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On April 28 2013 14:57 Craton wrote:This is really ironic considering how hilariously inaccurate your view of teaching is. Development, be it of games or regular software, can be very enjoyable or very tedious. It entirely depends on your environment and your management.
Not really. You need to look at some of the horror stories of games developers especially Activision. There is not a single teacher in the world that gets that kind of treatment.
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He's probably overpaid.
If I don't like it I'll just not buy their stock and take solace in the fact that his taxes went up this year.
Edit: A lot of 1%-ers are overpaid. That goes for actors, athletes, doctors, etc. It's not just CEO's.
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On April 28 2013 14:59 yandere991 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2013 14:55 sluggaslamoo wrote:On April 28 2013 14:40 yandere991 wrote:
It vests over 5 years and its stock based awards. That is roughly 10 mill variable pay per year without NPV taking effect. Hardly the sensationalist 800% raise. Yeah you're right, its hardly anything. If I had 55 mill I would want to spend that in a year. On April 28 2013 14:48 Klipsys wrote:On April 28 2013 14:45 sluggaslamoo wrote:On April 28 2013 14:37 wUndertUnge wrote:On April 28 2013 14:36 sluggaslamoo wrote:
Meanwhile Activision developers are struggling to make a living... See that's what I'm trying to figure out. What are their salaries? Does this man really deserve all fo that compensation? Shouldn't it go to the people actually doing the work? Being a game developer for the giants (except probably Blizzard/Valve) leads to a pretty terrible lifestyle. You basically get paid almost a minimum wage even though you are much more qualified and more deserving than the rest of the population.Most developers such as myself, started out wanting to become game developers and then came to the shocking realisation that its not what its cracked up to be and shifted to much more lucrative careers in the software development industry like web-development, where you can work normal hours and get paid 4 times as much. More deserving....? MORE DESERVING? You think that developers are more deserving that say, oh; teachers, nurses, police/EMS/Firefighters, social workers, single moms, peacecorps, habitat for humanity, big brothers/bigsisters etc... How in the...? They make computer games Stop being ignorant. Making computer games might sound fun, but the reality is the complete opposite for a lot of people. Being humanitarian has nothing to do with making money, money should go to people who put in the most effort, the hardest working developers are games developers, and its a tougher industry than all those jobs you mentioned combined. Becoming a Teacher is a 3 year course, becoming a programmer is a whole lifestyle. Did teachers painstakingly spend hours and hours every day after highschool sacrificing their social life so they could learn how to program in C++? No they probably went out to parties and had a social life like everyone else. Do they work 16-20 hour days during crunch time and never get to see their family for weeks, while your diet consists of cans of soda and cheetos? No teachers work less hours than even normal employees. Ignorance is bliss isn't it? So investment bankers deserve to be paid the most then going by your logic considering they absolutely shit on game developers in terms of hours worked per week. Hell I doubt game developers work harder than big4 auditors.
I've worked for Deloitte and that is just plain false.
Please keep talking if you would like to dig yourself a bigger hole.
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I always wondered how the higher management gets away with numbers like this. The developement of Diablo 2 cost about 6 Mio. You would be able to make 5 to 10 brilliant games with this money, but instead you give it to one guy for his "brilliant" decisionmaking.
