MA needs to make money on EU.
They have to keep their server park running, pay their developers, make profit for their shareholders, pay the rent etc. Without getting money from us, they cannot keep their checkbook balanced so there is not really a problem with them earning money.

Still you probably wondered how MA makes money on EU as there are no mandatory deposits or monthly fees.
Well, I did the same, so I dug into this and I found that there are a lot of ways MA makes money from us, players.

Actually there are several ways MA makes money.

Exchange rates:
If you deposit you do not get 100 ped for $ 10, but only 96.50 or so, if I recall correctly. Apparently the 3.50 (3.5%) is to cover the banking cost. Not sure if this only goes to the credit card company or if MA makes something out if this as well.
Similar if you withdraw.

Interest:
Even if you managed to break even, MA has your $ while you have the PEDs.
MA can bring your money to the bank and get interest for it. And if you want to withdraw, they do take their time to give you the money back (drawing a little bit more interest).

ingame advertisements from RL companies
This is direct cash for MA. It is said that if ads are enabled your loot increases so it is possible they give back some (or all) of this.


These are the only ways I could find with which MA makes direct money.
However MA also profits from what players do in-game.

The logic behind this is simple.
Players deposit money and get PEDs.
So (apart from exchange costs) everything is the same. You could withdraw the PEDs and get your dollars back.

Economically speaking you can see the PEDs and the items in the game as the debt that MA has to its players.
They got our dollars and we got PEDs and looted or bought items.
So far, so good, and initially it does not seem to make too much of a difference.
However for MA all items (including your mod fap) only have TT value. You can go to the TT and TT your mod fap, but you will only get the TT value, not the ingame value.

The conclusion of this is simple: the total debt of MA to the players are the PEDs in game and the TT value of all items. The TT value, not the auction value, and not what you have paid for it.

The key formula is:
MA profit = $ deposited - ped in game - TT value of all items in game.

The trick is if you do something with your PEDs, MA typically benefits.
Yes, they introduce items, but they only drop when you shoot a mob or mine a resource, and they will carefully balance that the average player does not get more out of it than is put in. If they do not do that, you could become richer and richer and cash out and eventually if everyone can do that MA would go broke.

Now how does MA actually make money ingame. Actually this is done whenever an item (or PEDs) are removed.
Well the surprise of this is that there are a zillion ways which cause PEDs or items to be removed from the game (and thereby giving profit to MA).

Let us look at them:

Quitting avatars:
people who played for a short while and got bored typically stop playing and do not cash out (as the amount is too small and the effort is too big). After a year the avatar is deleted and all the items are gone. So if people stop playing and not cash out, then everything they have is loot for MA after a year.

Wasted ammo:
If you shoot someoine in PvP. If you fire your gun in thin air. If you shoot at a mob but do not manage to finish it. In all those cases the ammo is wasted (and as you have to pay pec's for the ammo these pecs are gone. (at this point some people will say they got skills from it; I'll get to skills later).
Overkill (using a powerful weapon to kill/finish a low mob) also falls into this category.

Auction fee:
Again profit for MA. It is said this is put in the loot pool.

Using ME (not for combat, so heal, TP, wormhole, ...).
Profit for ME. You have to buy the ME (or obtain the nexus and the sweat and make your own). After you used the ME it is gone, and if you have used it to TP or wormhole, you are just moved to another location. If you healed your health is increases.
The ME (so in effect the money) is gone, so the balance sheet of MA improves.

Using a FAP:
Your health increases. Decay without profit (apart from the higher health).

Selling estates/apartments/malls/banks/LA's:
You get a deed, you get some pixels. However you cannot sell back to MA. The value of the deed is 0. So immediate profit for MA. The bank sale directly put $ 400.000 in MA's pocket.

Maintenance fee:
Direct profit for MA (as the pixels of your shop or appartment do not really need maintenance)

banks:
MA gets 5% of the profit (or 3% if on a LA)

Internal ads:
Rhe player has to pay for it, MA shows the ad for a while and the PEDs are gone.

