Thank you @Dudeious.Maximus and @Guvnor for trying. At least you tried. 
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I love how this is being floated as fact. Please explain where you got this from? The reliance on whales to support a gacha game is long dead due to the market saturation of such games. There is a reason SG released VIP, the dolar a day shop buy, the multitude of low dollar deals available with each summons portal. Zyngaās last payout to SG was $240mil based on earning. And even the most ridiculous whales I know wouldnāt account for $120mil of that earning per you āgenerally accepted figureā
And here is where Iām done with this thread and taking another hiatus from the forums. The OP could not possibly have been more courteous with his thoughts, and put forward legitimate solutions. But instead this turns into ridiculous finger pointing BS about āyou spend so itās your faultā and finally complaining about other people complaining by mods! Lmao
Thanks for reminding me why I donāt come here often.
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Yeah there is rosta space is one, comes to my mindā¦ As more heroās coming out everyother monthā¦ There a long list of other Qol improvements that are needed.
People about being no1 takes all this effort etc makes me sick reallyā¦
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That is my personal experience that I shared I didnāt say anything about the op or others that spend.
How have I said you spend its your faultā¦ All the pulls I did in AR was free?
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I think the concept (Pareto) is 20% of cause made 80% of effect. In this case 20% spenders account for 80% spending. But spending is not income. This game also generate a lot of income from advertisement. That is why they make Mystic Vision more frequent.
On this topic: having played for more than 3 years, I am tired of this horde of updates and new contentsā¦ please slow down SG. Better new contents with more quality than new contents that are just repetitive quantity or rushed.
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This is so true. 
Whatever they were trying to accomplish with this pressure, it looks like it worked on those who feel like they have to have it all to stay competitive. At least for now.
For the rest or us? Well, Iām proud to say that today is a month since Iāve said enough. Since I have realized that my monthly spending of 250-300ā¬ is not nearly enough to keep the pace. So I said woooooow! You havenāt really deserved the money Iām currently spending, and you are rude enough to ask for more?!
So instead 250-300 in last 30 days they gotā¦ 8ā¬. And I feel much better. I recommend everyone to try this experiment. I havenāt gotten literally anything valuable in the meantime (no 5*, no aethers III, no 4* asc matā¦) But you still feel good, you know. 
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I honestly think when it comes to the commercialisation and longevity of this game we all have to take into account some factors that donāt seem intuitive.
Without fundamentally changing the game structure there is in my opinion a fairly fixed amount of time we can have a large, vibrant and competitive user base. This is largely due to the fact that new players will take years to catch up to the point where they can realistically compete with those that have been here long enough to build depth in their rosters / emblems and soon LBs. I believe most whales are by their very nature competitive and it gets harder and more expensive for a new whale to compete (you used to have to buy summons and 4*mats, now you have to buy emblems and soon aethers on top of that). If it is hard for whales to catch up it is even more so for those who spend less.
This coupled with the natural (or the sg accelerated) attrition rate of players leads to a smaller and more stagnant list of elite alliances which can struggle to maintain good numbers due to no fault of their own.
I think sg / zygna know all this and prefer to wring out as much money from this game before it dies even if that means speeding it up.
I work with poker (slot) machines and there are a lot of similarities between that industry and the gatcha model - the most profitable model is to burn out the addicted and find new ones when they finally break free. I think the sg / zygna plan involves a new game to replace this one as the main addict driven cash cow when this one dries up a bit and they are developing many of these to increase their odds of finding the next success.
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My current thoughts with Aethers ( I still call them chevrons) is that they are trying to find a way to distribute them for more active participation of the entire game community. The randomization appears to be a strategic way of manipulating results that somehow reward the lower tier players to catch up. I love Ninja 50 and had a great time with Magic Tower completion with buy in flasks. Who knows how this will turn out. I feel that guaranteed loot should be stated so that the cost of heavy active participation has some sort of quantifiable net cost benefit analysis. I am in agreement with fur and confused by their strategy lately with their introduction and Aether rewards availability.
