The rest ~$40m is big companies' investment money, and FG has to pay it back at some point.
That's not really how capital investment works. Those larger firms bought equity in FG, it's a completed transaction. It's not a loan - FG doesn't owe them money.
The game makes 6.11% of its development costs. It has to make a lot more than 100% to be profitable and continue to exist.
All of this is missing a time horizon. There are plenty of companies who technically aren't profitable for years and years - that's what being a startup is like. You have to find your audience before you can monetize hardcore.
It's true that the company could run out of funds, but there can also be additional funding rounds. Progress has been made, new arguments can be made for why the company is worth so and so. Investors could be convinced to back an entirely new project using the company's accumulated tech and assets.
To caveat: I'm not under any delusion that FG is kicking ass right now, but OP's language is more absolute than it should be, and it's not really that easy to determine a timeframe for when the company would have to call it quits.
They took a smallish loan ($2mil), even that is gonna be very challenging
The rest ~$40m is big companies' investment money, and FG has to pay it back at some point.
That's not really how capital investment works. Those larger firms bought equity in FG, it's a completed transaction. It's not a loan - FG doesn't owe them money.
The game makes 6.11% of its development costs. It has to make a lot more than 100% to be profitable and continue to exist.
All of this is missing a time horizon. There are plenty of companies who technically aren't profitable for years and years - that's what being a startup is like. You have to find your audience before you can monetize hardcore.
It's true that the company could run out of funds, but there can also be additional funding rounds. Progress has been made, new arguments can be made for why the company is worth so and so. Investors could be convinced to back an entirely new project using the company's accumulated tech and assets.
To caveat: I'm not under any delusion that FG is kicking ass right now, but OP's language is more absolute than it should be, and it's not really that easy to determine a timeframe for when the company would have to call it quits.
I did take it with a grain of salt! People being able to read it still is what lets them also take it with a grain of salt. I do agree that it doesn't seem to have a solid understanding of how things are supposed to work, and seems to lean a bit too hard on "THE END IS COMING", but it's fairly valid to point out that they're not beholden to anything and could just shut it down tomorrow.
The grain of salt is what takes it from "This will probably happen tomorrow" to "This is within the realm of possibility". Still a decent message for others to hear imo.
I think what happens here in the early game is completely fine. It's a nice little micro duel. Far better than any of the early game micro interactions we see in Sc2 .
After this battle I want uThermal to be ahead 55-60%. Perhaps similarly to someone winning their first objective in HOTS.
But most likely this game snowballs far harder. But even it it didn't, the problem Stormgate has is that it just isn't exciting. The core simple micro we see in the early game is great, but we need something really cool in mid and late game. Some big impactful skillshots that can be dodged and if not dodged can oneshot opponent units etc. Or tons of multitasking and attacks everywhere.
The rest ~$40m is big companies' investment money, and FG has to pay it back at some point.
That's not really how capital investment works. Those larger firms bought equity in FG, it's a completed transaction. It's not a loan - FG doesn't owe them money.
The game makes 6.11% of its development costs. It has to make a lot more than 100% to be profitable and continue to exist.
All of this is missing a time horizon. There are plenty of companies who technically aren't profitable for years and years - that's what being a startup is like. You have to find your audience before you can monetize hardcore.
It's true that the company could run out of funds, but there can also be additional funding rounds. Progress has been made, new arguments can be made for why the company is worth so and so. Investors could be convinced to back an entirely new project using the company's accumulated tech and assets.
To caveat: I'm not under any delusion that FG is kicking ass right now, but OP's language is more absolute than it should be, and it's not really that easy to determine a timeframe for when the company would have to call it quits.
You have a point. I could use a different wording, but it's just my opinion. It isn't relevant at the end. You might have your interpretation, that's what discussion is for. The goal is to let people know the facts. Not everyone followed the development as much as me. What do you think about the rest of the points?
P.S. FG also took $2m loan they have to pay soon, which I forgot to mention in my post :D
I even spared some details, such as in point 4. I didn't mention Gerald tried to make excuses, saying that this "ping-boosting" software they advertised on the Steam page is used in China to improve connection. Some folks fact-checked it, and it turns out it's open info, and they use different software. We called him out, he went dark for some time, and came up with this blog post promise, which he never fulfilled.
IGN gave this a 8.0 I am surprised the review was covered by quite a few gaming news websites, given how low the player count it had for such a long period of time.
EPT
