Rift Maker Trion Worlds Considers Going Public

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"Redwood City-based MMO developer and operator Trion Worlds, a company that has raised over $100M in venture capital, may soon file for an initial public offering.

"As we build scale and become more profitable, [an IPO] is clearly on our horizon at some point," CEO Lars Buttler told Reuters."

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So the question is, if things are going well... is going public where you have to now report to stockholders instead of investors a better thing or should they stay private?

How do you view this sign?

Well it is a good sign because pretty sure we can all accept they dropped 50mil into Rift from their own statements and have probably made that back by a lot. Only issue is every dev that has gone public has been baught out like Blizzard and Bioware.

I will not pretend to know how it works, but couldn't a major company come in a buy them up and take control over the direction of the company? Right now it seems like they are taking every dime we give them and dropping it back into Rift which is a good thing.

I think it is a good sign. You never know what agenda investors have (at least some). I assume going public would give them a little more freedom idea wise without the worry that investors would dictate certain things.

Good sign, horrible timing.  The markets are scared of IPOs fearing another dot com crash.

Where are they based?  Is Trion in USA?  I wonder where the IPO will list.

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Originally posted by Puremallace
Well it is a good sign because pretty sure we can all accept they dropped 50mil into Rift from their own statements and have probably made that back by a lot. Only issue is every dev that has gone public has been baught out like Blizzard and Bioware.
 
I will not pretend to know how it works, but couldn't a major company come in a buy them up and take control over the direction of the company? Right now it seems like they are taking every dime we give them and dropping it back into Rift which is a good thing.

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Originally posted by ActionMMORPG
Good sign, horrible timing.  The markets are scared of IPOs fearing another dot com crash.
 
Where are they based?  Is Trion in USA?  I wonder where the IPO will list.

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Yeah, it's a U.S. based company.

The interesting thing in the article I found was this statement:

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"Billy Pidgeon, an analyst for M2 Research who has followed the company since 2009, said Trion will need more hits in the coming months to prove it would be able to make it as a publicly traded company.

"They have to prove their platform can succeed and their next two games have to do well," Pidgeon said.

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Says their IPO success will be based on them having "more hits" in the coming months to prove it's "IPO worthiness".

I'm not sure how well a game like EoN is suited to go up against the competition in RTS play. That field is even more crowded than AAA mmos are, with games that corner the market already, and Defiance being based on a television show not even in existence yet AND being from the crappy SyFy channel that no one watches.

Then you figure there's no telling what's going to happen with Rift vs TOR, GW2, TSW, ArcheAge, etc, etc, etc.

I have a feeling that any investor thinking of going that route clearly has no idea of all of that at all. They probably just look at base numbers.

So they have done very well then. One thing I must say about them they do plow back the money into Rift and they continue to work very feverishly on it and keeping the updates coming which I wish more p2p games would do.

Originally posted by cheyane

So they have done very well then. One thing I must say about them they do plow back the money into Rift and they continue to work very feverishly on it and keeping the updates coming which I wish more p2p games would do.

    Amen, the crazy thing is this should be expected of p2p although they tend to go above and beyond in my eyes, time will tell.

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Originally posted by Puremallace
Well it is a good sign because pretty sure we can all accept they dropped 50mil into Rift from their own statements and have probably made that back by a lot. Only issue is every dev that has gone public has been baught out like Blizzard and Bioware.
 
I will not pretend to know how it works, but couldn't a major company come in a buy them up and take control over the direction of the company? Right now it seems like they are taking every dime we give them and dropping it back into Rift which is a good thing.

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1. Trion raised a little over 100 million dollars total. They spent 50 million on Rift and the rest on headquarters, business expenses and making two more games (EoN/Defiance)

2. End of Nations has already been pushed back as of last month due to "unspecified reasons" to 2012. There is no word whatsoever on the progress of Defiance as far as how far out to expect it and how it's progressing.

3. Rift has been running non-stop deals and special pricing since right after the first month. There is no promo they haven't touched without a sale attached to it in just eight months time. They've recently allowed their first microtransaction of a cash purchase mount, banker, etc.. which was quite contrary to what they stated in the past as far as features in Rift.

4. Although they've closed servers off just like any other company does at launch due to the intial launchday rush, they continue to close more off as recently as last week.

