Where Did/Does Our Money Go?

Solus

Nerouyn wrote: »

Solus wrote: »

Bethesda Game studios made the single player games, not ZOS, Beth Soft only published ESO, but also the single player games.

I strongly suggest checking your facts before you attempt another lengthy and embarassing 'correction' like that.

Both Bethesda and Zenimax Online are subsidiaries of Zenimax Media. That means - exactly as I said - that ESO is pretty safe. They're financially very comfortable and they would be loathe to risk any potential damage to the fantastically lucrative Elder Scrolls IP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeniMax_Media

Fun fact I know courtesy of wikipedia, Azura / Wonder Woman is married to Zenimax's CEO!

Kamatsu wrote: »

Compare this to say NCSoft, which is a public company, where you can see their reported earnings, balance sheet, P&L statement, etc on a quarterly basis. Why? Because they are a public company, they are required by law to report their earnings, losses, etc in a public manner for everyone to see.

That is for the benefit of investors and potential investors but it can be helpful for customers.

Eg. about half a year before The Secret World's release, Funcom's entire board exercised and sold off about a third of their stock options. That was a fairly serious bet that the game was going to bomb and stock prices would drop. Exactly what happened. Oh and a criminal investigation into the board into the bargain.

As a publicly listed company they had to publicly report that sell off. People noticed. Though mainstream gaming media sites didn't touch on it.

EDIT, reread the link.

EDIT 2: this company is a klusterF*ck, i couldve sworn they were two completely different entities but they are all owned by the same person? Just call it one damn thing. seriously

ethanthefox

Do you even realise how much its time ($$$ also) consuming to do new content? Just look for one dungeon example, there is design of environment, of characters if included , of mobs,bosses. Then you need to actually make these, modeling,texturing , animation, voice,music. You also have to design the mechanics, players want something feeling new. Just look at the new kind of mechanics in Maw or all dlc dungeons.This probably not been imaginated in one afternoon. I mean , only modeling a house can take few days for a single guy, not even counting texturing and design of it. Then all of this must be programmed with the less flaws possible and sure, bugs will happen since of the complexicity of the coding probably.(never coded a game so cant tell but I know that one wrong small line can mix up everything) I dont know how much people are still working on the game full time in the studio, but releasing new content every 3-4 months must be pretty hard sometime. Content isnt even released that they need to start working on the next one. And we now everytime it bring new bugs to fix wich add work on the table. Only my 2 cents

sirston

Oh big thing here forgot to add to my other post you agreed to a couple of TOS's and one of them was there was
11. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY

TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW AND SUBJECT TO THE STATUTORY OBLIGATIONS (AS DEFINED IN SECTION 1), ZENIMAX, ITS LICENSORS AND RESELLERS DO NOT MAKE ANY REPRESENTATIONS, WARRANTIES OR GUARANTEES TO YOU REGARDING ANY SERVICE, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE QUALITY, FUNCTIONALITY, AVAILABILITY, ACCESSIBILITY OR PERFORMANCE OF A SERVICE. EACH SERVICE IS PROVIDED TO YOU ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS.
https://account.elderscrollsonline.com/terms-of-service

Basically you buy the game as is they legally don't have to update it.

Junkogen

Mojmir wrote: »

Trumps campaign, his brothers an Investor isn't he?

On the board, actually. Making Tamriel great again...

Ch4mpTW

sirston wrote: »

Oh big thing here forgot to add to my other post you agreed to a couple of TOS's and one of them was there was
11. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY

TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW AND SUBJECT TO THE STATUTORY OBLIGATIONS (AS DEFINED IN SECTION 1), ZENIMAX, ITS LICENSORS AND RESELLERS DO NOT MAKE ANY REPRESENTATIONS, WARRANTIES OR GUARANTEES TO YOU REGARDING ANY SERVICE, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE QUALITY, FUNCTIONALITY, AVAILABILITY, ACCESSIBILITY OR PERFORMANCE OF A SERVICE. EACH SERVICE IS PROVIDED TO YOU ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS.
https://account.elderscrollsonline.com/terms-of-service

Basically you buy the game as is they legally don't have to update it.

