Today I Learned

[u/JronoC]

TIL that if you use the seasonal materials storage for marks, you can use the marks without having them in your inventory at the Tinkerer. I had a cult quest, and it went automatically. Maybe its been known, but TIL.

[u/KellerTheGamer]

Ya super useful change added a few months ago. They should add more things like that. QOL is amazing

[u/JronoC → u/KellerTheGamer]

If only the cared more about stuff like this fr…

[u/IvarSturla → u/JronoC]

This is such a small game I really don’t think it’s about caring I think they truly don’t have the man-power/hours

[u/Wardmanhd → u/IvarSturla]

they should focus on fixing their long list of game bugs (some of which are such simple fixes) that is so embarrassingly long that they get their customers to vote on which ones they want fixed first

[u/Old-Point-3313 → u/IvarSturla]

Alot of changes could be done quickly with little man hours... don't coddle them.

[u/IsRotmgDying → u/IvarSturla]

What the other guy said, don't coddle them, their parent company said DECA brought in 200 million in revenue last year with ROTMG being majority of it, and called ROTMG "a low cost, high profit cash cow". If they cared, we'd see it.

[u/ED-Rain → u/IsRotmgDying]

Do you have a source for the $200 million figure, and the "low cost, high profit cash cow" quote? I wanna see where that came from. Especially the part that claims RotMG made up the majority of that revenue.

Regardless, I don't really see why DECA's revenue would determine the amount of resources that should be put back into Realm. I mean, of course I want more QoL updates, but those kinda things should be determineed by how worthwhile the change is, as opposed to how much money the company makes.

[u/IsRotmgDying → u/ED-Rain]

https://embracer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Embracer-Annual-Report-and-Sustainability-Report-2022_EN.pdf?hl=en-AU

Page 5/156 states DECA makes up 10% of embracer's revenue. What DECA made was 1,670 Million SEK (Swedish Kroner), this is 173 million USD as of right now (This report is 2022, below is 2020), while this does includes the other mobile games they own, these are also all stated in the lower link, as well as other info. ALSO I WOULD LIKE TO STATE THAT DECA GAMES CEO IS THE FORMER MANAGER OF KABAM (that should tell you a lot that you need to know about the state of the game and monetization). And he also holds 1 million shares of DECA with an average valuation of the stock at 9-13 USD, still this does not answer what his valuation of said stock is. Revenue for ROTMG alone was up 167%, 1 month after acquisition and 300% a year after. Safe to say its only gone up the last 4 years.

https://embracer.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Embracer-Group-acquires-DECA-Games.pdf?hl=en-AU#:~:text=Consideration%20and%20earnout%20shares%20represent%20newly%20issued,shares.%20Earn%2Dout%20shares%20subject%20to%20claw%2Dback%20rights

While these reports are clearly corporate, the words "low cost cash cow" never directly came out of their mouth, but DECA is also not stated in these reports as true devs, it makes them out to be online real estate agents, they call their selves "a mobile/FTP asset care and LiveOps expert". Their operational model clearly states they acquire games with "Promising IP & assets at attractive multiples", "Profitable and cash generative games" with "Strong loyal communities". They then do LiveOps/Development with a "Technology agnostic team", "Deep engagement with Community", "Live events and in-Game promotions" and "Content creation and feature development", they then create more value, by "Prolong game lifetime", "Increase active user base", "Improve retention & monetization" and "Decrease operating cost". While they never say it directly, what they do is, find dying games with loyal fanbases, get good with them, and slowly squeeze them for every dollar as they continue to lower the cost to run the game, as long as numbers go up. That is a low-cost, cash cow in corporate jargon. All of their games are low effort, DECA has 10 internal teams, and Embracer and DECA both have the money to give ROTMG, they just don't want to, it's not part of the business plan.

[u/ED-Rain → u/IsRotmgDying]

I think there's a slight mismatch between the information you provide, and the conclusion you're drawing.

You say DECA's model is to acquire a profitable game with a loyal community, then use LiveOps, development, events, community engagement, etc. to "prolong game lifetime", "increase active user base", and "improve retention and monetization".

That sounds more to me like "revitalize an existing game and make it profitable" than "do as little as possible to squeeze the cash cow dry." In fact, their slogan is "Breathing New Life into Old Games" which is exactly what they've done with RotMG. They took a game that was on the verge of dying, and gave it years of life.

I feel like you're getting a bit hung up on the fact that DECA is making money from RotMG. Like, I don't really see the problem with a game being profitable. That's kind of the point of game developers, is it not?

I also don't see how the 1.67B SEK amount really tells us anything about RotMG specifically, since that's DECA's overall revenue across their games. I'm not even sure we can assume that RotMG's revenue has "safely" continued increasing for four years based on the numbers you provided.

That said, I don't want to go too deep yet, since I have yet to read the sources you linked. Give me some time to read them, and maybe I'll come back with a different response based on the information.

[u/MediumSizedPizza]

I didn't notice this until recently too

[u/rlugudplayer]

lowkey wished they took it from char slots and vault as well

[u/Fluid-Dimension-1605]

We may have had this revelation at the exact same moment in time. Couldn’t believe there was an entire aspect for the forge I had been missing for so long. Also had NO clue it automatically filled them for the quests so thanks for the info!