ResetEra - sold for $4.55 million

Companies obviously change to. Just because there was someone there that believed in something or other one minute doesn’t mean they’re then going to be there in 5 years. As we found out, the “vision” for GamesRadar in 2008 was not the same as the one many of us joined in 2000. The community is at the mercy of Barry Boardroom. Or Sebastian in Marketing. Or whoever the flavour of the month is in the office.

GG

Exactly, whoever drew up this deal can just strawberry float off at any point for any reason: change of career, corporate infighting , shareholder pressure influencing corporate policy, change of ownership, the whole strawberry floating site imploding and then merely disposing of the asset to cut their losses. Anything can happen.

There is one thing and one thing only that can sustain a community serving its own best interests: either someone eschews ownership of the community as a simple moral act by not commoditising it and not package selling it, or its run by members of the community, or owned by them. Otherwise, their interests will never be represented, or rather they will be misrepresented or construed only in the interests of the corporate's profit agenda. To them, these people are merely data. They do not give one single solitary strawberry float about them.

4th anniversary. Wow what a milestone

Green Gecko someone offers you £4.5m for the keys to Grcade. Wdyd?

Dual wrote:Green Gecko someone offers you £4.5m for the keys to Grcade. Wdyd?

What's the anniversary?

The MOBA company is Swedish, how does GDPR work with that? I sit just people in the EU that can request their data be purged, or elsewhere as well?

Saw someone say this whole saga is basically Animal Farm....strawberry float

Dual wrote:Green Gecko someone offers you £4.5m for the keys to Grcade. Wdyd?

I'll give you an honest answer, if it came to a point where a site like this were financially valued at that much (sorry to say, it isn't).

I would retroactively calculate an hourly living wage for everyone who has given up their time to facilitate it, and I would place the rest of the money into a trust managed by a board. That board can have effectively infinite members or all users are automatically issued voting rights, making charitable contributions to other digital communities, digital rights activists, disability and mental health advocacy groups dealing with issues such a loneliness and communication problems, assisted living and accessibility playing games for personal well-being and connection, supporting the self employed media enterprising of marginalised individuals connected to games as a hobby such as streaming or indie game development as well as teaching about games, "game art" projects, and that trust is itself a principle stakeholder in a CIC company (the forum is owned by that company;- organisations or companies can be board members of other companies) that is running the community with a minimum ring-fenced 51% community interest profit split and maximum 49% wage or dividend split. These shares are what the buyer gets, but I would probably instead - if I sold anything - sell less than a majority stake by distributing most of the shares first.

Moderators and technical staff get paid from whatever balance of advertising or sponsorship is compatible with the people who actually use the website (this is the sustainable element as no matter how big a figure is, it's still eventually exhausted especially when you get involved in other causes), or the site is simply ad free because you could probably run a website for a 100 years on 4 and half million dollars if you didn't just keep most of it.

It would depend on which causes the community wants to support and what the compensation looks like, but I think what's fair is a CIC is set up in such a way that it is literally not allowed by the government to spend more than 50% or whatever of its profits on those gainfully employed. That is regulated similarly to the charity commission, the accounts are public like they are for other companies and the report has to be published yearly to explain what investments have been made in the community interest. It would not be possible for the buyer to dissolve the CIC and re-incorporate it as a new company limited by shares, because they would not have the voting power to exercise that, so instead they could sell the shares either back to the other shareholders or somewhere else. The main problem would be if people went over to the dark side and sold their shares to the corporate buyer and gave the buyer a majority share, then they could do that.

Whatever I did, I would never sell out a community outright, but let's be honest, ResetEra always was wholly owned as an LLC or something, and was operated at a profit, even if they tried to make it look different and now it has been wholly sold, NeoGAF was the same. Only Rllmuk is a bit different with its Provident Society.