Wow... That's just incredibly discouraging... I mean... I see now why people stress the importance of reading the terms of agreeemnt sometimes, but I always shrugged it off for video games. That's flat out horrible. By the contract we agreed to, ZOS never has to fix: Lag, class balance, exploits, bugs, etc. if they don't feel like it.

Damn... I dumped tons of cash into this game for crowns while they were on sale, and was foolish enough to buy the game for 2 platforms. Even beta tested this game. Come to find out years later that the developers don't have to make the game even run smoothly if they don't want to, and that all the complaining and whining we do about issues that deserve complaints and whines don't mean a thing to ZOS. Ouch. . . I suppose people were serious when they said that we as the players aren't entitled to this game working properly, nor updates and fixes.

Bouldercleave

Ch4mpTW wrote: »

sirston wrote: »

Oh big thing here forgot to add to my other post you agreed to a couple of TOS's and one of them was there was
11. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY

TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW AND SUBJECT TO THE STATUTORY OBLIGATIONS (AS DEFINED IN SECTION 1), ZENIMAX, ITS LICENSORS AND RESELLERS DO NOT MAKE ANY REPRESENTATIONS, WARRANTIES OR GUARANTEES TO YOU REGARDING ANY SERVICE, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE QUALITY, FUNCTIONALITY, AVAILABILITY, ACCESSIBILITY OR PERFORMANCE OF A SERVICE. EACH SERVICE IS PROVIDED TO YOU ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS.
https://account.elderscrollsonline.com/terms-of-service

Basically you buy the game as is they legally don't have to update it.

Wow... That's just incredibly discouraging... I mean... I see now why people stress the importance of reading the terms of agreeemnt sometimes, but I always shrugged it off for video games. That's flat out horrible. By the contract we agreed to, ZOS never has to fix: Lag, class balance, exploits, bugs, etc. if they don't feel like it.

Damn... I dumped tons of cash into this game for crowns while they were on sale, and was foolish enough to buy the game for 2 platforms. Even beta tested this game. Come to find out years later that the developers don't have to make the game even run smoothly if they don't want to, and that all the complaining and whining we do about issues that deserve complaints and whines don't mean a thing to ZOS. Ouch. . . I suppose people were serious when they said that we as the players aren't entitled to this game working properly, nor updates and fixes.

It's the same verbiage as EVERY other TOS out there. Stop pretending to be some doe eyed naive little victim here. No one buys into your BS.

sirston

Ch4mpTW wrote: »

sirston wrote: »

Oh big thing here forgot to add to my other post you agreed to a couple of TOS's and one of them was there was
11. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY

TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW AND SUBJECT TO THE STATUTORY OBLIGATIONS (AS DEFINED IN SECTION 1), ZENIMAX, ITS LICENSORS AND RESELLERS DO NOT MAKE ANY REPRESENTATIONS, WARRANTIES OR GUARANTEES TO YOU REGARDING ANY SERVICE, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE QUALITY, FUNCTIONALITY, AVAILABILITY, ACCESSIBILITY OR PERFORMANCE OF A SERVICE. EACH SERVICE IS PROVIDED TO YOU ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS.
https://account.elderscrollsonline.com/terms-of-service

Basically you buy the game as is they legally don't have to update it.

Wow... That's just incredibly discouraging... I mean... I see now why people stress the importance of reading the terms of agreeemnt sometimes, but I always shrugged it off for video games. That's flat out horrible. By the contract we agreed to, ZOS never has to fix: Lag, class balance, exploits, bugs, etc. if they don't feel like it.

Damn... I dumped tons of cash into this game for crowns while they were on sale, and was foolish enough to buy the game for 2 platforms. Even beta tested this game. Come to find out years later that the developers don't have to make the game even run smoothly if they don't want to, and that all the complaining and whining we do about issues that deserve complaints and whines don't mean a thing to ZOS. Ouch. . . I suppose people were serious when they said that we as the players aren't entitled to this game working properly, nor updates and fixes.

