'Profits plummet at Jagex' - Insidermedia

[strilmus]

man i am glad i bought those bonds earlier when i was thinking about getting more runecoins with them

 

still, i don't really know what they're thinking with their idea of raising the barrier to entry when the only rise in quality has been a halfhearted graphical overhaul (that's glitchy) and, well, the microtransaction content

 

the average rate of update quality has dropped a noticeable amount, and the only redeeming parts of elf city have been somewhat eroded by jagex's sense of balancing, while all of the really wasted parts was because they had people vote on nice sounding content choices that they were never going to deliver on in a satisfying manner, but allowed rampant speculation as to what they would do, anyway

 

and in order to accomplish that they had to stuff another content type into the garbage while its organs were sold to the highest bidder, while the elf city advocates gently reassured me that their choice wasn't going to do that, but I don't see any damn sign that it's not effectively dead for several years (they tell me the name is still alive, but the skeleton might as well be buried in the himalayas)

 

until they repair their design and garner enough balls to make a stand where it actually counts instead of holding to shitty concepts that were undermined ages ago while letting other concepts that were important to gameplay get trampled into the dust, they're just going to keep driving players away when they find out that all of these trailers were just made to hide the crap its covering

[Yoko Kurama]

 

 

This article title is incredibly alarmist/misleading, the profits went down sure, but the revenue only went down slightly.  All this means is they spent a ton more money in 2013 than on 2012, probably on new projects/more employees, etc.  The revenue was only a bit less.

 

Profit: 944.8k, down from 9.8m <- oh god everyone freak out

Revenue: 46.5m, down from 53.1m <- wait nvm

 

There's nothing to suggest that their current model is failing.  If anything, they impressively dodged some taxes.

 

Shame on this website for trying to make a story when there really isn't one.  Also confused as to why we have an article in November 2014 comparing 2012-2013, how about we wait a month so we can compare 2013 to 2014.

 

#econ101

 

I was thinking this as well.

 

It was like the year parts of the web made a massive show and dance that jagex was in the red and made a lose not a profit, but when you looked the the actual figures they made one of the biggest profits for years, they just decided to re-invest it all with extra credit from investors into expansion. Which far from suggesting a failing that the scaremongers aimed for actually suggested quite a successful year with big profits and enough investor confidence to make such a big re-investment.

 

At the end of the day good revenue with a small profit is the most desirable figures we as players could see.

Good revenue means they are doing well and making the money they need to succeed.

Small profit means they aren't making an excess of money that investors/management are then skimming off for their own pockets, it means they are re-investing in the company - which is again desirable for players as it means new games, more devs and hopefully better content. 

 

 

Not to be nitpicking, but what great content have we gotten in 2013 that might drain a lot of the revenue? :s 2013 was known as the lackluster update year, so I don't think the revenue went to RuneScape significantly.

 

 

2013 was pretty eventful. A horde of new bosses, weaponry/gear, a new (albeit poorly designed) skill, two world events, a fairly signifcant and well recieved quest (TWW). Not saying it was their best year ever, but they did do quite a bit.

[Fire_Hawk154]

Why am I not surprised...

[Yoko Kurama]

I don't think the numbers themselves are bad, but keep in mind that shareholders are notoriously interested in short-term profit. Now Jagex isn't publically traded (I think), so I guess they'll have to answer to IVP, and they probably won't be happy with this.

[Blofeld]

The fact that its 2013 means we really can't read too much into it. A lot has changed in the last 12 months, especially updates to the original EOC like revolution and Legacy which have helped people get back into the game. The introduction of iron man mode should also have provided with them with an ample extra amount of income. Things have also stabilized a bit more with their micro transaction content now that everyones used to it- there has been a heck of a lot of it in recent months. But the problem with this is they will soon reach saturation point where every skill outfit and bonus will already have been released (not to mention wing designs) and therefore surely the only direction things can go from MT revenue is down.

 

As others have said, investment in Transformers will also have completely have skewed the figures for a few years (especially this years financials that we probably wont see for another year) , as its taken lots of investment for near zero return.

 

That said I've still yet to see anything to prove that Transformers isn't going to completely flop. When the Beta was released I saw quite a lot of marketing, such as sponsored emails from Paypal about it, making it seem like a finished product. This was very dangerous because I am sure many people did the same as I did....tried the beta  on launch day, did the tutorial but then couldn't get into a game and was stuck in the lobby, and now have never touched it since due to initial bad experience. Inviting a big audience in for a beta is very dangerous as it risks putting people off the game permanently.   Judging from the fact that less than 1 million people have registered for it so far, TU reddit is desolate and all reviews have been mediocre I get the impression it is going to be the biggest waste of money they have ever had.

 

 

The fact that they have recently supposed to have made redundant a sizable amount of the TU staff http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-11-10-jagex-confirms-possible-layoffs also suggests how much in flux their costs are at the moments. It is also noted that there was quite a large influx of the standard bad reviews on the Jagex glassdoor from Sept-November (possibly due some due to the above lay offs).  These all said the same thing the Jagex reviews always say: upper management is rudderless and does not know what they are doing.

[Mercifull]

And another game bites the dust... http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-12-16-jagex-shutting-down-transformers-universe

[Hajutze]

It's a wonder it took them that long considering the game s*** b***s.

 

I do hope they use the engine for something new, because the visuals weren't that bad.