How is Starbound being funded?

I think they should make Starbound as expesnice as Gears of Halo Theft Auto 5; you either sacrifice a Goat and sell your souls to Satan, or watch the movie Spider-Man 3.

 

Is there an option where someone stoves my head in with a brick? Methinks Ill choose that one.

 

They have a guaranteed 2-3 purchases from me (seeing how my friend will make comments that I should buy him Starbound until I finally do it ;-.

:catface2:

 

I was under the impression that many of the staff had jobs of some kind and worked on starbound when they could.
However, if the worst were to happen, they could probably offer up preorders. low balling it, let's say that 10,000 people preorder it at 10$ each So, that's 100,000$. Divide that by 14, that's 7142.85$ per person. So, that would be enough to survive off of for 1 month I believe (depending on the standard of living where you live). If they ran out of money for some reason, they could do this and either really bust their butts on it and get it done as quickly as possible, release it within the month and hopefully make money back quickly enough to where everyone can survive, or do the preorders, do some job hunting, find part time or even full time jobs that would pay enough for them to live off of and work on starbound in the time they're not at their actual job.
In short, to my knowledge, they're fine. and if they're not, there are things they can do.

 

But see the problem is, I dont think theyre just going to get 10,000 preorders....

 

you seem to misunderstand, i'm basing the number off of how many newsletter subscribers they have and almost cutting it in half just to be on the safe side and account for any preorders they might not get right away. Personally, I think starbound will sell like crazy, but i'm just basing this off the numbers we actually have.

 

I think they stole all the Nails for Nintendo's coffin and sold them, funding Starbound development for the next 71 years.

 

Non-renewable? How so? Tiy made massive profit on the last game he developed, and now he is using the profits from that game to fuel this project. That's exactly how Nintendo funds their projects, but I doubt anyone loses sleep over their financial planning. Capital resources are renewable. They renew them by releasing new games and getting paid. If they never release new games, they SHOULD run out of money eventually.

As for the actually financial side of this, I'm FAR from an expert, but I can make some flimsy estimations. Terraria has sold over 2'000'000 copies. Each copy was ~$10, not counting copies sold during sales (which were probably offset by however many they sold over and above 2'000'000). That makes 20'000'000 gross income. Dividing out taxes that I don't care enough to look up (I'll guess 50% is taken out), that leaves ~10'000'000, since I won't factor in production costs (they were probably living with parents, or had jobs to cover costs of living for two developers). That means Tiy has 10 mil to pay for production-- That is to say 10 mil to distribute between his staff (the development team's salaries) and to buy his deluxe yacht/houseboat. Now, since this is very much an estimation, let's say I could be off by as much as 50%, then he'd still have 5 mil-- More than enough for 20 people to live on for a decade if they don't wipe their butts with money instead of toilet paper, or burn it in their fireplaces instead of wood. =/ If you are losing sleep, you need to take another math course.

Of course, if I am way off on my math and the Devs are actually struggling to make ends meet, I'd really like to hear it from them. So far though, all I've heard is Tiy saying he doesn't feel right about taking people's money if they aren't receiving a product (like Wonderlust), which makes me think he is standing solidly in the green.

 

Eh. I hear 5 mil isn't that much in terms of game or movie productions, so, you know.

 

ummm...Tiy didnt make terraria. He worked one it, yeah, but he wasnt the developer. He did a lot of the art for it. Also, i've not heard that terraria sold 2M copies, much less 2M that doesnt include ones sold during sales. You also need to factor in, in this case at least, that at least 2 people were working on terraria, Tiy and the main dev, it was the main dev's project, so most of the profit probably went to him, but I doubt Tiy was paid such an exorbitant amount as you suggest.

 

It's barely breaking even for an existing company, but for a start-up it is incredible. Bear in mind, most movies and games are made by huge teams of hundreds of employees. Terraria was developed by two people. To get some comparison going, Super Mario Galaxy is the ninth best selling Wii game worldwide at ~10 million copies, which is about four to five times the sales of Terraria. The game sold at a higher price, of course, but that is mainly due to a dramatically higher production and marketing cost that was almost completely absent in the case of Terraria. I'm not saying that Terraria made more money than Galaxy or anything preposterous like that, I'm just trying to add in some perspective-- the fact that Tiy and Redigit made the game themselves means that they didn't have to pay hundreds of employees to design, code, market, and distribute their game.
The fact that you said you are losing sleep over this kinda gives me the impression that you think Tiy is working out of a cardboard box with a laptop he fished out of a dumpster behind Radio Shack while drinking what appears to be urine in a Starbucks coffee cup. I just don't think that is anywhere near the truth of the matter. Actually, I also doubt that they are filthy rich either, but I think investing to build Chucklefish instead of simply saving his cash for retirement is a wise move for Tiy.

 

Tiy could easily get a bank loan as the CEO of Chucklefish. He can show hits on this website as to proof that the game his company is almost done with will generate a lot of buzz/media attention.
FYI buzz/media attention = sales. So I would say that Tiy is probably rich and will probably be a lot richer by the end of 2013 unless...catastrophic harddrive failure!
So the only thing you should really worry about is if they don't have back ups of their work and the hard drive dies.

 

Huh. You make some good points. And I suppose pixel graphics probably wouldn't cost nearly as much as Crysis graphics in this case. I can see how Tiy can probably make 5 million dollars last long as he spends it wisely-

Sweet Notch Jeb preserve me! Just the thought of a loan gives me nightmares. I sure hope Tiy doesn't have to resort to that.

 

Most small companies do get loans, it is nothing to have nightmares about.

 

I trust credit loans like I trust sharks that havent been fed for 3 days.

 

But what if everyone else are just bots, and we're the only ones willing to buy the game?! On the off chance

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that Tiy doesn't make enough money, they just might break his legs. (I have no idea where he live, so I pictured him living in 18th century florence)

 

I can't decide if this thread is full of love and concern for the Developers, or fear and distrust of the credit system and common business procedures. Do you have no confidence in Tiy's ability to make sound financial decisions? I find your lack of faith disturbing...

 

Im just saying, you might as well get force choked by Darth Vader, than take a credit loan from a bank.

Nothing really to do with Tiys business choices really :/

 

I like Tiy as a person, but he could very well be one of those guys who gambles away 5 million dollars in one night, and have to sell his enormous restaurant chain to his rival just to make do. I'm serious; that actually happened.

 

we need inter planetary/inter system (like, between solar-systems) carrier pidgeons. SPACE PIDGEONS GO! not even your spaceship will be safe from pidgeon fecal matter! MUHAHAHAHA. And to add to the fun, lets add spacegulls! (get it? instead of SEAgulls they are SPACEgulls!) imagine jettisoning your trash, and within seconds have the entire blob of garbage being swarmed by ravenous space gulls. (... sugar-free does not mean random-inducing free... *takes swig of Pepsi Max*)