# on crytek's crass kapitalist crysis aka "maximum bs" > it is not from the benevolence of the butcher the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner but from ir regard to ir own interest > ~ adam smith a quick and dirty remix of the tragic story of another boss dismissing concerns about unpaid wages and generally sounding like ir's reading quotes from an economic text book off a card it's sure been tough for garmes companies recently - unless you're the owner of course many players have heard devs at the company's vast network of studios directly responsible for the likes of first-person manly shooter crysis garmey action sim ryse and even homefront: the furniture revolution first noticed something was up as early as last week 'in truth' capitalism has had its ups and downs throughout its ugly unwritten history. but this year saw a particularly dramatic downturn with reports of staff going unpaid for months on end the cancellation of generic tech demo 2 and vociferous criticism of the focus on 'free' to play (str8-wack) garmes reports indicated capitalism was close to bankruptcy as it worked to secure investments that would guarantee its dark future. then last month management announced capitalism had received backing from a mysterious benefactor and all was well again so we're informed following that there was the sale of homefront and crytek uk to publisher deep silver - a move understood as 'in the works' for some time and something apparently staff at the studio were hoping for after a stressful career digging deeper we discover big c has also downsized its austin texas studio shifting development of some horrors of our gilded age to its headquarters in frankfurt germany leaving what was once the continuation of the dark sided dev team to support companies using crytek's dead crying engine tech (borrowed from technically minded but conceptually inept aliens) whatever the press releases say it's clear big c has cut costs and has reduced its staff count which at one point was seen staggering across nine studios throughout all this the people at the top of big c refused to speak - until now. here in an exclusive and extensive interview with robert what founder and ceo caveat dearly finally discusses the troubles at the company - ir - laughably attempts to defends ir policies and impersonal management style and explains why ir's sticking with free-to-play. so read on for crytek's dark plans for timesplitters crysis and ryse as it switches from being a garme developer to just another crass 'garme service' hey cav - what's the state of kapitalism at the moment? caveat dearly: we've been undergoing a transformation. part of the transformation is of a financial nature part of it is of a strategic nature and part of is a re-organisational paradigmatic nature. the shift from retail products towards a garme as service is the one we're undergoing. as a result we've seasonally adjusted our entire strategy across the board for each garme. we evaluated the staff and looked at those which do not fit in this strategy. this requires additional investment which naturally(tm) leads to temporarily diminished capital resources. but we're today fully prepared to deliver a garme as service. from a strategic perspective. we're now financially equipped towards that - that is we've restructured the studios so we focus on frankfurt sofia kiev our asian operations and budapest towards delivering our particular strategy - that of total domination! as regards to austin we've downsized austin to be our us hub for the engine business and brought over hunt to frankfurt. then in the uk we sold the homefront ip as well as the homefront team which was pretty much the majority of the team to koch media. that helped me personally in two ways: it was a strategic sell as well as a means to downsize costs so i'm better equipped towards selling consumers a future of garmes as services what was the main cause of the financial difficulties ©apitalism(tm) finds itself in? caveat dearly: the primary cause is continual transformation yo. we're observing where the industry is going. we know free® to play or garmes as a service - indeed online life in general - is now all but the future of garming. we've known this for a while. we were simply finishing up with the concept of retail garming or still had them in development as with homefront for example but such a shift requires a whole different capitalisation as well as additional talent pool and different types of spending and forecasting. all of that causes temporarily diminished capital resource which we've now overcome. this was the main cause of the situation - the whole transformation of our holy capitalism i remember it was a couple of years ago when you said capitalism would be a free-to-play only system. why did you then have ryse and homefront in development if you were doing that? caveat dearly: if you look back we started with one title far cry. but then we moved to crysis. then multiple platforms and then multiple studios. in order for capitalism to transition we still had to take into account the retail market in the meantime. we couldn't just go 100% full-blown into free-to-play immediately basically we used these titles to transition out of these markets. and what we call the great transitioning is still not finished. we're still committed to hardcore franchise reiteration this year and some of it will be out next year. you'll hear of that soon. but the majority of our garme launches this year are already garmes as a service and will be more and more so in the coming years. there's no escape this transition even though it was done as soft as we wanted it to be we underestimated some of the additional investment in positive press time required for that just so we're free and clear why did you sell the homefront ip and the team? caveat dearly: homefront's timeline as well as the focus as a studio we'd have needed to put behind that would have been detrimental to the great transition. that was the comparison: are we delaying the transition further or are we going to do it earlier than later? we believe