Planetarions Annual Report

[Oghy]

Now that Spinner has quit and PA will inevitably die...
I would like to request to the remaining people (or spinner) to see the annual reports of Planetarion...
As any company Planetarion/jolt/simtech must have some written facts and reports about their spendings.
I would just like to see an overview of the REAL costs and profits of Planetarion.

This would remove my scepticism and that of many others who like me, do not understand what exactly these huge costs (that were always mentioned) are and were.

The creators always talked about them, but never made them public, now that PA has come to an end, I think it would clear up a lot of things and a way so that we can understand why...

[Leshy]

If you are desperate to know, the best you could do is contact SimTech (most likely through Jolt), and request to be granted access to their financial records. Of course, I doubt any company in the world would grant a random caller access to their private details, but you can give it a shot if you want.

[Oghy]

Originally Posted by Leshy

If you are desperate to know, the best you could do is contact SimTech (most likely through Jolt), and request to be granted access to their financial records. Of course, I doubt any company in the world would grant a random caller access to their private details, but you can give it a shot if you want.

Uhm... Most companies are obligated to give atleast some form of financial information to the government. Over here (Netherlands) you can request to see financial records of almost any company through the commerce office (kamer van koophandel, probably a bad translation). Some records will be limited depending on the type ofcompany and how much the company is willing to make public.

As for being desperate...
Spinner n other creators have always talked as if they spend 1000s n 1000s of dollars on Planetarion and not geting anything in return... When I make my own calculation I just cant see how on earth it costs so much...
All I would like to know is what they've been spending and geting exactly...
Cause if you ask me... Someone has gotten a fat check out of PA

and on a sidenote... If I remember correctly ppl have tried to contact SimTech, but apparantly they merely exist on paper.

[Tomkat]

It depends on the company.

I doubt that SimTech is a Public Limited Company, and so I doubt they will give many details of their financial information.

[mikay]

Originally Posted by Oghy

When I make my own calculation I just cant see how on earth it costs so much...

Maybe that's cos you know nothing.

OK here is a little insight:

Spinner, Fudge: 2 IT professionals at say E80k pa each - that's not expensive (certainly wasn't 2 years ago) for a competent IT professional.

Other development staff: Dunno who - anyone worth having would want similar salaries.

Zeus: Support staff, should be on a decent wage for a full time staff member. Say E30k (which is pretty low but hey).

Oh add 10% to staffing costs, I know national inrance works that way in the UK, dunno about other places.

Office - E15k pa - pretty cheap for office space and people have to work somewhere.

Webhosting: E50k/pa - this is probably way way low and I should know this better having worked for webhosting/ISP companies in the past. Done properly with security/support webhosting is very expensive and the bandwidth at their peak was phenominal.

These would be the basic costs and my estimates are low and E250 pa. Fact is is Spinner had gone contracting 3 years ago (in the height if the internet boom) he could have got E200k pa or more so it's not unreasonable to expect a decent wage from his business. There is a huge difference between running a hobby out of your bedroom and a business with full time development/support staff.

[W]

Jesus, you really think it's the staff that got those fat checks?

Hay maybe you're right.

[Razorback]

Originally Posted by mikay

Maybe that's cos you know nothing.

OK here is a little insight:

Spinner, Fudge: 2 IT professionals at say E80k pa each - that's not expensive (certainly wasn't 2 years ago) for a competent IT professional.

Other development staff: Dunno who - anyone worth having would want similar salaries.

Zeus: Support staff, should be on a decent wage for a full time staff member. Say E30k (which is pretty low but hey).

Oh add 10% to staffing costs, I know national inrance works that way in the UK, dunno about other places.

Office - E15k pa - pretty cheap for office space and people have to work somewhere.

Webhosting: E50k/pa - this is probably way way low and I should know this better having worked for webhosting/ISP companies in the past. Done properly with security/support webhosting is very expensive and the bandwidth at their peak was phenominal.

These would be the basic costs and my estimates are low and E250 pa. Fact is is Spinner had gone contracting 3 years ago (in the height if the internet boom) he could have got E200k pa or more so it's not unreasonable to expect a decent wage from his business. There is a huge difference between running a hobby out of your bedroom and a business with full time development/support staff.

I think you overdo the costs abit.
The wages is one thing.
15k for an office room ? thats pretty reasonable for just spinners desk and chair i guess
and 50k webhosting ? for what ? the last years we had 12k players peak. You dont need alot of hosting for it (otherwise most of the freegames with 10k players wouldnt survive even a month).

