How much does it cost to keep the DU server online?

[boots_1588]

How much does it cost to keep the DU server online? Pretty sure they said it was one server... one shard thing.

[tristan]

I don't know but I think quite some right now?

Maybe it's going to be higher or lower when they do improve their technology 

[blazemonger]

It's not one server, no one ever said as much.

The cluster will probably be quite extensive and cost considerable already, only to 'get worse' as the game grows

 

There's no need for us to know details here though.

[Haunty]

It is one shard, but that can be many servers working together as a pool of resources, so it's hard to say how many they have.

[Mod-Meldrik]

Comments have been hidden to prevent this into turning into a flamewar and going off topic.

 

To answer your original question @boots_1588, the cost is unknown, (wether NQ releases information regarding server cost, is up to them) and no, NQ has not said it's "one" server, quite the contrary. The games "one shard" or one universe runs on a cluster server, which is composed of multiple servers and multiple systems, as Haunty mentioned above.

 

Single Shard does not mean single computer.

 

As a reminder to all, while yes, the question(s) may have been asked a million times, this does not mean that one should be rude or bait someone into a flamewar over what's already been answered. A simple post that answers the question or links to the answer, goes a long way.

 

 

Best Regards,

Meldrik

 

 

 

 

[boots_1588]

1 hour ago, Mod-Meldrik said:

Comments have been hidden to prevent this into turning into a flamewar and going off topic.

 

To answer your original question @boots_1588, the cost is unknown, (wether NQ releases information regarding server cost, is up to them) and no, NQ has not said it's "one" server, quite the contrary. The games "one shard" or one universe runs on a cluster server, which is composed of multiple servers and multiple systems, as Haunty mentioned above.

 

Single Shard does not mean single computer.

 

As a reminder to all, while yes, the question(s) may have been asked a million times, this does not mean that one should be rude or bait someone into a flamewar over what's already been answered. A simple post that answers the question or links to the answer, goes a long way.

 

 

Best Regards,

Meldrik

 

 

 

 

That's what I like to hear "A simple post that answers the question or links to the answer, goes a long way. " +rep

[Kuritho]

Assumptions with very little research on Dual Universe:

1.) DU's server hosting per machine should be similar to Amazon's Dedicated Hosting at roughly 6 dollars an hour, but we'll use 7 dollars as a more extreme example.

2.) DU's machine will run 24/7, costing roughly 180 dollars per machine per day(normally 168, but we're increasing it a bit).

3.) DU will have 10 machines in the USA, 5 machines in Asia, and 10 more in European countries. Another 2 will be added for Australia and Southern America. However, there will be much less resource demands on Australia's and South America's servers, so we'll divide the hosting costs by 2 for those.

Assumed Costs Per Day: 24*7(180(25 + 2)) = $816480 per day. Of course, that is a stupid amount because of my bad estimations.

---Above is bad math, ignore it---

We're instead going to use a real-world example. World of Warcraft's servers cost 120k/month to upkeep with a total (for every server) of just five million per month. It has about ~7 million players, so roughly 1.1 dollars per month per player for server costs.

Assuming Dual Universe will have the same hosting costs, each player has to pay roughly 15 dollars per month.

Dual Universe is making about 14 dollars of profit per player per month.

If Dual Universe has about ten-thousand players at launch, they'll make $140,000 in profit per month.

---Extras---

If Dual Universe has a hundred staff members each getting paid 70k/year, the cost for every staff would be 7,000,000

Dual Universe would make 1,680,000 but be in debt of 5,320,000

HOWEVER! The number of players would be expected to rapidly rise up to roughly a hundred thousand after a few months, making a profit of 1,400,000 per month for silly-high amounts, allowing Dual Universe to make roughly 16,800,000 per year for a profit of roughly 11,000,000 dollars, or roughly 366665 DACs at a cost of 30/DAC.

---Notes---

These are all estimates.

[Greenfox]

5 hours ago, Kuritho said:

Assumptions with very little research on Dual Universe:

1.) DU's server hosting per machine should be similar to Amazon's Dedicated Hosting at roughly 6 dollars an hour, but we'll use 7 dollars as a more extreme example.

2.) DU's machine will run 24/7, costing roughly 180 dollars per machine per day(normally 168, but we're increasing it a bit).

3.) DU will have 10 machines in the USA, 5 machines in Asia, and 10 more in European countries. Another 2 will be added for Australia and Southern America. However, there will be much less resource demands on Australia's and South America's servers, so we'll divide the hosting costs by 2 for those.

Assumed Costs Per Day: 24*7(180(25 + 2)) = $816480 per day. Of course, that is a stupid amount because of my bad estimations.