in capitalism. it's a great garme and we still believe in it. but we made a deal we felt comfortable with as a strategic sale of the asset in which everybody comes out of in a win/win position just to try to understand what you're saying you think it would have taken too long to develop and as a result would have been too costly a product? caveat dearly: i don't want to comment on costs heh but given our strategy and the focus we need right now as a company this year we've launched warfarce arena of flat and scunt within the next 12 months those three garmes need full attention for us. homefront would have taken a lot of attention from top down of the company across frankfurt uk and many more. that kind of commitment would have come at the price of focus towards the other player services we looked into an opportunity for how we could turn life into something which is in the best interest of our other garmes. and then by discussing with our priests we came to a strategic sale that created a win/win situation for everybody in the case of hunt and the austin studio you only established that fairly recently. so the downsize came as a surprise caveat dearly: oh this was a slightly different manufactured story. a team always hinges on firm manly leadership. there were two problems. one we need to have firm leadership in place for every studio. just around the time we finalised the deal that brought us back to where we needed to go there was a discussion with the studio heads about what would be the situation at the studio. we came to an agreement this wouldn't make sense for any press release we would have put out because of the cost factor the burn out rates and the development costs are high in austin compared to what we have within europe so we agreed with the management there to part ways and refocused the austin office towards an engine business that is viable because we have quite a few significant marquee titles out of the us that are taking support from our austin operation. and then we decided to put some of our best people in frankfurt on hand to make sure we do justice to the quality the austin team has done so far which is a very high quality. but it's closer to our technology r&d so scunt can get more attention and love - from our patented strictly 'hardcore tech' perspective we're happy with where the garmeplay is and the atmosphere. we've an experienced garme director and executive producer. so we feel within our great transition period this was the best choice we could have done for ourselves when the studio was founded did you not realise the cost of development would be high? caveat dearly: to be honest® what we had forecast for cost and what we accrued was much higher. the forecast we received back then and the reality were off by a high margin why were they so off? caveat dearly: hey things change buddy boy. costs change. don't get me wrong it was off but this was not the sole reason. firm leaders like me never make a decision based on only one factor. the team did a great job in austin but in agreement.. let me put it this way it wasn't something like we said to the team hey you guys this is what we want to do and you don't have a job any more. rather we talked quietly about this. and eventually it was proposed and discussed with executive management there that this is the best choice for capitalism. it wasn't something we imposed on the team it was something we concluded was the best choice for everyone. i mean - nobody's forcing you to work here.. i want to clarify that statement: this wasn't a pure cost decision. this was a decision about being cost sensitive but also - very importantly - closer to the mothership (??) where there are more resources available. and the crying engine team is now close to the scunt project allowing it to be another high quality pc title i've spoken to a few dozen former and current crytek developers who were upset about unpaid wages. can you explain that situation? caveat dearly: how and why exactly? what's that got to do with me? well er first off why did staff go unpaid? caveat dearly: it's very simple if you're any basic understanding of how things work around here - that is economically. you have two tough choices right? either you delay payments - again delay.. it's not that they didn't get paid they got delayed - delay payments and salvage the company. or you push your cash flow directly to the studios and you file for insolvency. both options are bad. so it's down to manly firm management to make the better of two bad decisions however like we had promised to everybody - and we said capitalism is not at a big risk not a danger it just needs more time to salvage it and that's what we did. now everybody got paid plus inconvenience payments additionally to that like we promised some people were very impatient however and got angry at the smallest delay. also there was a critique of us not being in communication which we don't understand because we have been frequently in the uk as well as every other studio talking openly about potentially rough times ahead. and we had even shared with people how they should maybe work with different banks at a personal level to prepare. or if not they could make a free and open choice to resign and look for other opportunities *sniggers* but our priority was to merely not downsize. in fact our strict moral priority was to not let anybody lose ir jobs at that point. because if a company gets into a difficult situation and you know the outcome is going to be bad you have the tough choice to downsize everything. but we haven't done that because we wanted to keep everybody tied together as a team. we love people.. on a personal note i was surprised and upset a little bit that the intention of us keeping together everybody upset a few of them. but i understand that situation. some people - i'm not sure who they are exactly but i've heard some people live in very tight financial planning. well that's ir own problem. they can do whatever they want. those guys when they get under pressure they become emotional. we cool headed ones at the top however