On that Note the game developers Only really do this so when they shut down the servers one day people can't say Hey! I want my money back bla bla bla. its to cover themselves they will fix stuff to make money. Now EA is a worse you agree to a TOS that says you don't own the game you bought. you Own the ability to play it in your home country.
http://www.pcgamer.com/ea-blocks-entire-country-from-using-origin-accessing-purchased-games/

Egonieser

Solus wrote: »

Nerouyn wrote: »

Armitas wrote: »

Where does our cash go...?

This game cost a buttload of money to make. It's probably one of it not the biggest budget MMOs ever.

They could do that because they've made a fortune from single player games like the TES ones and Fallout and were banking on the Elder Scrolls IP being a hit. But like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars before it, fizzled instead.

Having those successful single player games means I'm confident ESO won't ever be sold off or shut down. But they'll be expected to try to recoup the original costs of development and pay for ongoing development.

That's where the cash is going.

Bethesda Game studios made the single player games, not ZOS, Beth Soft only published ESO, but also the single player games. Basically means they marketed the game. Im not entirely sure who gets the money, but im pretty sure that Bethesda doesnt get a majority of it. A percentage probably, because it's their lore, and what not. But ZOS put in a majority of the work to get it where it is today, and if im not mistaken this is really their first game? Sure the head of ZOS worked with EA (barf), and has experience creating MMO games and using the same effects some MMOs use? But as a whole? ZOS is still an infant if we compare to other MMO developers.

I think alot of people are getting more and more frustrated and losing faith in ZOS.
I feel like in the coming year, alot of big changes will happen for the better. Some things people wont like, but i think overall things will change for the best.

Bethesda will only get what Zenimax allocated them for marketing and PR. They will not get a penny more. Pay the people who do the advertisement, pay for the PR and giveaways. Bethesda is a child company under Zenimax, same like ZoS. Neither of them are separate entities here, they are all working together towards a single goal, and it is in Bethesda's interest just as much as ZoS's for ESO to do well because both are technically the same corporation, just different dev teams.
ZoS will get the bulk of the money, yes because they make and maintain the game, but that's it. They don't have their own personal pockets to cash into or accumulate some money and invest in their own products/employees etc, that is entirely up to Zenimax, not ZoS or Bethesda which are both the workforce for Zenimax Inc, along with ID software and countless others.

Sigma957

Ch4mpTW wrote: »

After doing some thinking for a bit while playing another game created by a somewhat similar size group of developers, I couldn't help but wonder where our money goes on ESO.

Where does our cash go...?

No seriously. Where does it go? The customer service has gone downhill incredibly fast. There's no more in-game GM's (Game Masters). The testing of ESO seems to have gone downhill, as every single patch there's a load of things that are either still not fixed or are newly broken. The overall online performance is pretty bad with lag having invaded PvE after at 1 point having been only a Cyrodiil thing (but even at 1 point there was no Cyrodiil lag). The combat team doesn't seem to have 'balance' too much of a concern, as patch after patch things seem to have been in favor of stamina-based builds. Not to mention constantly pushing out things that make stamina more and more appealing than magicka. And so on.

So where did it all go? I mean... ZOS apparently was rich enough to give away a boat load of cash to someone who supposedly doesn't even play the game regularly, as well as is doing another giveaway type of thing now. Meanwhile there are more and more complaints about the base of the game, and the game's overall performance. As I mentioned earlier, the game doesn't even have an adequate support team. So where is all of the cash going then? Anyone know? Where's my money?

Well it's easy to know where the money goes,, its costs to keep servers running. All the employees at ZOS need to be paid ( I bet they are all not on 10k a year lol ) The buildings the severs and where ZOS work all have running costs involved and then there are taxes.

Sharee

[edit] nevermind, this has already been said.

Grymmoire

No mystery, it goes to fuel the:

kevlarto_ESO

Bonus money for the CEO

Kamatsu

Solus wrote: »

EDIT 2: this company is a klusterF*ck, i couldve sworn they were two completely different entities but they are all owned by the same person? Just call it one damn thing. seriously

LOL Why would they do that? By running multiple companies they can lower their tax by giving high-interest loans to each other and then declaring those loans & repayments against their tax... thus lowering what they have to pay. Or they rent 'IP' from one company to another for a heft fee, and then use this to offset against their income/revenue... and you guessed it, use this to lower their tax paid. Etc and so on - there;'s way more than these 2 methods used to lower tax, but these are the 2 most well-known to the public.

