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The Community Buy-out Project
Forum index >> Grid-Iron discussions >> The Community Buy-out Project Goto page : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
 
[GI] AdminGI Supporter
Posts: 2367
Posted on 2023-06-18 9:43:36
SrednaD wrote:

Thanks Pete for the great sum up of the games economics. I remember the buyout back then and I do believe that we talked shortly about it together.

Before the community bid moves on, serious due diligence must be done. I work as an auditor and have worked on mergers and acquisitions before. Either the community will buy Melderon out for the emotional fee (+10k) or Melderon needs to supply trusted third party with financial information that can assist the buyers in making a reasonable bid.

The price has risen now that the opportunity has been made for buying. Those taking over the game should also take into account the hours needed to make the game more lucrative by fixing the hundreds of bugs in the game.

I am in the bid with the others since I want the game to continue and see if we can ease out some bugs. I hope that we can do the so we can continue playing.


Come on guys, let's get serious here.
This is not a multi million buy-out attempt. We are talking about lowest 5 digit numbers here.
As I mentioned in previous post, I will ask the owner for finances and will forward the answer to simpathia.
There will not be any "trusted 3rd party" audits or whatnot, as I'm sure the owner will just say "forget about it" the minute this is mentioned.
You will be able to check the numbers the minute you take over the database (as all supporter purchases are in the database of course). And if someone here thinks we, along with the owner, will risk legal action over couple of grand. Come on now. Let's get serious here.

I will provide the rough numbers to simpathia (when I get them). You (the community) will be able to calculate the offer that is acceptable for you, the owner will look at it (if the offer will be serious enough) and If accepted, there will be a contract made, payment and then transfer of all IP (including source code, server and domain). That's it.
If anyone wants to play the multi-million dollar takeover for GI. It won't fly.

Guys, I mentioned few times that owner is having serious health issues and I'm 100% certain he will not stress his life even more with this.

Again, if this is not acceptable to the community, let's forget about it and move on.
Hard-core fan (ultimate supporter owner)simpathiaGI Supporter
Posts: 1009
Joined: 2015-04-29
II.2
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Hard-core fan (ultimate supporter owner)
Posted on 2023-06-18 11:38:42
Administrator wrote:


Come on guys, let's get serious here.
This is not a multi million buy-out attempt. We are talking about lowest 5 digit numbers here.
As I mentioned in previous post, I will ask the owner for finances and will forward the answer to simpathia.
There will not be any "trusted 3rd party" audits or whatnot, as I'm sure the owner will just say "forget about it" the minute this is mentioned.
You will be able to check the numbers the minute you take over the database (as all supporter purchases are in the database of course). And if someone here thinks we, along with the owner, will risk legal action over couple of grand. Come on now. Let's get serious here.

I will provide the rough numbers to simpathia (when I get them). You (the community) will be able to calculate the offer that is acceptable for you, the owner will look at it (if the offer will be serious enough) and If accepted, there will be a contract made, payment and then transfer of all IP (including source code, server and domain). That's it.
If anyone wants to play the multi-million dollar takeover for GI. It won't fly.

Guys, I mentioned few times that owner is having serious health issues and I'm 100% certain he will not stress his life even more with this.

Again, if this is not acceptable to the community, let's forget about it and move on.



Thanks Admin, I'm looking forward to the information.
There will be questions related to the operational side of things that will need to be answered as well, and I assume that we can talk about those things as well.

Let me stress to everyone that this is a friendly take-over attempt with the goal to increase our playing pleasure. I'd very much want also the current owner to feel that he's leaving this game in good hands
[GI] AdminGI Supporter
Posts: 2367
Posted on 2023-06-18 12:07:51
simpathia wrote:

Administrator wrote:


Come on guys, let's get serious here.
This is not a multi million buy-out attempt. We are talking about lowest 5 digit numbers here.
As I mentioned in previous post, I will ask the owner for finances and will forward the answer to simpathia.
There will not be any "trusted 3rd party" audits or whatnot, as I'm sure the owner will just say "forget about it" the minute this is mentioned.
You will be able to check the numbers the minute you take over the database (as all supporter purchases are in the database of course). And if someone here thinks we, along with the owner, will risk legal action over couple of grand. Come on now. Let's get serious here.

