What Portion of Cash-Shop Proceeds go toward Development

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Originally Posted by DefendPopPunk

I uh, think you just added a lot of weight to my original reply.

I still don't know what you're referring to as information at this point, as you've changed it quite often in this thread. If we're talking about what you originally posted, which I was, then yes, I can see their profits for any given quarter. I don't have to ask for it, it's on their site.

Gosh, don't you have a business to be running?

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The beauty of being self-employed.

I can sit here and have a good laugh while everyone's driving home for the day. 0.o If you must know, the supply quotes are received, the bids are out, my crew's hotel rooms are reserved for the evening, and I've just finished logging hours to turn over to my accountant for payroll.

So yes, I have a business to be running. o.O> And I am indeed running it! Any progress getting an answer from SE on how much money they are making from the cash shop in profit (the entire point of this thread) yet?


http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3077/3...a0354e14_m.jpg

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Originally Posted by Eagleheart

The beauty of being self-employed.

I can sit here and have a good laugh while everyone's driving home for the day. 0.o If you must know, the supply quotes are received, the bids are out, my crew's hotel rooms are reserved for the evening, and I've just finished logging hours to turn over to my accountant for payroll.

So yes, I have a business to be running. o.O> And I am indeed running it!


http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3077/3...a0354e14_m.jpg

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It was a rhetorical question. Yeesh. But kudos anyway.

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Originally Posted by DefendPopPunk

It was a rhetorical question. Yeesh. But kudos anyway.

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I love how he continually ignores the points we make :)

Also his reply regarding Stakeholders made me chuckle :)

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Originally Posted by Parz3val

I love how he continually ignores the points we make :)

Also his reply regarding Stakeholders made me chuckle :)

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Yeah, I don't like to bring up my education or occupation to distract from the argument, but it's fairly clear when someone doesn't know what they're talking about.

Thanks for contributing though, you had many good points.

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Originally Posted by DefendPopPunk

Yeah, I don't like to bring up my education or occupation to distract from the argument, but it's fairly clear when someone doesn't know what they're talking about.

Thanks for contributing though, you had many good points.

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But still doesn't have the information he wanted!

http://images.sodahead.com/polls/001...rs_xlarge.jpeg

that was a very entertaining read, i thank the three of you for it.


ps
Parz3val your memes were pretty damn funny

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Originally Posted by Sholah

Any money from the cash shop that goes toward FF14 development will just go into developing more things that can go into the cash shop rather than the actual game. This is why cash shops are bullshit. They're just going to create content that should be in the game and put it into the cash shop instead.

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Assumption machine go!

That Eagleheart guy has the right of it. I am a stakeholder in Sony, as i have a ps3, but only in the area of having options. As an investor i would he a stakeholder for a monetary (and much more important) aspect. As a customer, I only have a stake insofar as having an option of a service. If Sony disappears, then I go elsewhere. No money lost as far as investments are concerned. That's is the difference i think he was alluding to. Its a semantic argument.

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Originally Posted by Xairos

That Eagleheart guy has the right of it. I am a stakeholder in Sony, as i have a ps3, but only in the area of having options. As an investor i would he a stakeholder for a monetary (and much more important) aspect. As a customer, I only have a stake insofar as having an option of a service. If Sony disappears, then I go elsewhere. No money lost as far as investments are concerned. That's is the difference i think he was alluding to. Its a semantic argument.

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Yeah, I saw this for what it was and that's why I didn't hinge the entire argument on the definition. Still, when you say something like "you're a stakeholder because you're a player?" as if it wasn't true, that's where I came in and said that that is wrong. Stakeholders come in all different flavors in terms of involvement, but I don't see how calling a customer a stakeholder (which is true) is something that is laughable.

Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that I said the income statements are available for anyone to browse for whatever reason they wish, but then he wants to go into specifics about per unit costs and such, about which I never had anything to say in any of my posts. Well, initially I may have said his whole post, but what I meant was the blanket statements and absolutes. I do agree that per unit costs are not necessarily anyone's business, and I never argued against that.

What the hell? Are the mods seeing this? I have literally never seen such an arrogant, childish argument between strangers this side of 4chan.


The past three pages aside, if SE decided to raise all their subscription prices by a dollar, I'd definitely pay it. I don't mind paying for this game, and if I think that putting a pumpkin head on my character is worth literally less than a six inch sub at Subway, then I'm totally going to do it. (And I'm totally going to do it)

Has nobody seen the kind of F2P cash shops that give you things like "Look at this badass sword! Rent it for three days for $1, or three months for $3!" This seems a lot less of a cash grab to me than it does a way to justify putting back in content that people may have missed.

Literally everything that was shown in the Optional Item shop was seasonal, or in the case of Sleipnir, a result of the fanfest. (Except the Scion minions, I don't really know where they're from.)

Yes, because the only product that SE makes is FFXIV. The most-likely assumption would be that any increase in revenue would go toward future R&D for not only this game, but for every project they have at the company. It's a bit ridiculous to demand a company to share budgeting plans with the general (in this case, non-understanding) public.

People just wanna know if their cash will benefit the game in any way rather than detract from it.

It would be nice to be reassured.

Though sadly I think the answer is it'll most likely hinder FFXIV development.

never mind.

I would give them a gold mine of cash if it meant major patches came every two months instead of three.

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Originally Posted by Parz3val

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SE as a public company had been bleeding $$ for quite some time. I think its kinda funny when ppl are concerned about "padding wallets". Their wallets had giant holes in them. At this point its more realistic to say that they are trying to stop the bleeding. I don't begrudge them that. You'd do the same if your wallet had holes in it.

I'd rather know what portion of our subscription is being used to develop content that gets locked behind a cash shop instead of being released in a patch or expansion.

Do we even know what portion of the initial game purchase and monthly subscriptions go toward development? Obviously it isn't 100%. The devs don't get to keep all the money to pay themselves with, then decide where to allocate the rest of the funds. The money goes to Square Enix, who makes all kinds of products. It is reasonable that the company will attribute a higher budget to a game that is performing better than others, but it's not like it's a 1:1 ratio of "you make x amount of money, you get that money put back into the game." SE rakes in the revenue FFXIV gets, uses it to pay for business expenses, funding other projects, employee salaries, etc. And whatever is left over, they divide up where they see fit and decide on a budget for each game. And even at that point, the budget is not purely a "Make the Game Awesome Fund" -- a huge portion goes into marketing, merchandise, hiring staff, server maintenance, and other stuff.

I don't think we will ever get any stats about how much of the game's profit goes back into actual "game development," because not only is that a vague term, but the percentage probably fluctuates constantly based on the company's whims.

All I know is, Square Enix took in our subscription money and decided to use it to create the cash shop. I'm not confident that the cash shop profits will be used any differently.