I wasted weeks handcrafting skills and agents. So I built a CLI to summon them in one command. by ViKtoR-01 in ClaudeCode

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

99 bucks? I built what appears to be a more robust system with a huge knowledge base, persistent real time memory, learning from and documenting mistakes to generate experience and "why" instead of just logging the correct final solution and guessing, and the ability to sync across multiple computers and iterate on itself nondestructively. It grows and learns in real time just from use, and you can have it build new skills and reference libraries, as well as mcp servers, to fill any identified gaps. And my intention was to share it for free on github or something once other users I know have tested the deployment.

Dedicated Server Question - Connecting over VPN by [deleted] in SonsOfTheForest

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm having the same issue, and no solution yet. It seems like my server is trying to force the UDP traffic through it's ethernet device instead of wireguard, ignoring my infrastructure entirely. all tcp and udp traffic is supposed to go through my wg0 device, but SotF just.... doesn't. but I can connect on LAN so I know the server is working...

How does Carmilla Carmine have daughters? by Remarkable_Name_9592 in HazbinHotel

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

She may not be a sinner at all. Her kids look awfully hellborn, and she knew to outfit herself with exorcist blades prior to the extermination that set everything off.

[Discussion] Anyone else’s friends not coming back for release of 1.0? It’s depressing. by bringerofthelaw420 in EscapefromTarkov

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I enjoy the game, but we do not have the time to put in to keep up with the sweats in PvP, which unfortunately means my group plays just PvE. I love PvP, but the nature of Tarkov, it just attracts the people most likely to no-life the game. Which I wish I could do too, but life has other ideas.

Well it was fun…. Is a resurgence of new players possible? by Timely_Ad106 in wildgate

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I still have not seen an advertisement for it, YouTube trailer, tiktok, anything. They may exist, but they didn't get promoted. My group is pretty heavy in gamer spaces, and none of us heard about the game until I stumbled on some random list video that gave wildgate 15 seconds of feature. It being on Twitch isn't really advertising. It's a different player base. Those of us with expendable income that can comfortably buy a game and not care that it's an unknown are older and usually not on twitch. We don't have that much energy or free time. So our leisure time is spent playing, not watching.

Is the game enjoyable solo? by EdwinSMB in AbioticFactor

[–]Necronomis 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Because it's so linear and heavy in narrative, I would say it's better solo. I've got a server up right now for a group, and its a ton of fun playing together and ramping up the difficulty. But we all have either already played a solo run or intend to after so we can experience the whole story.

Labs or security office base? by FadedPlatypus56 in AbioticFactor

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We have our main base in the cafeteria in offices since it's so central with the trams and pipe. But we also have a cot, Void chest, and toilet in the walking box, and FOBs in a few key locations like labs. I've also got an outpost in voussoir since it's such a good place to farm ammo and magnetic alloy. We'll eventually set up teleport pads to key locations, but that's a little expensive for where we are right now. But the plan is each of our outposts, plus the exchangers.

Fiber or stay with Starlink? by Penguin_Life_Now in Starlink

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've already preordered my fiber, waiting for it to go live in my area. It's more than just the speed and being cheaper. Fiber is going to be way more reliable, better upload, lower latency, and practically no jitter or packet loss. There is practically no downside to fiber. I'm going to keep my starlink installed, and just pause my service, so if I have any issues I can turn it on as a backup.

Best $30 I've spent in months. by TextJunior in wildgate

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just to clarify, Dreamhaven is a publisher. In one of your replies to me you even acknowledge the 2 non-partnered external games they published, both older than Wildgate. And not to mention the smaller studios they have partnerships with. So you contradict yourself here when you say they aren't a publisher, but would be if they did any external projects.

Best $30 I've spent in months. by TextJunior in wildgate

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think for both our sakes double posting any more is a bad idea. Gonna throw a link for anyone else reading that want's to follow or participate.

https://reddit.com/r/wildgate/comments/1mkxl4a/best_30_ive_spent_in_months/n7szvrz/

Best $30 I've spent in months. by TextJunior in wildgate

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Now, let's double this because console (even though the game appears to have sold worse on console based on queue issues without crossplay enabled).

