Message from Erepublik cofounder
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by Plato
Dear Citizens,
My name is George Lemnaru, one of the co-founders of Erepublik. I am also the guy that came up with the Erepublik concept that was improved over time with excellent ideas from the community, the team and from the other co-founder, Alexis Bonte.
Creating a "New World" with economical, political and geo-political rules based on how things work in real life is something that I am really passionate about.
Still, the Erepublik idea has one weak point, technically speaking the project is very complex and costly... and our plan is to make it huge one day! In order to achieve that, we need to constantly improve it, fix bugs, come up with new features and allow the community to grow.
Not implementing the proper revenue system would make it impossible for us to do so.
Our plan is to launch this summer a better Erepublik version (V1), with less bugs, better gameplay and great new features. Our team is twice as big as it was in November when we launched the beta, so as you can imagine, our costs have grown accordingly.
In practice, besides helping us fund part of the growth of Erepublik, the e-payment system will allow Citizens with less time available to still reach some of their goals. This will also increase the demand for virtual goods sold by companies in Erepublik. Combined with the new war implementation, it will resolve at least partially the overproduction problem that we have at this moment in certain countries and industries. Everyone will benefit.
We already created the system to track gold consumption and movement in Erepublik so that we can fine tune it in order to maintain the economical equilibrium of the New World.
As you know there are lots of subscription based online games. Our goal is to keep Erepublik free as much as we can so that everyone can play and that those who invest time and effort in it can do as well or better than those who prefer to buy gold to grow their Citizen.
This is why we want to implement the Gold payment system in the beta phase so we can fine tune it to achieve this goal.
Again this being a beta that we are all building together, things are not set in stone. I look forward to your ideas and to discussing alternative implementing solutions with all those who want to give us feedback.
So please don't hesitate to comment this article or send me a direct message concerning this.
Thank you,
George
LATER UPDATE: Concerning this matter I will try to keep a constant dialog with the Citizens using the comments of this article.
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Comments
I don\'t see why so many are against the paying for gold thing, I think it\'s fine.
Why not other methods besides buying gold to \"allow citizens with less time available to still reach some of their goals\". For example allow to place e-companies ads in game, or pay to have a more detail company/party page, or just plain rl ads... Possibly limited stock for sell if you don\'t pay for it. So that gms less time would have to pay to have more items for sale... Like a upgraded account that would be able to have a customized profile. Btw why don\'t you guys sell t-shirts and so on?
Did someone say Erepublik t-shirts?
http://www.erepublik.com/article-83501.html
Exactly, me and some others even received a e-mail from the team asking for address and size so we could receive a t-shirt.
Multe salutari si incurajari din Romania. Ceea ce faceti este extraordinar. Good Luck with this project!
PHuSiOn9 has it perfect. Instead of buying gold, let people pay for extras.
If allowing people to buy gold keeps ads and registration fees off the game I don\'t have a problem with it. It would also help jump-start the smaller countries who have a few extra change in their pockets.
How about making a feature that won\'t give people ahead in the game based on how much RL cash you can get a hold of. Make it possible to \"upgrade\" your account. This will give you extra features, such as more inventory slots, a possibility to see alot of different types of statistics to see how your life has improved (salary, worked days, etc.) and how your country / the world is doing (economic statistics like seeing how much your local currency is worth, and has been worth previously). And give the donators a star or something to make them \"stand out\". I\'m sure many would pay a small sum to get extra functions, but these functions will still NOT mess up the game for others who can\'t afford to invest RL cash. Make it fair for everyone. If you sell gold, newcomers can buy like 500 gold and create a company, and sell products for 0.01 $ or whatever, and every other company will go bankrupt since this first one can afford to lose money for a few weeks. Just please, reconsider. I\'m sure there\'s so much more fun stuff you can add for donators that won\'t mess up the gameplay and give \"rich people\" an unfair advantage. As you can see ALOT of people will stop playing if this happens. Just please reconsider. I\'m sure you can make money with my idea, combined with ads and stuff like that.
I agree with PHuSiOn9 too. Pay for what you want without interfering the monetary market directly. This is one of the things that impressed me with this game and I would prefere nearly anything else than that. I think this project is great and if trying it out (it is a beta) is necessary so be it, but you will loose a lot of players and I think you will put the real economic diferences from our real lifes in here. Thats what bothers me cause I thought you had what you had through personal effort in erepublik...