What pisses me off is it's not exactly transparent that ResetEra was a profitable company, owned by and hinging on one person (in their own words), and then they've sold it and spoken in such a way to suggest it has not materially benefited them and they are oh so sad about it, this was something they never really wanted to do etc etc. Jog on mate. They didn't eschew ownership or personally operate in such a way that they safeguarded or ringfenced aspects of its operations that served the community, even by just doing that with a certain standard of moral principles or ethics, they stayed in the dark and then sold it for a strawberry floating massive sum while quietly amassing value. They knew they were doing that and they tacitly or rather openly admitted that by selling off the lot, rather than going for a partnership or something. There's no other reason why the valuation would be so high than it was looked at economically, scrutinised at every level, by packaging it up and selling it. It's really duplicitous as it was my understanding ResetEra was supposed to be a community driven offshoot of NeoGAF but instead they simply created a bucket and poured those users into it - with a view, that much is now apparent, to sell. This is collecting and trading people's personas, activity, and their data, 100% no other way about it. It's user acquisition and dissolution, a $ to every person.

Mafro wrote:The MOBA company is Swedish, how does GDPR work with that? I sit just people in the EU that can request their data be purged, or elsewhere as well?

I think it's anyone who can request that, but if its a citizen of an EU member state requesting that of a business based in an EU member state, then they are legally compelled to do so, and to do so in a specific timeframe. They can't ignore it because that's a crime and they can't make the process overly burdensome either. However, I do think that the right to be forgotten stuff pertains to your personally identifiable information, so you might have to demonstrate that it's personally identifiable and also that it's no longer pertinent or in the public interest according to the means for which it was originally collected.

(So say for example it wouldn't apply if someone had an article about them that mentioned their name but the allegations in it or facts about them were true, even if they themselves submitted that information.)

So quite a lot of it hinges on the real names and stuff thing. For example, you could get your e-mail address and IP address deleted but they might keep the posts: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/gu ... asure/#ib2

Edit: Hahaha I'm so glad someone over there has pointed this out as well as me:

Not much! It'll mainly just be someone else keeping the lights on. There will be no imposed changes to the rules or to the staff. Members will not have to change how they post. B-Dubs has agreed to stay on as general manager. At the staff's request, and with the new owners' permission, I will continue to make myself available as a consultant in case they ever believe I can be helpful.

Once you sell, unless that's part of the contract, you can't guarantee this at all.

KK wrote:

Green Gecko wrote:we've been approached by an advertising network once (one based in bath that actually looked very genuine with reasonable policies).

SWERVE: It’s a subsidiary of Future Publishing.

Sounds like an agency James Bond would hunt down.

It’s baffling to me reading the thread on era full of bootlickers saying well done. Censorship or suck ups or whatever it’s icky.

Era's staff so far seem more concerned about saying they don't need to be paid, rather than talking much about the other issues being raised in the thread such as Era of all places now being partnered with forums they would normally consider social cesspits under their new owner's umbrella, and the owner's plans for "new ad formats", creating growth and "synergies with the MOBA Group".

One of the mods opened up donations to try to prove that people didn't really want to give them money...or something. They ended up with a bunch of donations and said they'll give it to charity.

Garth wrote:Era's staff so far seem more concerned about saying they don't need to be paid, rather than talking much about the other issues being raised in the thread such as Era of all places now being partnered with forums they would normally consider social cesspits under their new owner's umbrella, and the owner's plans for "new ad formats", creating growth and "synergies with the MOBA Group".

One of the mods opened up donations to try to prove that people didn't really want to give them money...or something. They ended up with a bunch of donations and said they'll give it to charity.

This is such an absurd thing to do it makes my brain hurt.

People already were giving the site money. It was just all going to one person.

If that mod just takes the money I will laugh very hard

Hey, just to prove that I'm not trying to make any money, you can donate to me here:

YikesYallAreFoolsYo@Paybro.com

DON'T donate though, just give some money if you want to prove I'm not trying to make anything.

What the strawberry float

As for the don't need to be paid thing, it's one way of ducking out of responsibility. If they were paid, even retroactively, they'd then have more of an onus to be accountable for shitty moderator actions and social engineering the site (nazi mods etc), whether that's true or not, people would be demanding answers and that's stressful enough when it's essentially unpaid work. Except now all of a sudden it very much is paid work... They just didn't get paid any of it.

The site has been when and truly strawberry floated over as a whole.

OK thanks for clarifying.

You'll have my offer by the end of next week.

EDIT: Damn that was meant to be a PM.

Dual wrote:

Green Gecko wrote:

Dual wrote:Green Gecko someone offers you £4.5m for the keys to Grcade. Wdyd?