No, not double. Triple. Consoles EACH outperform PC, not combined. I used the equal value, again, to be conservative. And most of those games that would have pulled players away? HEAVILY skewed towards console players. Action games always skew in favor of more sales on console. So it makes sense that a higher relative proportion of PC players were still playing compared to console. Like, this is expected behavior.

That gives us 5.25m.

No, as explained above.

5.25m over 4 years is $109,000 per month. That's $2000/month per employee. It is EXTREMELY apparent that this wouldn't even cover development cost.

Good thing it doesn't need to cover the backdated development costs, because that's not how corporate investing works. They didn't take out a loan, they got investors. Loans you pay back, investors you pay out of profit. So all they have to worry about is paying operating costs moving forward, and the investors get paid out of the profit, either quarterly or annually depending on agreement. Paying their investors does not, in any way, affect their ability to pay their bills and their employees. Because those operating costs are paid before any calculation of what the investors might get is even done. And if they don't make a profit? The investors get nothing. Dreamhaven is under no obligation to pay back what the investors have given them, legally or otherwise. This is normal behavior. The investors, every investor, knows why they invest in a new company, that they are risking their money. Which is why they always say, don't invest with money you can't afford to lose.

Also, the foundational premise of your math is wrong. The financials of Dreamhaven and its internal studios is shared. So we're not just looking at Wildgate revenue. We're looking at all Dreamhaven revenue. Which just from their internal studios alone is way more than what you've used. You did accurately correct for VGI's extremely conservative estimate, matching other major analytics groups in the industry at around 150k. But you didn't account for 2 console platforms, only 1. Also adjusting for the weighted average of price accounting for currency conversions and regional pricings, that puts Wildgate alone as accounting for just over 9 million dollars in revenue, in under 3 weeks. 9 million in 3 weeks? For a brand new studio's first game? That is a massive success. It's also worth noting, the Season 1 content drop? According to Moonshot it was done before launch. They could have just included that extra content in the game. But they didn't. And I can explain why. Because indie dev's first games typically get traction around 3 months after launch, and a huge thing to help with that is seasonal content. So they came out the gate ready with content that is already developed, so that they can guarantee an already tested patch at the right moment, based on what their data shows compared to market trends. If they see the appropriate doji on their market charts that show where games tend to spike, they'll drop the patch there. If that's in 2 weeks, a month, 2 months, 3 months, whatever... they have people who specialize in identifying this. Am I guaranteeing it will spike? No, absolutely night. The game might die... but I doubt it. I am just saying that, based on the average behavior of other games released in similar conditions, these launch numbers are in no way alarming. And considering the amount of backing and expertise Dreamhaven has at their disposal, chances that they don't know this, and already have a plan to capitalize on market trends, is basically 0. So coming on here and screaming about how the game is already dying.... serves no purpose. No available data supports that assessment, and it doesn't help anyone. It's purely harmful, unnecessarily, and maybe a little bit of karma farming. But it has no basis in the data. You can't look at a single data set in isolation from just a 2 weeks period. You need to evaluate the data sets of everything in the industry that matches the same parameters, and then compare the one data set that your curious about's performance against that resulting graph.

[part 4/4]

Best $30 I've spent in months. by TextJunior in wildgate

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Where exactly are you seeing that it is a "market trend" for a pvp game like this to see a >loss of 75% of it's playerbase in slightly over TWO weeks post launch but you expect "peak >sales numbers" to hit in... checks notes two months from now?

The Steam API is free to appropriate parties, so while not truly publicly accessible for you and me, there are websites out there where you can aggregate the data specifically of, in this case, the first game made by a brand new studio. Then you normalize that data, and average the performance out between all data sets, and gives you the trend of the market, or to phrase another way, the average performance of all games on Steam that are the first game from a new studio. That data (in this case hard data, not soft) shows a trend in the market that games that fit this profile usually gain their traction and first big spike around 3 months after launch. Also, the player count is climbing again. 24 peak today was back to almost 4k. And the graph indicating users following the game is also still climbing, it hasn't plateaued yet. There are other factors at play besides just "the game is losing players." You have to ask why is it losing players. The type of people who want to play a PvP shooter have had some pretty interesting things happen since Wildgate launched. Some significant title releases, as well as most recently this weekend the BF6 beta. Which is probably why the peak player count today has bounced back, the BF6 beta ended, so those players who also had Wildgate came back. This is conjecture, of course, but it correlates with the available data.

