XBOX got 14.000 aquilas - Steam got nothing (Fatshark responded 23/01/2024)

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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The relative Aquila value in dollars is…meaningless really on that scale. Tying that directly to potential proportional real losses is nonsensical for several reasons.

First, Aquilas don’t actually have any meaningful cost to Fatshark to produce and distribute in and of themselves. The MTX assets do of course, but the actual tokens is pretty zero-cost and the asset costs aren’t huge either.

Second, the only way those losses would be both “real” and anywhere near that proportion is essentially if every player who was given the Aquilas was already going to buy that many, and chose not to as a result of the potential gift. If they weren’t ever going to buy that many, or only a fraction of that amount, Fatshark isn’t out anything they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten.

Third, the overwhelming bulk of income that Darktide will ever generate, the majority of what players are going to spend on this game, was already done at launch. From all available public data, the game has made about ~$85M in total, and ~$60m of that was in its first month of release, so averaging about $2M/mo since then, and that’s pretty typical for videogames. There’s just not as much to lose out on at this point.

Finally, that infusion may do lot to stimulate new interest, get people playing again, maybe blow their load of Aquilas and buy even more or drag their friends into the game with fresh enthusiasm after some time away.

Now I don’t really care to have much of a dog in this fight, I’m not actually expecting FS to give out 9k aquilas to every PC player, but it’s also hardly something that would be business suicide for Fatshark, any more than giving away that many Aquialas to all the Xbox players was during their largest customer acquisition month on that platform.

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126

the currency has no value. if a person actually purchases the currency it becomes revenue for FS.
if they gave away 500trilion of that currency to a dead account they wouldn’t lose a single cent.

so the only thing that matters is how many people now don’t buy the currency due to having been gifted the amount for free.
and not every player would have, thats your mistake.

even if they were considering it at some point, that ship has sailed. it would shine a bad light on them now.

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Regardless of what your own thoughts are on premium currency in games, which is its own problem and discussion, saying that they have no value is just blatantly untrue. Avoiding the monetary association with the premium currency (9k is around 40 dollars, 14k is around 60 dollars) and making up hypothetical scenarios in your head are coping mechanisms.

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129

Thank you for this valuable observation cedric. I must say that since before release, the complete out of touch nature of the higher-ups of Fatshark shows time and time again, as they keep creating fires with their bad decisions that then the devteam then desparately tries to put out month after month.

They basically keep painting themselves in the corner and making damage to the brand for the simple fact that they choose short sighted greed over long time investment into player goodwill.

This thread is here to finally try to make a difference and push them for positive change so Darktide itself could finally profit on the longterm.

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130

its you’re right to be wrong…

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First, while the premium currency does not cost anything to produce and distribute, the assets that are created do cost to produce and distribute, which is what the premium currency is bought for, and spent on. It’s strange that people keep forgetting what the premium currency is there for.

Second, there will be people who were never going to spend anyway, people who already spend now, and people who may or may not spend because they received some freebies, this is an unquantifiable “what if?” point that doesn’t have anything substantial to back it up.

Third, So to be clear, you want FS to give away around their ENTIRE PROFIT from sales as premium currency and you don’t think thats… unviable or ridiculous? Are you serious here?

I don’t think I need to say more, that last point is well enough information for me.

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It’s not strictly about what’s lost, but the absence of what they potentially stood to gain.

If a Fatshark employee added 7000 Aquilas to your account, there’s no direct cost, sure. You go and buy your items, cool beans.

Had the employee not given you the Aquilas, do we know if you would have spent the necessary $ amount to get the same cosmetics? The amount you would have spent (in the absence of the free Aquilas) is somewhere between $0 and $30 (or whatever 7000 Aquilas costs) inclusive.

If FS are planning on certain amounts of revenue from Aquilas/MTX, giving away Aquilas will eat into those goals. Do players give a rats ass about said goals? Probably not.

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133

bruh

thanks for confirming what i said i guess

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134

still got that sour taste of price inflation being a direct result of aquilas flushing the market due to xbox handouts and the urge to get them out of the circulation as fast as possible.

not only arent sets including weapon skins anymore, the ones offered are horrendously pricy so its a loss on all sides for pc platform especially.

as for the justification of higher player count given the aquila incentive, i know nothing about business motives but once decked with enough funny money i’d wager there’ll be no profit from this group for quite some time.

whereas i, from my player point of view, would rather wait 5 minutes longer for a quality match with 3 lions than an army of rabbits.

lower player numbers werent noticeable before and i did spent more on my drip, which dryed pretty much up given the current reskin/pricing/bundle content situation.

dunno if the core whale performers wouldnt generate enough to keep the game afloat, wouldnt mind playing with the same 50 guys all day if they inevitably know their stuff.

so instead of getting x-amount of aquilas i’d rather have the prices and bundle size go back to what they were early on.

for whatever sum i’d get it’ll run out eventually and any new acquisition will “hurt” even more compared to a cheaper “spur of the moment” skin for the week.

anyways, just my take on the matter, in the meantime my drip budget goes into mcfarlane warhammer figures, 3d printing be praised, i get to choose my gear easily :smile:

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135

I’d like to see what data you have that handing out the equivalent of shop vouchers that allow you to pick 40-60 dollars worth of goods at no cost to you, increases additional purchases and as a result, increases profits. This hasn’t been done in any game, or hell, any industry really.

