News Frontier Developments plc IPO announcement
- Thread starter Michael Brookes
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If I'd be an investor I'd get rid of my shares post haste.
Wow!!
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Someone just bought 101000 shares of FDEV stock.
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That might make the price jump a little tomorrow.
Why? I'm no expert, but I am pretty sure that someone also sold 101000 shares^^
Launches on Monday 15th December LAST YEAR??!!!
Mu77ley
Volunteer Moderator
Yep, share options for Frontier staff. Nice (if not uncommon) touch.
All this means is that the 'Owners' of frontier - David and his close team I guess, get £40 million paid to them as a return on their investment in the game, so, without sounding cyncial as we all understand the capitalist society, dont we? You backers coughed up the dough to make this game (including David and his team I'm sure), you lot are rewarded with some ones and noughts that look like spaceships and stars and the fat cats get a different type of ones and noughts, 6 noughts to be accurate.
I wouldnt think all that 40million will be spent developing Elite or any other game, a large slice will go elsewhere and if I owned frontier I would look after myself too, you have to put food on the table somehow.
Bear in mind I am of a cynical disposition ;-P
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Welcome to faulty capitalist socieyty.
SHareholders shoudn't get that much money for that amount of money they could make the game allot better and hire allot more staf but they dont.
Becouse people arent actually capitalists at all but just greedy littel "insert thing that i cant say on the forums becous of cencorship".
Shareholders take a risk when they invest in a business. Without investors (shareholders) companies like Frontier would never be able to raise the money in the first place. This is because the risk is far higher than a bank would accept for a loan. Over 90% of venture-funded businesses fail, so the remaining 10% (like FD) are expected to make up the losses.
This "faulty" society is in fact what enables games like Elite Dangerous to exist in the first place. It's also the reason why we have Google, Facebook, Instagram, Uber, and thousands of other things that people use every day.
A couple of other points:
1. You can't directly translate money into a better game. Developers neee to be found and trained, as well as all of their support structure (managers, designers, etc). You can't just throw money at a project and expect improvements - in fact, it harms the project in the short terms as all these developers are brought up to speed.
2. Frontier are, in fact, hiring (see bottom of ED newsletter). This means they definitely are doing all they can to improve the game, but it's a slow process. Good staff are hard to find and you can't take too many on at once. See above.
3. The £40m is paid to the company, Frontier Developments. The evil shareholders only get their money when they sell their shares to other people - no money is lost from Frontier in this process.
Source: I am a founder & director of engineering at a software startup.
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
Cynicism is fine but I think in this case it is a bit gratuitous (and late, news is from more than a year ago btw) unless you have some kind of evidence. IPO s are not new. Most companies nowadays, especially the ones traded at the usual stock markets have required or will need at some point public offerings to be able to develop their products or carry through their investment plans at some point or another. Raising equity is just one more standard way to fund activities going forward. Debt being the other main one. And pledges a new third these days. FDEV is using a balanced approach with all these three ways as part of their financing.
If you think that doing something as relatively trivial these days as raising equity leads to dishonest practices in general then you need to think again.
It is clear not all the funds raised in this IPO have gone to Elite, FDEV has a few other products and projects in their portfolio aswell at the moment. But that is by the by.
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I didn't say anything about dishonesty...did I? Merely a cynical observation about capitalism and in particular on kickstarter companies /projects, the same goes for Star citizen, they are paying themselves a small fortune and the game isn't even out!
Kind of makes me worried about further monetization of Elite for the sake of dividends and shareholder confidence... are my concerns unfounded?
they are unfounded in so far as the "shareholders" are essentially DB & key staff plus 2(3) long term partners. they hold about 86% of all shares and their main interest for now should be developing ED to hit "quality resonance" and other devs to market via cobra engine & FDEV backend. the recent azmaon game was a bit of a hit i think ^^
all is safe & sound in FDEV land
(Full disclosure - I've never backed a Kickstarter for anything - and I never will...)
TBH this is what rankles me about Kickstarter in general: You give money to see something happen, and it does, and it is an amazing success - and then those who essentially bankrolled the "risk" by using kickstarter run off and have an IPO/Facebook buyout/big$$here.
The kickstarter backers are donating money to start someone's business. The return on investment is ridiculously small for them. For those getting the funding, it is a miracle - millions in seed money for nothing more than a flashy demo reel. When that sweet sweet investor cash rolls in for the pay-day, it was the backers who made it happen, but they aren't going to get a dime from it or see any benefit.
I get the argument that Kickstarter helps get concepts off the ground that can't get conventional funding, but the complete lack of shame or even acknowledgement when they go public or get bought out really turns me off.
This is equally true for all the other kick starter programs: Oculus, Star Citizen, etc. The ones who REALLY benefit from the best kickstarters are the people who get the IPO/Buyout money later on.
So, congrats to Frontier for making millions off Kickstarter and hey, we got a good Sci-Fi game too. Just remember to thank your backers for all that money you used to get your payday.
TBH this is what rankles me about Kickstarter in general: You give money to see something happen, and it does, and it is an amazing success - and then those who essentially bankrolled the "risk" by using kickstarter run off and have an IPO/Facebook buyout/big$$here.
The kickstarter backers are donating money to start someone's business. The return on investment is ridiculously small for them. For those getting the funding, it is a miracle - millions in seed money for nothing more than a flashy demo reel. When that sweet sweet investor cash rolls in for the pay-day, it was the backers who made it happen, but they aren't going to get a dime from it or see any benefit.
I get the argument that Kickstarter helps get concepts off the ground that can't get conventional funding, but the complete lack of shame or even acknowledgement when they go public or get bought out really turns me off.
This is equally true for all the other kick starter programs: Oculus, Star Citizen, etc. The ones who REALLY benefit from the best kickstarters are the people who get the IPO/Buyout money later on.
So, congrats to Frontier for making millions off Kickstarter and hey, we got a good Sci-Fi game too. Just remember to thank your backers for all that money you used to get your payday.
Well I suppose with Kickstarter people should bear in mind that they are paying for the product that is offered. Anything beyond that is not really something you're involved with, if they meet their obligations then your part in things is over. You're pre-purchasing a product rather than making an investment in a companies future, and it turns out that some people will spend ridiculous amounts of money to pre-purchase a product.
The moral of the story being that you should probably spend less on the Kickstarter and buy the shares with the money instead when the company goes public.
Just seems like a slippery slope, potentially with an "oh dear... we really need some money for these servers and game developments and we've already had our one hit wonder on Kickstarter. Did we mention all of the new online store content...? *cough*" moment in there.
Kind of already annoys me that any personality for your ships has been stripped away and monetised. You'd think basic customisation would be there? Just a few standard colours and then additional prettier ones online, but nope. Straight in their with purchasable personality.
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