A better revenue stream

Sloan

Observations:

• Dev work needs constant funding, or it doesn't happen.
• Servers need constant funding for hardware, or they get shut down.
• Players don't want emotes, different skins, pay-to-win, different weapons, &c.
• Paid DLC will split the playerbase in a problematic way.

Observation #2 tells me that there is a source of funding out there, but it's not reaching the studio. So, the problem seems to be tapping into that source without screwing over the servers and without annoying players.

Here's my suggestion: integrate a usage-based server donation mechanism into the game, share donations between servers & the studio.

How should it function?

• As a server operator, I should be able to easily get access to donations from people who have played on my server with minimal transaction costs.
• As a server operator, I should be able to use information about who donated and how much to give out reserved slots.
• As a player, I should have an option to add some funds to a donation account to be disbursed to servers which I use.
• As a player, I should never face any different treatment as a result of my donor (or non-donor) status, or the disbursal rate. I.e. admins and server operators should not see funding-related things until after that has happened.
• As a player, I should be able to choose a funding rate for servers I play on (quantity per hour played, quantity per month to be shared between visited servers, for example).
• As a player, I should be able to (optionally) whitelist/blacklist servers that may receive funds from me, with the default being any server which I use.
• As a player, I should be able to configure what proportion of disbursed funds go to the servers vs the studio, with a reasonable default set.
• As a studio, a player-defined proportion of the total disbursed funds should be received to support dev work.

What effects should this have?

• Fewer paypal-related transaction cost losses, funds can go (almost) directly to server operators and the studio as a monthly lump-sum.
• This is a steady-state revenue stream, so should be viable as a long-term funding mechanism.
• The servers I play on are directly supported by me with minimal effort from either side.
• Should avoid pay-to-win issues entirely, and with no more pay-to-play than already exists due to paid reserved slots.

How could this be extended?

• The "to the studio" part could gain additional options to allow players to directly fund specific projects. This can replace paid DLC, by allowing it to be funded before development ever begins.
• Servers could optionally declare a monthly revenue limit, and any additional funds could be sent to the studio. This could be part of the player-visible server information, so people could consciously prefer servers that support the studio.

Sloan

Also, funding should appear in local currencies whenever possible, to avoid currency conversion losses for EU-based players donating to EU-based servers in euros.

Dani3l

Awesome post, Sloan! :D

However I DO have to harshly add to your emote statement: Players do want realistic combat-"gestures", and NOT "emotes"!!! (ONLY the super awesome tactically useful gestures are realistic and 1st person view, ONLY THOSE can be used OUTSIDE the mainbases!)

And regarding the finance-stream: First of all, wouldn't two simple basic "one time donation" and "monthly donation" buttons on the joinsquad website make sense, so players can (like in Project Reality!) donate what they think is a fair compensation for either the ongoing development of Squad or its' current state (or even both!), I'm sure that all of those who are quite glad with how far Squad has already come, would donate quite a stable monthly amount altogether, and then OWI giving the option for donators to publish their ingame-name and (optionally) donation amount, so that everyone can see that OWI is actually receiving a very good amount of donations and then can not claim that they would "... have to add more microtransaction-emotes because players aren't donating enough"!!!

And in the end, I would really appreciate if OWI additionally would finally fix Battlerecorder!!!!!! EAC ("easy anticheat") appears to have become massively worse and worse over the past months, there are more and more often strange things occuring on specific servers (won't go into details here in public), and battlerecorder would massively help in identifying whether those are actual game-bugs or whether those are players who ruin the game for everyone by somehow circumventing EAC, including them having a negative impact on OWI's own revenue due to that...

Greetings from Daniel from Project Reality, Sloan! ;)

Sloan

Hey, haven't seen you in years!

The goal here was to use the fact that some regular transactions already happen, and simultaneously improve them & capture part of that as a revenue stream. A donation button could be added, but IMO would end up being rarely used compared to the flow of money that currently funds server hosting.