Game is too easy to make money

[its pArrot]

Even on the hardest the game can become easy to reach a level of financial stability where it doesnt matter what you do ie whether it be opening your digital distribution for other AI and waiting or just doing marketing deals. The real gameplay for me comes from trying to avoid going broke and making a profit (the early years of a company) needs to be more risk and large fines. For example its like 50,000 for breaking a publishing contract it should waayyyyyy higher like a percentage of the total sales etc. If your doing digital distribution and your servers cant keep up, you lose the AI but you just lower to 2% then raise to 20% again. No consequences.

Basically its too easy to make money, should be more barriers to making money like taxes and fines. A certain percentage on any income could be lost to taxes, the more you make then the more you pay. Another idea could be to have an accountant as a staff option to hire who must create your tax filings and have a deadline for this in game with penalty if you fail to meet it. The bigger you are, the more accountants you need to complete this filing. I love this game, but for me anyways i dont want to be making millions in the first month. Option for bigger loans, higher interest, more and higher costs, AI more aggressive etc. Nothing is wrong with this game its the best i have ever played, i just want it harder so i can play more and longer.

[Shankly]

These suggestions will probably help the developer - he said that the next update is likely beta, where he will be balancing things more than he will be adding new features

[LatN's Strategy]

What alpha and difficulty are you playing in?

[its pArrot]

Originally posted by LatN's Strategy:

What alpha and difficulty are you playing in?

Latest one in testing branch, and max diff. Most of the ways that are broken in making money are not the selling of software. Servers, deals, IP and stock make the selling of it irrelevant.

[Rabob]

Originally posted by It's pArrot:

Originally posted by LatN's Strategy:

What alpha and difficulty are you playing in?

Latest one in testing branch, and max diff. Most of the ways that are broken in making money are not the selling of software. Servers, deals, IP and stock make the selling of it irrelevant.

Yeah agreed. I often (nearly) bankrupt companies by basically making software for the sole reason of gaining market recognition and a framework for a future software. So I start an OS, get a publishing and marketing deal -> then proceed to miss the deadline in order for the product to not be an absolute mess -> sell for 1 dollar a piece (Even though production alone is 2). I pay the 50k fine, but I earn that back anyway since if I sell 500k and my publishing/marketing share is likt 25% I still keep 375k. Meanwhile the AI is selling at a loss and having a huge marketing campagn in the millions for a revenue that is 6 figures at best.

I think there should be some negotiation like: you expect to sell 1 million copies, they expect a minimum payout of 10 million for marketing and publishing and they ask 35% total of sales. So if you sell the 1 mil at 100$ then you have 100 mil revenue, you lose 35 mil total. If you however exploit it like me, you sell 1 mil copies at 1$ you have 1 mil revenue, but pay 10mil in publishing and marketing costs. LEaving you with a 9 million loss. So pricing actually becomes relevant instead of transferring the loss to the publisher. It gets even worse when you consider that software you are selling, means that the competitor (your publisher) is selling less. So you make him lose money and you make him lose sales indirectly.

So the negotiation part would then be to agree on a x copies sold. So the higher you make this number, the lower the % will be, but the higher the minimum sum will be. For instance:
expectation 1 mil - min payout 10 mil - 35% of revenue
expectation 100 mil - min payout 50 mil - 15% of revenue
expectation 0.1 mil - min payout 0.5 mil - 50% of revenue
expectation 0 mil - min payout 0.25 mil - 75% of revenue (there should be a minimum level, but 50k is just too low either way I think)
This formula you should also adjust based on the software and some penalty for late delivery. Like 10% of the minum payout per month over the deadline.
Another thing that is really important: based on the features and market potential, there is a minimum expectation of sales. So you can't cheese the system saying you expect 0 sales and just pay the lowest fines possible, because the lowest fines in case of OS or something would be 10 million.

This way you actually think more about what to do: Do you release a bad product sooner or fix stuff for a month longer? Do you sell more at a low price and set expected sales high at the risk of selling too little? Or you go for a low minimum payout, but high % royalty?

Having a digital distribution is also a cheesy way of earning and it gets better the later you get because there are more digital sales and hosting gets cheaper. There should be an up-keep to making a digital store (instead of this stupid 'internet cost'. Like writing an actual software/storepage for it and having a customer support. But this should be very diverse. So say you want to make a steam equivalent, then you get 'workshop' for games and whatnot and your offering is different than say an EA or Ubisoft store. So you not only compete for digital distribution, but there is a quality difference. So for instances games want to be sold on a platform which has workshop support and office software on a platform which has good customer support. So you would need both customer support and workshop if you want to sell both, but that would be a big investment. With the programming of the storefront there could also be reasons to make it good instead of having features x and y. Like better quality means that the customers rather purchase online than physical or support is easier to handle or the bandwidth usage is lower.

Right now, I pretty much always start digital distribution for easy money, but that in the bank since the stock market and stocks in themselve suck so much. Then produce some software and get bored eventually. The challenge is kinda gone with the cheesy ways to earn. Especially digital distribution in its current form means you can already retire at the start of the game.

[its pArrot]

Originally posted by Rabob:

Originally posted by It's pArrot:

Latest one in testing branch, and max diff. Most of the ways that are broken in making money are not the selling of software. Servers, deals, IP and stock make the selling of it irrelevant.

