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A letter to the devs...


BiGEdge

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Here many always write about NQ and DualUniverse as a game, but probably forget that not necessarily the game is the important product, but the technology behind it, when it comes to the one server.
The game including content seems to be irrelevant. The technology behind it, if it works and becomes financially viable, is the key to success. 
The problem at the moment is that the technology behind it cannot be sold at the moment due to the energy crises worldwide, as this apparently causes high costs financially. This would also be confirmed by the savings and tests with the performance. I estimate that a player would have to pay a monthly subscription for more than 20, - €, depending on how many players are permanently available, even more. At the same time, the game itself is not even filled with content. Means, if the game would be really alive, with cities, trade, many players, quests and occupations, PvP and more these costs would jump up to >30,-€. The bad thing is, if there are less players than in the best times, the subscription fees would have to be raised every time or game content would have to be deleted to save costs.
Especially now, when many energy prices such as coal, gas, electricity are becoming increasingly expensive, this technology is not interesting, at least in the current state of development of price-performance.
At the same time, it is also a very expensive game on the part of the players, the power consumption by DualUniverse with the "game content" is 4-6 times of, for example, World of Warcraft, which offers much more content and employment. And yes, in the next few years, gamers will also have to pay attention to whether they spend 500,-€ a year on PC power consumption or >1500,-€.

 

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1 hour ago, Aaron Cain said:

Sorry to say but i have seen space engeneer servers that are closer to the original DU vision as DU is itself, and those i did not invest a few hundred in. 

 

This is certainly true and on top of that these servers offer actual gameplay and interaction with others..

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1 hour ago, Zarcata said:

but probably forget that not necessarily the game is the important product, but the technology behind it, when it comes to the one server.

 

I don't agree.

 

I think the only technology worth anything is the voxel tech -- the voxel to mesh algorithms and the voxel editors. 

 

As far as I know, NQ didn't develop technology to make single-shard a possibility.

 

This technology was already viable because of how cloud-based infra works, and NQ has famously leveraged AWS to do this (vs. trying to build their own stack as some other companies do).

 

This idea that it's one server isn't true -- it's still many servers working in a cluster, with instances going in and out of the cluster as needed. 

 

Power consumption isn't the issue, because that's not how AWS charges. CPU, memory, and read/write ops on a database like Dynamo is where things get really expensive. AFAIK AWS hasn't drastically raised prices recently (if that's not true please LMK, it'll affect my day job lol). 

 

They over-leveraged these easy-to-use services early on, then realized it was too expensive...because NQ is the exact opposite of an "expert" in server tech. They made really obvious mistakes that many first-time devs do: not designing for scale, then had to cut back. 

 

Even with them utilizing these services at their highest, it probably wouldn't be too expensive if they had ~100,000 subs or so. The issue isn't just cost, it's that their sub base is so low -- in a scaled-out subscription model, there's always a ton of players under-utilizing the infra that more than make up the hardcores playing all day. 

 

I do agree that there's tech worth something, although it's hard to say if others will really see the value and I don't believe NQ has had much luck in developing useful server tech other than their core voxel systems. 

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30 minutes ago, blundertwink said:

Even with them utilizing these services at their highest, it probably wouldn't be too expensive if they had ~100,000 subs or so.

How would a game like Dualuniverse get that many subscriptions? Even Eve, as a comparison of games, has just about managed this number and probably offers the better product in terms of content.
Especially in the long run, I don't think DualUniverse can keep 50,000 players in the game. It offers too little content and lasting motivation.

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44 minutes ago, blundertwink said:

 

I don't agree.

 

I think the only technology worth anything is the voxel tech -- the voxel to mesh algorithms and the voxel editors. 

 

As far as I know, NQ didn't develop technology to make single-shard a possibility.

 

This technology was already viable because of how cloud-based infra works, and NQ has famously leveraged AWS to do this (vs. trying to build their own stack as some other companies do).

 

This idea that it's one server isn't true -- it's still many servers working in a cluster, with instances going in and out of the cluster as needed. 

 

Power consumption isn't the issue, because that's not how AWS charges. CPU, memory, and read/write ops on a database like Dynamo is where things get really expensive. AFAIK AWS hasn't drastically raised prices recently (if that's not true please LMK, it'll affect my day job lol). 