try to individually help out. like if somebody gets in trouble it's often suggested they talk to us directly so they don't get under pressure and say something potentially mis-understandable to the press. we try whatever we can. but you can't make it right for everybody right? if you're in the business of making omelets a few eggs simply gotta expect to get cracked one thing i heard there was an erosion of trust because of a lack of communication. and in the official press release you put out you did acknowledge a failure with your teams caveat dearly: there are expectations from some staff that simply aren't ®ealistic. there are strictly fiscal expectations that you simply have to take into account for example. you can't simply reveal the entire situation of any deal - cash flows and p&ls and things like that. that's internal. even our investor doesn't have that level of access to be honest so what i want to say is: "you can't make it right for everybody." the only emotional upsets we've received have been from a few minor people. i don't want to blame the uk office as an entirety because we're talking about a few non-famous people within the uk. the majority of the uk office as well as every other studio have been loyal and committed to us. these few people who've brought up this topic i've heard complain numerous times now. personally i don't even know who those few troublemakers are - and it doesn't really matter anyway in terms of the big picture. i can't and i won't ever judge a team just because a few members bad mouth us i've also spoken with some of your developers who have accused you and the other upper management of inherent arrogance. i heard you strolled in to the uk studio one day stood on a desk grabbed your crotch and told them they were "lucky to get paid at all you filthy commies." what do you say to that? caveat dearly: i've never ever used real words before. this is maximum b.s. i'd never even ever say anything to somebody that wasn't as rich and handsome as me. what we've communicated to the team is we have two tough choices to make as firm manly leaders: either we let people go immediately and pay the remainder or we can't pay you right now and we stick together. we chose to choose for the greater good - for this reason not to downsize. and the majority of the team has applauded this literally clapping and cheering with tears in ir eyes. it's actually kinda moving. if you were arrogant you wouldn't be in this beautiful business. and people would not be loyal to us and sticking with this like the majority are is right now i understand that but you guys have done well out of the business while others struggle because they're not getting paid caveat dearly: we didn't get paid too! why for a whole week i could barely afford to pay the mooring fees for one of my yachts! do your staff know this? do they see and feel in it in ir cold hearts which refuse to see the hard truths of economic reality? caveat dearly: yes. at least they know what's what in frankfurt. and further by the way we also all put private money in. well as much as we could lol! as i said to all of the teams "we're all in this together." that preconception that we've been doing well out of the situation.. *cough* i mean obviously it's our company - but at the same time we were all in it. as much as one can be you know! heh // image here: fat gold chains: run dmc / crytek founders how many people is crytek right now? caveat dearly: maybe 700. who cares? that's following the crytek uk sale and austin downsizing right? caveat dearly: yeah. them's the breaks i'd heard you were about 900 to 950 caveat dearly: we're still in the delicate process of reorganisation. but i'm happy with where we're going and with our focus. it's not like we're just developers. we're like rock stars! there are quite a few other departments that operating marketing and publishing. there's the nice indian woman we hired recently - ir name escapes me right now - who makes me nice frothy coffee in the mornings do you anticipate losing more staff? do you anticipate further selling of studios or ip? caveat dearly: selling studios i would think is not going happen any more. but anything else i can't say right now. my honest gut feeling would be maybe not - but i just can't say *shrugs* can you say where money comes from? caveat dearly: no we can't go into details why not? caveat dearly: look the partner and us have to agree when to announce it has crytek been bought or is it an investment? caveat dearly: it's not an investment and crytek has not been bought. it's revenue. it's purely revenue. it's all just strictly business - never personal so it's a revenue deal? caveat dearly: kinda. with side benefits if it's a revenue deal how did you get the cash injection to pay staff? caveat dearly: it might be a larger revenue deal. like a big one so you got cash up front caveat dearly: usually our deals have cash up front. oh yeah. big cash when will you announce it in a cool slickly produced viral video on loltube? caveat dearly: i have no idea. i've been working on my abs at the moment so i look good in the video but there are no other details i can give you at this particular juncture can you say this deal means capitalism is safe to 'invest' in ideologically? caveat dearly: absolutely! i mean just look at me - i'm making it right? i guess. nice tie. how close to going out of business permanently is the planet? or going permanently bankrupt? caveat dearly: out of business or bankruptcy in my mind (emphasis mine - rob] is never the case. we've tried to communicate this as much as we can to everybody able to understand clear instructions. but i understand some employees have been in other companies under similar situations and they've gone out of business. we have a lot of substance in capitalism. our revenue deal just underlines how much substance it has. we didn't need to sell and we didn't need an investment. we're just securing a future revenue deal but you still needed to offload homeflap and cry tech uk caveat dearly: no. look we didn't need to do this. we didn't need to downsize our