I hear all the time about how my sub money goes to paying for servers and paying workers and the such.  But how much of my $15/Month goes to paying for servers and devs.  Everyone talks like they know where that money is going, but it seems to me its hard to find out exactly where its all going.  I played World of warcraft for a while and I'm thinking about switching to Aion.  but its been bothering me where my money is going.  So how much of my $15/Month goes to devs and how much goes to server maintainence?

Out of expenses most of it goes to "human" time.   Things like customer support, and developer time.   As a matter of fact in most P2P games I'd being will to bet something that taxes are more than "hardware" time.

It all goes to hookers and blow.... sheesh, thought you knew that...

Just kidding :P

Where does it go exactly? Only someone in the business can really tell you. But by using logic you can pretty much guess where its going.

Say a game has 100k players at $15 a month.

That 1.5 million monthly income is going to be split between things such as Marketing, Payroll, Hardware, Property fees (they have to work somewhere) new development, research, legal, power, corporate taxes, business expenses (investor meetings, travel, shows, etc) and loans/debts the company may have acuired while the game was in development. Sure some money is kept as pure profit, but tahts natural.

Not saying any of this is 100% accurate, but I think it might be close to what happens with your $15 every month.

Originally posted by fyerwall

It all goes to hookers and blow.... sheesh, thought you knew that...

Just kidding :P

Where does it go exactly? Only someone in the business can really tell you. But by using logic you can pretty much guess where its going.

Say a game has 100k players at $15 a month.

That 1.5 million monthly income is going to be split between things such as Marketing, Payroll, Hardware, Property fees (they have to work somewhere) new development, research, legal, power, corporate taxes, business expenses (investor meetings, travel, shows, etc) and loans/debts the company may have acuired while the game was in development. Sure some money is kept as pure profit, but tahts natural.

Not saying any of this is 100% accurate, but I think it might be close to what happens with your $15 every month.

Also, any IT's out there know what the monthly cost is for the bandwidth for say... 100k subscribers?

Originally posted by OnyxSunrise

I hear all the time about how my sub money goes to paying for servers and paying workers and the such.  But how much of my $15/Month goes to paying for servers and devs.  Everyone talks like they know where that money is going, but it seems to me its hard to find out exactly where its all going.  I played World of warcraft for a while and I'm thinking about switching to Aion.  but its been bothering me where my money is going.  So how much of my $15/Month goes to devs and how much goes to server maintainence?

I believe most companies use the stance that the sub fee soley goes to maintaining the servers and your account. What that means is it allows you to log in when you want and have your stuff be there but it DOES NOT guarantee that you will get any kind of future content at all. People tend to forget this and then go on a rampage if they don't get new content/expansions as often as they want but that isn't part of the deal. That is done to hang on to customers (and with expansions it's done to make more money/pay for the dev time to make the expansion) but it is not something you are owed.

In reality it goes to everything, so the more subscribers they have then the more profits they have and thus they hire more developers to make more content to bring in more customers to make more profit to hire more developers......

Originally posted by Lansid

Also, any IT's out there know what the monthly cost is for the bandwidth for say... 100k subscribers?

I don't know the answer, but you should ask about contemporaneous users or whatever the term is, not subscribers.

In other words, players online at the same time.

Game design can make a big difference on how much 100K subscribers spend time online.

 Well once you pay them with your money its no longer really your money its theres and they can pretty much do what they please with it, sucks huh.

These are very speculative and lazy costs for just the hardware.   Some math is probably wrong or similar but it's a forum post that will get flamed no matter what so I don't care much.   But it should be withing a ballpark.

The costs are based on Amazon's server hosting service.   There are plenty cheaper, However Amazon's service is special in the sense that you can increase/decrease the number of servers you're running at any time in around 15 mins or so.   However to ease everything I'm completely ignoring this fact to simplify reading.

As I was saying people and tax costs are much greater.   Paying accounts/lawers to keep your people supported are expensive,  people to support the game are expensive,  people to support the customers aren't expesive but you need a whole lot of them.