I agree with this but please add some kind of limitation so that one can not buy a lot of gold like 1000000000 for real money....And if you make something that we can make groups it\'s really good(for Exa. a Nowar group or a terrorist group)
Not to mention these \"strength boosters and other fun stuff\". People with RL cash will be able to win fights against people who can\'t invest RL money. I trained every single day for 3 months, just to get beaten by some random dude who got 2.0 strength and decides to spend 20$ buying strength boosters and using 10$ more to buy gold, with which he/she buys alot of Q3 weapons. What\'s the point in fighting someone like that \"fair\"?
Another idea. Sell separate forums here on erepublik.com. So that I can buy a hidden sub-forum for my party. I can go on all night with ideas that won\'t break the game but still something that people will pay for.
who cares. it\'s theirs to run. you should be thankful that they are keeping it free
I agree with PHuSiOn9 and Ettan. Admins consider what you\'r doing!
Is this really worth losing your player base over? Think about it, many people will probably leave if this is implemented, and hardly anyone new is going to want to start playing if the only way to make money without spedning months playing is to pay.
Even if people say they\'ll leave, I think they\'ll stay. This game is too addicting.
also i think that there is going to be an important problem in erepublik market. Actually, resources are created by nothing... everything is only produced by working, not by consuming anything else, apart of the gold needed to create a company. Once GOLD becomes infinite in erepublik, as it can get by buying it in alien world, economy will explode.
\"economy will explode.\" it is already exploding... didn\'t you notice it crashing?
\"Yamato Suzuki: Even if people say they\'ll leave, I think they\'ll stay. This game is too addicting.\"
Some of us broke the habit of WoW, I think this is easier. 🙂
Not to mention these \"strength boosters and other fun stuff\". People with RL cash will be able to win fights against people who can\'t invest RL money. I trained every single day for 3 months, just to get beaten by some random dude who got 2.0 strength and decides to spend 20$ buying strength boosters and using 10$ more to buy gold, with which he/she buys alot of Q3 weapons. What\'s the point in fighting someone like that \"fair\"? by Ettan
Signed, 100% true
I cant wait for an option to buy shirts and other in game things. I want anything to be able to throw my money into EREPUBLIK. Anything to make it better and better.
Brazilian Portuguese Translation: http://www.erepublik.com/article-139531.html
Thanks a lot for the feedback. Let’s analyze together what would be the influence of the gold to the economy?
Let’s say I’m a new Citizen of Erepublik and I choose to buy gold with real money. How my actions will influence the economy?
- I will create a company – knowing that the Company owners can’t work it will result in a decrease of the overproduction (issue that we have now).
- I need local currency so I post an offer on the monetary market to sell gold – new gold enters the economy and will be easier for the Citizens that accumulated local currency working hard to buy gold.
- I used the local currency obtained to pay employees in a price dumping strategy (possibly) – Here we are worried rather on the fake accounts creation hat we fight with. Also, choosing a dumping strategy will be very risky and very costly. The companies with a good management will still have good results (management skills can’t be bought). The first result of this strategy will be the creation of new jobs for unemployed Citizens.
- I used the local currency obtained to buy products – new demand for the products in the economy.
The conclusion is that the economy will be rather helped.
It won\'t be as hard to break the \"addiction\" once the game is screwed, assuming it becomes so.
We want to implement as new features in the V1 (besides others) the possibility to buy with gold internal advertising within Erepublik (promote your party or your company) and private forums too.
But would paying a monthly fee for extra features would be a solution?
1. paying a monthly fee to access extra features will:
- let the Citizens that pay for gold with real money get access to those features
- forbid to the other Citizens to access those features.
2 buying with real money gold that can be used to access extra features will:
- let the Citizens that pay for gold with real money get access easier to those features;
- still allow the other Citizens to access those features if they gathered enough gold.
It’s frustrating also for us to work for a feature that will be used just by a small part of the Citizens.
On the strength boosters idea: I would prefer to brainstorm with you in our next article. It’s the best idea that we came up but we are opened to your suggestions.
