I.P. for sale?

[IntelDan]

What would it take?

[Maverick]

money

[IntelDan]

Are you the official spokesman?

[GasTeddy]

IPs for sale

[CptTrips]

Only Hitech could answer that.

First only he has the revenue and overhead numbers.

And that means nothing if he has no interest to sell.

But a reasonable number might be 40x NET monthly profit.  (Assuming capital equipment is not that big in this case but you'd have to take into account the salaries for someone to run it and maintain it in calc of NET).

[hazmatt]

Spitballing here. These numbers are probably completely wrong because I'm basing on looking at the scoring numbers.

From the scores it looks like active subs is between 400 and 500?

Splitting the difference: 450x$15=$6,750

$6,750 x 40= $270,000

I suspect if you offered $1,000,000 that it might be considered.

[CptTrips]

From the scores it looks like active subs is between 400 and 500?

I'd say the max number of online you've seen in a year x 5 is a reasonable guess.

Some people just hold accounts open for a long time without often playing.

AND you have to deduct from gross revenue salary for someone else other than HT to maintain\bug fix to get a NET.

My guess there is no number you could rationally offer that would be high enough to tempt him.

Unless you were Elon Musk and willing to vastly over pay for a business.

[hazmatt]

If you could keep the current subs at (estimated 450) you're break even point would be after 12.3 years. (I'm guessing most wouldn't be interested in that kind of return)

[CptTrips]

If you could keep the current subs at (estimated 450) you're break even point would be after 12.3 years. (I'm guessing most wouldn't be interested in that kind of return)

And when you are dealing with a founder, they often have wildly irrational views of the true value.  Either they think think can turn it around or they think about all the blood sweat and tears and money they put into it over the decades means anything.  It only has meaning in as much as it has contributed to the current revenue numbers.  Otherwise that was long sunk costs and of no interest to a buyer.

Unless you are buying a brand like Aston-Martin, or Harley-Davidson, or Microprose   Then you don't really care about the revenue but are buying the brand recognition that has been built.

Sadly I don't think there is much stored value there.  Unless you are 50-60 yo and played Air Warrior, you probably have never heard of it.  For some reason it just never clicked as much as Warbirds even though a better game and probably more successful over more years.

No amount pure math would justify, is probably worth him giving up the job.

[hazmatt]

I agree.

The other problem would be the learning curve for whoever took it over. I'll try to over simplify it here.

For example:
One day when you pull the trigger on the P51 it blows up.
Somebody who doesn't know the nuts and bolts of the design would have no idea where to start looking for the issue in the code.
If I had (theoretically) written the coad, I would know for example that the code for firing the guns in the P51 was under a function called:
Fireweapon(); which calls a function called P51armamen(); which calls a function called 50calballistics etc etc...
If you have no idea the actually design of the program you are going to spend a lot of time reading comments and searching for stuff that would be a 5 minute fix for the person who wrote the code.

So unless the dev would be interested in explaining this stuff to somebody who could understand it or making it opensource I don't think it would matter. If it was opensource who would decide what to implement and what happens if the development goes in 5 different directions?

All a very big can of worms

[CptTrips]

I agree.

The other problem would be the learning curve for whoever took it over. I'll try to over simplify it here.

Exactly.  You could sweeten the pot to workout a transition consulting gig for HT to standup a new team, but someone about to run something like that is going to cost you in the 120k range in the DFW area (at the very least).  Throw that in you month NET profit calc and see what you have left.

The most rational path would be for a competitor to buy him out, close AH to kill a competition, contract HT to migrate his MMO server tech to back their front end client, like IL2 or DCS or CP.  That could give them a quick leg up on achieving what took HT decades.

AH has the best MMO server tech in the business, IMHO.  That is a severable, viable, fungible asset that would have real value.  That would allow DCS or IL2 (or possibly CP) to focus on their core competency and simply BUY the server tech they need as a near turn-key solution rather than spend 5-8 years more trying to re-roll their own and not benefiting from the decades of experience and all the hard lessons HT has already worked through.

In that case it would only make sense to shut down AH to not cannibalize their projects.

A LOT of tech companies do that.  Simply buy and absorb.  Faster and simpler than home growing.  Microsoft did a ton of that.  Google simply bought Youtube.  It didn't invent it or develop it itself or duplicate another version of their own.

[Dadtallica]

We did this exercise a few months ago. With Lusches stats the sub count was approximately 800 and we figured its worth about $600K give or take.

We had another same time on what it would take to hire the team needed to compete and you’re looking at around $500K just to start.

I know because I started the threads lol. I can’t find the first one for some reason.

[CptTrips]

So as an intellectual exercise say you looked at it as a buy and strip.

Compare it to hiring 3 backend engineers at 120k and them taking 4 years to create a server that could perform to HT level.

Not all projects are successful.  You could spend years and still end up with a mess vs just buying something that works and getting it a lot sooner.  Time is money.  Time is risk.

I could see (for instance) DCS say, will buy your server tech and your contract to get it migrated to our product in 6 mo. $1.2mil.  That would probably be much less risk for them and risk avoidance is worth money.  That is probably worth more money than trying to buy the game itself and turning it around.  The game itself has no value except as a proof-of-concept for the server tech.

So that would end with AH closing anyway.


Or it might just be worth it to HT to goas he is now.  Keep it as a retirement side gig and work it only as much as amuses him.   Someone described AH as a fixed-annuity for HT now and I think that is insightful.   He spent decade investing in that "annuity" and now he just wants to kick back an collect the payments.  That also is perfectly reasonable to me.

[Dadtallica]

So as an intellectual exercise say you looked at it as a buy and strip.

Compare it to hiring 3 backend engineers at 120k and them taking 4 years to create a server that could perform to HT level.

Not all projects are successful.  You could spend years and still end up with a mess vs just buying something that works and getting it a lot sooner.  Time is money.  Time is risk.

I could see (for instance) DCS say, will buy your server tech and your contract to get it migrated to our product in 6 mo. $1.2mil.  That would probably be much less risk for them and risk avoidance is worth money.  That is probably worth more money than trying to buy the game itself and turning it around.  The game itself has no value except as a proof-of-concept for the server tech.

So that would end with AH closing anyway.


Or it might just be worth it to HT to goas he is now.  Keep it as a retirement side gig and work it only as much as amuses him.   Someone described AH as a fixed-annuity for HT now and I think that is insightful.   He spent decade investing in that "annuity" and now he just wants to kick back an collect the payments.  That also is perfectly reasonable to me.

This is why combat pilot may be doomed at the start. That’s a lot of money to throw at a 10+ year hopeful return.

$500k was only year one to restart AH. Using your $120K salaries that are pretty much average, we already have a problem in year #2.

Or go as is, a hard drive in a closet that generates passive income in retirement until it no longer does. Who doesn’t want that?

Let’s just ride this gem until it dies!

[AKIron]

The average computer programmer salary in DFW area is considerably less than $120K.