________________

Person costs

storage::

Month storage: 15KB for one person. @ $.120 /GB ======== Penny faction
Loading costs: 150 logins at 15KB each. $.170 /GB ======== penny fraction

Server flex Costs:

Play Bandwidth:
Player In: 1Kb/Sec over 40 hours = 140MB. .10/GB ======== $ .0136
player Out: 10KB/Sec over 40 hours = 1.37GB. .13/GB ======== $ .1781

resouce Demand:
1/1000th of ONE server resources for 40 hours. @.96/Server Hour ==== .0384

_________________________
Server Costs::

Running 1 server rated @: Extra Large Instance

15 GB memory
8 EC2 Compute Units (4 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each) (one EC2 unit is anywhere from 1.0 to 1.2 GHz depending)

$691 dollars a month

Play storage 5,000 people
.07 GB ===== 1 penny
750K logings ===== $1.28

Play bandwidth 500 players online 24/7
player In: 1200 GB ==== $123
player Out: 12,000 GB ==== $1,600
 

Originally posted by OnyxSunrise

I hear all the time about how my sub money goes to paying for servers and paying workers and the such.  But how much of my $15/Month goes to paying for servers and devs.  Everyone talks like they know where that money is going, but it seems to me its hard to find out exactly where its all going.  I played World of warcraft for a while and I'm thinking about switching to Aion.  but its been bothering me where my money is going.  So how much of my $15/Month goes to devs and how much goes to server maintainence?

Well, each company has got revenue and expenses. Your sub money goes in their revenue. That is all you need to know, only them and their accountants need to know the little details.

The OP has got a very good question.  Take all of the counter arguements so far.  Oh it is for the staff, maintence, game support, customer support.

Erm, I beg to differ.  I think these guys could run something like WoW on about 3 bucks a month.  Maybe with their sub base of 11 million plus, they could go free to play,

But that would be crazy right?

Have any of you guys played Lineage 2?  Actually it's a total nightmare, hardcore grindfest, but they have a huge player base, and it's a bloody expensive turn fee.  Somthing like £!5 a month in UK, and that is ridiculous, about $20-25 bucks.  That game does not have constant expansion packs, and loads of changes.  It has about a hundred quests in the whole game!   Then take a game called Shaiya.  It is, I kid you not, almost a carbon clone of Lineage2.  The exact same graphics (which are quite good actually) and even same monotonous gameplay and sound.  I think it is even cooler than L2 because it has permadeath.

Now how can they justify one over the other?  Okay Shaiya has the shop system, but when has ANY mmo never had some gold spammers, which is just the same thing. 

I love WoW, I truly do. But just think that if all those millions Blizzard scoop up every month went towards making new games, we would have had several classics by now.  Think of it.  We'd be on Starcraft 3, Diablo 4, heck, prob Warcraft 5, and we'd be getting ready for WoW2.  But they are greedy, like all major corporations.  Why do you think the banks ditched us into a global recession?   So yeah, WoW is a great game.  Looks and plays like shit, and has an arcane playing system.  But whilst those figures keep rising 12 million next month?  What would you do?  I think I would churn out some non-descript part of lore from an old Warcraft game, much to the developers' groans, and get them to make a new expansion.  Retail it at almost the same price as a contemporary game, and piss myself laughing all the way to the bank.

Btw - you guys should not that I am genuinely a hypocrite.  I do play and sometimes enjoy WoW, as well as other MMO's.  But just give us the day when we can have a fully fledged Mass Effect/ Dragon Age MMO that is like an actual world with proper dynamic stories. 

As far as where it goes, that depends entirely on the size of the sub base. I would bet that fully realized and well run, that it would look something like this. Assuming they are running at least 5-7m+ per month. Software has a high margin.

10% infrastructure

25-30% development and game world staff

7-10% administrive costs (bldg, Ins, execs, sales etc)

10-15% marketing

30-50% net margin - profit before taxes and depreciation

No idea.

I do remember reading that Blizzard had paid out $200m of "running costs" over 4 years.

Originally posted by paulscott

Play bandwidth 500 players online 24/7
player In: 1200 GB ==== $123
player Out: 12,000 GB ==== $1,600
 

So I Decided to find out how much money WoW gets per month, Assuming that they have a Minimum sub base of 11M subs, They would get $165M a month on subs alone, not to mention if they bring out a new expansion, and other stuff too.  I don't have the time to do the math Since I have to get to work.  But I bet running the Servers Is Reasonably less money than $165,000,000/Month.