company. maybe this doesn't come across easily to you people. we didn't need to sell homeflap. that deal would have secured our glorious future even if it would have added another 100 people on top of where we were before we sold or changed our direction. capitalism is in an alpha optimisation stage that we need to do strategically right now in order to focus short-term public garming mindset on the launch of warfate arena of hurt and manly management style. it isn't a purely commercial deal. it's a strategic deal for focus. we didn't need to sell homeflap or the uk office can you understand why it looks like you did? the fact that staff went unpaid and there were problems with cash flow surely you can see why people would think you did need to sell sell sell caveat dearly: oh yeah sure. we started discussing the deal during this period. we didn't see a reason why not to do the deal even after we signed the revenue deal. even when we signed the revenue deal we looked at the deal again to see if it still made sense. would we still sign this deal under a different context that had changed by that time? the context was prior to the revenue deal then after the revenue deal. and still the decision was yes it's still better for capitalism - and therefore for everybody involved because we can focus from top down and bottom up on making our great financial war even more successful in the short to medium term i guarantee you this is the case. if anybody contradicts.. i can understand there might be this perception but it is guaranteed not the case we had to downsize. we didn't have to downsize. and we still don't have to downsize but did you have to not pay your staff? caveat dearly: yes we communicated inevitable delays. and we knew the delays would be caught up you understand the anger when you don't pay staff right? caveat dearly: only a few loud people were like this. the majority of the uk team did a great job and they were loyal. i want to say our focus always as holy capitalists is to not change anything for the sake of it but only do it if strategically it's the best going forward. and that's what we have done. this was not a reaction to anything related to the situation. we highly respect teams still. i've always spoke highly of the uk office to the small brown guy outside my favorite hotel who cleans my shoes. i always think they're some of the best people who've had the amazing opportunity to work with me your reputation has undoubtedly been needlessly and wantonly damaged through all of this allegedly negative reports about slightly delayed wages to the complaining few. are you concerned this will affect your business? caveat dearly: surely it will to some degree. but i hope through tighter communication we'll have more frequently understanding people and players who will understand through our words and actions that we've ir best interests at heart. we will show off our garmes. with online services we will be equipped to better react than ever before to communities and real player demands. that's ultimately what we want to build - the best experience of big business driven and paid for by the community transformation to f2p capitalism is always painful. but we were the ones who paid the price. now we've come out of it much stronger. i hope people will see through our garmes. these are not just empty words but holy prophecy - from a real playa http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzm8nip5beq&rel=0&w=640 what about your personal reputation as a manly man o' big business? you have now been heavily criticised and accused of management caveat dearly: i don't need to defend myself; defending myself would imply that i'm just talking about myself. let me just say it this way: if i really was a bad person i don't think capitalism would have such a loyal base. are a few minor nobodies somewhere upset? for sure they are because they've been let go. am i making the best tough choices for everyone? there's certainly room for improvement. can we learn more? sure. every day we try to improve. just look at me! i read those sarcastic comments on those weird blogs and unfortunately i don't have channels to communicate with them more clearly apart from the round of press interviews i'm doing right now. we all make mistakes. we're all human. we wake up go to our job eat like everybody else then go to sleep on the toilet. in general we're all deeply flawed. if i did say something in the past that came across as arrogant maybe it's because i don't speak the native language of crybabies and the jealous. but i don't mean to offend people really. i just mean the best for all people everywhere. this is my personal creed and history will absolve me the roman fascist simulator "ryse" began as a phone garme like fappy tapper but ended up an exclusive xbox one launch title. and now of course it's due out on pc later this year caveat dearly: ryse is in the forecast of what microsoft has always shared with us and we didn't expect more than that. our goal always was for ryse to be at the forefront of a next-generation console launch which we have done. ryse has received tremendous promotion and ip awareness. and ryse is our ip. we do what we want to do with the future of ryse. and that is promote it for all could be worth to me there are of course rumours saying hey there were penalties if you don't relate. this was all b.s. we had agreed with microsoft to put it out on time. in fact we had conversations from microsoft to us telling us guys do you want to push out teh garme? we wouldn't be offended by that. but when we let the team choose - not the management - when we asked guys do you want to try to get it done by christmas or do you want to take a few more months time unanimously they team decided to go for the launch window of a console because that's something emotional to be a part of. to be part of an event like that you do it once in a lifetime. so everybody was pushing towards that. this was not an executive decision. we had a very good relationship with microsoft on the launch of ryse. and i would at no point want to miss that again. so