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NQ status update - keep the game supported for the long run?


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What public information is available about the company NQ itself in terms of:

 

Can it keep up development and support of DU for the foreseeable future = financially sound?

 

How many staff are working on this project?

 

I am aware of the dev locations in Paris and Canada - correct me if I am mistaken.

 

My concern being that the real life financial situation will close the doors of the simulation.

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NQ's latest (and largest) round of funding was in 2019 for ~$11 million. I personally don't see how they could attract more investors until their KPIs improve.

 

Investors won't throw them money to "get their tech" -- because their tech doesn't work at scale and is tightly coupled with AWS. Several people have suggested that NQ is making DU as a "tech demo" and the "real" asset investors care about is their tech...but that doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny. 

 

Staff is hard to estimate but varies between 50 to 100 employees based on the site you look at. It's a surprisingly large indie, and arguably has too many people relative to the number of developers

 

They do have recent job postings -- if they were in such a dire financial situation, they wouldn't be looking to fill 3-4 positions (one would think). 

 

It's baffling they would spend money on two expensive offices, but yes they have offices in Paris and Montreal -- why spend all that extra overhead as a new studio making your first ever game...? Cuz JC didn't want to leave Paris...? 

 

So...all the public information we have suggests they spend a lot on staff and overhead, including high fees for hosting since they don't stand their own servers. AWS isn't that cheap at scale, especially for things like DynamoDB. 

 

IMO there's no immediate danger of the doors closing on the simulation because we'll likely see it coming, but there's no way NQ is "financially sound". 

 

They will push the product to a "1.0 release" and market it. They will see churning users in the month / months to follow and realize that the math isn't going to work. Before they shut it all down, they will likely scale the company down (they don't need two offices or 100 people) and keep it going as a smaller project. 

 

I'm honestly not super optimistic about the state of the game or its future, but I don't think there's any immediate danger of NQ evaporating just yet. 

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At least the subscriptions will bring money into the system, as well as the started Refer a Friend programme will bring money in, the question is rather how many new players will the programme really bring into the game and be able to keep them permanently, or is it more likely that the majority will be dead self-created accounts in order to grab the bonuses?

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One other caveat: NQ also didn't build their own billing system, so they get hit with about a 5% transaction fee from Xsolla.

 

This is a really good exploration of NQ's decision-making. I feel like they did a lot to "save time": Xsolla, picking Unigen2 of all engines, AWS.  

 

For reference, a processor like Stripe is considered very expensive in the industry at 2.9% and is extremely easy to implement. It's sad because there are cheaper options that offer a far, far better user experience than freakin' Xsolla.

 

Frankly, I don't get the feeling that NQ does care about financials at all. Or at least it didn't under JC, which makes sense....PhD academics with no experience doing real world work tend to not care about pesky things like financials. What CEO gives up 2.1% of their company's revenue to save a few days of dev...? 

 

Two offices? 50-100 employees? High AWS fees? High transaction fees? That's not an org that's making healthy choices IMO. 

 

@Zarcata Subs will bring money in, but they likely need something like 50,000 to 60,000 subs just to cover payroll alone...Refer a friend is a great test -- if referred friends churn at a lowish rate, it will encourage NQ to do more marketing in general. Any shred of positive ROI will allow NQ to scale the game fairly consistently if not quickly.

 

It might not be as hard as people think, because a 3 month sub minimum gives them more to spend on acquisition per user. Even if they churn right away, it is plausible that NQ can achieve positive ROI and scale the game somewhat. 

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By giving so much importance to the question of the wipe.

I wonder about NQ's desire to really have active players.

 

Maybe a minority of tester is enough for them to advance in the game.

 

If they really needed thousands of extra players, they should have put an end to these wipe questions because it destroys their business: players stop playing (certainly need to ban / censor all players spamming this topic as well).

If they don't clearly say no. It's just that he doesn't need a new player / active player.

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1 hour ago, Knight-Sevy said:

If they really needed thousands of extra players, they should have put an end to these wipe questions because it destroys their business: players stop playing (certainly need to ban / censor all players spamming this topic as well).

If they don't clearly say no. It's just that he doesn't need a new player / active player.

 

Riiight, that's a good look -- banning people that discuss a valid topic in the forum. "Wipe" is among the most popular topic here after pointless arguments about PvP. 

 

I think you vastly overestimate the influence or visibility of discussions here -- it's a fact that very few people even view posts, never mind actually reading them. 

 

Any suggestion that people are quitting because some post talking about a wipe are anecdotal at best. 

 

The idea that they could get "thousands" of players if only they stop people from talking about a wipe is really baffling....most of these posts barely have hundreds of views; blocking discussions on an unpopular forum will not make any material difference. 

 

By the way, you just started this thread onto the topic of a wipe. So, what do you all think about a wipe? Yes? No? Yes? ?

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4 minutes ago, ShippyLongstalking said:

 

Riiight, that's a good look -- banning people that discuss a valid topic in the forum. "Wipe" is among the most popular topic here after pointless arguments about PvP. 

 

I think you vastly overestimate the influence or visibility of discussions here -- it's a fact that very few people even view posts, never mind actually reading them. 

 

Any suggestion that people are quitting because some post talking about a wipe are anecdotal at best. 

 

The idea that they could get "thousands" of players if only they stop people from talking about a wipe is really baffling....most of these posts barely have hundreds of views; blocking discussions on an unpopular forum will not make any material difference. 

 

By the way, you just started this thread onto the topic of a wipe. So, what do you all think about a wipe? Yes? No? Yes? ?

 

They don't, so they're confident about their funding and don't need a user benefit right now.

 

 

And if not my thought perssonel with the wipe:
- Make a good game

Talk about wipe when it's done.

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