Itās a disgusting shame to everyone! We are bombarded with new heroās events etc loot has sucked for a long long time. Now with all new heros events etc, the chance of drawing a good 4ā or anything else besides the normal garbage ādawa ,aife or any feedersā hasnāt changed at all EXCEPT for you get crap draws loss of gems i spent over a thousand gems and pulled all 3ā bs! And every player can vouche and say samething and small giant wont do anything about it except take our money and do nothing except lose players. This CRAP needs to stop and be fixed!! Before everyone decides its not worth playing anymore.
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I couldnāt be bothered to write a proper answer yesterday, but today Iām gonna throw my two cents in (the above still holds though).
In short: I agree with complaints about power creep etc. but fixed prizes for the top would only add insult to injury.
As we all know, in terms of power there is a huge disparity between big spenders and everybody else. And since those spenders enjoy (on average) better rewards from titans/tournaments/events, this disparity slowly grows. Adding fixed rewards on top of the existing ones would greatly accelerate the process. Iām fairly sure this would make a lot of moderate spenders quit - no one is going to pay only to be a punching bag. So no, this is not a viable solution.
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Iāve worked in the industry.
At the time it was considered a design constraint.
Still, if you donāt trust me - which is totally legit - you may want to check this here
The reason is to maximize income, but, as incredible as it can seem, whales are still essential to gachas.
Which is why, despite the existence of all the things you mention, they are releasing hero after hero: thatās where the big money is.
Or at least has proven to be.
Assuming this game actually has 1.4m playing, 10% of that is 140k.
Thatās less than 1k on average per āwhaleā.
Math is absolutely possible.
You are distorting: the fault is not in spending, but rather in what is being spent on.
On E&P spending is your vote.
What you spend on is who you vote.
Yup, but thatās a different cash flow.
One you donāt really manipulate with what you offer to players but rather what you offer to advertisers.
In terms of revenue they can yield significant money (up to 40% of the total) but they donāt belong in the players/developers dynamics: you donāt go to the stadium and pay the ticket for the sponsors on the shirts.
Ask NBA, they did without them up until 2017.
Ditto.
Not only is the most profitable, but it is the most replicable in the sense of frequency: the shorter it takes to milk your cows, the earlier you can go milk your sheeps (i.e. get to the next game).
Longevity is not that needed, you only need new herds.
And that is what many think Zynga chose as their business model.
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I donāt know what constitutes a whale in in this game (ie $1k/week, $1k/month, etc). I suppose a whale will/does spend until they get what they want.
If I had to put a number on those that āgo for itā, Iād say between 10k to 15k. But not all of those are whales, so Iād guess less than 15k whales based on my thinking.
I agree with you.
Thank you for the link. 2 things, with all due respect, worked in the industry can mean many things. And also how long ago you worked there makes all the difference.
With regards to the article, there are a few issues i have with it:
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The spend depth analysis for E&P is off base. I have several times over the content listed out in the table and I dont even come close to that net spend. Not even in the same galaxy. $440k for 70 legendary heroes and a maxed out base is an insane amount of money.
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the premise of 10% of a gaming population being able to afford that level of spend is extremely unrealistic, and this article does not explain where that premise originates from. Fewer then 1% of the US population earns more than $400k a year, and you would need to earn much higher to be able to afford to sink that much money into a game. So I find it extremely difficult to believe that 10% of a gaming population can afford that.
Whales were essential to gachas. But there are only so many whales in the marketplace. There is an overabundance of Gacha games out there and the reliance on a select few whales is no longer a tenable business model. E&P used to be whale dependent, they are not so anymore.
You have to look at scale right now. E&P has outgrown its need for whales when a large percentage of its player population can easily spend $20-$25 a month on it due to microtransactions (I already listed them above) and their vastly increased frequency of Ads via Mystic Vision. Using the same figure of 1.4m players and (admittedly) speculating 50% of the populating spending $25 a month, that ads up to $210m in annual revenue. The actual numbers are likely much lower but im totally speculating here and doing so to show how scale matters.
The hero pulls has big money, sure. Whales account for some of it. But your average C2P player will be doing a few pulls each month as well, and enough of them doing it will overrun any set of whales easily. Releasing hero after hero is for mass pulling, not just targeted pulling by whales. Since E&P has released the Hero Academy, people have access to limited offering heroes so SG feels the need to constantly spit out new ones to incentivize mass pulling.
I meanā¦ yes this math checks out. Only problem is that its impractical. 140k people affording 1k is not a real thing. I would be shocked if 14k people can afford it.
