SWGEmu half-year financial report (first half of 2014)

[makednoce]

I'm just seeing this. I wasn't aware that financials were posted, it's great that this is transparent for the community, even more reason to support the EMU.

Just a few observations about ******/Lucas:

I live and work in the SF Bay Area, and have worked in the Gaming industry here. I have a few friends at LA, ******, as well as a number of other shops big and small. My observation is that no news from ****** is probably good news for the project. ****** understands a few things, one is that in the acquisition they also acquired a bunch of various communities of, sometimes rabid, SW fans. They also understand that leaving those communities alone, and in many cases actually supporting their efforts either overtly or though omission is in their best interest. Every SW fan is a potential paying customer for ****** and they know that.

You are not dealing with SOE here, of any organization ****** understands two things better than any entertainment company that has ever existed a) Marketing and b) How to extract money from its consumers. This isn't a slam on them, if anything its a compliment, it's something they are really good at (if you have children you probably already know this). That said they also understand the downstream consequences of snuffing out a community driven project like SWGemu, because those community members are probably involved in other non-game SW communities (501'st is a great example of this) so any action taken has exponential downstream consequences.

If there is anything the Gaming industry learned from the handling of SWG by SOE it's the impact of exponential downstream consequences on the bottom line. SOE is barely recovering from this hit to their reputation still 10 years on, at least here it is in the epicenter of where games are born and developed. Things like "Don't pull a Smedly on your community" are still heard in conference rooms here. And there are devs that flat out refuse to work at shops with bad reputations around Gaming communities.

****** wants no part of a marketing nightmare like that. They understand marketing and money and avoid any bad publicity like the plague, any action against a SW community would be viewed very negatively by SW fans and the industry here, which is something they definitely can't afford, given their game production efforts here.

So my observation is no news is probably good news, they know economic goodwill means you will probably go see the next ****** SW film and continue to take your Family to ******land and buy SW related ****** merch. And this for them has way more upside than attempting to snuff out a community driven project of passionate SW fans.

Just my 2 credits

Well said, but ****** will allow this project to continue.This project is too small for them to notice and handle with it (for now).
Untill SWGEMU becomes financial threat to ****** this project will continue.
I only see a solution when SWGEMU is finished with 1.0, they send letter to ****** that they have finished their project to the point were it can make money.So in that case ****** will have to rebuy the code from SWGEMU developers and merge with Star Wars naming rights.Because 1.0 is diferent from the original SWG code and it is unique and SWGEMU developers have the rights to sell it on the market.The only problem is in Star Wars names witch ****** owns now.But as Lucas Arts said ****** obligated to preserve all SW community and not destroy it, so in some point in time they will have to offer a contract to SWGEMU devs. (my 2 denars).

[Mabin3]

Well said, but ****** will allow this project to continue.This project is too small for them to notice and handle with it (for now).
Untill SWGEMU becomes financial threat to ****** this project will continue.
I only see a solution when SWGEMU is finished with 1.0, they send letter to ****** that they have finished their project to the point were it can make money.So in that case ****** will have to rebuy the code from SWGEMU developers and merge with Star Wars naming rights.Because 1.0 is diferent from the original SWG code and it is unique and SWGEMU developers have the rights to sell it on the market.The only problem is in Star Wars names witch ****** owns now.But as Lucas Arts said ****** obligated to preserve all SW community and not destroy it, so in some point in time they will have to offer a contract to SWGEMU devs. (my 2 denars).[/CENTER]

SWGEmu will never become a financial threat to ******. ****** has 81 billion dollars worth of assets. SWGEmu has a bank account with $4,000 in it. That's $4,000 vs. $81,000,000,000. SWGEMU could get a hundred times bigger and not even be a 81,000th of a care to ******.

****** isn't going to buy SWGEmu. You know how much of a nightmare that transaction would be? No company in their right mind would set themselves up for that amount of litigation from Sony. You know, the company that has over 15x amount of money that ****** does. And Sony has no reason to shut down SWGEMU because it'd be spending money on something they can't get any more money out of.

The only threat I could see developing is EA. If a SWGEMU release is coupled with a massive decline in SWTOR, we may see either EA or EA's influence with ****** try to make some kind of litigation happen. As others have mentioned, this would likely bring bad press for ******. And although EA has the rights to develop Star Wars games, it's EA who wants to please ******, not the other way around.