I am still waiting more feedback concerning the e-payment system.
how will it increase the demand for virtual goods? demand is capped by the number of citizens, 100 citizens only need 100 food no matter how much gold they buy same applys to everything but weapons besides helping us fund part of the growth of Erepublik, the e-payment system will allow Citizens with less time available to still reach some of their goals. This will also increase the demand for virtual goods sold by companies in Erepublik.
@arknor: few comments before I\'ve explained this.
Nice to have you answering. I see it this way, however I didn\'t take much time thinking about it, possibly can end up agreeing with you. And thats a good point on the feature limited.
\"How my actions will influence the economy?\"
-I will buy a company or more than one- Better one with alot of workers
-i will exchange gold for a lot of currency - There are countries paying a lot of currency for gold, gold gets accumulated on countries budget
-I will advertise the hell out of my company promising higher than average salaries, or even gold bonus to some or everyone.
-I will not actually buy any products - I don\'t work and possibly in my region theres a hospital, also there is real cheap products.
-I don\'t really have to know all about management I just keep my prices a bit lower than everyone else, if I get in trouble, oh well lets buy a bit more gold.
The conclusion, it depends on the players with gold, the economy could possibly suffer more than be helped, in the end they will be the ones that matter.
Im no expert in economy and to be honest I havent made any effort to gather gold but I think the result is not that nice. At least in Spain (the only reference I have) the problem is not really the overproduction, but the amount of companies. It creates a bad circle consisting in prices dropping meaning lower salaries meaning less buying (even gold). GM doesnt work, but if there were less companies (meaning more workers) the companies would pay better giving citicenz the oportunity to improve. The worst part, I think, is that what I work hard to get someone with better real economy than me can get without doing a thing. You could actually have someone not working, not owning no company but having everything top quality. How is that fair?
To be honest, the example you give is taking for granted a good intentioned player. If someone goes for a price dumping strategy by buying gold this way, in the best of possibilities some companies are lost. That isnt fair. If they can manage that strategy by fairowned gold I wont say a thing, but by bringing real economy into the game... dont think so.
I know Im not being constructive, but Im not able to see nothing but the inconvenients of the idea (specially at these hours 😛 ) What you say about paying for features... you could give both possibilities. Pay with real money or with gold, but not buying gold in it self. Give gold a price but dont sell it.
@PHuSiOn9 - I don\'t see any bad influence to the economy on the first 3 situations. On the 4th: cheap products => you buy, hospital helps only when you click on the work button. On the 5th: agree with you but this means you have A LOT of money to spend.
@Meiko - the problem of the economy is not the low prices (that\'s even a good thing for many Citizens as they will afford to buy more products), but the stockpiles made by companies for not being able to sell their products. And yes, even in real life some of the companies with a bad management are going bankrupt. And also in real life people don\'t start from the same level, some of them have rich parents, some of them don\'t.
Features obtained both by gold or real money: what feature do you think of?
Are the players allowed to sell their gold for real money to the other players?
George, please have a look at www.hattrick.org
Its an webbased football game that maybe you have heard of.
They have at the moment 955 068 active users worldwide that compete against eachother. The way they pay for their servers and bandwith is with a \"plus\" feature where you can rename your team, see extra statistics etc. It certainly seems to work for them.
Me, im never gonna buy gold for real money, just out of principle. I play this game because its competetive and challenging, and that will be taken away if people can buy gold for real money.
George, please follow Drakner\'s idea instead. It seems like a far better idea. Ads would be far better too. I could pay money to buy gold, but i wouldn\'t be fair because then I mix the real world with this virtual world. Please think again. I fought very hard for my company, borrowed money, worked hard. Now I have almost repaid everything. But if I could buy gold for RL money it would be so easy, and it would mess up the econommys and markets. I loved Ettan\'s post and totally agree, so please read it. Here it is:
How about making a feature that won\'t give people ahead in the game based on how much RL cash you can get a hold of. Make it possible to \"upgrade\" your account. This will give you extra features, such as more inventory slots, a possibility to see alot of different types of statistics to see how your life has improved (salary, worked days, etc.) and how your country / the world is doing (economic statistics like seeing how much your local currency is worth, and has been worth previously). And give the donators a star or something to make them \"stand out\". I\'m sure many would pay a small sum to get extra functions, but these functions will still NOT mess up the game for others who can\'t afford to invest RL cash. Make it fair for everyone. If you sell gold, newcomers can buy like 500 gold and create a company, and sell products for 0.01 $ or whatever, and every other company will go bankrupt since this first one can afford to lose money for a few weeks. Just please, reconsider. I\'m sure there\'s so much more fun stuff you can add for donators that won\'t mess up the gameplay and give \"rich people\" an unfair advantage. As you can see ALOT of people will stop playing if this happens. Just please reconsider. I\'m sure you can make money with my idea, combined with ads and stuff like that. /By Ettan
Just as a first point, have you analyzed what you think the demand for this will be? Seems to me that the game isn\'t really developed enough yet to warrant spending real money on, and that a more steady revenue system such as ads would serve better in the initial phases. I\'m not really knoweldgeable about this though.
