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Eve Online Development Team Cut In Half Since 2010
F0URTWENTY
Member UncommonPosts: 349
http://marketsforisk.blogspot.se/2015/05/ccp-financial-statements-for-2014-review.html
From legally obtained and published financial records from the site linked above:
CCP Employment:
603 - 2010, December
553 - 2013, September
508 - 2013, December
339 - 2014, December (FML that bloodletting.)
Revenues down ~10% from 2013 to 2014 in all locations. (North America, Europe and Asia)
In game unused plex up ~30%. Must be a lot of plex hoarding going on.
I mentioned in other posts how I felt that development seemed to be much slower now than when I played back in 2010, but I had no idea that almost half of their developers are gone. To me it seems Eve really has gone into maintenance mode and isn't trying to be "Eve Forever" like has been advertised many times in trailers. All these patches in the last few years with balance changes and nerfs and almost no new features makes a lot of sense now. It also makes sense why no work has been done on Project Legion a year after it was announced, they probably have 5-10 guys working on it alone.
CCP needs to find a way to make some new features like walking in stations or Project Legion to bring in some new blood, but it seems more and more unlikely that will happen.
Comments
Maintenance mode? Slower development?
Are you actually playing EVE or just pulling things out of thin air? EVE has one of, if not the, fastest development pace in the MMORPG landscape right now. There are updates every month. Many of them substantial updates.
New ships, new areas of space, new modules, new graphics, new starbase structures and most importantly huge balancing passes.
Yes, CCP has lost a lot of employees since 2010, but the major loss of employees came when they cancelled the World of Darkness MMO and let that entire development team go. Then, the same year, they restructured the company and cut a lot of the fat to get back to working on EVE. The way that CCP handled World of Darkness, and ran a game that I was really looking forward to playing into the ground, is inexcusable. I will never forget that fiasco and I'll bring it up any time an apologist comes along to defend CCP's dumb-shit moves.
I am the first to criticize CCP and I'm no white knight for the game or the company. CCP has problems and EVE has problems. Both of them have a lot of issues to iron out, but EVE is most definitely not in maintenance mode. They are furiously trucking through the hard times and still creating and recreating the universe.
Legion is still in development, or more likely it's still being ported from PS3, but nonetheless they haven't cancelled it yet. Not to mention Valkyrie is on the way too, and unlike World of Darkness we're actually seeing substantial progress in that game's development.
I'll leave you to your own devices on financials speculation but as to your 2010 vs present numbers, in 2010, CCP had three titles with full development teams: EVE Online, World of Darkness, and DUST 514. DUST runs with a small but kickass live team right now, and World of Darkness was cancelled. I don't think there was ever a time when there were 500+ people solely working on EVE Online.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I'm the guy that writes the content at updates.eveonline.com, and I approve of this message.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I don't think new ships and UI changes nobody wants or asked for is substantial. I also do not think it will bring any new players or interest to the game. To someone who is waiting for a new reason to play a few new ships and some structures for the big alliances doesn't matter at all to me. Also these graphics updates never mattered to me at all because I was a pvper, and pvpers in eve are generally zoomed out to have increased situational awareness. I couldn't care less if something I hardly am zoomed in close enough to see has gotten a little more shiny.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
So they are adding more tabs to the spreadsheet so to speak?
Adding more of the same thing is not the same as adding something new.
What's wrong with that if they know what their customers want? It's better to cater to their loyal fans than to neglect them in the hope that a few others will like the game more.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
EVE's "reason to play" is, and always has been, entirely up to the player. It's one of the things that makes the game great. You go and make your own stories with the sandbox that they have provided.
If you treat EVE like a themepark MMO and only play when new content comes out like the Apocrypha expansion, then you'll be sorely disappointed with EVE.
I belong to a certain NPSI group and we call ourselves Low Sec Concord. We "police" certain areas of low sec and issue citations for illegal low sec activity. We have a lot of fun because we've created this amusing context which is just really an excuse to blow people up, but it's a FUN excuse for blowing people up. We have so much fun that many of the people we blow up end up joining us!
I will admit, however, that I don't play EVE consistently. In fact for the past two months I've been playing Witcher 3 and Pillars of Eternity exclusively, but EVE is always my one true whore and I'll go back to her every time the grass turns brown on the other side of the fence.
So the real point of your thread becomes clear. You don't like the game, so you went fishing for some bad news about it.
The bad news didn't pan out, so now it's just an "I hate Eve" thread.
We get it; point taken. You can end the thread, now.
Hope they will lock this thread now.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I liked the game enough to play it on and off for a long time. It doesn't mean that I have to be happy that the game is in decline.
WOW i must have lost a few years there somewhere,i thought it was just 2 years ago they hit 650 employees not way back in 2010.
I know it all had to do with them building DUST and they had other ideas like Phone apps or something and another game White Lion or something like that.
I am not an Eve player nor am i fan but i thought it a slap in the face of of their supporters.They made soooooooo much money from that cheap game and turned around and wasted it.They could have made Eve a brand new game engine and given Eve players as well as onlookers the game it deserved to be and still had money left over.Imo CCp is an extremely poorly run business.
It is one thing to rip off a player base as does Blizzard Entertainment by not putting BACK into the game a FAIR amount of the profits.However CCP simply tossed it all out the window,well and likely have some nice bankrolls in offshore accounts.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
But that's the thing...
You are.
Nobody that likes something goes to such trouble to find that it's failing. Aside from that, if you liked the game, Lokto's and Hourglass's posts would be a comfort to you...
...rather than lead you to use the "spreadsheet" language that critics of this game often use.
It's okay. You're allowed to not like games. You're allowed to tell people you don't like games. Opinion acknowledged.
Well that's pretty darn cool really. I read your stuff all the time, even when I'm not actively playing EVE. It's one of the most informative game studio produced blogs in the entire MMORPG sphere. Keep up the good work!
They must have. I can't figure out where the gold is in EVE to make people value it so much. It's built completely upon a disembodied world of interstellar commerce and piracy but even with the small map shooter attached it has no anima or lifeforce. Playing EVE is like watching the long VGER sequences in the 1980 Star Trek movie. You look at all of this mechanical retina flash and wonder why the fuck you are watching this shit.
+1000 for all your great work!
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
OP is on a personal a personal anti-EVE crusade with incorrect facts with past posts too. Mods should look at this.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"