CCP lays of dozens and closes VR department

Communications Center General Discussion
64

This is sad news. CCP took a bet on the future and they lost. We should not condemn them for being willing to take a chance.

Having said that, I was very surprised to learn of the circumstances surrounding the financing of Valkyrie, back when it was near to release. I think there was a thread on the old forums where we all discussed it.

Very briefly, CCP went to capital markets to raise investment money for marketing and developing the Valk title. It was reported in the press at the time. This was weird because they were tight partners with Zuckerfreak and Egobook at the time. He was sinking billions into VR with the Rift, but he wouldn’t lend the headline game title some coin for promotion?

So it was clear back then that CCP wanted to keep all the profits from Valk to themselves (they didn’t want Egobook’s money), or that nobody else believed it would be a big success (Egobook was not offering the support).

Either way, the sums of money involved caused me to write back then that CCP was “betting the farm” on Valk. They were burning a truly huge amount of money promoting the new game.

Did they make it back? The current news might imply that they did not, although we don’t know how much they lost. Maybe they made a lot of it back before the game basically died through lack of a player base, which seems to be where it is at just now.

If they did not make the bulk of that capital back before taking Valk out back of barn, the financial pressure on CCP will force them to do more with less with Eve, the title that essentially paid for Valk, and will continues to pay for it.

This is why both of the previous posters are wrong. Kisht is correct to note that staff time from CCP was diverted to Valk. That is essentially why we have renamed asteroids as “the new big thing”, representing a years worth of dev time (and our subscriptions). Unfortunately we will not get that attention back onto Eve, because now our subscriptions will be usede to pay the debt owed for the Valk failure.

Mywallet is dead wrong about the two title not having anything to do with each other. It is not worth explaining why, if you don’t understand the basics of corporate debt then you won’t learn it from me here.

Suffice to say that CCP now have an existential problem on their hands. They owe an unspecified amount of capital on the Valk failure, and they will need to service that debt with whatever revenues they still have. That would be, of course, our subscriptions.

So long as Eve players are prepared to pay subscriptions in order to pay the debt for the failed Valk experiment, CCP is viable. Should the player base decide that the game is simply too expensive for what it offers, they will stop subscribing and that is the stone cold end of CCP as a trading company.

That is why I said they were “betting the farm” on Valk, and goodness me I hope was wrong.

If I am right, CCP will be searching for ways to sell the profitable parts of their empire (Eve), pay off the debt they owe (Valk), and still come out with some capital profit. The fact that they have advertised the firm for sale but have not yet found a buyer indicates that the debt burden is too big, and that ROI for the Eve price they demand is too low.

This suggests that they did indeed bet the farm, and that they lost.

The staff ought to get together, contact government representatives, and have a serious discussion about what is best for Iceland.

It seems clear to me that it is best for Iceland if the CCP staff who created Eve, and who work hard to keep it going, keep their jobs. It is best for Iceland that Eve continue to exist, to earn Icelandic workers salaries, and that Iceland retains a reputation for successful digital production.

Thus it is necessary for CCP staff to be sheltered from the debts incurred by Valk, at least until such time as a fair market price for a ring fenced Eve is settled, and a reasonable private sector buyer is found.

It would be both sad and shameful if the greed for Valk profits caused the end of the Eve industry altogether.

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65

It was, while I never got to try the early versions (I was told it was MUCH better than warzone) the warzone version was just TERRIBLE, I hadn’t played something that bad since trying indie games with stock assets. The controls were beyond terrible, the ships looked like children’s toys, not spacecraft, and the gameplay was just bad overall. The game deserved to be shut down and canned as well as whoever was in charge of the project. (Though I feel sorry for individual coders, not their fault it sucked.)

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66

Problem there is, it’s the guy in charge responsible for this, but I agree.

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67

Do you think the CEO does whatever he or she wants, or do you think the decision was ultimately directed by the owners?

Note the plural: ownerS. Not one guy, or girl, but a group.

This is why, depending on the seriousness of the debt crisis now afflicting the firm, there needs to be a decision made about whether the same owners have a future with the operations of whatever group of Icelandic workers make the Eve product.

In a pure market, there would be no option but for the debt from Valk to take it’s inevitable toll on Eve. Happily there is no such thing as a pure market.

68

LOL, actually WOW factor was missing. Remember how VHS came to be the only home video format. Hardware devs cut them-selves the tree they wanted to grow high and strong.