I'd be willing to bet a nifty something that ALL taxes are more than hardware costs.

Originally posted by paulscott

I'd be willing to bet a nifty something that ALL taxes are more than hardware costs.

Only if you have a really bad accountant, or in that case team of accountants. Corporations tend to pay less taxes, percentage wise, than most individuals. They can write so much off, have most the local systems begging and kissing their rears to stay in the area and provide jobs. Don't let them fool you with the tax system. And there is no way WoW costs 165M a month to run just on hardware, bandwidth and the individuals parked there to make sure things don't explode. Subscription fees are just like the prices of game, based on very little but marketing and hype. You got a game that is put out in 6 months with a team of 3 or 4 people selling for 20 dollars and another game that takes 2 years, dozens of people and millions of dollars selling for 50, maybe 60. There's a complete disconnect between what something costs and what something sells for in the gaming industry, that's why people are starting to ask why $10 DLC wasn't included in the price of a subcription and what their subscription supposedly pays for.

Originally posted by Nesrie

Originally posted by paulscott

I'd be willing to bet a nifty something that ALL taxes are more than hardware costs.

 

Only if you have a really bad accountant, or in that case team of accountants. Corporations tend to pay less taxes, percentage wise, than most individuals. They can write so much off, have most the local systems begging and kissing their rears to stay in the area and provide jobs. Don't let them fool you with the tax system. And there is no way WoW costs 165M a month to run just on hardware, bandwidth and the individuals parked there to make sure things don't explode. Subscription fees are just like the prices of game, based on very little but marketing and hype. You got a game that is put out in 6 months with a team of 3 or 4 people selling for 20 dollars and another game that takes 2 years, dozens of people and millions of dollars selling for 50, maybe 60. There's a complete disconnect between what something costs and what something sells for in the gaming industry, that's why people are starting to ask why $10 DLC wasn't included in the price of a subcription and what their subscription supposedly pays for.

Hardware/bandwidth costs aren't all that high to begin with.   You can fire a person working minium wage and 39 hours a week and get a few extra high end machines every month or a dozen or so low end servers up and running.   It's worth mentioning these get leased and not bought(tax right off for leasing, and being able to favorably swap hardware in/out). 

ALL taxes also involves quite a few things.   It's not just income taxes we're talking about but the whole mess, including the taxes that you need to match with employee's.    Sure even "writing off" a whole bunch of the mess you're still have a large mess of cash competing with one of the smaller costs(which is still a large mess of cash).

It goes from your pocket into theirs. Most devs use pre-existing servers that are being supported by another sorce of income. So unless you are a brand new company or a company that went out a bought all new tools and servers for your game, the majority of that sub money goes into their pockets.

It goes to the beer and strippers after long nights of work.

Honestly it doesn't matter where the money goes (assuming it isn't funding an alien invasion or the MPAA) I would instead ask why we are accepting the 'industry standard' of $15/month at all.

In the scheme of things it is a rather cheap hobby but it still seems an arbitrary number established by marketers as a baseline fee people will fork over. After all if a game were to charge $30 a month the gaming community would demand with clenched fists and bullhorn tirades what amazing services were being offered that would generate such an 'astronomical' fee increase...nevermind that the standard is simply the progression of earlier arbitrary game fees.

It has become so ingrained in the genre that if a game were to come out with a $7 fee people would wonder what was wrong with it or if an existing game were to offer a fee decrease (other that the 9.99 extended contract offers) then the players wonder when it is going to crash and burn.

Not that I am really complaining, as most of the AAA titles still seem worth 15 if they are worth anything at all to you, but I wonder where the MMO offerings will go in the future especially considering the increasing presence of item shops/pay to play options within the normal fee structure.

Of course I would 50 a month for a truly epic experience with a lot of personal service however :) It would have to be pretty special though

It goes into their profits because you are willing to pay it.

MMOs only have subscriptions because history tells that people are willing to pay them.