---Above is bad math, ignore it---

We're instead going to use a real-world example. World of Warcraft's servers cost 120k/month to upkeep with a total (for every server) of just five million per month. It has about ~7 million players, so roughly 1.1 dollars per month per player for server costs.

Assuming Dual Universe will have the same hosting costs, each player has to pay roughly 15 dollars per month.

Dual Universe is making about 14 dollars of profit per player per month.

If Dual Universe has about ten-thousand players at launch, they'll make $140,000 in profit per month.

---Extras---

If Dual Universe has a hundred staff members each getting paid 70k/year, the cost for every staff would be 7,000,000

Dual Universe would make 1,680,000 but be in debt of 5,320,000

HOWEVER! The number of players would be expected to rapidly rise up to roughly a hundred thousand after a few months, making a profit of 1,400,000 per month for silly-high amounts, allowing Dual Universe to make roughly 16,800,000 per year for a profit of roughly 11,000,000 dollars, or roughly 366665 DACs at a cost of 30/DAC.

---Notes---

These are all estimates.

Math doesn't work like that if you got  some fixed costs (i like your optimistic view :3, i really hope we get 100k players too) .

But it's a good theoretical example.

 

I will just add one thing, i know for sure.

 

Costs for Devs:

-Engine License

-SFX License

-Ohter License

-Servers

-Energy

-Personal

-HQ

-Equipment

-Others

 

For a similar Dev group of an indie game. I know that they churn trough 300~400k a month in development cost (and have been doing so for 3 years ;3), aka having two to three servers running + the fixed cost of the whole other stuff. Given that i know little to nothing about cloud servers and how much they cost, i can't really say what we will end up with. But lets say, we will need 10 server shards and the overall cost would end us at around 500k/month, probably.

 

That means to be selfsustaining they would need arond 33k User, who pay 15 dollars a month.

Which isn't even that much.

 

Hopefully i'm ways off about what an single server shard costs and how these providers calculate heir cost. But i would say we need around 20k User for sure, to cover ongoing development. Based on how costly all of the other things, except servers are.

 

The only people that know for sure are the Devs and maybe the investors, that will get an update about cost/etc but need to keep that under a sort of NDA. The only thing we can do, spread the word if we really love the game that once will be there for us all to play. ^^

[blazemonger]

These 'calculations' are just silly, show a complete lack of any real world business comprehension and reallt are nothing but fantasy.

[Kuritho]

27 minutes ago, blazemonger said:

These 'calculations' are just silly, show a complete lack of any real world business comprehension and reallt are nothing but fantasy.

At least I tried.

Care to try and guess?

[blazemonger]

To what end? NQ has no obligation to share any details on this and they are not  in the business of developing DU at minimal revenue. 

 

Besides having secured 4 years of playtime already for myself, IMO a monthly fee of around $15 will be fair and in line with industry standards.

 

Knowing what the EVE infrastructure is (servers are just a part of this) and assuming DU will eventually run on similar dedicated hardware, combined with staffing they should be able to make that work.

[NanoDot]

The amount of cloud-based servers needed to run DU will vary dynamically depending on player load. DU's game world is not made up of "static zones" that are assigned to specific servers (like the "classic" MMO model), but instead the "zones" in DU will shrink and expand dynamically depending on player activity and player distribution in the game world.

 

In a "classic" MMO, the amount of objects and models in a given zone is static, only the amount of players in the area varies. But in DU, nothing is static, not even the shape of the planet surface, so the amount of processing power needed to run a "zone" could vary drastically, depending on what players are doing in that area.

 

For instance, if there are 100 players on Alioth (all within 30km of the arkship), it could take 2 servers to run Alioth, but if there are 1000 players spread across the entire planet, it may take 8 servers to run Alioth. Once those 1000 players have built a few hundred structures, it may take 18 servers to run Alioth...

 

Using cloud-based servers allows that flexibility, as it allows the "pool" of servers to be adjusted dynamically.

 

But there's always an "overhead cost" involved, which means that it's not cost-effective to have small groups of players scattered across 100's of solar systems, because that starts increasing the server cost per player.

 

Speculating on DU's operating costs will be wild guesswork at best, because the architecture is unique.

 

 

[blazemonger]

Speculation this is for sure yes. That said, I would not expect the cluster to be able to expand or shrink unlimited. It would simply be a cost issue to allow for that. I can see how within a set maximum size cluster nodes can be created to accommodate the need for more or less depending on  how many people are in a certain area. From the previous comment it seems the idea is that a node = a server and this I do not expect to be the case. I think it would be more like the universe is a cluster running VMware  as host OS where new guest OS virtual machines are patched in as needed for areas where population (suddenly) grows to 'load balance' the number of players per machine. This technology in itself is not new but the application in a gaming environment with the required sync and speed being the main challenges would be afaik.