All of the positive effects on the economy that you thought up rely on many people using this service, otherwise the effect is negligible.
One of the developers stated before that you intended erepublik to be a slow daily progression, and would be very hard to progress alot in a short period of time. Have you gone back on this?
The biggest issue I see is that once the invite system is removed, the only way to get gold without saving up local currency for ages will be to buy. This will only allow people who buy their gold to take part in the economy part of the simulation. I would take months to save up to purchase a company, let alone buy export licences and quality upgrades. You say that someone who buys their gold may have bad managerial skills, but in the current form the game is quite simplistic and bankrupcy will only really happen if the person has no clue whatsoever.
The game will eventually revolve around real money, as the citizens that do will be able to upgrade their companies, augment their strength, and have huge advantages over those who choose not to pay. Involving real money into this SIMULATION will ruin it. I have seen \"our goal is to keep xxx free\" many times now, and it always turns out the same way: those who pay are the elite of the game and those who choose not to pay never amount to anything.
I realise you have bills to pay, and I will try to think of some alternate ideas that I think would better suit the game.
gaah!! why is everyone so upset?😛
The servers needs to be pai😛P
why not put up som Internet ad s all over the site`? 🙂
ill leave after the gold system comes in. as will alot of others.
but i dont really care, cant play a game for ever..
@Ape - is the Citizens choice if they want to sell the gold for real money, for the moment we can\'t give help on this as we can\'t track it, but it\'s an idea.
@Drakner - I analyzed few posts earlier the \"pay for extra features\" solution. But what extra features do you think of? Don\'t you think that will be even more unfair for the other Citizens to have access to some extra information?
@Michael - Don\'t forget that every solution that we choose can be changed. One of the most important reasons why we decided to implement the revenue system at this early stage is that we need first to see if this system is a solution. Don\'t know, maybe we will find a better one. You know that many features that we implemented wrong in Erepublik were later much improved.
\"All of the positive effects on the economy that you thought up rely on many people using this service, otherwise the effect is negligible\" - than where is the problem? in this case even the bad effects that you are talking about will be negligible.
We are thinking of a value like 10 eur=20 gold that will not affect the gold mass in Erepublik.
@Volkan - knowing that you are a very active and smart Citizen I\'m not very happy to know that Erepublik might lose you. On the other hand it would be much worst if the 16 guys that work at Erepublik will lose their job, the money invested in this project will be lost and the project will not be able to be improved.
So if it\'s only \"just out of principle\" the decision is much easier.
actually its the only (in my memory) game that asks peopel to PAY FOR A BET TEST 🙂
That is the point...
then you should rename it as \"closed paying beta test\" more accurate 🙂
I suggest, really, a low monthly fee VOLUNTEER, not obliged, that woul dbe accepted by the most (people is accustomed to HATTRICK, the very popular we b browser game you know..)
Apart crappy ea releases of bf2 of course 🙂 LOL !
If you are going to bring in the option to buy gold then make sure there is a limit to it, say for example you can only buy 5 gold a month, also do not make it an option to buy strength boosters.
I think the idea of adding an option to buy gold is perfect. It makes sure that those who don\'t pay aren\'t at a disadvantage. That those who have spent time aren\'t at a disadvantage. I think it\'s the only way to make sure that everything is win-win.
You could also simply set up a donation system. That\'s what they do on particracy.com Where people who donate get a little symbol and their name goes on a list on the front page.