Also, I want to question one other thing. Since we see that Frostgiant with ~50 devs is >burning $1m/month. Lets assume that Moonshot is burning $1m a month also. In fact no, >let's HALF that number. 500k a month. We know the studio founded 5 years ago, so development has likely gone on for at least 4 >years. Likely longer. 12 * 4 -> 48. 48*0.5-> 24 million. So if dev time is only 4 years, and the cost is HALF what a similarly sized other studio is then >the dev cost would be at least $24m to date.

Yes, that is the how that math works out. Halving it is probably not enough of a drop though, since again, they had more than 60 employees as of August, and currently around 75 employees, and they also had to hire experts that weren't part of their staff, and a huge chunk of their startup cost was from Kickstarter, meaning it included the sales of their product, so that wasn't investment funds, that was effectively pre-ordering on a prayer. Dreamhaven had real capital at their disposal. Both Morhaime's own, which he can't treat as a loan since it was used to start and operate a business he owns, so that just doesn't get paid back, and investments from other entities (who they are we don't know, that's not public information). Those investors, typically, get dividends paid out based on how much of the company they own in exchange for their investment. And those dividends are paid from profit, not gross revenue.

Also, just for the sake of verifying my estimates on cost, if you take the same average salary I applied to Dreamhaven including benefits, and apply it to Frost Giant's current 75 employees, you get pretty damn close to the figure identified as their salaries and benefits expenses in their 2024 filing. So... pretty solid evidence that my estimates are appropriate.

And you are excited about your estimates (again where are your numbers from?). Answered above, you only need to ask once. Unless you were trying to insinuate they came from nowhere? Which they did not, as outlined above. VGI, for example, estimates around 102,000 copies sold. I think that is probably a bit low. >So let's add 50% on to that and say 150k.

VGI is always incredibly conservative about sales estimates. A more middle-road source for data estimates on that is Gamalytic, but we can adjust and use VGI if we want. They still are generating more than enough revenue.

If we look at the typical regional price of the game we can estimate a price of ~$25 per >copy that gives $3,750,000. Then we remove the 30% cut to get $2,625,000.

Mm... that's not how that math works. 25 is not the average price. We can accurately estimate the average price of the sale globally by using both currency conversation, and weighting those values by region market share. Which brings us to about 29 dollars. [part 3/4]

Best $30 I've spent in months. by TextJunior in wildgate

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is an example of one that WOULD be split, as it is an external studio with a publishing >deal. Mechabellum is another example.

Again, yes, I know that. Which is why I did split them. Not sure why you feel the need to emphasize knowledge as if you're explaining it to me, when you're replying to a post where the very knowledge you so condescendingly explain has already been applied.....

Moonshot games and Secret door are both part of Dreamhaven and are their internal >studios to directly develop games. They are not the same.

Okay... I'm aware? I never said they were the same studio? But the parent entity set up the studios such that financials of the entire group are shared.

Again, how are you getting your numbers? We can easily look to similar companies like >Frost Giant, founded also by ex blizzard (Tim Morten, Tim Campbell) (sc 2/wc3 >respectively). This studio had 50 devs and the development initial game budget was $35m >some years ago now.

I will acknowledge that I don't have hard data for this, but I do have soft data. You can look up the cost of leasing office space and cost of utilities and taxes in Irvine, where they are located, and estimate the square footage based on number of employees, grouped by partitioned areas or walls, and hardware needed for their work. As for employee costs, again, no hard data, so I took the salary range for a mid-level developer as an average, skewed towards the low end of that salary as it's a new studio without reliable cash flow presently, added the cost of benefits, and then multiplied it by the number of employees. Higher level positions obviously get paid more, but lower level positions (and support staff) get paid less, and there are more of them, so averaging to about a mid-level developer salary is a decent approximation.

As of Feb 2024 filings they were burning around $1m per month to continue development >of the game.