 

 

 

[Greenfox]

On 20.6.2018 at 11:28 AM, blazemonger said:

Speculation this is for sure yes. That said, I would not expect the cluster to be able to expand or shrink unlimited. It would simply be a cost issue to allow for that. I can see how within a set maximum size cluster nodes can be created to accommodate the need for more or less depending on  how many people are in a certain area. From the previous comment it seems the idea is that a node = a server and this I do not expect to be the case. I think it would be more like the universe is a cluster running VMware  as host OS where new guest OS virtual machines are patched in as needed for areas where population (suddenly) grows to 'load balance' the number of players per machine. This technology in itself is not new but the application in a gaming environment with the required sync and speed being the main challenges would be afaik.

 

 

 

Yup you get it.

^^

[Del]

On 6/19/2018 at 7:58 AM, blazemonger said:

It's not one server, no one ever said as much.

The cluster will probably be quite extensive and cost considerable already, only to 'get worse' as the game grows

 

There's no need for us to know details here though.

This is why I think this statement is wrong. The video game industry is now operating like a publicly owned stock. Investors, the gaming community players, are now shareholders. Therefore there is a need for the shareholders to know the details, its called ROI return on investment. In my case my ROI is how long will i be able to play this game based on the money i am spending (Or bigger picture) Is the game sustainable. 

 

Back in the day when video games were not publicly funded we might compare that to a privately owned company, in which case your above statement would be more accurate. 

 

I can understand the interest and where it comes from. This looks like the best game since forever and I am personally hoping it succeeds incredibly.   I am hoping the roadmap which is due out this summer will clear up any doubt I may have about spending 140$ on an unfinished product.

[Tordan]

52 minutes ago, Raza157 said:

The video game industry is now operating like a publicly owned stock. Investors, the gaming community players, are now shareholders. Therefore there is a need for the shareholders to know the details, its called ROI return on investment. In my case my ROI is how long will i be able to play this game based on the money i am spending (Or bigger picture) Is the game sustainable. 

no.

if you want to INVEST in a game, there are methods for that. this is spending the equivalent of lunch money for the ability to help test an unfinished product. Your ROI is limited to what they offer.

[blazemonger]

Backers are not shareholders nor investors and we do not have any rights or entitlement to what you are saying.

[Del]

thats your "opinion" restating it does not make it true

 

Just like my opinion restating it would not make it more correct than yours

 

lunch money is what makes the world go round, this game actually shows it has 1 million plus in lunch money and 5 mil plus in equity 

 

but anyway cant wait for the roadmap

 

only reason I posted here is because boots_1588 had a decent question im glad a few people considered it:)

[blazemonger]

28 minutes ago, Raza157 said:

thats your "opinion" restating it does not make it true

 

It's not an opinion this time, I am stating a fact.

 

I am a founding backer and have no stake in NQ beyond having fronted what I did because I believe this project will become a great and viable game that I will be able to enjoy for many years. In exchange I got about 4 years of playtime as well as the opportunity to gain access at a very early stage. i have no say in the direction the game is taken by the developer nor will I gain anything outside of the perks promised when I pulled my credit card.

 

You are of the opinion that backers are investors/stakeholders which they are not, never have been and never will be. The investors are the ones who put €5M+ on the table, we as backers brought in a lot less and we do not own any part of NQ or DU, we have a license to use the client in order to access the servers and that is it.

 

 

The answer to the OP question is that it's really not as easy as calling out a number. The cluster DU will run on is dynamic and may cost more or less depending on resources being activated or patched in. It is public knowledge what EVE runs on, it is not unreasonable to assume DU will require similar hardware so if anything you can check what that configuration will cost to rent/own/run/maintain (spoiler alert; it ain't cheap). And to top it off, the servers are only a relative small part of the running cost for NQ.

[CoreVamore]

I think it cost 23 pizzas a week to keep the servers going, thats my opinion, and Im sticking to it!

 

[Del]

On 6/29/2018 at 3:57 PM, blazemonger said:

 

It's not an opinion this time, I am stating a fact.

 

I am a founding backer and have no stake in NQ beyond having fronted what I did because I believe this project will become a great and viable game that I will be able to enjoy for many years. In exchange I got about 4 years of playtime as well as the opportunity to gain access at a very early stage. i have no say in the direction the game is taken by the developer nor will I gain anything outside of the perks promised when I pulled my credit card.