Dont get me wrong, I like the idea that good work makes good money. But in cases like this the diffrence to what a normal game designer gets is just rediculous.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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On April 28 2013 15:04 sluggaslamoo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2013 14:59 yandere991 wrote:On April 28 2013 14:55 sluggaslamoo wrote:On April 28 2013 14:40 yandere991 wrote:
It vests over 5 years and its stock based awards. That is roughly 10 mill variable pay per year without NPV taking effect. Hardly the sensationalist 800% raise. Yeah you're right, its hardly anything. If I had 55 mill I would want to spend that in a year. On April 28 2013 14:48 Klipsys wrote:On April 28 2013 14:45 sluggaslamoo wrote:On April 28 2013 14:37 wUndertUnge wrote:On April 28 2013 14:36 sluggaslamoo wrote:
Meanwhile Activision developers are struggling to make a living... See that's what I'm trying to figure out. What are their salaries? Does this man really deserve all fo that compensation? Shouldn't it go to the people actually doing the work? Being a game developer for the giants (except probably Blizzard/Valve) leads to a pretty terrible lifestyle. You basically get paid almost a minimum wage even though you are much more qualified and more deserving than the rest of the population.Most developers such as myself, started out wanting to become game developers and then came to the shocking realisation that its not what its cracked up to be and shifted to much more lucrative careers in the software development industry like web-development, where you can work normal hours and get paid 4 times as much. More deserving....? MORE DESERVING? You think that developers are more deserving that say, oh; teachers, nurses, police/EMS/Firefighters, social workers, single moms, peacecorps, habitat for humanity, big brothers/bigsisters etc... How in the...? They make computer games Stop being ignorant. Making computer games might sound fun, but the reality is the complete opposite for a lot of people. Being humanitarian has nothing to do with making money, money should go to people who put in the most effort, the hardest working developers are games developers, and its a tougher industry than all those jobs you mentioned combined. Becoming a Teacher is a 3 year course, becoming a programmer is a whole lifestyle. Did teachers painstakingly spend hours and hours every day after highschool sacrificing their social life so they could learn how to program in C++? No they probably went out to parties and had a social life like everyone else. Do they work 16-20 hour days during crunch time and never get to see their family for weeks, while your diet consists of cans of soda and cheetos? No teachers work less hours than even normal employees. Ignorance is bliss isn't it? So investment bankers deserve to be paid the most then going by your logic considering they absolutely shit on game developers in terms of hours worked per week. Hell I doubt game developers work harder than big4 auditors. I've worked for Deloitte and that is just plain false. Please keep talking if you would like to dig yourself a bigger hole.
The word is "doubt". GF worked at EY audit and she was racking up huge hours during tax season. IT guys at big4 work normal 9-5.
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On April 28 2013 14:48 Klipsys wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2013 14:45 sluggaslamoo wrote:On April 28 2013 14:37 wUndertUnge wrote:On April 28 2013 14:36 sluggaslamoo wrote:
Meanwhile Activision developers are struggling to make a living... See that's what I'm trying to figure out. What are their salaries? Does this man really deserve all fo that compensation? Shouldn't it go to the people actually doing the work? Being a game developer for the giants (except probably Blizzard/Valve) leads to a pretty terrible lifestyle. You basically get paid almost a minimum wage even though you are much more qualified and more deserving than the rest of the population.Most developers such as myself, started out wanting to become game developers and then came to the shocking realisation that its not what its cracked up to be and shifted to much more lucrative careers in the software development industry like web-development, where you can work normal hours and get paid 4 times as much. More deserving....? MORE DESERVING? You think that developers are more deserving that say, oh; teachers, nurses, police/EMS/Firefighters, social workers, single moms, peacecorps, habitat for humanity, big brothers/bigsisters etc... How in the...? They make computer games
I think he's saying they are much more deserving than the rest of the gaming industry workers not the rest of the population in general. I disagree though. To me, that's like saying the guy at BK that makes the cheeseburgers is more deserving of the big money than the CEO because he works harder. People seem to have this idea that CEOs sit around drinking scotch, wearing monocles, and smoking cigars while counting their money and greedily licking their lips for the next time they can screw over Mr. Working Man and take his paycheck so his kids can't have Christmas, all while laughing manically. Being a CEO requires a lot of work and normally years and years of hardwork and risks that could mean permanent financial ruin. It's not like a normal job where you do a poor job, get fired, and find another one for another company doing the same thing. As a CEO literally everything you do is for your business. Everything you do is in the spotlight and you risk millions or even billions of dollars (your own as well as others) and are responsible for other peoples jobs. Joe programmer doesn't get shit from 10,000 employees if he does a shitty job and blamed for the ruin of countless lives. Their only responsibility is programming. A CEO does a shitty job and he goes to prison, has his family reputation screwed for basically forever, gets paraded on tv or news outlets as a major failure, and has thousands basically blaming them for every problem in the world up to and including world hunger.