 

They over-leveraged these easy-to-use services early on, then realized it was too expensive...because NQ is the exact opposite of an "expert" in server tech. They made really obvious mistakes that many first-time devs do: not designing for scale, then had to cut back. 

 

Even with them utilizing these services at their highest, it probably wouldn't be too expensive if they had ~100,000 subs or so. The issue isn't just cost, it's that their sub base is so low -- in a scaled-out subscription model, there's always a ton of players under-utilizing the infra that more than make up the hardcores playing all day. 

 

I do agree that there's tech worth something, although it's hard to say if others will really see the value and I don't believe NQ has had much luck in developing useful server tech other than their core voxel systems. 

 

Well im just done with Voxel building stuff, I dont see the appeal.  Maybe sometime down the road when things get better with technology.  But as i see DU and Starbase think that the building is the main part of the game, and that just seems to bring out a niche amount of people.  And forget to make an actual game around it.   Then on top of that I hear arguments from people tell me "then just buy a ship from someone!". Ok thats great in all, but then what do i do with those bought ships in DU. As nothing looks appealing.  And AND AND, if that is your suggestion (which ive been told by multiple people) then maybe building shouldn't be the main part of the game.   I would love to be proven wrong and have DU go to release and launch and have a healthy player base and continue to grow, but the reality is I dont see that.  They dont focus on fun, and their tech really doesnt work.  Yes pop is low because of the wipe talk, but reality is it was bad even before that. now its just 'really bad'.

 

 

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1 minute ago, Zarcata said:

How would a game like Dualuniverse get that many subscriptions? Even Eve, as a comparison of games, has just about managed this number and probably offers the better product in terms of content.
Especially in the long run, I don't think DualUniverse can keep 50,000 players in the game. It offers too little content and lasting motivation.

 

My question would be how could they survive without this scale of subs...? 😵

 

100,000 subs means (at most) $1,000,000 in revenue per month. That's not a huge amount...Not for a company of NQ's size! 

 

IMO, 50,000 subs is far too low to keep a company of NQ's size going. That's only $6mm a year at most -- that wouldn't even be enough to cover payroll for ~50 people, especially for devs...never mind marketing, taxes, rent, or infrastructure! 

 

They'd have to do severe layoffs, which would only hamstring their progress more. 

 

Somehow, NQ must think they have the ability to scale this game to a level high enough to support themselves...I don't think it's likely either, but with no other source or revenue (as of now), I don't see a way for them to be sustainable without hitting this sort of sub scale, at least ballpark. 

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1 hour ago, blundertwink said:

 

My question would be how could they survive without this scale of subs...? 😵

 

100,000 subs means (at most) $1,000,000 in revenue per month. That's not a huge amount...Not for a company of NQ's size! 

 

IMO, 50,000 subs is far too low to keep a company of NQ's size going. That's only $6mm a year at most -- that wouldn't even be enough to cover payroll for ~50 people, especially for devs...never mind marketing, taxes, rent, or infrastructure! 

 

They'd have to do severe layoffs, which would only hamstring their progress more. 

 

Somehow, NQ must think they have the ability to scale this game to a level high enough to support themselves...I don't think it's likely either, but with no other source or revenue (as of now), I don't see a way for them to be sustainable without hitting this sort of sub scale, at least ballpark. 

Since the employees are in Europe, that can count with 50 employees already, especially since certainly not all get good wages. Let's just calculate very good salaries as an average of 10.000,-€ per month times 50 employees. Are it 500.000,-€/month. With 100.000 subscriptions a 8,50,-€ on average per month it is 850.000,-€. That leaves at least €350,000 for the rest. (Whereby I would rather lower the wages.) So it can definitely pay off.

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4 minutes ago, Zarcata said:

Since the employees are in Europe, that can count with 50 employees already, especially since certainly not all get good wages. Let's just calculate very good salaries as an average of 10.000,-€ per month times 50 employees. Are it 500.000,-€/month. With 100.000 subscriptions a 8,50,-€ on average per month it is 850.000,-€. That leaves at least €350,000 for the rest. (Whereby I would rather lower the wages.) So it can definitely pay off.

