The annual report of 2012 has been placed online at the MindArk website and for now just in Swedish. I have been going over it with Google translate to find a few interesting bits. The property they bought in Germany was meant to be a secondary server space and a location where they could host both partners, investors as own people during the Leipzig Game Convention. But when that was canceled indefinitely, the need for that property was not there anymore. Servers were placed in Amsterdam instead and the property is for sale. Is that an email system? Hope they can get it from paper to the game pretty quick. Several new payment service solutions will be introduced in 2013, including Paypal and Paypal's mobile payment service Zong Profit for the year: -20.971.158 Swedish Kronor, which is about -3.8 million dollar. (not sure if I have the right numbers here, as the translations are a bit strange) Ok will have to wait for the English one, as the rest is gibberish
So MA wanted to buy this property both for server space and to host partners and investors on the basis of a one-off gaming event in Leipzig?
Not one-off. At the time it was a recurring event, but it ceased to be held in Leipzig, and moved to Cologne: Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_Convention
OK, my mistake... Seems like it was a big event throughout most of the 00's - but seeing as MA was in Germany already, why didn't they find somewhere in Cologne then instead of Holland, assuming that this exhibition is going to be as regular in Cologne as it was in Leipzig.
It seemed like the German property was a money trap for them since property management of that kind (a castle?.. really?) was likely outside their realm of expertise. Wouldn't a "warehouse in a box" kit of worked? Just buy a small patch of dirt to build it over a weekend. I wonder if a "portable server" is possible if someone could rig it up in the back of a 18 wheeled truck storage container? I've seen military set up LANs for virtual training sims that way. oh the things I can think up, so many ways for them to avoid messes like that.
Portable servers, I think IBM was doing those a few years back (yep, there you go, http://www.zdnet.com/ibm-unveils-latest-datacentre-in-a-box-1339306597/). Being in construction myself I think the cost to renovate the caste sounds a bit high myself, so who knows the contractor might have thought he was working for a big software company and jacked up the price a bit. I'm sure somebody did the math for MA on the construction and made it sound very good, but I think (and I hope MA thinks so too now) that that was not their best decision ever and they should have stuck with what the know (or so they say). [edit] HP does those portable data centers too, http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/30160