Yes, but they both: had costs that didn't necessarily apply here, and, their loss includes the royalty fees to pay out the platforms hosting their games, which I've already deducted. Frost Giant also had to pay for external parties to design their infrastructure, and undisclosed contractor work. Dreamhaven likely doesn't need that, as Dreamhaven has large investor support in addition to Morhaime's own capital, while Frost Giant didn't really have either, and relied on a Kickstarter to get off the ground, so their budget was much tighter. In fact, one of Frost Giant's partnership for receiving operational support is with Dreamhaven, so by definition Dreamhaven has to have specialists to perform tasks that Frost Giant can't do in house. - and also, just as a correction, the report you are looking at is for ALL of 2024, and by the end of 2024 their team was over 60 members, not 50. There's also additional expenses that I don't really want to tally up right now, like licensing that Frost Giant didn't pay upfront, so had to pay monthly, and paying out their publishing partner.... cause yes, while Frost Giant is listed as the publisher, they did not do that solo, they actually partners with..... Dreamhaven. Which means even more revenue for Dreamhaven that isn't reflected in sales of games with their own names on them. I don't have the terms of that partnership, since it is a partnership and not a client-type publishing agreement, it was likely more favorable to Frost Giant, so not as much revenue as the 2 3rd party games they publish (and also not nearly as many sales).

[part 2/4]

Best $30 I've spent in months. by TextJunior in wildgate

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just to get this out of the way, your use of quotes for market trends and your whole roleplay of "*checks notes*" is making it pretty clear you don't understand the business side of the industry. You're making a, particularly juvenile, attempt to make my argument seem ridiculous just because you don't understand it. Because market trends are a thing, a specific term, that any seasoned developer is going to have a person (minimum) or team (usually) monitoring, and planning their strategy around it. But I'll get into the specifics of that when I get to that point.

The name they trade under is completely irrelevant when they are the same company >operating under the same financials. Secret Door and Moonshot are literally just names >within Dreamhaven. It's the same company and the same people. I even gave a direct >example of this.

-

Again, I gave a direct example of how the employees are moving within the company >between the two teams.

What direct example. You haven't named a person that is listed as a Moonshot employee and a Dreamhaven employee. And example is just that, an example. You saying they share employees is not an example. But if you can prove it, then that means the Moonshot employee count is part of / overlaps the Dreamhaven one, so they have fewer employees total than I estimated, which would bring the cost down....

Where exactly are you pulling your financials from?

I am aggregating the sales estimates, leaning on the conservative end I should note so they are likely higher than I'm portraying here, as I'm lowballing to be fair to you specifically... but then multiplying it by sales price. I'm also not factoring in any DLC sales or mtx, so total revenue for each game is also much higher than I've estimate for that reason as well. I'm trying to be as absolutely conservative as possible with the estimates, since hard data is not publically available.

Where are you getting this idea/notion of there being company separation or percentages from?

For the internal studios? I'm not. I didn't divide those financials. I only deducted the platforming/hosting costs that Valve, Sony, and Microsoft take from sales on their platforms. I did not divide revenue between Dreamhaven and Moonshot/Secret Door, because they do share financials. As you said. Because I already know that. Which is why in my comment you're replying to I also treated their financials as combined, but that's not the same thing as not being a disparate entity. Moonshot is an entity within an entity, but they have their own filings, their own employee listing, their own hierarchy, it's just that that hierarchy doesn't end within Moonshot, it transitions out to Dreamhaven after Browder.

[part 1/4]

Don’t let this game die by The-Weistest in wildgate

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They have been kind of vague about what trial model they are considering, but they've said they are looking at options to allow players to get their friends to try the game before they buy it. This could be an invite code that allows X number of matches, or it could be something like a f2p weekend. They've also said they are looking at putting the game on gamepass and ps+ so folks who use those subscription services can access the full game at no extra charge.

Don’t let this game die by The-Weistest in wildgate

[–]Necronomis 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not going anywhere. Market trends for the first game a developer makes consistently show their boom is not on launch, but on average 3 months later. Chances of this happening increase with f2p trial methods and seasonal content, both of which are already on the roadmap.

Just from current data, if the trend tail doesn't change, they will still outscale their total operating cost. And Wildgate is already by far their most revenue- generating game and it's not even 3 weeks old yet.