 

You are of the opinion that backers are investors/stakeholders which they are not, never have been and never will be. The investors are the ones who put €5M+ on the table, we as backers brought in a lot less and we do not own any part of NQ or DU, we have a license to use the client in order to access the servers and that is it.

 

 

The answer to the OP question is that it's really not as easy as calling out a number. The cluster DU will run on is dynamic and may cost more or less depending on resources being activated or patched in. It is public knowledge what EVE runs on, it is not unreasonable to assume DU will require similar hardware so if anything you can check what that configuration will cost to rent/own/run/maintain (spoiler alert; it ain't cheap). And to top it off, the servers are only a relative small part of the running cost for NQ.

You  misunderstand me, I know my money, IF I spend it will not make me a shareholder. It is my opinion that with the way video games now take money up front, before a game is finished, that for me specifically, I expect to know a very large amount of information before i will put my money into a project, which I view as an investment. I appreciate that dual universe is trying to make a game that will be successful, however this is not the video game model of 5 years ago. Crowd funding video games is fairly new compared to the industry.Therefore I DO expect to be in the know, and believe that any question is in fact on the table.

 

This opinion is in fact a fact to me  Perception will forever change and shape the future

[Greenfox]

11 hours ago, Raza157 said:

You  misunderstand me, I know my money, IF I spend it will not make me a shareholder. It is my opinion that with the way video games now take money up front, before a game is finished, that for me specifically, I expect to know a very large amount of information before i will put my money into a project, which I view as an investment. I appreciate that dual universe is trying to make a game that will be successful, however this is not the video game model of 5 years ago. Crowd funding video games is fairly new compared to the industry.Therefore I DO expect to be in the know, and believe that any question is in fact on the table.

 

This opinion is in fact a fact to me  Perception will forever change and shape the future

 

You will be in the known.

 

Just not as much as an real investor or someone with certain power in the dev studio.

 

Atm we're getting quite a lot of info given to us.

Something could go faster, but we're not on a dry spell here.

(pleaes roadmap , pleaes with a cherry on top :3 ... i'm starving for that)

 

As i am an Investor in another game, by a small amount thanks to microinvesting.

I can say, that an Investor Update is mostly the same all over again.

 

- This is our expenditure

- This far are we in development

- This is our problem database

- Expected realese date closer/further away then previously stated

- Lots of reasons why

 

These informations are at most time super duper driple NDA covered. For a good reason.

 

 

The main reason we don't get perma update on the state of the game atm.

It has an negative impact if one cannot deliver on promised dates. People wil flame and negative PR will spin up in the deepths of the web.

So developers are carefull what they say to normal backers.

 

(We can't have nice things cause of idiots ... it's just the truth. I have seen games fail, cause they where to open with information and negative PR stuck around... even when all problems where solved and the game kicked off well. In the end it costed them their lifeblood ... new influx of players.)

 

We all could ask NQ to open up an foundraising of small time investors, off 250 to 10k bucks.

With nothing to give us, except type 2 stock in the company + the information feed it would bring.

 

I have seen two games, that gotten a few million that way. And at somepoint in time, one could sell their part of the company to someone for a profit. If they ever get there. Or convert it by right into real stock, when it goes into the big open stockmarket.

 

 

 

[MookMcMook]

18 hours ago, Raza157 said:

You  misunderstand me, I know my money, IF I spend it will not make me a shareholder. It is my opinion that with the way video games now take money up front, before a game is finished, that for me specifically, I expect to know a very large amount of information before i will put my money into a project, which I view as an investment. I appreciate that dual universe is trying to make a game that will be successful, however this is not the video game model of 5 years ago. Crowd funding video games is fairly new compared to the industry.Therefore I DO expect to be in the know, and believe that any question is in fact on the table.

 

This opinion is in fact a fact to me  Perception will forever change and shape the future

1. Investment in Financial Investment for some kind of dividend in monetary ROI.

 

2. Personal spending money investment in a purchase eg clothes, gym membership or game sub.

 

They're different and perhaps the dual (hohoho) use of the word investment is the issue with the communication.

 

I agree with what you said, if I put my spending money into something up front like a theatre ticket I want ALL the info on how good it will be for that princely sum before spending it to book seats.

[blazemonger]

However in this instance you are buying tickets for a play that is still being written with no rehearsals nor premiere date set yet. The information you seek is simply not there yet and you would not be in a position to directly question nor direct the creation of the play write just because you already bought your ticket (but will be invited to join rehearsals as a spectator because your did).

[Aaron Cain]

nice example!