When was the last time you saw a programmer do a shitty job, get fired for it, and brought on TV to point out how awful they were at their job? Normally, when you get fired, you get fired. That's it. The rest of the world doesn't give a shit. Nobody remembers in 15 minutes even what happened to Jimmy from the corner office after he is replaces by James. Their is no legacy of failure. You are not responsible for anything other than one tiny bit of the company. If the company itself fails and you aren't at fault, you can get a new job. As the CEO, if company fails and it isn't your fault, you still have people looking to you and at you for you to solve the problem.
Edit: The CEO is also responsible if you the programmer do a shitty job while you the programmer are not responsible for the opposite.
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On April 28 2013 14:25 wUndertUnge wrote:
$64.9 million
This is actually not that much money compared to Activision's revenue, and it looks like his salary barely jumped at all; he just was awarded a larger share of ownership.
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god wish he would take all that money and actually make a good game for once lol
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On April 28 2013 14:49 Klipsys wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2013 14:44 Defacer wrote:On April 28 2013 14:29 Juicyfruit wrote:
Hate the guy too, but activision is making mad bank through CoD and Skylander and shit. You can't say they don't know how to milk people for cash, because they clearly do. Hundreds of people were in involved in making CoD and Skylander a success. It always bothers me when one guy is the primary beneficiary of so many people's hard work — and he's not even the one assuming any real risk. Really? He's taking no risk. I wonder how much his raise would have been if Activison was losing money instead of virtually printing it
Um, dude learn to read. You're disagreeing with something I didn't even write. Sheesh.
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On April 28 2013 14:48 nicknack wrote:
Why do people hate this guy?
"The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games." -Kotick
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so where is the intellectual property of the developers? because it looks to be pirated by CEOs.
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On April 28 2013 15:17 xM(Z wrote:
so where is the intellectual property of the developers? because it looks to be pirated by CEOs.
They sold it for money :p
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lol, cheesy way to get out of it.
they need to have a creativity clause in their contracts.
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On April 28 2013 14:55 Zandar wrote:
Greed goes unpunished these days.
I'm not totally against capitalism but the current system is flawed at the top of the piramyd.
All these bankers who bankrupted so many families got away too.
Bobby Kotick's "greed" has made Activision a lot of money.
It's a short-term strategy that will eventually suck the life out of the franchises he's milking into the ground, but you can't deny that it works.
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On April 28 2013 15:08 yandere991 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2013 15:04 sluggaslamoo wrote:On April 28 2013 14:59 yandere991 wrote:On April 28 2013 14:55 sluggaslamoo wrote:On April 28 2013 14:40 yandere991 wrote:
It vests over 5 years and its stock based awards. That is roughly 10 mill variable pay per year without NPV taking effect. Hardly the sensationalist 800% raise. Yeah you're right, its hardly anything. If I had 55 mill I would want to spend that in a year. On April 28 2013 14:48 Klipsys wrote:On April 28 2013 14:45 sluggaslamoo wrote:On April 28 2013 14:37 wUndertUnge wrote:On April 28 2013 14:36 sluggaslamoo wrote:
Meanwhile Activision developers are struggling to make a living... See that's what I'm trying to figure out. What are their salaries? Does this man really deserve all fo that compensation? Shouldn't it go to the people actually doing the work? Being a game developer for the giants (except probably Blizzard/Valve) leads to a pretty terrible lifestyle. You basically get paid almost a minimum wage even though you are much more qualified and more deserving than the rest of the population.Most developers such as myself, started out wanting to become game developers and then came to the shocking realisation that its not what its cracked up to be and shifted to much more lucrative careers in the software development industry like web-development, where you can work normal hours and get paid 4 times as much. More