Multiple companies spreads the money around, offer's multiple ways & methods to reduce tax paid and allow companies to shuffle their profits around.... why would any company reduce all that to 1 company, esp since it would likely mean higher expenses due to higher tax needing to be paid! Pffft.

Note - not saying I support this, but it's the truth. It's how virtually ever big multi-billion+ / multi-national company does business. Most, if not all, big companies do this.. multiple companies shuffling the money out of high-tax area's to low-tax area's to reduce tax paid.

Alucardo

Sir! That's like asking a woman her age

DaveMoeDee

americansteel wrote: »

investors
zenimax media
bethesda softworks
developers pay checks

You forgot operations.

Bouldercleave

Alucardo wrote: »

Sir! That's like asking a woman her age

Or when the baby is due.

Solus

Kamatsu wrote: »

Solus wrote: »

EDIT 2: this company is a klusterF*ck, i couldve sworn they were two completely different entities but they are all owned by the same person? Just call it one damn thing. seriously

LOL Why would they do that? By running multiple companies they can lower their tax by giving high-interest loans to each other and then declaring those loans & repayments against their tax... thus lowering what they have to pay. Or they rent 'IP' from one company to another for a heft fee, and then use this to offset against their income/revenue... and you guessed it, use this to lower their tax paid. Etc and so on - there;'s way more than these 2 methods used to lower tax, but these are the 2 most well-known to the public.

Multiple companies spreads the money around, offer's multiple ways & methods to reduce tax paid and allow companies to shuffle their profits around.... why would any company reduce all that to 1 company, esp since it would likely mean higher expenses due to higher tax needing to be paid! Pffft.

Note - not saying I support this, but it's the truth. It's how virtually ever big multi-billion+ / multi-national company does business. Most, if not all, big companies do this.. multiple companies shuffling the money out of high-tax area's to low-tax area's to reduce tax paid.

Im not a business owner so i wouldn't know, also i played morrowind today, first time in years, and saw zenimax in the start up. Literally never noticed that before. Then again last time i played morrowind, was release. I was 12.

lol

Nerouyn

Solus wrote: »

EDIT 2: this company is a klusterF*ck, i couldve sworn they were two completely different entities but they are all owned by the same person? Just call it one damn thing. seriously

Corporations owning corporations - often with completely different names - is pretty common. Their primary motivation typically isn't to confuse us either. There are all sorts of potential legal and financial benefits.

My advice would be to check wikipedia next time. It's pretty reliable for stuff like this.

Solus

Nerouyn wrote: »

Solus wrote: »

EDIT 2: this company is a klusterF*ck, i couldve sworn they were two completely different entities but they are all owned by the same person? Just call it one damn thing. seriously

Corporations owning corporations - often with completely different names - is pretty common. Their primary motivation typically isn't to confuse us either. There are all sorts of potential legal and financial benefits.

My advice would be to check wikipedia next time. It's pretty reliable for stuff like this.

I googled zenimax online studios and got this page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeniMax_Online_Studios


It never alluded to BSG/BS being anything in correlation to ZOS being anything connected.

But ironically i played Morrowind last night and saw Zenimax in the credits, i never noticed it before.

Lashiing

seems like their hiring people like yourself to constantly complain about their game on the forums

Smashington357

They use our money towards developing new proc sets to stack on top of each other then collectively laugh at us posting on the forum about it while drinking beer and eating popcorn.

Now that i think of it can i have a job at ZOS?

Solus

Lashiing wrote: »

seems like they're hiring people like you to constantly complain about their game on the forums [Edited for grammar/ corrected spelling]

Who says I don't work for ZOS already?

Think of me as one of those fake Walmart shoppers that are actually employees in disguise.

Nerouyn

You're not using wikipedia properly.

Solus wrote: »

I googled zenimax online studios and got this page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeniMax_Online_Studios


It never alluded to BSG/BS being anything in correlation to ZOS being anything connected.

But ironically i played Morrowind last night and saw Zenimax in the credits, i never noticed it before.

I gave you the link for the parent company Zenimax wikipedia entry earlier. Guess what? That exact same link is on this page. In multiple places.