I will provide the rough numbers to simpathia (when I get them). You (the community) will be able to calculate the offer that is acceptable for you, the owner will look at it (if the offer will be serious enough) and If accepted, there will be a contract made, payment and then transfer of all IP (including source code, server and domain). That's it.
If anyone wants to play the multi-million dollar takeover for GI. It won't fly.

Guys, I mentioned few times that owner is having serious health issues and I'm 100% certain he will not stress his life even more with this.

Again, if this is not acceptable to the community, let's forget about it and move on.



Thanks Admin, I'm looking forward to the information.
There will be questions related to the operational side of things that will need to be answered as well, and I assume that we can talk about those things as well.

Let me stress to everyone that this is a friendly take-over attempt with the goal to increase our playing pleasure. I'd very much want also the current owner to feel that he's leaving this game in good hands


I have sent the basic financial infos, costs and what is needed to keep the game running.
I asked Simpathia and I ask all others involved to please keep the infos between the members of this initiative.

There is no NDA involved (as I mentioned this is not a multi million dolar takeover and we also won't treat it as such), but we all hope and bet on your honesty to keep that among the involved members.
Thank you in advance.
lefthandedjoe
Posts: 3
Posted on 2023-06-18 12:14:16
SrednaD wrote:

Thanks Pete for the great sum up of the games economics. I remember the buyout back then and I do believe that we talked shortly about it together.



I do not remember of any details anymore, SrednaD. It is so long ago.

But what I know is that I once offered X EUR per active account, and it was about 2000 players at that time. I was making this offer since the usernumbers went south, and I felt the Owner would love to make some money out of it. At least that were the signals I was feeling, when no improvement happend anymore, no engangement with the community was there and so on. I was wrong with the intentions of the owner, and this is OK. It was an offer, and it was refused. Seems, Admins memory was tricked a bit. But no worries, my memories on this are fading, as well. And most important, this is the past.

Talking about NOW, my analysis is the same as posted by me before admins statement. And yes: No-one needs to sell, and no-one needs to buy. /Captain Obvious


One a side note to Admin: if there are any doubts about my identity, just contact me and I will happily prove it, if ever needed. Cheers.
[GI] AdminGI Supporter
Posts: 2367
Posted on 2023-06-18 12:46:03
lefthandedjoe wrote:

SrednaD wrote:

Thanks Pete for the great sum up of the games economics. I remember the buyout back then and I do believe that we talked shortly about it together.



I do not remember of any details anymore, SrednaD. It is so long ago.

But what I know is that I once offered X EUR per active account, and it was about 2000 players at that time. I was making this offer since the usernumbers went south, and I felt the Owner would love to make some money out of it. At least that were the signals I was feeling, when no improvement happend anymore, no engangement with the community was there and so on. I was wrong with the intentions of the owner, and this is OK. It was an offer, and it was refused. Seems, Admins memory was tricked a bit. But no worries, my memories on this are fading, as well. And most important, this is the past.

Talking about NOW, my analysis is the same as posted by me before admins statement. And yes: No-one needs to sell, and no-one needs to buy. /Captain Obvious


One a side note to Admin: if there are any doubts about my identity, just contact me and I will happily prove it, if ever needed. Cheers.



You never offered X amount for user.
You offered X amount for the whole thing (server, database, ...) and the amount was laughable.
I do remember (very clearly) the owner instructing me to let you know that you can't buy the domain alone for that kind of money

Just facts. Nothing more.

This is, of course, if you are the person that played the game under the username of "pstimpl" back then.
lefthandedjoe
Posts: 3
Posted on 2023-06-18 13:47:41
LOL.

I have no reason to level down my discussion style to yours, as I have no reason to debate with you how offers looked like I made 10+ years ago.

@community: good luck with the effort, from the bottom of my heart.

Pete
[GI] AdminGI Supporter
Posts: 2367
Posted on 2023-06-18 14:10:08
lefthandedjoe wrote:

LOL.

I have no reason to level down my discussion style to yours, as I have no reason to debate with you how offers looked like I made 10+ years ago.

@community: good luck with the effort, from the bottom of my heart.

Pete


Look, Pete - no one wants to argue you. Far from it. I would never even write about any offer from the past if you didn't step into discussion with those "past offers".
But don't expect that I won't correct your statement about your offer (even from 10 years ago) when you accused us that we didn't even want to consider your "serious offer". Your offer was not serious back then and that's a fact.
Back then, we had a serious offer from another company and we went into serious discussions with them for a bit - but couldn't find the common ground to proceed.

