Gravity's finances

I'm really pleased to hear that a pre-renewal server is going to be implemented - like a lot of veteran players, I found renewal wanting in terms of game balance and dynamics. Whether a server will succeed or fail depends on many factors but ultimately, the bottomline is whether it's a sound business. If you're interested in assessing the long term prospects of such a server (or RO in general), I'd highly recommend combing through Gravity's latest financial report here: http://www.sec.gov/A...tm#toc283775_11

You'll be able to see how much subscription revenue the US server generates per year (ie US$3m), its percentage of all servers' subscription revenues (ie 10%), relative size to the Korean/Japanese servers, official population numbers (ie 4000-5000 which I suspect includes the bots & zeny spammers), numerous risk factors facing the company, its rather abysmal stock price on the one hand but seemingly a cheap deal on the other, considering its strong price/book and price/net tangible asset ratios etc. A useful check on company PR if nothing else.

Interestingly, the Korean server generates only 30% more revenue but has only 70% of the US server's population size (assuming no bots on either server). It also shows why the Japanese server has so much clout because its legal arrangement with Gravity Co. is that of a contractual license (compared to subsidiary ownership as in the case of Gravity US which carries overhead - eg Heimdaddy's wages - and the flexibility inherently given in the contract) as well as because it has nearly 10-15x the population size, depending on your estimation of the number of bots on the US server, and 7x revenue.

If you're into that type of stuff, go nuts on the EBITDA/profit margin ratios et al but I thought this might be a useful reference tool for the community to have considering there are some suggestions re the viability of going back to monthly subscription model for the pre-renewal server ($10 x 12 months x 500 users =?) compared to the profitability of the Kafrashop machine (average user spends $750 on RO annually, excluding merchandise purchases) versus perhaps a mixture of both business models (like Ymir).

Hope this helps!

Pretty interesting, thanks for the link and the short analysis.

You'd have to be a moron to think that the subscription model would pay the bills. I hope none of the people suggesting it were serious, for their sake.

Anyone who plays the game knows that people spend far more on the kafra shop than subscriptions (and by that $750 figure, it would seem that it's close to an order of magnitude more on kafra shop vs VIP!)

Edited by DrAzzy, 08 June 2012 - 10:54 AM.

but making the server like ymir with pay to create a char will keep the bots out. idk about pay to play because i like vip more especially if we would still get enhanced rates and drops that right there is worth the money for me.

Interesting read

You'd have to be a moron to think that the subscription model would pay the bills. I hope none of the people suggesting it were serious, for their sake.

Anyone who plays the game knows that people spend far more on the kafra shop than subscriptions (and by that $750 figure, it would seem that it's close to an order of magnitude more on kafra shop vs VIP!)

Pretty much.

Subscription won't pay the bills alone, but I wonder if people would be willing to do it simply to keep bots off of the new server. (Granted, they shouldn't have to pay for that, and if they actually do, free trials should not exist on the server)

No Kafra Shop is a nice thought, but it's not going to be realistic. If a different sort of Item Mall from what we have now is even on the table for the new server, people need to be thinking of what they'd actually buy from it. It's nice to say "NO HD ORE, NO OP GEARS, ETC ETC", but those things make up a ton of the Kafra sales. People need to think about what they would actually be willing to spend money on if everything they don't want to see in the game is removed from the Item Mall.

Maybe putting more captcha inputs in when creating an account would help. If I recall correctly, only one captcha is required to make a warpportal account, and no captcha is required for each RO account after that?

costumes

-Pay per character slot opened-one free to wp accounts in good standing
-separate VIP purchasable package
-Ores/no certs -using enriched still breaks plenty of stuff and is very profitable for a server.
-OP gears only if they combo with and encourage people to purchase in-game attainable items.

Interesting read

Shouldn't you guys know all about this? This isn't your homework read?

Shouldn't you guys know all about this? This isn't your homework read?