I\'m still really against this payment system. It gives people paying with real money way too much benefits. They won\'t have to work (=be a little bit active) for their stuff, they can buy Q3 of everything. It will just really mess up the system. The fun is that you have to PLAY/work for your money.
And +1 with TerenceHill, paying in beta test?
(I\'m for more advanced options aswell, things that save you time, some nice statistical pages, some stuff to pimp your party/company/personal page etc)
Then its gonna be like the real world in Erep too. The people with money control the world. And the poor are the slaves. Stupid idea! I rather pay like 5 dollars every month for my account instead. Come on dude! Dont do this.
i think there are alot of things that can be thought of that can be a fairer way to pay for the server/costs. Yes, ability to change name, even though you state in rules that it cant be changed, i dont think that would have that bad of consequences. Maybe access to extra tips tutorials, on management, politics etc. Advertisement would definatly be a plus for ye. Just to avoid pop ups if possible. I still think strongly even with reading all that you said that buying gold is going to tip the game way in the favour of people with real money to spend. Knowledge can be as valuable, but it still needs brain power to implement, so rather than giving them all the gold they could ever need, make the people work a bit for it.
Someone said an article or two ago that a premium membership could include working and training 2-3 times a day.. this would upset the balance as much as buying gold.
There are many things that you could add to a premium membership, you and erepublik citizens just have to brainstorm and target the good ideas, and cancel the ones that would create domination for the poorer people.
I have posted this before but I\'ll post it again:
1. All citizens are born free and equal in dignity and rights (the IRL rich ppl get all the companies and workers, the IRL poor ppl get noting and can just click a few times a day)
5. Every citizen has the right to work and to receive a payment in exchange for his work (you are not receiving payment for work, you are receiving payment for having more money then someone else)
10. The economic system is based on the market economy and all the citizens have to act according to the fair competition, demand and supply rules. (with GFRG= \"gold for real gold\" there will not be fair competition and the supply rules will not fair either. and the market system will not be correct eighter, you should change the rule in: \"the economic system is based on your RL financial status and all citizens get money according to what they earn in RL or according to how rich their parents are\" )
Have you ever read \"the animal farm\" george? It\'s written by a guy with the same name as you (george Orwell), and although the content of the book has little to do with this, there is one resemblance: In the end, the pigs (who where punishing everyone that had not followed the their rules) where not living by the very same rules they themselves had made. while typing this I thinking the following: maybe this GFFG has more to do with the animal farm then I first thought: \"all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal then others\"
Well..i feel the urge to stress this i already said \"
i dont know ANY BETA GAME that asks for people to pay for deployment\"...
thats a fact
this game is far from being over and polished, still lots of bug, still no answer against multi account, cheating, and so on...at least less than expectec..
bringing a disadvantage from real money investment is IMHO at the wrong moment, stage.
If this change will go through I will quit playing Erepublik the very second this \"pay for success\"-feature is implemented. I think it would ruin the game as I have seen many browser-based games with similar features been ruined before. I understand that it is costly to run this project, but there should be other ways out of it.
Why not look other ways for getting the money you need? A lot of suggestions has been made here already (though I haven\'t taken the time to read all the comments). I have, like many others, asked for a Donate-button since day one. Why you haven\'t even tried that yet seems like a mystery to me. A lot of people love this game and wouldn\'t mind giving you a little money to keep up the good work, without buying themselves ingame advantages doing it.
Btw, Will you still ban citizens with bought gold? I mean, by buying gold I would be totally protected from being banned since I would cry out loud if you took the gold away or my citizen, or at least you will think twice before baning, how would you prove to us that you didn\'t mistook someone and banned...
I would take a close look a Hattrick.org if I were you. It\'s a VERY popular game with a million user or so. How do they earn money? You can pay a small fee to be a premium user (called supporter) for a month, six months or a year. As a premium user you can make a logo for your soccer team, change team colors and other small stuff that makes the game more enjoyable. NONE of these features gives the premium user a easier way to the top.
Another feature they have is to get results and make changes from your mobile phone. To a fee of course. Just think about it, send a SMS, again with a small added fee, to eRepublik and you have trained and worked for today.
I SAY IT AGAIN: TAKE A CLOSE LOOK AT HATTRICK! Thanks. 🙂
generalissimo i don0t like your name
Right...