Double or Triple SC Days?

All in game transactions are done via SC. It's a company policy. That includes Player Studio which is now a part of all their new games.

Payout to Content Creators I believe is 50% of SC paid, in cash value.

So a 500 SC helemt sells and the content creator gets 250 SC worth, or $2.50.

at 2x SC, that leaves SOE with nothing, and actually at a loss considering that they do have labor costs to get the item added into the market place.

3x SC sale used to buy that helmet is a direct cash loss. (SOE got $1.66 for the SC, which they have to pay $2.50 to the creator. Net loss of 84 cents, not counting other costs involved.)

That same helmet, sold on sale for 250SC, but with full cost SC, leaves both SOE and Creator with $1.25 each.

Answer

It would seem like a bad company policy though (unless there are other reasons).

But what I mean is your 2x example where they make nothing on the player stuff, but increase SC sales (and as SC is effectively free to them therefore make more money) - I dunno about cost either, development cost per item should be relatively small, and effectively covered by a very few sales (if the costs are high that is in and of itself an issue).

The whole F2P model seems to work best (and maybe only work) in the pile em high sell them cheap and sell lots OF them way (again help by the very small production costs).



As I say though, maybe there are tax reasons etc., why they can't do that.

You're missing something....

Yes, SC is "free" for them to exchange out.

But, lets take a 2x SC sale.

Someone buys $10 of SC

They get $20 value of SC (2000 SC). SOE has "made $10" in this.

Now, that person goes and spends all 2000SC on Player Studio items.

SOE has to pay the content creators for half the cash value of the SC spent.... which is $10... which was how much they made in selling the SC... effectively meaning an even balance... BUT for the fact that maintaining the market place, evaluating Player Studio entries, and modifying/polishing playerstudio items prior to release are all costs of the transaction you have to figure, resulting in a net loss.

Triple SC it's even worse, losing money even before labor and server costs are applied to the figures.

SC is just a cash equivalent for SOE products.

Also, all game items being sold for SC only is for certain rules, laws, and limitations. There's good reason basically all games with micro transactions require exchange of real money for their in game virtual currency for actual item purchases.

Franky I was shocked they did 2x and 3x in the first place, but back then they didn't do in game item sales to NEARLY the same extent either.

Also, as someone else pointed out, by "reliably" doing big SC sales once or twice a year people would wait and stockpile, both customer habbits being bad for their accounting and taxes.

Yeah, but as in prior MMOs with the similar issues I simply can't see that they are spending $10,000 per player item (as a one off cost).

If they are even effectively spending $100 per player item (as a one off cost) they seriously need to look at thier proceedures.

Not all MMO games do use virtual currency though, many have and still do use direct payment for items.

Ive not bought SC since they stopped doing sales, cant see me buying any more till they do.

Sadly tho the player studio problem is a real one but that doent stop them creating a flag to track which SC was bought and to reduce the payout if PS gear was bought with sale cash. Not rocket science. Either way a 2x sale, while close to the bar for PS payouts would still net them profit overall since not all purchases would be PS purchases. A 1.5x sale would be all gravy.

absolute guesswork and wrong

Then so is Smedley, SOE's accounting department, and the IRS. (Which... they probably are, but eh.)

I don't completely understand all the legalities (which i already stated) But here's my source.

Here, have a ton of boring reading as to why i'm mostly correct.
http://www.iasplus.com/en/publications/us/industry-spotlight/tech/tech-spotlight-issue-4
http://eq2wire.com/2014/01/07/smedl...ription-changes-mostly-accounts-and-tax-laws/

There really isn't that much difference between offering up a 2X Station Cash sale or putting game items on sale for 50% off. You effectively end up getting the same thing. The chief differences that I can see is that SC applies to multiple games (all of SOE's games) where as the item sales are within a specific game itself and a pure SC sale allows you to buy whatever you want as opposed to only the items that were selected for the sale.

So if you want your "2X Station Cash" then just wait for a big in-game sale, see if there's anything there you want, and then buy up some SC to get those items.

You may have lost me here. If SOE pays $15 to a creator for every $10 they earn in SC... how many helmets do they need to sell before "Step 4: Profit!"?

Whoever is responsible for those micro-transactions should be fired. SOE should know that people spend most money at double or triple SC(people just like it if they can get things cheap...even if it just feels like it's cheap)...so to do that once in a while(not predictable and not too often) generates a lot of money. They drained that cash-flow by giving the PS-Designers too much of the cake and/or making those items too cheap(SOEs own items should be cheaper than the PS ones. Who sells the goods he creates himself for the same price as those of others in his own market?).

SOE just failed there....

?

You must not know how player studio works. They pay out commission on the items sold. There is no "one off cost" As long as that item sells, the creator gets more money. Some people have received over $7,000 checks from SOE.

Player items have a selling cost, true, but the production cost is one off - so as long as they at least cover the selling cost they should be fine.

SOE items and SC itself have no selling cost and only a one off production cost.

Yeah it depends on the reason I guess.

If it is a tax issue, somehow, then maybe there's not much the can do, if it is a player items thing then you'd think they'd change the system instead of not doing them.