rec.autos.simulators

I can see one problem. Papyrus has money involved here. They could get
financial gain by banning people. I am most definitely note accusing them of
doing that, but it could be argued, and it will always leave room for doubt
when the "police" are not without interest in the outcome themselves.

Joakim

   Frankly I don't think they would gain very much money even if, and this
is HIGHLY UNLIKELY, everyone who got banned bought another copy of N4.  I'm
pretty sure they don't get paid on a per-copy basis.  Money comes via a
contract with Sierra/Havas/Vivendi.  I would rather doubt if they got
increases in cash allowances everytime a copy of N4 was purchased. (ps I'm
not a business major and I have gone broke before so take ANY financial
advice of mine with some very large grains of salt.)
  Their financial gain will come in continued sales of future Papyrus
products which will largely depend upon keeping the online community happy.
If the Papy Loop racing continued to be crapola....everyone would just
migrate back to N3 and that would hamstring any future sales.
dave henrie

in general, developers _are_ payed royalties per unit.  is Papy an
in-house team?  if so they might have a totally different scheme.

--
Gunnar
    #31 SUCKS#015 Tupperware MC#002 DoD#0x1B DoDRT#003 DoD:CT#4,8 Kibo: 2
                                silence is FOO!

  Thats my lack of business training showing through...:)
I guess it might come down to the (**WARNING CLINTONISM**) definition of
units.  Is each box sold a unit?  or each thousand boxes?    Papyrus was
purchased by Sierra about the time N2 was released, so I was just assuming
they are funded on a strict budget by Sierra, so a hit sales product doesn't
make that much of an impact on Papy themselves...
  Even as off base as I may be..:)  I still don't see the small # of people
who most likely will be banned will make that much monetary difference to
Papyrus...However, our muckracker Dodgefan has recently posted he already
HAS purchased a second copy of N4 so I guess maybe there 'might' be a small
addtional trickle of funds...
dave henrie

I think this is pretty much the way it works in a traditional
developer-publisher relationship:

- the publisher ships a number of boxes to stores
- the publisher waits for a (rather long while) for returns
- the publisher then pays the developer a rudely small amount of cash
  per box that hasn't been returner.

and if the developer got an advance, they won't get a dime till the
advance is covered.

if Sierra purchased Papy, I guess it'd be a fair assumption that they
just write paychecks to Papy employees and hog all the rest of the
dough for themselves. :)

I haven't been in such a relationship myself, but this is what I
understand from numerous articles on http://www.gamasutra.com and
http://www.gamedev.net and a bunch of other places.

--
Gunnar
    #31 SUCKS#015 Tupperware MC#002 DoD#0x1B DoDRT#003 DoD:CT#4,8 Kibo: 2
                          DE RECTIS NON TOLERANDUM EST