 

Only some employees are in Europe, the rest are in Canada.

 

$350,000/month is workable, but it isn't so much wiggle room, really. They'd spend over $17,000 just for Xsolla's fee...and infra could easily be $50,000+ at that scale. 

 

And I think $10k/month is probably a reasonable starting point for payroll -- plenty might make less, but $120k/year isn't a lot for a Sr-level dev or upper-management. Plus there's benefits. 

 

Finally, you'd need a sizable marketing budget to stay at 1,000,000 subs...with retention for some of the best subscriptions being about 80%, that means enough marketing budget to bring in ~200,000 new (or returning) players every single month.

 

That could easily cost $100,000+ on its own, even with decent organic growth. 

 

So yeah, 100k subs would work for NQ...50k subs? Not so sure. With it being unlikely they even get to 50k subs...? I'd be looking for other options, personally. 

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1 hour ago, blundertwink said:

So yeah, 100k subs would work for NQ...50k subs? Not so sure. With it being unlikely they even get to 50k subs...? I'd be looking for other options, personally. 

Other options are more reasonable content. Content that players enjoy and want more of.
But bad content is 1-5h AFK mission flights or constant commitments like calibrating or making schematics just so you can use your machines. so far there is hardly any content, but only so called timesink. (don't know can you translate it like that?).
DualUniverse will never reach 1,000,000 subscriptions, not even if everyone had 5 alt accounts.

You have to remember, it's a game and it's supposed to make a player's free time positive and long term. DualUniverse doesn't have much to keep you busy - that is, fun and enjoyable and varied.

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6 minutes ago, Zarcata said:

Other options are more reasonable content.

 

Should have clarified...I'd be looking for other options if I were an employee at NQ. It's maybe a mean thing to say, but that's just how I see things. 🤷‍♂️ 

 

Especially with leadership so focused on other projects (likely web3/NFT in nature based on the CEO's recent posts), I wouldn't feel optimistic about NQ's long-term prospects. 

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If we compare with other successful MMOs. There is a French speaker who must have around 300,000 users who pay their 50 euro annual subscription.
The studio is about 400 people (employed in France), according to confessions of former dev who left this studio, a very large part of the sum is used for the realization of other projects which are often commercial failures (but not necessarily critical, the products remain good, they just lose a lot of money).
 

NQ currently announces 76 employees on the linkedlin page, difficult to know if this figure is true, but the trend is publicly to always increase the real number of its employees on this kind of platform (10 or 20%).
 

Let's say NQ is fifty people now (at least the Dual Universe part).
=> It will take 300,000 / (400/50): 37,500 players pay the subscription a year
=> The Dual Universe subscription is twice as high: 18,750 players who pay 100 euros / year
Let's assume an average of 2 accounts per character (thanks to the sale of DACs for example): 9,375 dedicated players.


To know that the other MMO manages to generate 2 million annual net margin and one can think that they use at least half of the operating budget for other projects... NQ even if their servers cost too much money, they should at least be able to keep a dev team working on their game.


The question : is it really possible to reach these 20,000 players? (or less with people selling subscription)

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I'd rejoin the game tomorrow if they delivered the game they promised when I joined at A2. 

 

Player markets, safe zones limited to sanc moon and the sanc zone on alioth, and atmo pvp. Thats the bare minimum tbh. That ignores a lot of what I think would be really nice to have features or changes. 

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On 7/19/2022 at 1:18 AM, Knight-Sevy said:

 


The question : is it really possible to reach these 20,000 players? (or less with people selling subscription)

 

Yes, add in a sims update and numbers will be reached. 

 

There is literally nothing to do after you build something.

And all ideas from the past that can still be found on this forum to include stuff to do are just ignored.

 

we have showers and beds but cannot shower or sleep

we have toilets, ok lets skip that.

there are vegetables but we cannot harvest or eat

we cannot cut trees and use them

 

we cannot listen or dance to music or even entertain friends

 

and no a build puzzle is no direct entertainment.

 

add a sims update and they will come

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On 7/18/2022 at 7:18 PM, Knight-Sevy said:

If we compare with other successful MMOs. There is a French speaker who must have around 300,000 users who pay their 50 euro annual subscription.
The studio is about 400 people (employed in France), according to confessions of former dev who left this studio

 

Huh? This math makes zero sense to me. 

