2P, P2W in the % used here - that has funded a company like Inno to their goals, kept up game populations, was enticing and exciting to potential new players, and made everyone (players and corporation, alike) happy (or at least no name calling?)
I don't think anyone got a perfect model for this. Someone here posted they think Inno should charge everyone fairly, a monthly fee, etc and personally doesn't like to compete with others that they consider purchasers of "infinite" game power correlated to an excess of disposable income - because they have disposable income they can hurl at the game, and others choose not to do that.
So how do we take FoE, a traditionally and strongly F2P game (and by the strictest definition I can think of, they STILL are F2P because your game may take 10 years of time to take it to where you want it to be, but you haven't spent a dime to do it - just gobs of time...).
I can't think of a good business model to fund ALL of what Inno does in their business, other than the model we use here. I believe they will continue to refine it, possibly moving some things we pay for now to free (or less costly), and adding new things where they cost money for time acceleration, or power acceleration.
I think there is still a financial wakeup call occuring, too. Wait until you see what QI is - and what it costs. It might be galvanizing and might even portend future trends.
Does anyone have an example of a successful (competing) model to blending F2P, P2W in the % used here - that has funded a company like Inno to their goals, kept up game populations, was enticing and exciting to potential new players, and made everyone (players and corporation, alike) happy (or at least no name calling?)
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Johnny B. Goode
Well-Known Member
This used to be true, but there are now multiple fairly powerful buildings that have only been made available to players through cash expenditures. Unless they someday come to the AD or are made available in future events, you can never get them no matter how long or how actively you play. F2P by the strictest definition means that everything in the game is attainable without spending any cash, just time. Used to be true of FoE, no longer is.
The best model for a F2P game is the way FoE was for the first several years. You could get everything in the game if you played long enough. You could get it a bit quicker by playing more actively. You could get it instantly (or almost) by spending money. That model was good enough for Inno, but not for MTG, apparently. Combine that with the fact that the developer with the vision for the game died just a few short years after the game was introduced and you have what we have now. A game owner (MTG) that only cares about how much money they can make from the game. Development staff cut. Cash-only game items. Unimaginative game features that sometimes barely work and are only designed to keep players glued to their screens and spending cash.
As long as MTG owns Inno, this won't change. It's a sad state of affairs, but it's truly reflective of the corporate culture since at least the 1980s.
Xenosaur
Well-Known Member
So what I think I hear you saying @Johnny B. Goode is that in 2017 or so, there was not anything you could buy directly, as you referenced - such as a "powerful building". I bought diamonds then for land squares, I think I was so noobish that I actually paid for a pesky blueprint too, and bought things in events, an extra this or that (way before fragmentation).
For me - I do count my 2nd or 3rd purchased CHERRY BLOSSOM set as "powerful building", but then again - all I had to do was have a few frogs jump efficiently and bought the chance to do that more times than were given to me for free (or earned).
So we did have that back then too - kinda, sorta - but I think you're saying it wasn't as rabid or pervasive or ubiquitous or as "in your daily face", as today.
I agree the player base had the sweet spot game here, and I often wondered "how are these guys doing this, this way, for so long"?
We know the answer - massive growth of the player population and from that, they kept their accounting beans in order by volume. Now it seems player counts are way down, and things cost most and there is a price tag on almost everything.
For me - I do count my 2nd or 3rd purchased CHERRY BLOSSOM set as "powerful building", but then again - all I had to do was have a few frogs jump efficiently and bought the chance to do that more times than were given to me for free (or earned).
So we did have that back then too - kinda, sorta - but I think you're saying it wasn't as rabid or pervasive or ubiquitous or as "in your daily face", as today.
I agree the player base had the sweet spot game here, and I often wondered "how are these guys doing this, this way, for so long"?
We know the answer - massive growth of the player population and from that, they kept their accounting beans in order by volume. Now it seems player counts are way down, and things cost most and there is a price tag on almost everything.
Pericles the Lion
Well-Known Member
Afaik, there have been three buildings that could only be purchased with cash. The Keymaster Workshop (20th Anniversary Event), the Himalayan Firs (2023 Wildlife and 2024 Wildlife) and the Rhododendron Field (2023 Wildlife and 2024 Wildlife). The Keymaster is a pretty good building in that it produces frags of the Tower of Conjunction (but the ToC is rapidly being surpassed by more recent buildings). The HF and the RF are okay.
Sharmon the Impaler
Well-Known Member
I think that it would be safe to call Eternal Dreams a pay for only building. The minimum is now 2.64 million in Q with an equivalent diamond value of 28K diamonds as is stands now. Can you get it free ? Sure if you have a massive diamond store or it may be free as a DS 5 events from now when it's been over shadowed by others.
UBERhelp1
Well-Known Member
The HF and RF are available in the epic 2024 wildlife kit. You can get as many as you like,
Pericles the Lion
Well-Known Member
I guess that it depends on the world. On my main I'm only about 14K diamonds away from Gold League at the moment.
Avan Sensei
Member
I played this game for 3 years and it dawned on me that it is now easier than ever to win fully leveled event buildings (including the main event building) for free. Inno makes money off of event pass, yes, but at the same time gives away event buildings for free. You see the balance here? Making the wildlife event longer just means more free tickets to play and more daily specials to win. In this year's wildlife event I have won 6 fully leveled event buildings for free, including the Flamingo level 11 and Serene Animal Crossing. This had been my most successful event in 3 years of playing this game. I don't think Inno is ruining the game. On the contrary I think Inno is making this game easier for the F2P players.