deserving....? MORE DESERVING? You think that developers are more deserving that say, oh; teachers, nurses, police/EMS/Firefighters, social workers, single moms, peacecorps, habitat for humanity, big brothers/bigsisters etc... How in the...? They make computer games Stop being ignorant. Making computer games might sound fun, but the reality is the complete opposite for a lot of people. Being humanitarian has nothing to do with making money, money should go to people who put in the most effort, the hardest working developers are games developers, and its a tougher industry than all those jobs you mentioned combined. Becoming a Teacher is a 3 year course, becoming a programmer is a whole lifestyle. Did teachers painstakingly spend hours and hours every day after highschool sacrificing their social life so they could learn how to program in C++? No they probably went out to parties and had a social life like everyone else. Do they work 16-20 hour days during crunch time and never get to see their family for weeks, while your diet consists of cans of soda and cheetos? No teachers work less hours than even normal employees. Ignorance is bliss isn't it? So investment bankers deserve to be paid the most then going by your logic considering they absolutely shit on game developers in terms of hours worked per week. Hell I doubt game developers work harder than big4 auditors. I've worked for Deloitte and that is just plain false. Please keep talking if you would like to dig yourself a bigger hole. The word is "doubt". GF worked at EY audit and she was racking up huge hours during tax season. IT guys at big4 work normal 9-5.
On April 28 2013 15:08 yandere991 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2013 15:04 sluggaslamoo wrote:On April 28 2013 14:59 yandere991 wrote:On April 28 2013 14:55 sluggaslamoo wrote:On April 28 2013 14:40 yandere991 wrote:
It vests over 5 years and its stock based awards. That is roughly 10 mill variable pay per year without NPV taking effect. Hardly the sensationalist 800% raise. Yeah you're right, its hardly anything. If I had 55 mill I would want to spend that in a year. On April 28 2013 14:48 Klipsys wrote:On April 28 2013 14:45 sluggaslamoo wrote:On April 28 2013 14:37 wUndertUnge wrote:On April 28 2013 14:36 sluggaslamoo wrote:
Meanwhile Activision developers are struggling to make a living... See that's what I'm trying to figure out. What are their salaries? Does this man really deserve all fo that compensation? Shouldn't it go to the people actually doing the work? Being a game developer for the giants (except probably Blizzard/Valve) leads to a pretty terrible lifestyle. You basically get paid almost a minimum wage even though you are much more qualified and more deserving than the rest of the population.Most developers such as myself, started out wanting to become game developers and then came to the shocking realisation that its not what its cracked up to be and shifted to much more lucrative careers in the software development industry like web-development, where you can work normal hours and get paid 4 times as much. More deserving....? MORE DESERVING? You think that developers are more deserving that say, oh; teachers, nurses, police/EMS/Firefighters, social workers, single moms, peacecorps, habitat for humanity, big brothers/bigsisters etc... How in the...? They make computer games Stop being ignorant. Making computer games might sound fun, but the reality is the complete opposite for a lot of people. Being humanitarian has nothing to do with making money, money should go to people who put in the most effort, the hardest working developers are games developers, and its a tougher industry than all those jobs you mentioned combined. Becoming a Teacher is a 3 year course, becoming a programmer is a whole lifestyle. Did teachers painstakingly spend hours and hours every day after highschool sacrificing their social life so they could learn how to program in C++? No they probably went out to parties and had a social life like everyone else. Do they work 16-20 hour days during crunch time and never get to see their family for weeks, while your diet consists of cans of soda and cheetos? No teachers work less hours than even normal employees. Ignorance is bliss isn't it? So investment bankers deserve to be paid the most then going by your logic considering they absolutely shit on game developers in terms of hours worked per week. Hell I doubt game developers work harder than big4 auditors. I've worked for Deloitte and that is just plain false. Please keep talking if you would like to dig yourself a bigger hole. The word is "doubt". GF worked at EY audit and she was racking up huge hours during tax season. IT guys at big4 work normal 9-5.