5. They say they are "vastly profitable each week/month" without elaborating on the details and now are seeking an IPO.

I'm not saying Rift is in danger. I'm not saying Rift is about to die. What I am saying is Trion is running out of cash, and fast. This is what happened to CCP trying to make two games on the side while still running one, which is exactly what Rift is doing.

Its a good sign. Some are going to have to troll pretty hard to put this in a bad light.

Originally posted by popinjay

I'm not saying Rift is in danger. I'm not saying Rift is about to die. What I am saying is Trion is running out of cash, and fast. This is what happened to CCP trying to make two games on the side while still running one, which is exactly what Rift is doing.

I am not sure they are even remotely close to running out of cash. Even the most pessimistic guy will say Rift atleast sold 600k boxes. Now say that was at 50$ and this is not including the CE, but right there alone you have 30,000,000

The game has managed roughly 53 active servers medium/high for the past 7 months. Now say worst case scenario and the doubters are right and Rift only has 300k subs worldwide. That is still 300,000 * 15$ = 4.5mil for 7 months.

My personnel view is they broke even a very long time ago and every dime since then has been reinvested. See this is not B2P, so the money is not in the box. The money is in keeping the subs. That is how WoW became so popular because they practically gave the game away to everyone.

I'm in the "they are running out of cash" camp - and it's a bad sign.  It would mean, if correct, that Rift is not profitable ENOUGH for their needs and wants, and that tends to end up badly for all involved.

If it's not correct, then hey, it's great for them, and I hope they build on their success.

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Originally posted by Rusty715
Its a good sign. Some are going to have to troll pretty hard to put this in a bad light.

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Second, I think you're here to defend Rift which is not what this is about either. So this isn't for trolls or fanbois in that regard.

This is an OVERALL discussion of the company and how this affects it. You many not be aware but Trion has two more games to consider which they've already started on. This is more about the financial health of the company overall, not just Rift.

Trying to pay for two additional games while continually adding content to your main game is taxing and extremely expensive. It's clear that even if Rift does well it cannot in any way pay for two more games to be developed when you look at what is coming out soon for releases.

No one has to 'troll hard' to present a Devil's Advocate view based on the facts of the market right now.

Originally posted by popinjay

 

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Originally posted by Puremallace
Well it is a good sign because pretty sure we can all accept they dropped 50mil into Rift from their own statements and have probably made that back by a lot. Only issue is every dev that has gone public has been baught out like Blizzard and Bioware.
 
I will not pretend to know how it works, but couldn't a major company come in a buy them up and take control over the direction of the company? Right now it seems like they are taking every dime we give them and dropping it back into Rift which is a good thing.

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I'm not saying Rift is in danger. I'm not saying Rift is about to die. What I am saying is Trion is running out of cash, and fast. This is what happened to CCP trying to make two games on the side while still running one, which is exactly what Rift is doing.

Ignoring that your post is a big contradiction in itself. Where is your source for this info? since you sound very sure that Trion is running out of cash even though Rift is making them lots of proft and they announced to go Public.

And please don't tell me it is your opinion because it sounded as if you know some inside info that we don't.

Simple. They sold this to the venture capital guys as a WoW-killer. They were shooting for mass-market mega-success, not just with Rift, but they also sold their server technology as being state of the art and something they could sell to other companies.

Obviously, they did not provide anywhere near the return on invesment that they originally said they would. There game is in no way a mass-market success... they sold perhaps a million units total in more than 6 months, and more than half - probably three quarters - of those players are no longer subscribing.

They most likely ended up spending more money on Rift than they originally planned, and now don't have enough money left to keep the live team going and develop two other games at the same time. So they are thinking IPO as a way to sucker some more money out of public investors so they can keep the train rolling down the tracks for a while longer while they try to A) Get Rift to a state where it's worth playing for more than a month, and B) release at least one other game which will be cheaper to support, but make them some cash.

There idea is likely going to fail. Investors are a little more focused on the bottom line and common sense than the fanboys who are still subscribing to the game in the hopes that it will improve. I'm doubting they'll raise enough money to offset the poor retention now that people have actually played their games, seen their server tech, and know what's behind all the marketing and hype.

Could be viewed as both good and bad, which depends on circumstances we don't know.

All I see is a company that has made one MMO, which is developing two additional MMOs, needs to raise some capital to bolster the development of their two new MMOs.

Honestly it's a better approach than CCP's "try to bleed the customers of your existing MMO of money to fund your new MMOs" approach, which obviously hasn't worked out too well for them.