But. Let's leave it at that. It's off topic anyway.

Believe it or not, we all have good intentions here. Admins, owner and (we do all believe) the community.
If something happens and the game gets sold, ... good. If not, we will all go on with our lives. It's not like some huge buy-out is happening here anyway. And it's not like anyones' life depends on the outcome of this initiative.

So, data was sent to Simpathia. Now it's community's turn to look at facts and prepare the offer (if at all).

And, let's stay on the topic here from now on.
Hard-core fan (ultimate supporter owner)simpathiaGI Supporter
Posts: 1009
Joined: 2015-04-29
II.2
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Hard-core fan (ultimate supporter owner)
Posted on 2023-06-18 16:06:54
Administrator wrote:

lefthandedjoe wrote:

LOL.

I have no reason to level down my discussion style to yours, as I have no reason to debate with you how offers looked like I made 10+ years ago.

@community: good luck with the effort, from the bottom of my heart.

Pete


Look, Pete - no one wants to argue you. Far from it. I would never even write about any offer from the past if you didn't step into discussion with those "past offers".
But don't expect that I won't correct your statement about your offer (even from 10 years ago) when you accused us that we didn't even want to consider your "serious offer". Your offer was not serious back then and that's a fact.
Back then, we had a serious offer from another company and we went into serious discussions with them for a bit - but couldn't find the common ground to proceed.

But. Let's leave it at that. It's off topic anyway.

Believe it or not, we all have good intentions here. Admins, owner and (we do all believe) the community.
If something happens and the game gets sold, ... good. If not, we will all go on with our lives. It's not like some huge buy-out is happening here anyway. And it's not like anyones' life depends on the outcome of this initiative.

So, data was sent to Simpathia. Now it's community's turn to look at facts and prepare the offer (if at all).

And, let's stay on the topic here from now on.



Thank you very much for the information. Consider it to be provided under informal NDA.
I will set up further communication tomorrow with those who indicated they want to share in the responsibility for this Community project.
I will also keep the wider community posted on developments.
Thank you all!
KlomgoGI Supporter
Posts: 2176
Joined: 2014-08-09
II.2
Offline
Posted on 2023-06-18 16:09:21
Administrator wrote:

And, let's stay on the topic here from now on.


That's the most important sentence!
The past doesn't matter. The times have changed.

And yes, maybe the objective value of this game is below 10k.

But we have to respect the emotional value of the owner. And when the owner tells us a price we have to accept it and pay it or not.


As an example: If we want to buy the wedding ring made of gold from a married person, we can't tell "the ring has the objective value X because of the current gold price".
The emotional (and subjective) value of this ring for the married person is much higher. You have to accept it or not.

So thanks for Peter for the explanation of the objective value.

And thanks to the Admin for the explanation of the emotional value.

PS: And thanks to simpathia for his great communication and management
anonymous
Posts: 1
Joined: 2023-01-12
II.2
Offline
Posted on 2023-06-18 18:18:34
Wow, the audacity to ask for 10k for a game that is pretty much abandonware.

I wonder how many Supporters will renew their subscriptions now that they know the owners want to exit? Let's not kid ourselves if no one bites this game will be shut down before the server plan will need to be renewed.


Yoinks wrote:


a bit of due diligence regarding the asking price and revenue.



I don't see anyone mentioning the expenses in the numbers above, although the game probably doesn't require much server power since there are so few active users the database is probably quite massive holding 41 seasons worth of data.

If someone actually buys it they will need to be aware that they will pretty much have to rewrite the whole thing since it uses 15 years old legacy frameworks. No experienced developer will work for less than 40EUR/h.
Also the match engine, as we very well know, is a joke, slightly inspired from the sport but not really a simulation, so the only real value here would be the <500 active users who still play probably due to nostalgia. The churn rate for total users and paying users also needs to be taken into account.

lefthandedjoe wrote:


85 Ultimates are no business value anymore, since they got promised lifetime contract length, and do not spend any money in this game again.


The lack of vision with that "lifetime" supporter account is appalling, can't imagine who thought that would be a good idea.

 
Forum index >> Grid-Iron discussions >> The Community Buy-out Project Goto page : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6