Last time I heard the .NET team were working up to 18 hour days in the final month of a project, but that's besides the point, as you mentioned auditors and I wasn't referring to IT.
Its not like we just work in this little bubble where we don't know what's going on in the other sectors. Its a single building and these organisations are heavy on communication we hear a about what goes on in each others sectors every month, and we also talk to people in other sectors during breaks.
I know they rack up more hours than normal employees but they still get to go home and have normal diets and earn a substantial amount more per hour worked. Also just look at how many employees get fired from Activision by Kotick every year, Job security is just so much better at a consulting firm than a games company.
I personally know employees from both worlds. I can tell you that crunch time and the environment for a games developer at companies like Activision is much worse.
The other thing though, I really want to emphasise the point that software developers spend their entire lives honing their skills. This is a lot less common at a consulting firm, you learn your stuff at uni and when you get home you don't continue to spend more time learning how to become a better accountant/consultant/etc.
Did your girlfriend start learning how to do a tax audit when she was 13 years old, and then continue spending hours learning how to do audits every day after school in her spare time?
For the set of skills and effort that a games developer has, they still don't earn anything close to a senior accountant/consultant at the big four.
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On April 28 2013 14:25 wUndertUnge wrote:http://kotaku.com/activisions-boss-got-an-800-raise-and-a-watchdog-doe-483773785"Activision has a lot of money. Bobby Kotick has fat stacks, too. The publisher's CEO saw his total cash-and-prizes compensation jump from $8.1 million in 2011 to $64.9 million in 2012, reports Bloomberg, a figure that would make him the second-highest paid CEO among publicly traded U.S. companies. Kotick is due for another $16 million if the company hits performance targets, too. The bulk of his compensation came in the form of stock awards valued at $55.9 million. (Though they vest over the next five years, Activision is required to report them all at once, now.) The cash salary he got was roughly the same as always, $8.33 million." How about reinvesting some of that money back into the company instead of feeding that fat double-chin of his? Sorry, but this kind of thing makes me so angry. Rarely does anyone actually deserve to be making this kind of money, not to mention the fact that no one could spend this much money in one lifetime. Has Kotick actually made any innovations, or did he just figure out how to turn it into a money machine? It makes me sad that Blizzard got into bed with these guys.
I'm going to jump in here due to the gross inaccuracies and exaggerations you've put out. First off, Blizzard Activision has done extremely well during its last quarter, generating about $1.8 billion with a profit of about $350 million. Overall in 2012, the company generated about $5 billion (memory is fuzzy) with over $1 billion in profits for the year. Compare this with other publishers like EA and the video game industry overall, the publisher has been ahead of the curve in the industry. To shareholders point of view, this man absolutely deserves a raise, but it wasn't in form of cold hard cash, it was in the form of additional stocks, not directly from profits. This is absolutely not a 800% raise, nor is it a raise at all. Instead, he simply has more stake/ownership into the company now.
In most cases, one would want to hold onto stocks for few years than to sell them in order to raise cash for reinvestment/capital. It's better to simply use the profits they have or take out a loan from a bank which the company has been doing.
Now, you ask "how about reinvesting some of that money back into the company", and the company has indeed been doing that last year. Of the $1 billion profits from 2012, about $500 million went to shareholders, and most or rest of the $500 million went back into the company; Kotick's additional shares are not part of this.
IMO, Kotick has made the company a money making machine, and from that viewpoint, deserves the compensation.