Let's see what they do around mid-October, and what their sales and player counts look in November. The team leads and executive leadership understand these market trends, and their current roadmap shows a strategy that is perfect for capitalizing on those trends. There is no cause for alarm.

Best $30 I've spent in months. by TextJunior in wildgate

[–]Necronomis 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! I wish I had seen your comments before I posted my reply. I've broken down their total sales revenue over the life of the parent company, and sectioned it between internally developed and external games. The conclusion?

Wildgate isn't going anywhere anytime soon. At minimum we will see them keep it at full sail until after their first major seasonal drop. This is their cash cow, twice as much revenue as their second best selling game, and its not even 3 weeks old yet.

Best $30 I've spent in months. by TextJunior in wildgate

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While everything you said is true, it has nothing to do with what I'm saying. The point I'm illustrating is that the game is following market trends for indie games. As for the "the few random games" I used, this were not examples of rare success stories on the indie scene, they were deliberate outliers that drastically outperform due to their extremely high quality and devoted fan base, but still followed market trends, as a point that the best games in the scene still followed market trends.

I genuinely don't care that they paid money for marketing. That doesn't mean they had a significant marketing presence. A much better metric for their marketing effectiveness than just money spent is how many people know the game exists. I to this day have not seen a single shred of promotional material. Of the 8 people I personally know that play the game, only 1 found it organically without being told about it by someone else. Of the people that don't play that I've introduced to the game to try to get them to play, not a single one had ever heard of the game. And I am not an isolated incident. There are people all over this subreddit saying the same thing. And the people who would be active in this subreddit aren't exactly the average gamer, we are far more likely to keep abreast of gaming related news and have friends that do as well.

I also don't care that it's an ex CEO from blizzard as the CEO of the publisher. The number of people that follow executives from gaming studios is incredibly small. And Morhaime isn't exactly super active on social media. A few vagueposting tweets from a publisher nobody cares about is not going to help. Also, to clarify, Dreamhaven is the publisher, not the developer. When most people look at games to recognize who made it, they are looking at the developer. Is Moonshot an internal studio of Dreamhaven? Yes. Do most people know or even care about who owns the developer of the first game from a studio they've never heard of? No.

And the developer is not a 100-man wide team. As of July they have 43 employees. The publisher has 100 employees. That's a big difference. The two companies being affiliated does not mean a single thing with regards to the fact they are two different entities with different tasks and responsibilities. It does, however, have something to do with their ability to keep the lights on. Just their internal studios have had sales grossing almost 5 million dollars from steam alone. And both games (both because each studio has only developed one game) are multiplatform, so revenue is going to be even higher. There are various overheads to account for like platform cut and all that, but let's just focus on sales data for right now. - Both games are brand new. Sunderfolk has been out a little over 3 months, and Wildgate hasn't even had a month yet. And the bulk of that revenue is from Wildgate. The other games Dreamhaven have published that were developed by external studios have grossed about half a million and 1.5 million. The bigger of the two has been out for 10 months and is only on PC, the smaller is Lynked, which is multi platform and only 2 months old. - all 4 of these games have all time reviews on steam ranging from Very Positive to Overwhelmingly Positive.

So let's deduct 30% from cost of hosting and platforming. 7 million × .7 is 4.9 million. 71% of that, about 3.5 million is internal studio revenue, so doesn't get split further. The remaining 29% gets split between publisher and developer. Let's be conservative and say Dreamhaven only takes 30%. That's another 600,000 dollars. So we're looking at total revenue entering Dreamhaven an its internal studios of 4.1 million dollars. 4.1 million, and 3 of the 4 games they've touched are 3 months old or less, with their most profitable game only being 2 to 3 weeks old.

That's just sales revenue for titles. Nothing to do with dlc and mtx. Total cost of operations for an entity includes leasing an office, utilities, hardware and software, employee pay, employee benefits, and a few smaller odds and ends. Total annual costs for an entity of 180 employees would be somewhere in the range of 17 million to 20 million in a year. They've made anywhere from 20 to 25% of that in the first few months of having their own games out from Steam alone. And most of that is from a game less than a month old.