Events:
Fee for setting up the event go directly to MA

decay:
most of this goes into the loot pool. However Marco has stated on various occasions that MA takes a part of it.
(note: often people mistake decay with repair. Repair is actually compensating for the decay and is cost neutral for the player. If you have used your opalo for a while and it's TT is 1 PED, and you repair it to 2 PED, then you lost a PED but the TT value of the opalo is 1 PED more, so if you TT it you get the PED back that you have put into repair. It is only when you use the armor that it looses value. That is decay, and that is where MA takes its share. Part of the decay goes back in the loot pool and part goes to MA. So for MA (L) stuff is just as good as non (L) stuff!).

Taking a space flight:
The oil needed for this and the decay goes back to MA, and they only relocate your avatar to another position.

TPing back from Crystal Palace:
Again 5 PED for MA.

Coloring:
You loose the paint cans, the item you color does not get a higher TT, so profit for MA as value is removed from the game.

Bleaching:
This just undoes the coloring, and gives decay.

Hair cutting/hair coloring/body shaping:
Similar to coloring: material is needed to do this which is removed from the game (goes to MA); MA only changes the way your avatar is rendered.

Uneconomical hunting
If you use a weapon that you do not have good skills for the damage you do will be below average, so you need more ammo than better players and you loose more (and MA gains more).

Manufacturing:
I think the same holds here; not too sure though as my manufacturing experience is nil.

Mining:
Not sure what the effect of the tools is here, but I am pretty sure MA does take their cut from the decay.

Taming & pet handling:
You'll need nutro bars to feed your pet. Also if you want to build up trust you need to brush it, which results in decay.

Skills & implants:
Whatever you pay for it is for the selling player. MA will not give you money for it (apart from the TT value of the chip). Also you pay implanter decay.

scanning:
MA gives you some info, you get some decay


Remember that this is not bad as MA needs to get money to keep things rolling.
You might want to remember that the only way you can get money from this game is either luck or obtaining it from your fellow players (e.g. by offering services with markup).
Don't expect that MA will make you a millionaire!


By the way: MA does not get anything from markup. If you buy an item for +100 and later on you sell for +200 the selling avatar gets this +200 (and could exchange it to $ 20, the $20 you have to pay for the item).
The only exception is the markup for the things they create and sell (typically the estate things, bank licenses etc).
And of course they have an indirect interest. If you e.g. hunt fouls and get some bones (with say 800% markup). you might be able to make a profit on this hunt although for MA the TT value of the returns is < 100%.

To shed some light manufacturing generally works similarly to hnting or mining. Except instead of paying for bombs or weapons your paying for components and typically getting back less than you had originally put in. Again similarly to mining and hunting lucky loots and sales to other players can lead to eventual profits but again for MA the TT value looted is < TT value put in.

MA mant's us to earn from each others. i think this is why they did take away the PED from the loot. Now with the oils they can create a market for the oils and robot residues by dropping some nice blue prints. In that way they can prevent us from TT-ing the stuff. And the less we TT the more they get in the bank.

Good job Dutchie! +K I hope that everyone will understand now that there is no chance to get anything for free.

Yeah i have to agree with what nirfu said there is very little chance of actually making money off the game from hunting, etc unless you are very lucky. Where some players do make money however is from other players eg the % markup on items, resellng, trading, etc

Nirfu Wrote:MA mant's us to earn from each others. i think this is why they did take away the PED from the loot. Now with the oils they can create a market for the oils and robot residues by dropping some nice blue prints. In that way they can prevent us from TT-ing the stuff. And the less we TT the more they get in the bank.

I patently disagree with this at least with hunting for one simple reason. There are no oils that have any markup whatosoever. What this means is that they just changed the picture of the PED. It is still PED and still gets TT'd more than not.

Oils are quite new invention of MA and at the moment are often TTed. I believe that one day those will have a bit bigger % than it is now.