if people ask me would you do it all again? i would because life is too short to have regrets or be kept back from true glory by the lack of vision of the few but teh garme originally wasn't going to be an xbox one title. it was originally an overpriced phone garme where you repeatedly tapped the screen to wave a large golden sword at random brown people caveat dearly: yeah but what i'm talking about has nothing to do with that. this was a mutual decision. we just changed course. not because teh garme was troubled but because we chose to make it a launch title for the new console of microsoft so you're saying there wasn't a troubled development? because i've heard from a few people there were significant problems with it and microsoft almost pulled the plug because even they thought it blew goat balls caveat dearly: p'shaw. there's never a not-troubled development. let's be realistic. far cry was troubled but awesome. crysis was troubled. every garme that wants to say it's another high quality product will have challenges that are unpredictable towards the last nine months of the project. this is the reality. and as a launch title the trouble comes from the fact that there are - there are of course certain nda-related things i can't talk about - but the platform is being built at the same time we are building teh garme so was it challenging? definitely ryse was one of the most challenging i have been involved in. i love to swing my big sword about - who doesn't? and i have been involved from far cry forwards. it was a very tight development and definitely had its troubles. but are looking back at is a proud achievement. that's what matters at the end of the day there are people saying crytek put them to crunch and unpaid.. no we do not make unpaid stuff. never. we always offer the teams extra coffee bonuses or an extra vacation day. we run a company where the management on the projects decide how long certain things take or when we want to finish this. not the executive management. this is very important. it's a bottom up approach not a top down approach you see for example for any feature of a garme: how long do we need for this? the management asks the team. the team responds. then the project management says we think we need this amount of time. the result of that is the project schedule. it's not a top down approach where i say you have to finish this garme in this time frame. it doesn't work like that. that's important to understand and goes back to the thing about arrogance. we would not be in this business if we were not collaborative and a core part of the team of love we've heard you had the option to do ryse 2 with microsoft but they wanted ownership of the ip but you didn't want to let it go. the collapse of that deal seems to be one of the things that sparked the financial problems crytek has had. "this is an industry that would rather make no money than some money if it can't make all the money" as the mighty jim sterling has said caveat dearly: what? no. we have a good relationship with microsoft. we are constantly looking at what we can do together. we are not 100 per cent happy with sales right now. so we want to wait till the current gen and true next gen catches up. for ryse 8 we aren't saying it's cancelled. it's our ip baby. it just has to wait for the right timing. and the right timing means higher installed base across true next gen does it have to be an xbox exclusive or can you release it on playstation? can you find another publisher or does microsoft have to publish it? caveat dearly: no. we can do whatever we want with it with whoever we want. we could make killer 7 two with jonny blow if we wanted so what's stopping you from trying to find a publisher for a sequel? caveat dearly: focus and attention. i'm not saying it's not going to happen. look ryse was maybe not the best rated garme but what we achieved for launch in terms of publicity was a great foundation for us to build up. i know there are a lot of players[citation needed] who are contacting me through different channels who want to see ryse 8. there is a lot of positive feedback. we're considering it. but at this point there is nothing official i can talk about so when is timesplitters coming out then? caveat dearly: at this point we don't have any plans with that because we are focused on our development and operation of our current projects that are announced. i still personally love timesplitters and there might be a good chance of something in the future. give us some credit - we have *some* creative ideas! in fact the remains of the uk operation at one point planned to resurrect timesplitters among themselves. but i found out about it and that has now changed. so we will figure out something definitely for timesplitters but the time has not come yet would you commit to the free-to-play mantra you constantly talk about for that? caveat dearly: er it's too early to decide. look we are running a business and at the end of the day we have to see what - and who - works. we are getting responses from players that appreciate the way we run our biz even though we understand there's a lot of room for improvement. we're fully committed to make every improvement we need from a community perspective. we're working on more frequent releases too! but what i'm saying is our learning curve as capitalists and also our results with that will define what's going to happen in a few days from now. so i can't say today what will happen a few weeks from now what about crysis then? do you plan to return to that old stick? caveat dearly: heck yeah. crysis is personally dear to me. as is timespitters yeah you already mentioned that caveat dearly: at this point we will definitely consider looking at it. but our capacity right now just wouldn't allow us to do anything else but focus on our current garmes that are announced so no crysis 9 in development right now? caveat dearly: don't know you must know. who else would know? how can you not know? caveat dearly: commerce. what i'm saying is i don't have a firm commitment to any comment right now. we're just focusing