E&P is not a democracy. Its not an entity that you can lobby for change. Ive tried that, plenty have. It doesnt work. You have no vote here. Thats my point. There is no fault on consumers on the decisions made by the company when the consumer holds no power. The power is in a collective, mass movement by a majority of the consumers which frankly is never going to happen. Especially with people jumping down each others throat saying your spending is the problem or your complaining is the problem.
It still counts in revenueā¦
This I do agree with. But its only sustainable if you have a more secure stream of income, which the add revenue and the microtransactions give. There arent enough cash cows out there to keep milking and tossing and maintain a revenue stream based largely on them. Aka, not enough new herds out there.
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Errrā¦ that us$240m was what Zynga paid to the original SGG shareholders/investors (who collectively still owned the last 20%) for the second payout, that covers EPās performance over (1/3?) 2020 to (28/2?) 2021, transferring another 6.67% ownership to Zynga.
The us$240m is based on multiples of EBITDA (earnings before interest taxes depreciation amortisation). Itās not the actual revenue that was recognised for that period.
We donāt know what is the multiplier that was applied. It could be 3,5,10???
Letās say itās 5 (example)ā¦ that means EBITDA was us$48m for that period.
Working backwards, itās quite safe to assume EBITDA is at least 10% of recognised revenue, making revenue for that period US480m.
Meaning it was about US$40m per month on average for that period. Current player population is about 1.4m max.
Letās say that player population was at least 2m during that period.
Out of 2m, a fair percentage are f2p. Letās say itās at least 50%. This reduces āspendersā to 1m.
Now we split the 1m spenders to certain tiers:
Vc2p : only us$5pm : 250,000 : us$1.25m
C2p : only us$10pm : 250,000 : us$2.50m
P2p : remaining 500,000 : us$36.25m = us$72.50pm
This is just an example based on speculation.
Itās also possible that there are pockets of whales then. Those who spend >us$1000 per month, on average, meaning the percentage of f2p/vc2p/c2p may be much higher.
All that is certain is that us$240m was paid out for that second payment. And that itās based on multiples of EBITDA.
Game revenue is no longer at that level. Itās about us$20m per month, +/- 1-2m per month. I know cos I check every month. I check because I like to know who I am feeding every month when I spend on this game.
At this rate, itās probably recognised revenue of us$240m for the period that determines the 3rd payout. Assuming the same 10%, EBITDA would then be Us$24m. Using that same multiplier of 5, the third payout would then be US$120m. A far cry from that 2nd payout of uS$240m.
This would explain their current āmission statementā: revenue, more revenue, yet more revenue. Gimme gimme gimme.
If that 2nd payout wasnāt us$240m, perhaps SGG would not be as revenue-minded currently.
And yes, I am guilty of contributing to the current situation cos I was P2P during that period (2nd payout). Now downgraded to C2P and trying to go down further to VC2P. Itās tough yah but I am trying.
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Ofcourse this is all speculation. I just went off the only number that is publicly available for annual revenue. Also last I checked E&P was at 13M for monthly revenue. But I donāt know the source of that info so not really putting anything on it.
Also just pointing out, your revenue stream does not include add revenue which is substantial.
Point of all my ranting is that whales are no longer the driving force of that gacha system as they once were. Not with the scale at play now. Actual numbers are pure speculation.
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I check revenue stream from both Apple and Google stores. Add them up to get monthly totals.
That us$13m would be that from Google store, covers android players.
Revenue from Apple users is usually lower.
Errā¦ I donāt think that ad revenue will be as significant compared to revenue from summons.
Back when I was doing M & A (many years ago), ad revenue was taking off at us$0.01 per view and that was the basis used for many IPOS. It was a novel thing then.
By now itās so common that I doubt that revenue would still be us$0.01 per view but letās say that it is.
1.4 million players
4 views per day
Revenue per day = us$56,000
Revenue per month (30days) = us$1.68m
Thatās about 8%, based on average revenue of us$20m.
I doubt that itās 4 views though on average. More likely 2-3 per day. So the contribution is more likely to be us$840,000 (4%) to us$1.26m (6%).
That Amount is not to be sneezed at but it is not as profitable as revenue from summons.
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