[geoschmo]

Originally posted by rextorres:
PBW - IMO - is essential to the success of SE - just looking at how many postings the PBW site generates should tell anyone that - not to mention that the players who play PBW are probably the games biggest evangelists, most likely to buy the upgrades, good for cross selling, etc. etc. Heck I wouldn't even be playing SE if wasn't for PBW.

I don't know what the numbers are, but my guess based on # of forum Posts, would be that SE is shrapnel's cash cow and Shrapnel not putting resources behind one of SE's - and Shrapnel's - biggest marketing components is derelict.

It's absurd that Shrapnel supplying PBW resources is even an issue.

Shrapnel and Malfador have supported PBW. They donated the free products that we gave away in the fund raisers we have had. In fact they offered me some more recently but I never got around to announcing another raffle. Malfador has gone out of their way to make patch changes that allowed PBW to work in the first place.

But I must say you are WAY over estimating the effect PBW has had on the Shrapnel or Malfador bottom line. They don't release actual sales figures, but they did announce at one point SE4 Gold had gone over half a million in sales didn't they? A little math should give you an idea of how many units sold that is.

PBW at it's absolute peak has had something like 500 Users a week, 300 a day. Maybe that sounds like a lot, but it's only a fraction of the toal number of SE4 buyers.

You are probably right that Space Empries is the biggest seller at Shrapnel, but it's still a niche game. And PBW is a niche in that niche. Shrapnel is not rolling in dough. Tim, Richard and whoever else is on staff could probably leave right now and make more working for someone else. In fact they may have regular jobs in addition to Shrapnel. Not sure about that. The point is they don't have a lot to give, so whatever they give has to show an actual, quantifiable return.

PBW can't do that, as much as us diehard fans would like to think it could.

Geoschmo