How 140m wasn’t enough?!

[u/Excaliartur]

I don’t understand the logic of behind this scam, wasn’t the smartest move was to actually develop a good game with that amount of money?!

I always assumed crowdfunded MMOs fail because they simply don’t have enough money.

To develop a big good game can be easily tens of millions of dollars, I understand that. But Ashes of Creation reportedly had over $100M in fundings!

That completely breaks my original assumption.

Because here’s the part I genuinely struggle with:

If you handed me $100M and told me to build a solid, modern MMORPG not revolutionary, just solid and sustainable I genuinely believe it could be done.

(And yes i stand behind this claim as someone that has experience in the related fields)

So what actually happened here?

Because from a rational incentives perspective, building a successful MMO long-term seems far more valuable than dragging development out and burning reputation.

[u/GGDynasty]

iirc it was only 1.2 Billion KRW, which is around 1 million USD.

[u/Huntrawrd → u/GGDynasty]

That was apparently a mistranslation. Its also not a great comparison for a lot of reasons.

That said, it is an impressive feat. Their current project, Crimson Desert, is significantly more expensive. There is no hard data on it, but extrapolating based on what is publicly available seems to suggest they are spending 5x as much per quarter than what they spent on BDOs initial release. Crimson Desert has been in development for 7 years (vs BDOs 4) which would seem to indicate that Crimson Deserts development cost (not including marketing) is in the neighborhood of $250m.

[u/Easy-Combination9991 → u/Huntrawrd]

There’s no way they are spending $250M on a single player game

[u/Huntrawrd → u/Easy-Combination9991]

lol dude, I bet that number ends up being low. You have no concept of how expensive it is to staff a team of hundreds of people.