In the right hand summary box it's there as the parent company. The first sentence on the page says ZO is a subsidary of Zenimax.

Solus

Nerouyn wrote: »

You're not using wikipedia properly.

Solus wrote: »

I googled zenimax online studios and got this page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeniMax_Online_Studios


It never alluded to BSG/BS being anything in correlation to ZOS being anything connected.

But ironically i played Morrowind last night and saw Zenimax in the credits, i never noticed it before.

I gave you the link for the parent company Zenimax wikipedia entry earlier. Guess what? That exact same link is on this page. In multiple places.

In the right hand summary box it's there as the parent company. The first sentence on the page says ZO is a subsidary of Zenimax.

You posted the link after my initial post yes, to which I've already admitted I was incorrect.

What more do you want.

Sou_rou

Glad I put on my flameproof suit halfway through the OP.

My answer: I don't know. I see a lot of speculation, flames based on speculation, indignation based on speculation and the like--except the ZOS person's reminder to stay civil. Unless you have access to ZOS's financials, which we don't, you don't know. If you don't know, you're making it up.

If you have access to ZOS's financials, you probably can't share details legally.

Given a choice between winding myself up speculating and playing the game, I choose to play the game, which I find playable, enjoyable and, generally, better community-wise than some other games I've played.

Whatever floats your boat. I'm off to find a more interesting thread.

andreasranasen

Danikat wrote: »

Another thing to consider is even if they did release their financial reports it's not going to read like:
$10,000 - Bug fixing for Cyrodiil
$10,000 - Bug fixing for PvE
$20,000 - Next DLC
$15,000 - Planning future DLC
$20,000 - Crown store items
$??? - Profit
etc.

lol. Add a zero and double that amount to all those numbers.

- Just VO's (important ones) cost about $10-50k++ per project / per person.
- Then you have composing by Jeremy Soul, and i know for a fact from Guild Wars he charges a hefty amount of money.
- And Animators / FX artists that are brought in specifically for a certain project as independent contractors.

Fodore

Keep the servers up
Updates
Staff pay
Skooma
Female Costume design for manly orcs

Skitttles

Their new car payments

Yamenstein

Oh one of your threads again.

EDIT: So I am contributing something to the thread.

Is their any point even discussing this? We don't know Zos's financial situation. Unless they have stated it somewhere - which I doubt.
The cost that went into the game, money spend on advertising, systems, paying staff, expenses for staff - paying for travel fares, accommodation when doing events at other locations, building utilities, the amount of money spent on keeping the game up, amount of money spent on getting through maintenance - paying for services, paying the workers that spend the time doing that, who freaking knows how much money goes into all of this.

Do you think every single player in this game subs? Doubtful.
The only guaranteed income that they get is from purchases from their own store (whether its purchasing the game, tangible items like clothes or whatever else they sell, and any in-game addons).

Do you know how often I see a physical copy of ESO on the shelves? Not often. Maybe it's different for you. But even then the stores have already bought these copies, marked up the prices and are now selling it to you. Developers don't get that money. Digital copies don't really cost all that much anyway, and it's a one time purchase for any player - not like you have to pay THAT much each month, if you decide to sub that is.

---

I don't see the game "slacking severely". I don't understand where you got that from. Honestly it's been playing really well for me and I'm playing from Australia. If I'm getting good ping then chances are something is wrong with your connection, or maybe I'm just getting lucky and not many people are in the zone instance - my luck then. Though yes, latency problems have been a constant issue since launch - and I hope they are working on more fixes overall.

I haven't really had to deal with customer service, though yes, sometimes I do wish we got faster responses on the forums (or even some responses at all other times).

Zos has delivered on content, and now we have to wait until the new content comes out. We farm and we grind like how it is in an MMO - that was your other thread right? - which takes up time so we have to work for the gear we want, and when we get what we want, hopefully at somepoint, then soon after new content will come out and the constant grind just starts again. Go figure. Welcome to MMOs if someone didn't know that.

Andohir

The money goes where it always went and will go - to where the most of it already is.

https://www.zenimax.com/about

Maybe the result of the US-election also provides some benefits in future, when reading the last name at board of directors.