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Homeslice, sending out a billion dollars in Aquilas doesn’t mean Fatshark is now in a 9 digit financial hole, that’s just not how that works. Neither was giving away the Vanguard bundle a many tens of millions of dollar loss because a bunch of PC users got a a full bundle of cosmetics for each class that are usually valued at $10-15 each. Just because you can assign a dollar value to something, doesn’t mean it hits that way on the balance sheet.

Insisting on directly equating the aquila purchase price value with real potential losses is, well, absurd, for all the reasons I gave above (and that you studiously avoided directly responding to or addressing). Giving everyone 9k aquilas might dampen sales goal for a given time period, but it’s not going to gut the revenues of the studio. There’s a reason companies don’t count things like gift cards or store credit at their full face value on their balance sheet, Aquilas are literally no different. You trade dollars for an alternative medium of exchange that can only be used at one place and for a narrow range of goods and services, and that cannot be traded back, and value is only as high as interest in said narrow range of goods and services from said place. In the case of Darktide, we’re talking services with high fixed but practically negligible variable costs, you’re paying for access not actual product, Fatshark’s supply of Aquilas and ability to provision your account with Cosmetics isn’t limited in any realistic sense once they’ve covered development and overhead costs.

My day job is business analysis, I literally pay my bills spending all day in SQL/Tableau/Excel measuring the impact of this sort of thing. If you seriously think FS giving away the Aquilas to PC players is the same as taking a direct multimillion dollar hit to the bottom line at the full value of all those Aquilas, I’m fairly comfortable stating that the Cope isn’t resting on my end.

Again, not trying to insist that Fatshark needs to give everyone a bunch of Aquilas, nor am I saying it wouldn’t cost Fastshark anything, but equating them doing so with crushing business losses is absolutely nonsensical.

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137

maybe try attacking an argument i actually formulated. never said any of that.

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You have implied multiple times that giving away a large amount of goods, that have a monetary value no matter how much you are wanting to disagree, will result in more purchases and in turn, a profit.

What data are you using to reach this conclusion?

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i haven’t said so once. you’re projecting.
i only pointed out, how wrong you are in your value equalency.

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both sides on the “virtual currency is no value” here are wrong. the aquilas are effectively a scrip, which are assigned a value according to what the company issuing them dictate: their exchange rate is set accoprding to farshark’s internal decisions, not their relative cost in terms of the buy-in with real-world currency.

giving out free virtual currency has to be weighed against devaluing the act of purchasing more: in this case, if they give out too much it will make the act of buying any less attractive. because of that i don’t see whatever division inside fatshark that actually handles the cost setting considering the huge payout OP is naively asking for.

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So this entire time, you’ve agreed with me, but you’re arguing semantics? Come on, man why would you waste someone’s time like this.

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i don’t particulary care what fatshark does at this point. nor do i think they would ever listen to any demands anyway.
that doesn’t mean i think FS handled the situation with due respect for the community.

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143

See this we can agree on, FS have made a lot of poor decisions especially after the good will around VT2, while their newer game just sits around in desperate need of a content update.

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^
(Thank you for the eloquent presentation! Great post.)

Listen to the one that works with SQL/Excel. The backbone of modern economics has spoken.
Such Greybeards hold the wisdom, and don’t share it often…

Regarding where this topic went:
Why are we applying general Economics Theory to a system that operates on a currency that has no oversight, no correction and no reason for inflation, all in a “market” that’s completely controlled by a private entity, and which facilitates the purchase of product that’s “manufactured” by an internal team that works for the system’s owner on a salary?
And we’re going off on this based on no actual data? And without knowing what deals and contracts FS, MS and GW are entangled in?

Check this - even IF everyone that clutched them pearls sincerely wanted and expected the Aquilas, and however ridiculous or unprecedented that might sound, the point of this thread (and the one it originated from) is dissatisfaction, disappointment, scummy business practices and detachment.

Oh, and about precedents, good business and the poor poor corporate entity -

How’s that for a precedent @Roovka ?
A small developer expressing gratitude towards the people that bought into their project and memorializing their success with direct communication and an in-game item that everyone gets? The shock…
For every apology letter this industry produces, there should be one such as the above.

Why? It’s satisfying.
And also - good business!

Whatever Neowiz and Round 8 produce after Lies of P, I’m in! They can take my disposable, dedicated hobby income, and they don’t even have to ask me.

FS? No. Whatever they do with/after DT, I’ll pass. I’ve not spent money on this game since… July? I’ve Aquilas left over, and I care so little about what the Aquilas can give me access to, that I wouldn’t use them even if they… well… gave them away…

How’s that for business?

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145

This isn’t even remotely to related to what I was talking about. They’re not giving away 40-60 dollars worth of content, they’re patching a buggy launch and giving away a free item. Comically, you could say that FS have done both of these things but without the “we’re sorry”.

It’s cool that you’re personally boycotting FS, I can respect that, and compared to many supporters of this thread who are still playing and indirectly supporting FS, is more than they’re going to do but the blinders you’re showing for another game studio having the same issues other games have had, including this one, does not give me confidence that you’re being fair and honest with your argument here.

Your example is a studio saying sorry for a poor launch with a free item and announcing they’re fixing bugs based on feedback… the same thing every other game does, and including this one.

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