Apologize for the off-topic.

69

you look at the market, if a lot of people are buying a VR head set than its something good to get into, if 100 people buy a vr head set you don’t jump in expecting to sell and have thousands of games. dust 514 and their vampire game had nothing to do with there being so few players. every time they talk about changes to eve its , “oh that’s to hard to do because of old code or that’s too much work” well why didn’t they have a cross over and have some new blood atleast learn how to read the old code so they could better adapt it with new code or know what they are even looking at instead of going “oh god my eyes!”

Li Tavian

sony is a massive entertainment/device empire they have tons of money to spend. ccp does not have that much compared to them to be wasting money. ccp has us and the money being made when someone buys one of the phone app games.

70

Sad news. Didn’t expect that after EvE Vegas. Doing Mobile App is obvious move, everybody have phones, few can afford VR set. If mobile app would fuel the growth of EvE I don’t mind it. I had zero interest in Valkyrie, still waiting for Nova.
Sad but necessary move I guess. Maybe Hilmair flew too high and burned his wings


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71

It’s best to lay them off now rather than closer to christmas, this took courage to admit, “we ■■■■■■ up” I remember writing a thread about 5 years ago about how dust, Valkyrie etc is all a bad idea, I was shot down and banned from the forums for trolling
 looks like my prothesis have come true. The VR team will easily find I job, I’m a software engineer myself and I can tell you theres a shortage of jobs right now!

At the end of the day CCP is a business, and it’s a good business decision to pull the plug now rather than later, well done to who made this happen.

Good luck to all the ex CCP employees, not that you’ll need it.

72

I hope this means they will finally tackle the big visions they once had again without distraction.

The integration of multiple games with Dust was something really new and exciting and it got a lot of interest from inside and outside the EVE community. Sadly the lock to PS3 meant that only a couple of the interested players where attracted to the product. I even purchased a PS3 to play it, and I hate consoles to the bones. But the low resolution and unresponsiveness as well as the fraking console stuff like you can’t even make it play the in-game sound over the headset and stuff just killed it for me and I never touched it again.

Let’s hope they really bring Dust back from the grave to the PC and take up again the vision of the one Universe.

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73

this is a sign and mean there need to come better VR/AR hardware and
that will not be earlier then 2020-2025 before enough people going to buy it to make money with it

And maybe they need to invest more in EVE because of SC

74

It’s still sad but people saw it coming. VR just isn’t there yet. The scary part is they still hold to the FPS premise. Lawbreakers anyone?

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75

Sad to see people losing their jobs, but also glad that this does not affect EVE itself.

76

Nice to see a familiar face in here.

77

I won’t be at EVEsterdam this weekend, I need to hang back and work on a few things here at the office.

Everyone else who’s still scheduled to attend will be there though.

There’s really not much else to say publicly about the situation at this stage :slight_smile:

78

To bad, you’ll be missing out on some fun
 as you probably already knew. :scream:

79

Rumors say that CCP Phantom has been fired too. So sad :frowning:

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80

CCP Logibro was one of the biggest supporters fo the Eve-O tournament scene, and the Thunderdome server. His loss will be keenly felt.

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81

CCP LOGIBRO IS GONE???

NOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

Logibro was my FC on Sisi during the mass test
 he was the nicest dev of the ccp that I actually liked!..

CCP Seagull
 give him a job
 that’s fawked up
 now im seriously pissed off now at CCP games and their incredible lack of vision
 your visions fail
 have you not thought about this
 was this all a cash grab
 ffs


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82

Dear all,

EVE is a great game. Keep expanding it and making it better. Do not kill the golden goose that you have created. Keep investing in it. There is nothing wrong with having just one goose/horse to bet on.

If CCP owners/executive team fail, one day we will have an option to buy the remains of CCP and let the devs work on the game until their and our retirement ;). Maybe we should already start organizing an effort to buy out EVE from CCP :wink: to make it even in that aspect a community driven company ;). I will be happy to invest few thousands bucks in such shareholder structure.

best,
LastGold

83

Dear CCP

Several years ago at Fanfest (probably after the Summer of Rage) Torfi stood on stage and said “we are going to be laser focused on Eve”.

Perhaps after yet more failed projects and more staff put out of work you will finally figure out that it is the best thing you can do.

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