eRepublik Is Stronger Than Ever

Day 3,124, 13:24 • Published in Greece Denmark • by Zacharia Raven

First of all, greetings to all Greek!

I have been residing in eGreece quietly for some months now and now I will break the silence by publishing a new article. In my previous articles I have defended dictatorship module, predicted the death of mercenary business , contemplated about eRepubliks road towards a meaningless war game and defended the micro payment system.

Today I will take a moment to talk about an interesting argument. This argument is, that eRepublik has been abandoned. There have been many of these arguments, for every single update for the game. Recently one was made to show that changes in the epic battle formula will kill the game. But these kinds of articles come and go. However, there was one article which really sparked a heated discussion. One reason for this was the fact that it was published by a well-known writer, Gnilraps.



Beware, the bloodhound of Plato is running wild again!

Gnilrap talks about a real interview of Alexis Bonte in which he talked about another eReplabs game being shut down. This is what Bonte sai😛 “--if we hadn’t had the luck of having a strong existing game with eRepublik.com that gave us the financial legs to take the learnings and try again. We know exactly what mistakes we made with Tactical Heroes (and other failed projects) and we made sure we would not repeat them with our following major mobile release—“

And this is how Gnilraps saw it: “--eRepublik Labs has made a corporate decision to abandon the future of this game.”



eRepublik is not going to die

Yellow media sells, because it offers simple things to simple minds. This has not usually been the case with Gnilraps, but this time he really hit the rock bottom. Sure, painting apocalyptic pictures is more media sexy than just flowers. But when the fact is in the opposite end of what people seemed to believe, it becomes something else. Did Gnilraps actually understand so wrong, or did he want to mislead people? Who knows.

Bonte made it very clear, that eRepublik is doing so well, that it has given other possibilities to eRep labs. Not one, but two. They failed once and have succeeded with the other one so far. Or in Bonte’s words: “but thankful every day for our long lasting success with eRepublik.com—“

Long lasting success.


According to some, these people have just abandoned their jobs.

I have bought the financial reports of eRep labs in the past, and I can confirm, that eRepublik was going down the drains until 2012 and maybe mid 2013. Amassing million-dollar losses, V1 and V2 made it clear, that without more focus in CUSTOMERS eRepublik would die. So that is what happened. More everything for gold. Removal of daily gold purchases limit, several campaigns at the same time, all the time. Longer battles etc.

And now eRepublik is a million-dollar profit company. In fact eRepublik has never done so well as a product. V1 might have been a better “game”, but it was de facto a bad product. It got axed, and so did V2. I must admit that I have had my suspicions on the true meaning of continuous gold sales. Maybe a firesale? Taking as much as possible before closing? But no, if that were the case, eRepublik would have closed by 2014, or mid-2015 the latest. Yet here we are.


Smart business focuses on customers

Now, this part requires some knowledge of business to grasp why Gnilraps statement is simply absurd. When a CEO is looking at charts of three projects, and he sees that 85% of incomes comes from project A, 75% of expenses from project B and a bit of both from project C, he does not abandon project A. He does not do it, because he knows, that he would be left with mainly losses. CEO does, however wish to expand the portfolio of products, so he takes the excess profits generated from project A, and distributes it to project C. He also decides to abandon project B. This is called reinvesting. As a limited company eRepublik also has shareholders, who demand dividends etc. Instead of giving all profits to shareholders they decided that they could generate more value by putting it back to the company.

This money would have never made it to eRepublik.

Or it could have, if shareholders had preferred it, instead of getting more money. This is not very likely. A CEO needs to show, that by reinvesting to other projects the shareholders would get more money in the future.
Now, what does excess profit mean? It means all the money that is not needed to keep eRepublik running, and managing the planned development (budgeting). This does not mean that eRepublik would not receive any updates. On the contrary as we have witnessed, eRepublik is going through more changes than ever before. This implies that the CEO has a significant lump of money for development in the budget.


Budgeting is not so simple.

Now, Gnilarps asks, if we should spend money on eRepublik. Obviously this is the same as asking if we’d like to see eRepublik in 3-5 years. eRepublik is a project, and a product. If eRepublik generates less money than project C, it might get axed for the last time. History does not support this scenario, as they already have accepted pretty gigantic losses, and eRepublik is after all their flagship. In business flagships are sometimes allowed losses on the expense of other products.


Yes or no? DUH!

Should we still pay?

Those who have made eRepublik successful are paying. Increase of the customer/player ratio has been obvious, so it is likely that current style of the game at least keeps those players paying, and maybe attracts others in time. All will not be customers, but eRepublik has made a decision not to charge a monthly fee for example, so they expect there to be casual players too, who might enjoy the free modules of the game, such as politics.
If we stop paying, our money will not flow to other projects, but nor will it satisfy shareholders nor keep erepublik staff paid. So, unless we want to quit, yes, we should.

Other ventures doesn't mean abandoning

eRepublik is one of many operations, and as such an important one. When we do not see massive changes every week (ATM we do), some people tend to say that eRep is dying, or forgotten. No, as a flagship and the gold-egg laying hen, eRepublik is treated with care. That means, less dramatic changes, and more small updates. They don't want to risk the customers by pleasing non-paying players. This is completely smart, and really the only way to survive.

Conclusion

It is important to understand, that eRepublik has never been this successful in the whole time it has existed. This success has given ereplabs more opportunities, but it's not away from eRepublik.com, rather from the shareholders, who expect greater returns from other ventures. By decreasing our support to eRepublik we don't just damage other projects, but the whole portfolio, and eventually eRepublik too. Don't be fooled by the yellow press, be smart and keep on tanking.


I want You to TANK!