Kaiser Wrote:I patently disagree with this at least with hunting for one simple reason. There are no oils that have any markup whatosoever. What this means is that they just changed the picture of the PED. It is still PED and still gets TT'd more than not.

oil is used in some bp's and oil residue is used by crafters to turn up the value of L items. Indeed there is hardly any markup. Most irritating from oils is that they cannot be added directly to your ped card so you'll need to go back to a tt if you are overweight or overitemed.

Some good points, although we don't know what money is recycled and what money isnt. But I agree to assume it goes to MA, untill they claim differently. The fact they are so mystirious about it makes me suspicious. Some points I dont agree with: Interest -> MA doesnt save your money on an account, they spend it all . Uneconomical hunting -> This is where you lose to other players, not to MA (with exception of fap/armor decay).

There are indeed some controversial points.
Actually when I posted this on EU, I got slashed in such a way (up to being accuses of posting false information), that I had the mods fully remove the thread.

It indeed describes more the money flow, and some of the money flows back into the game in the form of loot, mined resources and manufactured items.

Wrt interest:
Well, if instead I would put the money on the bank, I would get interest, so for me this is an additional loss.
For MA, if they had to borrow money instead of using mine they have to pay interest, so at least having the money is a gain.

I guess they will at least have some kind of buffer to pay people that want to cash out, but I am fairly sure that if everybody at the same time threw all their stuff in the TT and decided to cash out, MA would surely be unable to honor all those requests.

As for the hunting:
I feel loot is random. I've never seen that it depends on anything you have done before.
And yes, I know some people say they see patterns. If you look at a random sequence of data long enough you will also find portions that seem to show patterns (heck: if a random sequence does not show patterns in some subsets, it would not be random).

I guess most of the ammo and decay goes into the loot pool (if such a thing actually exists; to me it could still be a table per mob with chances for each item; if this table is made properly you can prove that statistically MA will never loose (as it is known what the minimum cost is to kill a mob).

For uneconomical hunting: the flow is towards MA, whether MA actually returns this to players is an open question.
It could even be that ammo used up in pvp also ends up in the loot pool. We simply don't know.

Then again MA has quite a number of people on its payroll (I seem to recall having seen a number around 35).
These all need to be paid, including the offices, server park etc. Not sure about the rent and wages in sweden, but they have to take several millions out of this, in order to keep their business running.
Actually there is some data on this as they file a yearly report and that is even on their website.

For me personally this has led to the conclusion that this is way too risky to put substantial amounts of money in. When I deposit, I perceive the money as gone. Just spend on having a good time. I'd definitely not invest in this (and maybe I'm foolish, but it already saved me from big RL losses since I did not invest in the internet hype 6 years ago).

Btw to some extend the trade in uber items reminds me of the tulip mania in the 17th century.
For those who do not know this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

And, as I am off-topic anyway. Rule 1 for the prospective invester: "If it sounds too good to be true, invariably it is too good to be true".

dutchie Wrote:There are indeed some controversial points.
Actually when I posted this on EU, I got slashed in such a way (up to being accuses of posting false information), that I had the mods fully remove the thread.

Now you see where the true freedom of speech can be found. (Sorry, I couldn't stop myself)

Is there any official financial report available on-line? I must check that when I'll have some free time.

yes, i think it was at http://www.mindark.com
I've seen it once somewhere

lol I could have guessed that :/ Anyway, I've found some financial reports but every each of those is 'Swedish only' message. I guess as long as I'm unable to understand even a bit of Swedish I won't be able to read those.

If you look a little bit lower, there is an english annual report over 2005.
http://www.mindark.com/docs/reports/MindArk_AR_ENGx.pdf
This was posted june 2, 2006, so I guess in a month or so we'll see an annual report over 2006.
The swedish ones are quarterly reports.

Btw: I didn't read the report in full. I read this in bed and normally fall asleep before I am halfway....
Better than sleeping medicine :lol:

(hm: tried to use a 5 letter word starting with p ending with s and with ill inbetween, but got censored)

Sry. I've missed this one. All what I understood from this report is that EU is in the best shape ever.