 

You're saying 300,000 users pay a 50 euro annual sub. So that's 15mm euros per year in revenue.

 

Divided by 400 employees, that's an average wage of 37k euros assuming the studio has zero other costs. Yet somehow they are able to pay costs, pay 400 employees a living wage, and manage a net revenue of 2 million annually...? 

 

There's clearly something missing in these calculations...

 

What is your source? Does this studio also do microtransactions? Either they have a huge source of revenue other than subs or this information isn't right. There's no way this math adds up otherwise. 

 

DU with 20,000 accounts: paying infra costs and 50+ employees off ~200k a month or less simply isn't possible...the average employee wage would need to be well under 48k euros per year assuming 100% of their revenue went to payroll. Just doesn't add up. 

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16 minutes ago, blundertwink said:

 

Huh? This math makes zero sense to me. 

 

You're saying 300,000 users pay a 50 euro annual sub. So that's 15mm euros per year in revenue.

 

Divided by 400 employees, that's an average wage of 37k euros assuming the studio has zero other costs. Yet somehow they are able to pay costs, pay 400 employees a living wage, and manage a net revenue of 2 million annually...? 

 

There's clearly something missing in these calculations...

 

What is your source? Does this studio also do microtransactions? Either they have a huge source of revenue other than subs or this information isn't right. There's no way this math adds up otherwise. 

 

DU with 20,000 accounts: paying infra costs and 50+ employees off ~200k a month or less simply isn't possible...the average employee wage would need to be well under 48k euros per year assuming 100% of their revenue went to payroll. Just doesn't add up. 

 

I think NQ is banking off reducing server costs and selling DACs and possibly other micro transactions to survive. And possibly some layoffs after release.  I feel that's their plan of attack. Keep in mind NQ has to do more than break even, as NQ is around 25mil + in the hole right now.

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17 minutes ago, CousinSal said:

 

I think NQ is banking off reducing server costs and selling DACs and possibly other micro transactions to survive. And possibly some layoffs after release.  I feel that's their plan of attack. Keep in mind NQ has to do more than break even, as NQ is around 25mil + in the hole right now.

 

Eesh, they'll never be able to reduce server costs enough at those sort of subscriber numbers! They'd need their servers running soooo efficiently that Amazon would be paying them for this game to be viable at 20,000 subs. 😁

 

Also, they don't actually have to pay back the $25 million...it'd be generous if that was how VCs worked, but they invest money in exchange for ownership shares. It isn't a "loan" they expect to be paid back, although that's kind of how I assumed it worked before I had to research VCs for my dayjob. 

 

NQ is on the hook with them forever.

 

If that ownership share leads to $500 million of profit for the VC, well...that's why they do it. Huge risk for the potential of huge rewards.

 

That's also why most VCs would never invest money in a new studio with zero revenue led by someone with no experience in the field...they know that most new ventures fail in general. Nowadays, they want to see at least some revenue first...which I suppose NQ has, but they sure didn't when the investments came in around 2016! 

 

A very high percent of all VC ventures fail -- they still do it because the potential returns are so astronomical when ventures do have success. 

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11 minutes ago, blundertwink said:

 

Eesh, they'll never be able to reduce server costs enough at those sort of subscriber numbers! They'd need their servers running soooo efficiently that Amazon would be paying them for this game to be viable at 20,000 subs. 😁

 

Also, they don't actually have to pay back the $25 million...it'd be generous if that was how VCs worked, but they invest money in exchange for ownership shares. It isn't a "loan" they expect to be paid back, although that's kind of how I assumed it worked before I had to research VCs for my dayjob. 

 

NQ is on the hook with them forever.

 

If that ownership share leads to $500 million of profit for the VC, well...that's why they do it. Huge risk for the potential of huge rewards.

 

That's also why most VCs would never invest money in a new studio with zero revenue led by someone with no experience in the field...they know that most new ventures fail in general. Nowadays, they want to see at least some revenue first...which I suppose NQ has, but they sure didn't when the investments came in around 2016! 

