Phoenix Point declining player-base

Phoenix Point Game Feedback
324

Mmm, the numbers seem to not be real, though. Where that $11M come from, I dont know. But in the forum they say it is the value of the Epic deal. And I argued it is more reasonable to think on $500k max. according to SG reported sales and revenue. But there is no way of knowing, these figures are not public.

The strange thing about PP, is that has been no doubt a wild success for investors. 190% profit early 2019, is really wild. But who these investors are and how much they can decide what SG is unknown. But likely much less profitable for SG.

This is kind of the key point here, cause I think you are totally right. Though I would guess in Bulgaria the salaries are not as high for the devs as in other places. I find a SG salary reported in Glass door. And let me tell you:

3D Environment Artist salaries at Snapshot Games can range from лв26,383-лв28,948

This is is in Bulgarian Lev currency. Which means €14,474 a year. Which is insultingly low, even for Europe.

Because I overlook stuff, and out of curiosity I searched for salaries for game and software developers in Bulgaria. These should be much higher, right?. And the numbers I found are €1.125/month for Game Designer and €1.500/month for software developers.

For the ones out there from the US, which expect $100k for sofware designers. Game developers usually get paid much lower even in the US, and in Europe only in a handful of countries senior engineers get paid above €50k a year. For example the max salary I received when I was working as senior PhD computer vision and artificial intelligence specialist in the private industry in Spain, my salary was just below those $50k after taxes.

All in all I have no Idea how much keeping alive a 30 people team in Bulgaria would need. And even if that is the number of PP employees now. They started being 9, and they hired more people during developement. 30 is a number I have seen used in many places.

In Europe salaries need to cover medical expenses and other stuff, and when managing projects. 120-130% of the salary represents the actual cost of the salary for the company in management, according to the type of company. Bulgaria?, we dont know, the same way we dont know if the salary figures are before or after other taxes.

All in all, keeping alive SG, with a permanent staff of 30 and an average salary cost of €25k/year. Would be €700k/year only in salaries. Thought salaries are pretty much 80-90% of the cost of a software company. I would say, a reasonable number would be around the €1M/y to keep SG running.

Sources:
https://www.glassdoor.com/

Of course Im aware there is a lot of speculation in these numbers, in the same manner there is a lot of speculation when I estimated the epic deal on anything below $500k. So take it as just what it is, a somewhat informed speculative assumption.

325

Depends on social scheme, in post communist and social democracies a la Sweden it can go higher. But you get all forms of social security you would have to pay on your own, including retirement benefits (we call it pension).

So you trade some $$$ for social security, and that is what state (social state) exists for.

Employer has to be aware of all the costs and honour employees. In return, they do what he says.

So if developers are not to be blamed, who is owner and who holds the stick?

326

Well, for Sweden and Spain work in the same way, as most european countries do. I have only worked in european projects, including fairly multinational ones. All european countries have heatlh and retirement cost includded into taxes and many other stuff. Which a fraction is paid from the worker side usually, and another from the company side. The first are regular taxes (includded in the salary), and the second are called indirect salary costs (not includded and paid by the company).

The numbers of course can change a lot. And Im not expert in Bulgary. Nor I pretend to, It was only a rought overestimation.

327

Those numbers posted seem to be from the discovery documents Epic released to the courts in the Epic vs Apple case.

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328

You mean from here?

Of course, I have not read all the documents, but I have taken a look on some, and used an automatic search on all of them too. Did not dig that much into the party exhibits and demonstratives, thought.

https://app.box.com/s/6b9wmjvr582c95uzma1136exumk6p989

In general, Exhibits are presented in a very general manner, more specific numbers are redacted and none of the documents refferences Snapshot Games or Phoenix Point. Or any game besides Fortnite for that matter.

For the time being I give this forum 0 credibility (And they don’t actually provide a source for the info). And I stick with the estimation I gave based on the figures published by SG. But if anyone wants to go deep into this rabbit hole and finds some real info…

329

UV! Good to see you! how are you, my man?
I hope the current ‘Interesting Times’ have been treating you well?

