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I just spent the last 45 minutes writing an expansive post detailing the reasons this game is a Cash Grab, mathematically sound (and generous) estimates for the amount of money they could have made, and a historical look at successful MOBAs in the past and the financial success they found in Free to Play models and just as I was finishing my argument that financially they gain more from going free to play the next 2 monthes than milking it 2 more months and dropping it, I decided to edit.
And I f-ing. Tapped. The back button.
So anyways, long story short with extremely generous estimates based on first Peak and average playerbase, SMS mostly likely made around 242,000 dollars over the last 4 months. Assuming they needed at least a 5 man team and little to not capital on startup to stitch the game together, then they made roughly 48,400 each. We also have to assume it took about 4 months to stitch it together, however the Studio's twitter has been around since May of last year so who knows. So at least 7 months of work puts them at $7,000 a month and at most 18 months ago, $2,688 a month. Either way we can assume this was a part time project up to May of this year or else they would have been playing it very risky (I can't imagine they had startup capital outside of fan hype). So regardless they've basically made a nice Covid Cushion, but as things are the game is gonna die. Now assuming they only had the resources to keep the game up for 6 months, they have two more months left of server up time. Their last hurrah will be a final push to free to play (much like Breach) , before quietly going radio silent before the end of the year.
This isn't the bad play. In fact with the current playerbase on Steam a shift to Free to Play is most likely the only thing that will save the time your team has invested. However, simply shifting to Free to Play will not be enough at this point and you'll probably have to get extremely luckily to stay afloat. I really hope my estimates are wrong and that you're a wonderful company who had more captial to invest into the game. However whether Cash Grab or Love Child, I highly recommend a shift to Free to Play in the coming months. A third Hype Train will not arrive if you're planning on kicking the dead horse for an "official release," as a hail mary to save the game.
Sincerely, A bored Mathematician and Paragon enthusiast (Literally only heard about this reboot today, big sad)
Edit: Concrete figures. Estimations were made based on player Peak when game launched in July. With 2950 players at launch, if we assume 1/4 bought the 60$, 1/4 bought the 35$, and 1/2 bought the 20$ we get a rough estimation of $99,562. I'd say that that number could fluctuate +/- $20,000 depending on the true distribution of purchases of the varying packs.
Per month estimations were given hugely generous purchasing trends. Now Peak players may shift these numbers marginally, so I'm going to shift my thinking from last night and combine the Peak Players and the Average players into a second average. This will increase their profits more. On top of this, for July and August if we assume that a play had the temptation to make an in game purchase once every 3 days and that of those players 1/3 of them actually make the purchase and then we further assume that once making a purchase for the month players do not make further purchases that month. We also assume that in game purchases average out to about 20$ per purchase excluding dramatic outliers this seems reasonable given pricing of the in game shop.
Then July = (31/3)(1/3)(20)((2950+1167)/2) = $141,807 August= (31/3)(1/3)(20)((1099+434)/2) = $52,803
Shifting to September and October let's assume that as the player base dropped lit purchase rate dropped too. Now have players being tempted every four days and only 1/4 of players making the purchase.
Then September = (30/4)(1/4)(20)((723+317)/2) = $19,500 October = (31/4)(1/4)(20)((542+230)/2) = $14,957
Now August probably say new purchases of the game, however based on peak player rates for August I wouldn't say it exceeded 1/6 of the original profits and nothing else about the formula changed still assuming the same distribution as above: $99,562/6 = $16,593. For the following two months let's assume that the average playerbase the MAXIMUM number of new players that joined the game. Then (200/2959)($99,562)(2) = $13,458 for September and October together.
Altogether that's $99,562+$141,807+$52,803+$19,599+$14,957+$16,593+$13,458 = $358,779.
Now the reason this figure is so dramatically different from the one given last night is due to the averaging of the average playerbase and peak playerbase as a way of calculating the total number of people per month who might be tempted to buy something. Last night's figure used the exact same numbers instead only taking into account the average playerbase. While this looks like a lot, if SMS is paying their employees at least $40,000 a year, then divided into 8 employees that's $38,779 left over for the game. If you're expecting SMS to love the game so much that they'd underpay their employees then you're highly naive. Given these figures it's highly likely this is still a cash Grab however the recent hirings in dev 3 and the recent post in dev 4 give me a ray of hope that they're still trying their best.
Them's the figures. Thanks for thinking I didn't do the math, buttercup. <3
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