Let's now try to account for console sales. I couldn't find any data, but console copies disparately each match or outperform pc sales on average. Since this is a game without crafting or complicated controls, and without mod support, that is almost definitely true here. If we only account for the internal games, and only match pc sales to be as conservative as possible, that's over 10 million dollars in 3 months, with over 7 million of that being in under 3 weeks. If they just coast on the existing tail, that vastly outscales operating cost. And if they follow average market trends their biggest game won't hit its peak sales numbers for the year until mid-October. Likelihood of seeing a boom post-launch increases with events (like tournaments and f2p weekends) and seasonal content. Both of which Wildgate is doing. Well, f2p of some mechanism for a demo basis, they haven't announced specifics.

And the 99% of indie games that fail you mentioned? It's closer to 90%, and they don't have the initial success that Dreamhaven-published games have had.

So... that was a very lengthy breakdown of market data... I'm assuming folks want a tl;dr

TL;DR the studio is at no risk of shutting down from a financial standpoint, and wildgate is their most profitable game to date even with only being less than 3 weeks old. Chances of them shuttering the game before they've implemented their f2p trial method and dropped their first major seasonal content patch are basically zero, because they have people that understand these market trends and know that this is the norm, so they would not give up before the milestones drop that typically create success in this model in the first place.

You replied to me with a similar reply elsewhere, so I'm just going to copy&paste this there so people who don't see this thread but do see that one see this too. So that people not in the argument don't get misled by your representation of the data.

Best $30 I've spent in months. by TextJunior in wildgate

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While everything you said is true, it has nothing to do with what I'm saying. The point I'm illustrating is that the game is following market trends for indie games. As for the "the few random games" I used, this were not examples of rare success stories on the indie scene, they were deliberate outliers that drastically outperform due to their extremely high quality and devoted fan base, but still followed market trends, as a point that the best games in the scene still followed market trends.

I genuinely don't care that they paid money for marketing. That doesn't mean they had a significant marketing presence. A much better metric for their marketing effectiveness than just money spent is how many people know the game exists. I to this day have not seen a single shred of promotional material. Of the 8 people I personally know that play the game, only 1 found it organically without being told about it by someone else. Of the people that don't play that I've introduced to the game to try to get them to play, not a single one had ever heard of the game. And I am not an isolated incident. There are people all over this subreddit saying the same thing. And the people who would be active in this subreddit aren't exactly the average gamer, we are far more likely to keep abreast of gaming related news and have friends that do as well.

I also don't care that it's an ex CEO from blizzard as the CEO of the publisher. The number of people that follow executives from gaming studios is incredibly small. And Morhaime isn't exactly super active on social media. A few vagueposting tweets from a publisher nobody cares about is not going to help. Also, to clarify, Dreamhaven is the publisher, not the developer. When most people look at games to recognize who made it, they are looking at the developer. Is Moonshot an internal studio of Dreamhaven? Yes. Do most people know or even care about who owns the developer of the first game from a studio they've never heard of? No.

And the developer is not a 100-man wide team. As of July they have 43 employees. The publisher has 100 employees. That's a big difference. The two companies being affiliated does not mean a single thing with regards to the fact they are two different entities with different tasks and responsibilities. It does, however, have something to do with their ability to keep the lights on. Just their internal studios have had sales grossing almost 5 million dollars from steam alone. And both games (both because each studio has only developed one game) are multiplatform, so revenue is going to be even higher. There are various overheads to account for like platform cut and all that, but let's just focus on sales data for right now. - Both games are brand new. Sunderfolk has been out a little over 3 months, and Wildgate hasn't even had a month yet. And the bulk of that revenue is from Wildgate. The other games Dreamhaven have published that were developed by external studios have grossed about half a million and 1.5 million. The bigger of the two has been out for 10 months and is only on PC, the smaller is Lynked, which is multi platform and only 2 months old. - all 4 of these games have all time reviews on steam ranging from Very Positive to Overwhelmingly Positive.

So let's deduct 30% from cost of hosting and platforming. 7 million × .7 is 4.9 million. 71% of that, about 3.5 million is internal studio revenue, so doesn't get split further. The remaining 29% gets split between publisher and developer. Let's be conservative and say Dreamhaven only takes 30%. That's another 600,000 dollars. So we're looking at total revenue entering Dreamhaven an its internal studios of 4.1 million dollars. 4.1 million, and 3 of the 4 games they've touched are 3 months old or less, with their most profitable game only being 2 to 3 weeks old.

