Public Financial Reports

[no longer active 734]

In the entire time I have been on LotC money has always been this weird thing. We are told we have not enough money to run the server, now we have plenty, I never see whats actually happening. I think that LotC should take a page from the business world. At heart that's what LotC is: a business. To tell their investors, that's the donors here, whats happening with the money they make business reports. My proposal is that every month Tythus posts a summary of the money such as:

-Money gained (and how much from where)

-Money spent (To where)

 

As a potential bedrock VIP I would really appreciate knowing more information about where its going.

 

-Sili

 

[Flayings 165]

:^)

[no longer active 734]

Wow.... Making up Skype quotes won't do anything.

[big narstie 1701]

who cares and why does it matter to you lol wtf?? donators aren't investing in the server, you're told that you don't get **** all in the way of server standing other than the rewards you're given, it's not like £500 earns you a 10% share in LoTC

[Sporadic 2844]

We quite literally offer you an entirely free service composed of entirely volunteers. Why do you care where some ad and donation money is going? For all I care Tythus is using it as kindling for some delicious smores. 

[Aislin 4354]

I would like to see where the money goes, even though I'm sure most of it goes to Tythus' steam account. Letting a bunch of kids see a financial report is only going to enrage them.

[Knox213 10]

I would like to see where the money goes, even though I'm sure most of it goes to Tythus' steam account. Letting a bunch of kids see a financial report is only going to enrage them.

I also want to see where the money is going just out of sheer curiosity, i'd like to think the money is being spent to make the server better (IE: Advertisements, SERVER UPGRADES.) and know the money is not going on steam games :) 

[Aelu / Rel (Combustionary) 1540]

I've voted no.

 

More times than not, the server's stable enough. Large battles cause issue, but I don't see us ever getting good enough hardware to completely negate that. At the end of the day, it's a game I donated some money to because I enjoy it. If at a given time it works, great. If something's down, I'll just go play something else.

 

Releasing the information would be useful to some, but given our community, I've no doubt that some armchair economists would cause quite a bit of drama. I've no doubt the owners of the server use some of the money for personal gain - If I were in that position, I know I would. But I also trust that Tythus know's what he's doing. Making lotc's spending public would cause more problems than it'd solve.

[Helbolt 129]

I've voted no.

 

More times than not, the server's stable enough. Large battles cause issue, but I don't see us ever getting good enough hardware to completely negate that. At the end of the day, it's a game I donated some money to because I enjoy it. If at a given time it works, great. If something's down, I'll just go play something else.

 

Releasing the information would be useful to some, but given our community, I've no doubt that some armchair economists would cause quite a bit of drama. I've no doubt the owners of the server use some of the money for personal gain - If I were in that position, I know I would. But I also trust that Tythus know's what he's doing. Making lotc's spending public would cause more problems than it'd solve.

 

This.

[Samson Option 9652]

I demand the Burger King receipts. All of them, not just one. All. Of. Them.

[Kardel 1054]

Its not really investing, though. That would be way too complex. Its called donating for a reason. The server does not want to get in trouble from the government for soliciting money from people for whatever reason. By purchasing a donation package, you are not buying part of the server, nor are you really purchasing that package. You are donating money to the server on your own free will and being recognized for it through a system of perks. Don't call donors investors. We are simply donors.

[Cracker 4570]

I think we should look away from the investor analogy and examine the heart of Mili's critique which is him requesting financial reports for the server to insure there is some level of publicity regarding how donation money is spent.

 

Normally I wouldn't think this an issue, but  considering the few times I've been on the server as of late I have experienced uncharacteristic lag and slowdown which a server of our quality should not be having. Thus, I've no issue with that financial data being presented. I'd imagine Tythus skims off the top but I'd find the transparency would help foster player-staff relations versus being kept in the dark.

[Danny 2232]

When I was an administrator I tried to keep in touch with the spending and revenue of the server and it was extremely rare for us to be in a situation when we didn't get enough money to run the server properly. When I returned recently, I did talk with Tythus and I know things are still going very much the same as that, except with a recent giant boom in donations that's down to the change in perks: this is a novelty however.

 

When we discuss the money that LotC takes in, there's two main sources. The primary, but unreliable source, is donations - we can get anything from a few, to twenty donations in a month - that means that it can amount to $300 or $100, it just depends on the month really. That's then subsidised and supported by the money raked in from advertising - that's a surprisingly large sum of money, I was quite shocked when I discovered quite how much it was. I used to have access to both of the numbers for these revenues, but I obviously don't anymore. You're misgiven in thinking that we rarely get enough to keep things operating, because I can assure you that isn't the case. 

 

When you look at spending, however, you need to pay attention to the fact that we pay out for more than just server hosting. We pay for a web server, for DDOS protection on it and TeamSpeak, then more DDOS protection on the Minecraft server. We then have to fork out money on things such as forum skins, renewing licenses to software and in the past we have paid technicians to work on plugin projects for us up until we got the team we have now - I have full faith in the fact that Tythus doesn't skim any money from donations like some suggest. Indeed, the extra revenue from this month, as far as I'm aware will go towards redesigning the website for when the time comes IPB 4.0 decides to dance into our lives.

 

I don't think it's right that we make it total public knowledge quite how the funds are spent - it really isn't actually people's business, as bad as that sounds. However, I feel more visibility must be made within the admin team itself as (unless things have made a u-turn), it isn't ever that clear how it's spent to them either. We were going to sort that a while back, hence why we actually registered a company and were going to create accounts in its name for handling money so every admin would be aware of expenditure, etc but we never finished that (and indeed the company still exists with entirely no assets at all!) I don't think, however, making public mention of whether we are in surplus or deficit is a problem however - I know Tythus has before had to supplement server funds to ensure things kept running smoothly - and I think things like that should be told to the playerbase, just not exact figures as I don't see any necessity in that.

 

The server does handle quite substantial sums of money - over the entire server lifespan, I ain't sure quite how much has gone through, but I know that the sum for about 1/2 of it was extremely large (although the figure escapes me). I don't think it'd be fair to discuss things such as that publicly unless it was stored in the company accounts, as it isn't right for us to reveal the movement of money in and out of Tythus' own bank account. If there was enough demand for it however, I would agree with exact figures being revealed - even though I don't support the principle, if the demand is there sure - but only if it was going into the server's accounts.

[no longer active 734]

What I am getting at is what Cracker is saying, why not buy a better server? I'm not just going to come out and say that without knowing things such as our current specs and how much money we have. I was gathering information to become more well informed on the state of the server.

[Rhia 936]

Moved to the Great Library. It shall be sorted into appropriate category shortly.