Why would we know about their finances?

I have a feeling Heim is probably the only person here who has read that document or may have even been the one who wrote some of it. I definitely wouldn't expect any mods to read that.

Why would we know about their finances?

Yea I see their title as Ragnarok Moderators, not RO Accountants!

Nice info though OP

i've read that document and follow their stock GRVY, just because they are my favorite gameing company so i like to know what is going on. still kinda mad that ATVI didn't plummet with the release of that bomb they call D3 but i'm hopeing it will.

Imo, even if you're at the bottom of the employee chain, you should have a decent knowledge about your company and how it's doing.

The financial information is readily available for everyone to read.

Edited by CeruleanGamer, 08 June 2012 - 11:43 AM.

Imo, even if you're at the bottom of the employee chain, you should have a decent knowledge about your company and how it's doing.

Let me make this clear yet again, Volunteer Moderators do NOT work for Gravity, we receive no salary so I say again why would we have anything to do with their financial statements?

All this time I've been buying stock in GRAVY, and all I've gotten back is a thick brown meatliquid for my investment!

All this time I've been buying stock in GRAVY, and all I've gotten back is a thick brown meatliquid for my investment!

/facepalm

All this time I've been buying stock in GRAVY, and all I've gotten back is a thick brown meatliquid for my investment!

/me slaps you around a bit with a large trout

Oda...

maybe we can find stock in FRYS

ooh hahaha
Fitzroy Resources Ltd there ya go it's FRY

Edited by Niji, 08 June 2012 - 12:25 PM.

I still find it disconcerting how easy it is to find those particulars, especially when it can be used to do doom and gloom reports. But anyway it is what it is. Subscriptions on a good month are about 1/5 of revenue, and operational costs would not allow us life off of just that. I would LOVE if 100% of population used VIP for all accounts, and that 100% of all accounts was individual players, ie no bots, no multi clients; if it did it would actually be better than current, and if that were the reality the Item mall would be more of a backseat rather than relied upon. We do pretty darn good all things considered, but like most things in business staying the same but good eventually starts to stagnate, growth is how you assure long life and great fortune for businesses; this renewal server is the project we are doing to stir the pot and grow. The project should go well, it will be more work for us short term (sad) but when it works out then more becomes possible and more hands are called on deck.


But those numbers and all that is what my job is to worry about, our CMs are here to talk to you and to take your feedback back to our live team here, and the live teams job is to make the weekly updates and keep things going. If all that is done right I would hope that the community's only concern is when they can find the next moment to hop in game and play.

No way in heck I'm going to read all of that, though it was cool to see that Warp Portal is developing their own games in house.

I'm curious though. I have stock in GRVY, but does Warp Portal have their own stocks that I could buy into?

I still find it disconcerting how easy it is to find those particulars, especially when it can be used to do doom and gloom reports. But anyway it is what it is. Subscriptions on a good month are about 1/5 of revenue, and operational costs would not allow us life off of just that. I would LOVE if 100% of population used VIP for all accounts, and that 100% of all accounts was individual players, ie no bots, no multi clients; if it did it would actually be better than current, and if that were the reality the Item mall would be more of a backseat rather than relied upon. We do pretty darn good all things considered, but like most things in business staying the same but good eventually starts to stagnate, growth is how you assure long life and great fortune for businesses; this renewal server is the project we are doing to stir the pot and grow. The project should go well, it will be more work for us short term (sad) but when it works out then more becomes possible and more hands are called on deck.


But those numbers and all that is what my job is to worry about, our CMs are here to talk to you and to take your feedback back to our live team here, and the live teams job is to make the weekly updates and keep things going. If all that is done right I would hope that the community's only concern is when they can find the next moment to hop in game and play.

Wouldn't that be the day!!

i seriously have for knowledge about stocks....my question is...this is going good or bad...?
according to CMs posts it seems good but can be better....correct me if i am wrong !