But even if all of your costs are ok. We have roughly 1-1,5 years of payment. r1-4 were free,
During those 1-1.5 years, total costs 300-375k E there were now 5 rounds and 5 worldcups/speedgames (?) r6 was starting with 5 euro and now we are up to 10 euro in the last paid round (r9) his means the average is somewhere around 7.5 euros. for the speedgame about 5 euros aswell in average. The playerbase went from something about 20k - 5k during the rounds
20k (r5) - 15k (r6) - 12k (r7) - 8k (r8) . 6k (r9)
so all in all we have about 50k roughly paying players and the average of 7.5 euros you are around 375k E. Now the speedgames come in which might be just some small money maybe just 20-30k euros in total but there were no extra costs on the weekends. so all in all you are roughly at 400k gain and costs of 300-375k (if you take the high costs for inet like you give them here)

This all covered pretty much spinners view on things but i dont think he went out totally poor either.
About the last half year with jolt we can only make assumptions.

P.S. if someone is norwegian. the old company 5S had their annual tax reports public on the web, since the law in norway forces companies to do so. I would have posted it here since its no confidential info but my norwegian is kinda non existant so i cant dig them up.

[Castigated]

Originally Posted by Razorback

P.S. if someone is norwegian. the old company 5S had their annual tax reports public on the web, since the law in norway forces companies to do so. I would have posted it here since its no confidential info but my norwegian is kinda non existant so i cant dig them up.

Partially true... It's not on the web; you have to order it through the official registry office, and it costs to do so...

[Andy_r]

For what it's worth, here in Britain all limited companies have to file their financial info with companies house (http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk), and the public can see basic details for free or get more info for £5.

I used this method to track down The Slammer with their half-price playstation scam several rounds ago.

There are 19 companies listed with names starting "simtech" or "sim-tech" etc. so knowing their exact name is going to be the first step.

Oh and as for the costs, I know from owning and running a small business that those cost estimates are a WAY too low - phone bills, office furniture, electricity bills, rates, replacing broken kit, office suplies, bank charges, heating the office, tax on profits and employer's tax contributions, accounting fees, audit fees, VAT on sales, bad debts and a hundred other things soak up money faster than you can imagine. I need to make E100000 'profit' a year just to keep the company solvent, and that's without taking my own salary into account.

[laputa]

Originally Posted by mikay

Maybe that's cos you know nothing.

OK here is a little insight:

Spinner, Fudge: 2 IT professionals at say E80k pa each - that's not expensive (certainly wasn't 2 years ago) for a competent IT professional.

...

These would be the basic costs and my estimates are low and E250 pa. Fact is is Spinner had gone contracting 3 years ago (in the height if the internet boom) he could have got E200k pa or more so it's not unreasonable to expect a decent wage from his business.

What you call an 'insight' I call a guess. Not even an educated one. Or E is standing for something else than Euro.

[Oghy]

Originally Posted by mikay

Maybe that's cos you know nothing.

OK here is a little insight:

Spinner, Fudge: 2 IT professionals at say E80k pa each - that's not expensive (certainly wasn't 2 years ago) for a competent IT professional.

Other development staff: Dunno who - anyone worth having would want similar salaries.

Zeus: Support staff, should be on a decent wage for a full time staff member. Say E30k (which is pretty low but hey).

Oh add 10% to staffing costs, I know national inrance works that way in the UK, dunno about other places.

Office - E15k pa - pretty cheap for office space and people have to work somewhere.

Webhosting: E50k/pa - this is probably way way low and I should know this better having worked for webhosting/ISP companies in the past. Done properly with security/support webhosting is very expensive and the bandwidth at their peak was phenominal.

These would be the basic costs and my estimates are low and E250 pa. Fact is is Spinner had gone contracting 3 years ago (in the height if the internet boom) he could have got E200k pa or more so it's not unreasonable to expect a decent wage from his business. There is a huge difference between running a hobby out of your bedroom and a business with full time development/support staff.

Right... And I no nothing?

I do believe Spinner and other creators have clearly said over n over again that none of the 'employees' (or creators) of Planetarion has ever received much money if anything at all. They put all their money into Planetarion... Didnt he say all his savings were gone?

Other development staff: Dunno who - anyone worth having would want similar salaries.
like for example... PaTeam ? all volunteers...

Zeus: Support staff, should be on a decent wage for a full time staff member. Say E30k (which is pretty low but hey).
Same Story here... He had to quit to get a decent job because he got near to null income from Planetarion...

Office - E15k pa - pretty cheap for office space and people have to work somewhere.
I'll give you that... But how much of an office did they really need? They do not have to take any telephone messages of any kind, they dont need heavy machines to run their development on... They dont have a R&D department... They dont have a Support department... They all run it themselves...
When it comes down to it, Planetarion CAN be ran as hobby out of your bedroom... And if they had any sense they would not get an office space at all but simply work from the easy of their own home(s).

a business with full time development/support staff.
Eh? Its not like they are developing completely new things here
From round 5-9 they barely made any chances over a period of more then a year...
Only change came with PaX... But clearly that was not enough change to keep the general public happy...
Support staff? Dont be crazy... 99% of the support is done by an automated email reply system and volunteers (PaTeam). In the unlikely event of a midnight downtime Spinner is/was SOMETIMES (hardly always) contacted to fix the server.
Seriously... Ask yourself as a consumer of the Planetarion experience, when did YOU ever had real contact with the company...