Yeah agreed. I often (nearly) bankrupt companies by basically making software for the sole reason of gaining market recognition and a framework for a future software. So I start an OS, get a publishing and marketing deal -> then proceed to miss the deadline in order for the product to not be an absolute mess -> sell for 1 dollar a piece (Even though production alone is 2). I pay the 50k fine, but I earn that back anyway since if I sell 500k and my publishing/marketing share is likt 25% I still keep 375k. Meanwhile the AI is selling at a loss and having a huge marketing campagn in the millions for a revenue that is 6 figures at best.

I think there should be some negotiation like: you expect to sell 1 million copies, they expect a minimum payout of 10 million for marketing and publishing and they ask 35% total of sales. So if you sell the 1 mil at 100$ then you have 100 mil revenue, you lose 35 mil total. If you however exploit it like me, you sell 1 mil copies at 1$ you have 1 mil revenue, but pay 10mil in publishing and marketing costs. LEaving you with a 9 million loss. So pricing actually becomes relevant instead of transferring the loss to the publisher. It gets even worse when you consider that software you are selling, means that the competitor (your publisher) is selling less. So you make him lose money and you make him lose sales indirectly.

So the negotiation part would then be to agree on a x copies sold. So the higher you make this number, the lower the % will be, but the higher the minimum sum will be. For instance:
expectation 1 mil - min payout 10 mil - 35% of revenue
expectation 100 mil - min payout 50 mil - 15% of revenue
expectation 0.1 mil - min payout 0.5 mil - 50% of revenue
expectation 0 mil - min payout 0.25 mil - 75% of revenue (there should be a minimum level, but 50k is just too low either way I think)
This formula you should also adjust based on the software and some penalty for late delivery. Like 10% of the minum payout per month over the deadline.
Another thing that is really important: based on the features and market potential, there is a minimum expectation of sales. So you can't cheese the system saying you expect 0 sales and just pay the lowest fines possible, because the lowest fines in case of OS or something would be 10 million.

This way you actually think more about what to do: Do you release a bad product sooner or fix stuff for a month longer? Do you sell more at a low price and set expected sales high at the risk of selling too little? Or you go for a low minimum payout, but high % royalty?

Having a digital distribution is also a cheesy way of earning and it gets better the later you get because there are more digital sales and hosting gets cheaper. There should be an up-keep to making a digital store (instead of this stupid 'internet cost'. Like writing an actual software/storepage for it and having a customer support. But this should be very diverse. So say you want to make a steam equivalent, then you get 'workshop' for games and whatnot and your offering is different than say an EA or Ubisoft store. So you not only compete for digital distribution, but there is a quality difference. So for instances games want to be sold on a platform which has workshop support and office software on a platform which has good customer support. So you would need both customer support and workshop if you want to sell both, but that would be a big investment. With the programming of the storefront there could also be reasons to make it good instead of having features x and y. Like better quality means that the customers rather purchase online than physical or support is easier to handle or the bandwidth usage is lower.

Right now, I pretty much always start digital distribution for easy money, but that in the bank since the stock market and stocks in themselve suck so much. Then produce some software and get bored eventually. The challenge is kinda gone with the cheesy ways to earn. Especially digital distribution in its current form means you can already retire at the start of the game.

Totally agree with you mate on everything you said. The game lacks any consequences to any decision making, even as small as failing the fire inspection there is no fine etc and its cheaper just not paying the insurance. As you said the publishing deals are just broken whats the point of marketing your own product. the AI does it for you. You dont even need to sell software, just funnelling the money from distribution into bonds and the game is kinda over. The bigger you get, the risk should then scale up with that, like 50,000 fine for breaking a deal when you have 50 million doesnt matter at all. Great game with amazing potential but it lacks any difficulty as you cannot fail.

[Rabob]

Originally posted by It's pArrot:

Totally agree with you mate on everything you said. The game lacks any consequences to any decision making, even as small as failing the fire inspection there is no fine etc and its cheaper just not paying the insurance. As you said the publishing deals are just broken whats the point of marketing your own product. the AI does it for you. You dont even need to sell software, just funnelling the money from distribution into bonds and the game is kinda over. The bigger you get, the risk should then scale up with that, like 50,000 fine for breaking a deal when you have 50 million doesnt matter at all. Great game with amazing potential but it lacks any difficulty as you cannot fail.

I think I have found the biggest exploit yet. Become a billionaire in 1981 :'D
Well okay, I did it in 1983, but the same way you could do in 1981 or maybe even 1980 xD

You don't even have to move out of your mom's garage xD

Edit: no wait check that. I have earned so much money it doesn't even fit on the screen xD
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2488841478

[BigSilverHotdog]

You're proud of that post you just made, aren't you?

Good for you! It was relevant to the discussion and did not in any way make you look like a trollish lackwit.

Don't listen to anyone that tells you otherwise! You the man!

[Rabob]

Originally posted by Rainbow Droid:

You're proud of that post you just made, aren't you?

Good for you! It was relevant to the discussion and did not in any way make you look like a trollish lackwit.

Don't listen to anyone that tells you otherwise! You the man!

You okay there buddy? Did your mommy not buy your favorite candy or something?

[BigSilverHotdog]

gdi you found me out, I assume because the word 'lackwit' is hot slang with today's kids /nod