Companies do not exist to make money, they exist to make profit . They invest into satisfying their costumers and get some profit out of the proccess. Of course, there is a time in every company's life cycle when another company is satisfying their costumers better hence loosing business, so what does the company do? Reduce the profit gain and allow costumers to be more satisfied and win them back from rival company.

Now let's put that model onto OOO, what do we get? Other MMOs are ROFLstomping SK in terms of player base and it is up to OOO to bring something fresh and unique to the table, now I won't argue for one side or the other that OOO is getting less/more original, it is entirely a personal opinion.

OOO needs to make money to survive, I have to work one day to make money to sustain my own life, sure I won't be running my own company (I wish...) but I dp need to spend carefully to get a profit out of my salary (for when I get old, daughter's wedding and what not), the players and OOO are the same, aren't we all trying to get more out of what we invested?

An angel doesn't give things away for free but also doesn't dangle a moldy carrot to it's update-hungry playerbase-rabbits.

Putting fun looking content behind a gamble-wall isn't a crime against nature.

Putting a bugged piece of equipment out there that isn't properly functional yet and saying "pay money to get this" is also not a horrendous crime, but it's disrespectful to you consumer base and bad form as a developer/designer.

Define "to play" as far as SK goes. Using weapons and equipping armor and fighting against a planet of critters for riches, materials crafted from their guts, and more shinies. New equipment is half that equation. Is it pure f2p if you can't play 100%?

You can always rely on people to buy prize boxes and then sell them on auction house, that fits the f2p model, right? No payment required.

Oh you guys, always missing points. The video wasn't about how they aren't out for a profit, just that making a profit doesn't justify the means and that they don't have to be anal about how they make their content. I really don't know how the video could have made it any more clear.

My take on the issue is that companies do not exist to make profit or money, but to provide a good or a service to the humans. The money part should be there to validate the cause and reward it accordingly, such that future growth of the cause is possible. If I am a farmer, then my product of food is evidence that I am helping society, hence I will be provided with money if my product is a worthwhile cause. If my product is a REALLY worthwhile cause, then I will buy out my neighbor who isn't doing so hot, and all of the sudden there will be two farms, each producing better crops than there otherwise would be. On the flip side, if my corporation is making garbage and said garbage isn't selling then my company deserve to die out because I am not providing a good or a service to the humans. Capitolism looks SWELL on paper, doesn't it?

@Midnight

I'm pretty sure that "Three Rings" doesn't have to do anything to survive, as they are a part of SEGA. I would really like to think that SEGA has the resources to keep them alive, provide them with employees AND still come out ahead if only they would put some faith into what is now their game and have something resembling a decent business plan that involves Spiral Knights. That is to say that they need to keep their community intact (which includes the those commenting on Steam) while finishing up their "innovation spree" that they started around this time last year, and then procede to successfully market their game in a more acceptable way that will draw upon, once again, a larger audience than these forums that includes people with common sense.

In fact, I do believe that if SEGA puts more money, employees and thought into their game they'll get more out of it than if they do not. And to think that optimism bothers me.

My take on the issue is that companies do not exist to make profit or money, but to provide a good or a service to the humans. The money part should be there to validate the cause and reward it accordingly, such that future growth of the cause is possible. If I am a farmer, then my product of food is evidence that I am helping society, hence I will be provided with money if my product is a worthwhile cause.

Exaaaactly!

Video games provide recreational value. In the past (say, NES era), developers needed to convince people it was worth paying $50+ for games instead of going to the arcade, so they created games with high replay value or longer length, or whatever "better quality" means. Back then, once you released your game, there was no recalling them to patch - so games needed to be as complete and bug free as possible.

It gets especially sticky in F2P because people are already playing: by providing "quality", you don't necessarily make money, but you attract or keep active players.

F2P makes money via annoyance (ads, pay walls, invite your friends!) or providing conveniences (amplifiers/slots) or premium items (promo costumes).

In general, F2P games with microtransactions have only a small percentage of players who will actually pay at all (and "whales", who pay a lot). Their key to profit is to have a base game that attracts and keeps a large number of players, in order to make that "small percentage" of players a large number of actual people.

Looking at different extremes, you have:
- the strongly-metrics-driven Zynga, who watched player actions and would release very quick patches and features that would optimize their monetization (--> turn this feature into a paywall? add a convenience here? move a BUY button closer so it psychologically becomes more visible?).
- Riot Games, which provides a LOT of things for free, but successfully rounds up a large number of players.
- Adver-games, like Flappy Bird, which are completely free but make money off of advertisements (so they make money off of page/app views instead of from the players directly).

SK has mostly moved away from the visible paywall (energy paywall from the beginning) and moved closer to F2P. Radiants at endgame are really the biggest 'annoyance', but you can play through the game to get those.

Why are people buying into these promos again?

Because the promos provide them something that they value (whether it's investment in resale when price rises or to have a unique costume for themselves). But not all promos are successful. In the past (when elevators required energy and prize boxes/rare items came from energy purchases), a successful promo would drive so many sales that energy price would go down, and an unsuccessful one would barely move the price. It's more invisible now since prize boxes have been divorced from energy purchases, but I'm sure not all promos attract a ton of players.

Now, promos are quick to create and usually scheduled ahead of time, so there's no reason for them to stop doing promos.

The fallacy is the idea that they're only working on promos. The reality is probably closer to them working on actual features/content but for some reason or another are held back or slow about it. No amount of whining or throwing money will change how fast those features/content come out.

But then I think back to the huge silence in 'features' before Mission System, Battle Sprites, and Energy/Forge :x

I mean yeah, I'd personally prefer more + minor changes instead of few + huge changes, but that's just how my expectation has come for Three Rings lol.

Sure they had like a month gap between releasing Snarbolax and Roarmulus Twins, but who's to say they actually did implement them in a month?