Perhaps they were in debt ever since round 3-4, and were never able to get out of it. That could explain why they were always near bankruptcy.

[Oghy]

Originally Posted by Razorback

I think you overdo the costs abit.
The playerbase went from something about 20k - 5k during the rounds
20k (r5) - 15k (r6) - 12k (r7) - 8k (r8) . 6k (r9)

If you are talking about paid playerbase then perhaps you are right...
But... If I'm not mistaken the full playerbase was as follows:
r5: 40k accounts, Full paid only round as far as I can remember.
r6: 25-35k accounts, more free accounts tho.
r7: 20k accounts, lots of free ones hovering around.
r8: below 10k
r9: around 5k
r9b: around 5k
r10: around 5k

totals up to over 100k...
Lets say it was 100,000 paid accounts total over the p2p rounds.
Average of 7,5 euro... But lets assume each account earned them 5 euro...
Would mean that their income was around 500,000 Euro...

[dabult]

Spinner's and 5th Season's finances for the past years should be as public as anything, but im swede so i dont have an url to something like "riks-skatteverket", or whatever yours is called.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Oghy

r9: around 5k
r9b: around 5k

r9 was around 10k. However, you've balanced it up nicely by including 'paying customers' from a 100% free round.

[Fudge]

You're also totally forgetting:

• eUniverse going bust without paying us for 3 months of exclusive advertising, meaning no revenue for 3 months
• BarrysWorld going bust while owing us quite a bit of money
• Visa holding just about all the money from the first P2P round for 6 months (we saw the last of it about a year after we made it, after Visa had taken a hefty chunk from checking each transaction for fraud and never releasing enough at one time to actually give us some breathing room)
• The very first investor we had turning out to be a complete fraud living in a nice house - and running off with quite a bit of our initial start-up money
• BurstMedia grabbing a couple of months of advertising revenue near the end since we had no way of guaranteeing there wasn't porn in the politics postings
• Several advertising companies purging us from their systems without paying a dime, as there was no way a single site was generating that kind of traffic without faking it with robots

We made a normal IT wage during the dot-com era, but were struggling ever since the bubble burst, never quite getting enough money to get everything sorted. Once you fall behind it's very hard to get back on top of things.

These last six months or so, I've made less money every month than I would've gotten if I reported myself as unemployed and lived off the norwegian government.

I'm not exactly a wealthy man after 3 years of Planetarion. =)

[Oghy]

Originally Posted by Fudge

I'm not exactly a wealthy man after 3 years of Planetarion. =)

But...
Werent you and spinner employees with normal wages @ Jolt?
I dont understand this...
and creators never seem to clarify or give any details on money matters...
In fact creators have never given any details about anything what so ever :tongue:

Also... can we conclude from your statement that Planetarion got into a 100-200k euro debt and never really recovered?
Why is it so difficult to publish these exact figures? I cant see the real objection or problem here... I cant see why planetarion would need to keep these figures secret for their competitors (?), which is the main reason why other companies do it.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Oghy

But...
Werent you and spinner employees with normal wages @ Jolt?

Normal wages at jolt appear to be £0 pa.

[G.K Zhukov]

during 2000-2002 Spinner had an average wage per year of 402.000 NOK. In euros that is 50.000 with todays conversion rate (8NOK = 1 E)

[Eyebrows]

Originally Posted by Andy_r

For what it's worth, here in Britain all limited companies have to file their financial info with companies house (http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk), and the public can see basic details for free or get more info for £5.

I used this method to track down The Slammer with their half-price playstation scam several rounds ago.

There are 19 companies listed with names starting "simtech" or "sim-tech" etc. so knowing their exact name is going to be the first step.

Oh and as for the costs, I know from owning and running a small business that those cost estimates are a WAY too low - phone bills, office furniture, electricity bills, rates, replacing broken kit, office suplies, bank charges, heating the office, tax on profits and employer's tax contributions, accounting fees, audit fees, VAT on sales, bad debts and a hundred other things soak up money faster than you can imagine. I need to make E100000 'profit' a year just to keep the company solvent, and that's without taking my own salary into account.

Simulation Technologies Limited and Jolt Online Gaming Limited

[Eventh]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

during 2000-2002 Spinner had an average wage per year of 402.000 NOK. In euros that is 50.000 with todays conversion rate (8NOK = 1 E)

How many of those wages did Jolt pay???
Jolt took over before round 9.. Round 9 started in 2003.

what has his wage between 2000-2002 to do with Jolt??

[Scoot951]

50k sounds somewhat reasonable...80k is way too high tho, assuming E and $ are somewhat close...maybe some programmers can get paid that, but for a struggling business like PA I'd expect more like 30k. If it is 80k, then I think we know why PA's always had no money.