330

All is good. Same as everyone else I guess. Just waiting for the world to get back to “normal”

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331

Yea, while casually killing a few ‘Pandas’ on the way :joy:

Stay well, and look after yourself, yeah?

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332

Pandas would like to make a request to not be associated with the alien scum.

1486593205_001766_1486593692_noticia_normal
1486593205_001766_1486593692_noticia_normal980×794 94.8 KB

:speak_no_evil:

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333

Long time since we have seen you here. Coming back for some more time?

334

Heck no. I work for a reputable developer in the UK who care for their staff and customers. I love it.

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335

Oh. So “divorce” with SG was not the best practice I suppose. But then it is probably not the best place to bring it up.

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336

Please do so, I am social worker, I can advise :slight_smile:
Beside that who is company owner?

337

So I kept digging, because of course I did.

I went to the forum, asked for the source of the document and they referred me to here:

https://anonfiles.com/veb3h9v4u3/DX-3399_Redacted_pdf

This seems like an exhibit of the Epic vs Apple trial. Good for us the exhibits of the case are publicly available from United States District Court Northern District of California web, I mentioned before

So I downloaded all the files from the cases, searched for the document in question… and It was not there… at all. So this means that the source is fabricated (the fact that all available PDF exhibits are in image format and this is actually not, supports this conclussion), or it was illegally obtained from the office of the lawyer… which I doubt… but…

Also quite disconcerting is the fact that, even if the document was true… well it claims that of part of the deal was $11MM in concept of MG, which I presume stands for Minimum Guarrantee.

Regarding this, I would like to add a claim from a game news media:

The community manager went on to clarify the terms of the deal, saying that Epic’s promise didn’t come in the form of a single paycheck. Instead it was " for a minimum guarantee - which means Epic will guarantee that we will sell X number of copies. Even if we don’t hit that number, they still pay us."

A community manager of PP making that declarations seems also duvious, taking into account, lets not forguet the letter from the FIG team, that directly makes the opposite claim:

Since the received cash advance contributes to the game’s revenue.

So the most generous interpretation trying to reconcile of all the data seems to suggest that the epic deal could include:

  • 88% of sales for SG+Fig on epic sales.
  • Undisclossed payment in advance, likely to be $0.6M or lower.
  • Minimun guarantee of $11M in sales (Epic would pay the difference from the actual sales to SG+Fig)

Is this all true? I kind of think it is not. the deal would be so massively beneficial for SG, that it kind of does not make any sense.

But as I say, It is very hard to know. I think there is a lot of false information here.

EDIT: The claim of the community manager has been confirmed. The $11M number may be a complete fabrication.

338

I was the only community manager. My claim was accurate

339

Noted, thank you for letting us know. So this means no payment was made in advance?

340

Appreciate my position here. Even though I no longer work for Snapshot, I’m bound to keep certain information to myself.

That said, the information given at the time when I was with the company was accurate. So confirming that isn’t a problem.

The way a minimum guarantee works is that an amount of revenue is agreed on and paid out regardless of if sales figures hit that agreed amount or not. Obviously, there’s also a possibility for actual sales to go over the agreed amount, which would then be a bonus.

What I said at the time was that Snapshot didn’t receive a single paycheque. I don’t recall the exact context of the question I was answering, but the point is that with a minimum guarantee, devs generally don’t just get handed all of the money in one lump sum at the start of the deal.

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341

Thank you very much. I obviously understand your position. It just seems that a lot of people did made a lot of claims and published a lot of numbers, and they all contradict each other. Some of these claims are being used to criticize SG. Which is probably not fair, since many would just not be true.

I just went to look if I could find anything that could tell what is true and what was not.

342

I find this figure to be unlikely. Epic payed £8,38 mil for Control.

343

Remember that Phoenix Point was one of the very first games Epic acquired as an exclusive. It was also (as far as I can remember) the first crowd funded game they acquired.