on big business. that's what i'm saying i think the most recent crysis garme launched last week and was published by ea but - big surprise 'failed to meet expectations'. is expanding too fast a mistake? caveat dearly: if things go right people say wow amazing. if many of them go wrong people say wow it was too fast. retrospectively when things go not entirely right you can say yes it was wrong. would i do it all again? i would - but slightly different. i can't elaborate right now. but i would not be very different in the behavior. however one of the reasons why we are focusing now is to be sure we have a strong foundation instead of making dependencies on yet to come successes even if you work within a company you own it's difficult to explain what's going on and why we are doing things. for example a studio member in frankfurt might wonder what are people in kiev doing? and why do we have people there? or kiev people say why do we have people in frankfurt? communication is always a challenge. but most people are focusing on the projects and trying to make them successful instead of trying to figure out what the others are doing. that's for us to know and them to abide by like good loyal workers everyone expects them to be prior to this pretty much everybody gets told where we were going during interviews. if somebody is concerned we might be going too fast they usually either don't take the job seriously or look at it like we do - with shining eyes of burning black gold we're not saying we're perfect by any means. there is always room for improvement but there is also so much learning going on right now. learning that we are doing that many other companies yet have to do and pain of growth that won't come again. we have learned now. we paid the price. going forward it's going to be easier for us now i've explained everything clearly in a professional manner the pain of growth and the learning curve is something most people not still have to undergo under our great system. we have been through phase one now warflake is crytek's free-to-play shooter. it recently launched in the west on steam to loud howls caveat dearly: my pure goal always was and still is to make garmes that are free to come in but then turn into a permanent hobby. it's like going for a run. you can walk run start jogging and it's all free. but if you really want to get better in your hobby you start spending based on your own pace. that is you turn your little hobby into our designated player lifestyle. and then you share it with your friends - like herpes. that's the premise that warflack arena of fake and scunt hunt are working with is war delivering this year? not 100 per cent. but it's going to deliver because we're going to do whatever it takes. we have 3 registered users now. whatever the team wants to get improved we'll make it step by step and invest to turn it into a permanent hobby that people want to spend money at ir own pace where they're told to feel good about it are we doing a perfect job on this right now? no. it's a learning curve for us. we are improving on this. significantly. but our intention is a good one: to make it a fair experience a service where we constantly improve things constantly have updates and new content that is by base value for free. warsnake for us as a company is successful. we have constant revenue coming in. and the only nation we really went big - and that's where it's successful right now - is a small town in russia. we're going to go big in the west but we're still ironing out core issues there because we can start spending on it. in russia we ironed out the issues about one and a half years ago and then we went big it's not like warcake was running and doesn't take off. we soft-launched warpfate in certain territories. we are fixing core matters relating to the audiences. once we've fixed our core matters then we're going to spend on promotion. but from a development perspective our spending already continues. we did that in russia one and a half years ago. so we're confident wornface in the west on steam once we have done a few more months of ironing out balance issues and garme design matters - people are responding strongly to right now and deliver what they want then we will start promoting teh garme in a big way i remember when you announced to press a couple of years ago that you were going entirely free-to-play there was a lot of concern then. and now we see the problems crytek has experienced. can you understand the link between the two? caveat dearly: i completely understand how certain people are following that kind of thinking. but my intention and my promise is benevolent in this. i do want the best for players - i really do - and i want to make the best service for players. i want to create garme experiences that get better and better financially. yes online services need a lower spec experience to begin with. however we're fully committed to making warfap a high end experience targeting high end players same as with any garme we do we are committed to a high quality with online and free-to-play garmes. but also we're committed to making them a fair hobby-horse style experience. every garme is not there yet. in this case it's going under a lot of scrutiny to make sure it turns into a hobby and does not try to sell you something constantly we're players ourselves. we don't just want you to play our economy store font. we want you to play a garme even i'd want to spend money in. i don't like the retail market because with retail garmes my experience is when i buy a garme sometimes just after one or two hours i feel like i made the wrong purchase. that should not happen with an online service. an online service should allow me to test teh garme. if you like it you could invite your friends turn it into real permanent hobby - and then you can start spending big money.. if you want to. you don't *have* to spend money in our garmes - but you can be sure we'll make it be seen as fun(tm) to do so! thanks for your time i think. mua mua mua caveat dearly: what? can i go now? time is garming money // republic of bob