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On April 28 2013 15:11 Magic_Mike wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2013 14:48 Klipsys wrote:On April 28 2013 14:45 sluggaslamoo wrote:On April 28 2013 14:37 wUndertUnge wrote:On April 28 2013 14:36 sluggaslamoo wrote:
Meanwhile Activision developers are struggling to make a living... See that's what I'm trying to figure out. What are their salaries? Does this man really deserve all fo that compensation? Shouldn't it go to the people actually doing the work? Being a game developer for the giants (except probably Blizzard/Valve) leads to a pretty terrible lifestyle. You basically get paid almost a minimum wage even though you are much more qualified and more deserving than the rest of the population.Most developers such as myself, started out wanting to become game developers and then came to the shocking realisation that its not what its cracked up to be and shifted to much more lucrative careers in the software development industry like web-development, where you can work normal hours and get paid 4 times as much. More deserving....? MORE DESERVING? You think that developers are more deserving that say, oh; teachers, nurses, police/EMS/Firefighters, social workers, single moms, peacecorps, habitat for humanity, big brothers/bigsisters etc... How in the...? They make computer games I think he's saying they are much more deserving than the rest of the gaming industry workers not the rest of the population in general. I disagree though. To me, that's like saying the guy at BK that makes the cheeseburgers is more deserving of the big money than the CEO because he works harder. People seem to have this idea that CEOs sit around drinking scotch, wearing monocles, and smoking cigars while counting their money and greedily licking their lips for the next time they can screw over Mr. Working Man and take his paycheck so his kids can't have Christmas, all while laughing manically. Being a CEO requires a lot of work and normally years and years of hardwork and risks that could mean permanent financial ruin. It's not like a normal job where you do a poor job, get fired, and find another one for another company doing the same thing. As a CEO literally everything you do is for your business. Everything you do is in the spotlight and you risk millions or even billions of dollars (your own as well as others) and are responsible for other peoples jobs. Joe programmer doesn't get shit from 10,000 employees if he does a shitty job and blamed for the ruin of countless lives. Their only responsibility is programming. A CEO does a shitty job and he goes to prison, has his family reputation screwed for basically forever, gets paraded on tv or news outlets as a major failure, and has thousands basically blaming them for every problem in the world up to and including world hunger. When was the last time you saw a programmer do a shitty job, get fired for it, and brought on TV to point out how awful they were at their job? Normally, when you get fired, you get fired. That's it. The rest of the world doesn't give a shit. Nobody remembers in 15 minutes even what happened to Jimmy from the corner office after he is replaces by James. Their is no legacy of failure. You are not responsible for anything other than one tiny bit of the company. If the company itself fails and you aren't at fault, you can get a new job. As the CEO, if company fails and it isn't your fault, you still have people looking to you and at you for you to solve the problem. Edit: The CEO is also responsible if you the programmer do a shitty job while you the programmer are not responsible for the opposite.
I agree with you. I'm more emphasising the balance. You are completely correct in that its the responsibility and personal risk rather than the work load which is partly why CEOs get paid so much.
However I want to mention that this is far from the reality, what usually happens when a CEO does a bad job in a large company, is that he ends up shifting to another company/sector and getting paid the same or even more. Just look at Jay Wilson. A good track record has a large impact on a CEO's wage, however a bad one rarely diminishes it.
Sol Trujillo is a great example, where he became CEO of Graviton, which ended up having to close down, and then ended up being appointed for Telstra and making it lose 25 billion dollars and stepping down on his own rather than getting fired. Given his track record he should never have been appointed but it didn't seem to matter, he ended up getting more money anyway.
I also want to counter the point about job security though, job security for games developers is pretty atrocious.
I'm not saying CEO's should not get paid more than developers, I'm just saying that its silly that Kotick gets a huge raise while developers have to live such poor lifestyles.
Per hour developers don't earn a whole lot, the reason they earn a bit more than the average joe has more to do with the fact that they spend twice as long in the office.
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On April 28 2013 15:20 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2013 15:17 xM(Z wrote:
so where is the intellectual property of the developers? because it looks to be pirated by CEOs. They sold it for money :p
or, why wouldn't the same logic apply to media artists. after they get hired by a records/movie company, fuck them. 9 to 5 work hours and minimum wage. :p
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EPT