Originally posted by Fozzik

Simple. They sold this to the venture capital guys as a WoW-killer. They were shooting for mass-market mega-success, not just with Rift, but they also sold their server technology as being state of the art and something they could sell to other companies.

 

Obviously, they did not provide anywhere near the return on invesment that they originally said they would. There game is in no way a mass-market success... they sold perhaps a million units total in more than 6 months, and more than half - probably three quarters - of those players are no longer subscribing.

 

They most likely ended up spending more money on Rift than they originally planned, and now don't have enough money left to keep the live team going and develop two other games at the same time. So they are thinking IPO as a way to sucker some more money out of public investors so they can keep the train rolling down the tracks for a while longer while they try to A) Get Rift to a state where it's worth playing for more than a month, and B) release at least one other game which will be cheaper to support, but make them some cash.

So where did you get these numbers from exactly? You are talking to someone who played Aion from day 1 so I know what a struggling MMO feels like and yeah 7 months into Aion you had a good idea where that mmo was heading.

I work for a very large private company that is beholden to our membership. Private companies imo generally do better if they stay private. Going public is a double edged sword between generated revenue and doing what it takes to make stockholders happy.

***Raises plunger in salute to trion!***

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Originally posted by Puremallace

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Originally posted by popinjay
I'm not saying Rift is in danger. I'm not saying Rift is about to die. What I am saying is Trion is running out of cash, and fast. This is what happened to CCP trying to make two games on the side while still running one, which is exactly what Rift is doing.

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I am not sure they are even remotely close to running out of cash. Even the most pessimistic guy will say Rift atleast sold 600k boxes. Now say that was at 50$ and this is not including the CE, but right there alone you have 30,000,000
 
The game has managed roughly 53 active servers medium/high for the past 7 months. Now say worst case scenario and the doubters are right and Rift only has 300k subs worldwide. That is still 300,000 * 15$ = 4.5mil for 7 months.
 
My personnel view is they broke even a very long time ago and every dime since then has been reinvested. See this is not B2P, so the money is not in the box. The money is in keeping the subs. That is how WoW became so popular because they practically gave the game away to everyone.

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The problem with what you're doing is compounded because you or I have no idea how many boxes Rift sold at a CERTAIN price. You can't just say "lets' assume X were CE's." Next, you don't know how much someone pays for a monthly sub on average because that's where the real money comes from. Is it $8 or is it $15? There are too many variables there Pure.

All we do know is their obvious expeditures. They have to pay for all their current servers. They have to pay for building costs, employee salaries (500 employees now they say and adding more), they have to pay for advertising and all the other related costs to Rift alone like R and D.

Now after they've paid all of that, they have to pay to develop two full-sized games, one of which was pushed back.

Then you look at the recent microtransaction with the spider mount. They SOLD that for $10 when there was no need to bring in another CE. Now if you want to assume something that we can both agree on I bet:

let's assume that Rift HAS 500K subs for the sake of argument. Let's assume on-third of those players liked the spider mount and bought it. That is roughly 166k spider mounts. At $10 a pop, your one-time revenue stream from those people is 1.6 million dollars.

Instead of putting that into the game as content to be earned it was sold. That says to me Trion realized it was a way to get CASH quick, which falls right in logic with them needing cash.

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Originally posted by Supersoups

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Originally posted by popinjay
 

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Originally posted by Puremallace
Well it is a good sign because pretty sure we can all accept they dropped 50mil into Rift from their own statements and have probably made that back by a lot. Only issue is every dev that has gone public has been baught out like Blizzard and Bioware.
 
I will not pretend to know how it works, but couldn't a major company come in a buy them up and take control over the direction of the company? Right now it seems like they are taking every dime we give them and dropping it back into Rift which is a good thing.

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I'm not saying Rift is in danger. I'm not saying Rift is about to die. What I am saying is Trion is running out of cash, and fast. This is what happened to CCP trying to make two games on the side while still running one, which is exactly what Rift is doing.

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Ignoring that your post is a big contradiction in itself. Where is your source for this info? since you sound very sure that Trion is running out of cash even though Rift is making them lots of proft and they announced to go Public.
And please don't tell me it is your opinion because it sounded as if you know some inside info that we don't.

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Enjoy the rest of the thread and see the reasons why. They've already been posted for you. Just read em.