I'll give you an honest answer, if it came to a point where a site like this were financially valued at that much (sorry to say, it isn't).

I would retroactively calculate an hourly living wage for everyone who has given up their time to facilitate it, and I would place the rest of the money into a trust managed by a board. That board can have effectively infinite members or all users are automatically issued voting rights, making charitable contributions to other digital communities, digital rights activists, disability and mental health advocacy groups dealing with issues such a loneliness and communication problems, assisted living and accessibility playing games for personal well-being and connection, supporting the self employed media enterprising of marginalised individuals connected to games as a hobby such as streaming or indie game development as well as teaching about games, "game art" projects, and that trust is itself a principle stakeholder in a CIC company (the forum is owned by that company;- organisations or companies can be board members of other companies) that is running the community with a minimum ring-fenced 51% community interest profit split and maximum 49% wage or dividend split. These shares are what the buyer gets, but I would probably instead - if I sold anything - sell less than a majority stake by distributing most of the shares first.

Moderators and technical staff get paid from whatever balance of advertising or sponsorship is compatible with the people who actually use the website (this is the sustainable element as no matter how big a figure is, it's still eventually exhausted especially when you get involved in other causes), or the site is simply ad free because you could probably run a website for a 100 years on 4 and half million dollars if you didn't just keep most of it.

It would depend on which causes the community wants to support and what the compensation looks like, but I think what's fair is a CIC is set up in such a way that it is literally not allowed by the government to spend more than 50% or whatever of its profits on those gainfully employed. That is regulated similarly to the charity commission, the accounts are public like they are for other companies and the report has to be published yearly to explain what investments have been made in the community interest. It would not be possible for the buyer to dissolve the CIC and re-incorporate it as a new company limited by shares, because they would not have the voting power to exercise that, so instead they could sell the shares either back to the other shareholders or somewhere else. The main problem would be if people went over to the dark side and sold their shares to the corporate buyer and gave the buyer a majority share, then they could do that.

Whatever I did, I would never sell out a community outright, but let's be honest, ResetEra always was wholly owned as an LLC or something, and was operated at a profit, even if they tried to make it look different and now it has been wholly sold, NeoGAF was the same. Only Rllmuk is a bit different with its Provident Society.

What pisses me off is it's not exactly transparent that ResetEra was a profitable company, owned by and hinging on one person (in their own words), and then they've sold it and spoken in such a way to suggest it has not materially benefited them and they are oh so sad about it, this was something they never really wanted to do etc etc. Jog on mate. They didn't eschew ownership or personally operate in such a way that they safeguarded or ringfenced aspects of its operations that served the community, even by just doing that with a certain standard of moral principles or ethics, they stayed in the dark and then sold it for a strawberry floating massive sum while quietly amassing value. They knew they were doing that and they tacitly or rather openly admitted that by selling off the lot, rather than going for a partnership or something. There's no other reason why the valuation would be so high than it was looked at economically, scrutinised at every level, by packaging it up and selling it. It's really duplicitous as it was my understanding ResetEra was supposed to be a community driven offshoot of NeoGAF but instead they simply created a bucket and poured those users into it - with a view, that much is now apparent, to sell. This is collecting and trading people's personas, activity, and their data, 100% no other way about it. It's user acquisition and dissolution, a $ to every person.

[

OK thanks for clarifying.

You'll have my offer by the end of next week.

EDIT: Damn that was meant to be a PM.

I know that was a fisher post but it was an interesting thought experiment seeing as I'm not financially wealthy, so thanks

It's legit one of the reason poor people stay poor and wealthy people get wealthier though lol

Don't get me wrong, I think it's perfectly fair people get paid if there is a means to do that but 4.5m off of the back of largely other people for what was maybe a small slice of that investment at best? I'm talking a few thousand dollars, while within 3 months implementing ads on a very high traffic site and also taking subscriptions. Man what a player. Perhaps I'm under informed but that's a historic payout.

If you look at the brokerage firms used too it was pitched and sold as a luxury brand too, and some M&A consultants have said it was too low so they must have been desperate to get away

What's the GRcade turnover like these days? Are we rolling in it yet? One day it will be our claim to fame!

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:What's the GRcade turnover like these days? Are we rolling in it yet? One day it will be our claim to fame!

GG has just moved to a more expensive property.....