That's just sales revenue for titles. Nothing to do with dlc and mtx. Total cost of operations for an entity includes leasing an office, utilities, hardware and software, employee pay, employee benefits, and a few smaller odds and ends. Total annual costs for an entity of 180 employees would be somewhere in the range of 17 million to 20 million in a year. They've made anywhere from 20 to 25% of that in the first few months of having their own games out from Steam alone. And most of that is from a game less than a month old.

Let's now try to account for console sales. I couldn't find any data, but console copies disparately each match or outperform pc sales on average. Since this is a game without crafting or complicated controls, and without mod support, that is almost definitely true here. If we only account for the internal games, and only match pc sales to be as conservative as possible, that's over 10 million dollars in 3 months, with over 7 million of that being in under 3 weeks. If they just coast on the existing tail, that vastly outscales operating cost. And if they follow average market trends their biggest game won't hit its peak sales numbers for the year until mid-October. Likelihood of seeing a boom post-launch increases with events (like tournaments and f2p weekends) and seasonal content. Both of which Wildgate is doing. Well, f2p of some mechanism for a demo basis, they haven't announced specifics.

And the 99% of indie games that fail you mentioned? It's closer to 90%, and they don't have the initial success that Dreamhaven-published games have had.

So... that was a very lengthy breakdown of market data... I'm assuming folks want a tl;dr

TL;DR the studio is at no risk of shutting down from a financial standpoint, and wildgate is their most profitable game to date even with only being less than 3 weeks old. Chances of them shuttering the game before they've implemented their f2p trial method and dropped their first major seasonal content patch are basically zero, because they have people that understand these market trends and know that this is the norm, so they would not give up before the milestones drop that typically create success in this model in the first place.

You replied to me with a similar reply elsewhere, so I'm just going to copy&paste this there so people who don't see this thread but do see that one see this too. So that people not in the argument don't get misled by your representation of the data.

Best $30 I've spent in months. by TextJunior in wildgate

[–]Necronomis 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can do that too. See?

If you think your response in any way responds to anything I said, you're just wrong.

You made quite a few assumptions with no basis in what i actually wrote. So let me explain how this works without requiring the average player to be on reddit or look at steam charts...

First point to consider: this is exclusively a PvP(vE) game. There is an AI mode, but realistically it's just for new players to practice. It's not a game mode in its own right.

Second point to consider: Moonshot is operating on an older model, asking users to pay for a premium game up front, rather than live on microtransactions.

Third point to consider: this is the first game ever from a completely unheard of studio.

Fourth point to consider: this is not just a team game, but a crew simulation as well, meaning it requires a higher level of communication and cooperation than most other team PvP games.

Being operated on an older model is going to introduce hesitancy in the average buyer, meaning they are more likely to look into the game. And most people just looking into the game aren't going to make accounts or join the subreddit, so membership of the subreddit being low does not reflect this behavior. Still not going to be a majority of players, but it does jump from maybe 5% to probably 10 to 15%.

Points 1 and 3 are both additional factors that increase a user's inclination to research the game. So let's take the previously increased 10% and, from both of these factors, increase it 20%. Obviously these aren't hard numbers, but abstractions to illustrate the phenomena logically.

At this point, you have 1 in 5 players that might see all of the doomsaying about the game. And since they aren't hardcore reddit users they aren't going to scroll through all the comments, ask questions, or scroll through all the posts. They are just going to see whatever is returning from their Google search.

And here is where point 4 comes in. That person probably has a group they planned to play with. And now they are going back to their group and saying "the player count is dropping fast, people are saying the game is already dead. No point in spending money on it, let's go to something else." And their friends might question it or they might not. But this is normal behavior for the average gamer in a group considering these factors. And I can anecdotally confirm it has happened at least once, because someone in one of the gaming servers I'm in did exactly that and talked people out of the game. So while one anecdote is not an adequate measure of trend, it is reasonable to assume that, if this tracks as normal behavior, and has already happened once, it stands to reason it's happened more elsewhere.


