Entropia News: ComPet Announcement

2.4$ a deed then... or 24ped... 76% win for MA while retaining the remaining 24% as valueless (no TT) untradeable (currently) asset.

Good game, well played.

 

Best regards,
Henrik Nel
CEO MindArk

ya, right.... x'D

1st, look at those comments on the other forum :

-Fair Play by MindArk.
-Look how kind they are.
-Now we will SEE Entropia development
-This is great news. And sounds like a somewhat responsible way to convert those compet peds into something more viable.

lol...

I cannot believe people, especially oldtimers, are still this dumb and blind...fucking hillarious, as it means, the dumbass show will go on. x'D

p.s.
The best part is, these news got shared on other forums, but not on the official compet forum and that they dared to even re-announce a reboot...while they never had that intention.... x'D Way to go...

p.s. p.s.
After screwing with all investors since 2014 (!), spreading many, many lies...they even dared to re-announce a reboot of compet...MindArk today announced the official dead of this obvious (was obvious in 2014 already, but MA needed to pay a big marketing firm to be able to understand that) dumb idea.


p.s. p.s. p.s.
I will keep my Compet Deeds, because they will be still around, even long after the Arkadia moon has failed...then Compet Deeds will be so rare, that the servers will crash, everytime I "rightclick" them.

 

It is not a 76% win for MA, but a 124% loss (based on the original deed price of 100 PED) instead of a 100% loss, because on top of having to write off their investment they are now spending even more money on compensation. In the real world, if you buy stocks in a company that fails, everybody walks away with nothing. Or, at least, experience. Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted... though a lot of people refuse to learn.

 

Ahem, noone asked for Compet...noone wanted Compet...except for, uh, Rick and 2 or 3 other PR-Gag-Victims.

 

The game was funded by the players so was there a cost to MA?

They spend the money by way of it never leaving their bank account. Swapping a tradable asset worth nothing (no TT) for another un tradable asset (also worth nothing) and making everyone happy sounds like a great deal to me.

One slightly weird thing we might see is that, rather than being traded in, compet deeds become a new tradable form of Moon deed.

Think about it, people can now buy moon deeds for whatever price they fancy via the purchase of compet deeds as a proxy

 

You're right, the cost for Compet development did not come out of their coffers but from investors like in a Kickstarter project. However, I don't see why this would be a "great deal" for the company other than to extend its lifetime for a bit to try and fulfill the obligation they entered. They didn't get it for nothing. On the other hand, Kickstarter investors tend to be more aware that they won't see anything back if it fails. The compensation at least does come out of MindArk's cash so the whole operation was certainly a net loss.

 

But they didn't spend anything on the compensation. They already owned the moon deeds because they created them without even needing to pay an artist. Also the deeds have no TT value. So even if a player TT'd them and did a withdraw, MA would have nothing to pay

 

This is not how it works. One, the moon deeds belong to Arkadia Studios and not MindArk. Two, speculative investment deeds can't have a TT value since this would only create an equal liability on the balance sheet and not make any funds available for their projects. The buyers of these deeds provide risk capital and, under regular circumstances, would not be compensated if the project fails. But the degree of delusion is so strong in these circles, people "invest" without a clue what the word even means yet make up for this fully with their capability of raising shitstorms. But enough of that. MindArk has to and does pay the full regular price for this compensation. Here is an official statement:

http://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/f...Announcement&p=3664542&viewfull=1#post3664542

 

This is all a big mess...nothing else.

 

I don't understand what you mean by "eligible" or which monies. Also, the term "asking price" is not applicable as there was no bidding process. The deeds were sold for their nominal price, simply. Think of how an IPO works. MA has nothing to do with the trading between users after that. In the meantime, the risk capital they received by the compet deed sale got used up, it is gone. The deeds themselves are worthless as it didn't create a self-sustaining business. MA is now giving away something else as a form of apologetic compensation, for which they pay out of their regular income. I don't see what is possibly ambiguous about the whole process?

 

Arkadia Studios is getting this money now, $6 per moon deed, and MindArk is paying for it like any other buyer. TT value is irrelevant in both cases. Arkadia is now getting a risk capital injection by selling the deeds for their own project. The difference is none in principle but only in practical consequences, since Arkadia Studios has a much different track record of realizing such projects. Indeed the moon is functional already ahead of schedule and deeds are paying out while the sale is still ongoing.

Maybe I got confused, which deeds are you talking about now? If Compet, their market value is now precisely determined by the conversion rate, plus a small premium because people appreciate being able to buy with peds directly instead of having to go through the webshop. This however is trading between players only and doesn't benefit MindArk. If you mean the moon deeds aren't worth their nominal price because they hadn't been sold out yet, well, Underground was similar and the deeds now trade well above their IPO. How much time do you want to grant for collecting 7-figure amounts of dollars for a company which in the huge gaming market is but an obscure speck most have never heard of.

 

"The cost"... well it depends on what the cost was? I'm not convinced that Arkadia ever owned them. My suspicion is that MA create the deeds (TT 1 pec if as suggested) and likely connect them to a "webshop account". Then RL money is paid for them which likely goes straight to MA's bank account and likely MA take a cut (for running the webshop, and possibly some more because MA get 50% of everything a PP makes) before transferring remainder of said money to Arkadia.

In the case of the deed exchange, there is no RL money involved, MA simply deduct "swap deeds" from the number available in the shop and give them to the players in exchange for ComPet deeds.

I will grant you that, somewhere along the line Arkadia might want some cold hard readies for those deeds (even if it is only the 50% they possibly would have got through a normal web sale). I guess, in this case MA would have to pay them. They'd also loose out on their cut of the deeds had they been sold through the webshop too.

OK so I stand corrected there is some cost to MA.

Wistrel

 

Your first point is a good one... in theory I'd really like to hope that the "swap Moon deeds" were not "created" (so as to say there would end up being more than the original advertised allocation available). In theory if they were created (beyond the original lot) then the payouts would be diluted for distribution to a greater number of deeds... (in essence the pie is sliced thinner) that said though, if there are a ton of deeds still to be sold (which there are), then there are a ton of payouts that will never exist (or at least will stay in Ark or MAs pockets).

So yes, we can speculate that MA compensated Ark in some way for giving away their deeds, but indeed we don't know exactly what that compensation was.

Derptoken! That's the best one yet!

On the other topic... yes I suppose it is interesting that the Moon deeds didn't sell yet. I think you are right that people might have thought harder about the payout/time to recoup the investment in an ever diluting space. CLDs are good, plenty of people playing on Caly, AU deeds have been ok since the underground is relatively popular... but how popular will the moon be? especially considering that "player time/expenditure" in any given area of the universe, is a limited resource to spread around these areas of external (player) investment so that they might generate revenue (for investors/players). MA claim that player time/expenditure is growing (or that at least player arrival/retention is) but we only have MA's word on that. The same word that promised space courier missions.

For myself another one that went through my head about the sheer amount of cash Ark asked for the moon deeds, was that it was way too much to justify the cost of development. It felt waaaay too much like an over exuberant cash grab.

But indeed as you say, I can well imagine DerpToken and Compet had soured the grapes somewhat by the time Moon deeds arrived (not to mention the ill fated statue sale and the beyond comedic "invisible armour" sale). Another one I suspect might have been a discouragement was that the deeds would be untradable for an indefinite amount of time with a high risk that they would NEVER be tradable (if they don't ever sell out of the webshop).

Certainly for me I think that one was the biggest off put (although the amount available, the likely [low] ROI and the total mullah Ark wanted to generate were factors too). I didn't like the idea of potentially being perpetually locked into a bad deal.

Good discussion anyhow.

Wistrel