 

A very high percent of all VC ventures fail -- they still do it because the potential returns are so astronomical when ventures do have success. 

 

Well that may be true, I just can't envision a big group of people wanting to play the game with that we have. And are people gonna wait around for 2-3 years after release for more real content? I just don't see it happening.  This game should of been the way of space engineers and have players rent out servers then can mod and play with rules.  NQ doesn't even utilize the single shard they just make boring afk mechanics. 

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29 minutes ago, CousinSal said:

 

Well that may be true, I just can't envision a big group of people wanting to play the game with that we have. And are people gonna wait around for 2-3 years after release for more real content? I just don't see it happening.  This game should of been the way of space engineers and have players rent out servers then can mod and play with rules.  NQ doesn't even utilize the single shard they just make boring afk mechanics. 

 

Well...I agree with all of this. Hindsight is always flawless, but having shared community servers would solve soooo many problems.

 

Scaling for an MMO isn't easy at all...like it wouldn't be a stretch to say that every feature in DU becomes triple the complexity just because of the scale required to make it work in an online persistent setting.

 

It isn't unrealistic to suggest that 75% of the struggles NQ has faced technically are simply due to the demands of an MMO setting.

 

It's easy to imagine how much "more" the game would be if all that time went into feature depth and gameplay instead of struggling with scale -- not that all this complexity goes away on community servers, but it is orders of magnitude easier (and cheaper)...and obviously all this chatter about PvP or not PvP would go away with a few server settings. 

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2 minutes ago, blundertwink said:

 

Well...I agree with all of this. Hindsight is always flawless, but having shared community servers would solve soooo many problems.

 

Scaling for an MMO isn't easy at all...like it wouldn't be a stretch to say that every feature in DU becomes triple the complexity just because of the scale required to make it work in an online persistent setting.

 

It isn't unrealistic to suggest that 75% of the struggles NQ has faced technically are simply due to the demands of an MMO setting.

 

It's easy to imagine how much "more" the game would be if all that time went into feature depth and gameplay instead of struggling with scale -- not that all this complexity goes away on community servers, but it is orders of magnitude easier (and cheaper)...and obviously all this chatter about PvP or not PvP would go away with a few server settings. 

 

And wasnt that the reason Space Engineers didnt become an MMO?  I heard in very early concept they thought about it, but decided against it.  And seemed to be the right move for Space Engineers.

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2 hours ago, blundertwink said:

 

Huh? This math makes zero sense to me. 

 

You're saying 300,000 users pay a 50 euro annual sub. So that's 15mm euros per year in revenue.

 

Divided by 400 employees, that's an average wage of 37k euros assuming the studio has zero other costs. Yet somehow they are able to pay costs, pay 400 employees a living wage, and manage a net revenue of 2 million annually...? 

 

There's clearly something missing in these calculations...

 

What is your source? Does this studio also do microtransactions? Either they have a huge source of revenue other than subs or this information isn't right. There's no way this math adds up otherwise. 

 

DU with 20,000 accounts: paying infra costs and 50+ employees off ~200k a month or less simply isn't possible...the average employee wage would need to be well under 48k euros per year assuming 100% of their revenue went to payroll. Just doesn't add up. 

 

Yes sorry that was not clear.
At the last figures they were at 28,000,000 for approximately these 400 people.

Their game their ratio 60/70% of the total sales revenue.

But the majority of these 400 people do not work at all to directly develop the game, edition, other games, film...

In short, they announce 1,000,000 users, but there are people who play on several platforms at the same time do not pay or buy micro-transactions.
If we go back to the 16 to 17 million, knowing that the annual subscription is €50, that's about 300,000 paying players (which is rather consistent with the million users announced which certainly inflated).

I may have simplified a little too quickly, but it's really the "cash cow" very little is reinvested to maintain and update the game => Huge share in other projects.

------------------------

But yes the average salary in France costs 50,000 euros to a company.
But let's not forget the aid for companies (the FAJV, which gives the equivalent of 30% in tax credit) and also that the junior devs are underpaid, not to mention all the people without any particular status.

If each DU player gives 100€ per year.
With 20,000 perssones largely possible to pay salaries.
After what are the technical price ... Quite impossible to say

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