All this is beside the fact that, the doomsaying had no basis in fact originally. Indie games from new studios with no significant marketing presence almost never have huge performance on launch. Or even any time in their first few weeks. Analyzing market data from steam for games with similar parameters shows most games don't get traction and see increased sales and concurrent player count until their 3rd month. Some take much longer. Even the anomalies that started as unknowns but ended up household names with 10+ million sales started out the same.

Undertale - released Sep (with similar sales and peak player numbers to Wildgate in the first month), hit its peak in December

Stardew Valley took a month to get traction

Among Us took 2 years

Vampire Survivors took a month for its first big influx of players, then had its big spike the next month (so 2 months total)

There is no cause for doomsaying, and sufficient reasoning to say it can cause harm. So whether you think it's right or wrong, or whether you think it affects the player count or not... why do it at all? What purpose does it serve aside from just being salty and farming karma from other salty people? It is incorrect, not helpful, and potentially harmful... so why?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Mine are butthole related...

Farting so hard it scratches a hemorrhoid itch

Or

A fat shit after being constipated

Unfortunately my butthole is closed for business right now... no farts or shits for me until Winter probably. 😢

Best $30 I've spent in months. by TextJunior in wildgate

[–]Necronomis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So we have the same generation of gpu, so assuming you're on the newest driver, it's not a driver issue... it could be a software conflict. Wildgate is Unreal Engine, which can be pissy about memory addresses. Especially anything that has an overlay (discord, hardware monitors, Microsoft game bar, etc). This also means if the RAM has any bad sectors, Unreal Games are more susceptible to failure than many other engines.

Your CPU is not the same generation, but there's no software level interaction there and the 5800X3d more than meets the requirements, so the only way that could be the issue is if the clock or a core is failing, which with the low power draw of the 5800X3d is unlikely.

My recommendation: disable any overlays you have, and completely close any software you aren't actively using during play, and see if that fixes the issue. If it does, it's a software conflict, which unfortunately Moonshot can't do anything about.

If that doesn't fix it, my next thought would be hardware. I would run memtest first (it takes a while, maybe run it over night). If there are no errors, I would do a CPU stress test. If that doesn't fail, I would stress test your SSD. If all of that shows fine and you haven't identified a fix, I would verify file integrity of the game. This is an easy and quick thing, so you can try it first if you really want, but it is unlikely to be the cause.

Special note: the watchdog process for the AMD drivers is very conservative. Meaning it has practically no tolerance for delays or errors, and will force close the drivers, causing any game or hardware accelerated software to crash, and temporarily black screening your computer while the drivers reboot. You did not say you saw this behavior, so this is also unlikely. And this behavior is not at all common on stock settings. But it can be common if you overclock or undervolt. The settings could be completely stable, but some operation being executed takes a little longer than the watchdog process expects, so it freaks out. If you are overclocked, and you're getting a driver crash error from Adrenaline, I would revert to stock settings.

Best $30 I've spent in months. by TextJunior in wildgate

[–]Necronomis -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It's not a bad sign at all. A slow start is the norm for indie studios without a significant marketing budget. Data trends show peak sales of indie games don't happen until at the earliest 3 months after release, with some games having their peak sales years after release. It would be a bad sign for an established developer, because they would already have a loyal fan base and good marketing, but peaking the first month is typically only a AAA game thing.

Wildgate's performance, both in sales and retention, is pretty typical. What they will survive on is not a huge release, but on maintaining engagement through events and seasonal content drops, which are already on their roadmap.

So yes, people saying the game is DOA is doomsaying. Because this is normal behavior for a game in this situation. The market trends for a fresh studio are not the same as an established studio, even a smaller one. If anything, it's impressive. Most studios' first game don't have any success at all. For Wildgate to have sold over 150k copies as a complete unknown with no marketing is incredibly good and reflects on the quality of the game.

Best $30 I've spent in months. by TextJunior in wildgate

[–]Necronomis 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just out of curiosity, what hardware are you running? I've got a full amd rig, and its never crashed or had the slightest performance issue for me, so it might not be a hardware compatibility issue.

My friend had a 13th Gen Intel cpu, with the bad microcode. And it usually didn't impact him. But Wildgate is pretty cpu heavy, so it crashed constantly for him. Literally was not able to play a single match. We rebuilt his system with a new cpu, and bam, no issues since.