Hat tip to marketsforISK blogger croda for digging into CCP’s 2015 financials, which were released to the public at the end of March. The good news is that CCP posted record post-tax profits of $20.7 million in 2015. Even if we exclude the one-off sale of the World of Darkness franchise, it was a record year for the company, particularly since 2014 saw heavy losses.
The bad news is that studio revenue is down 16% since 2014, thanks largely to a decline in EVE Online, whose revenues are down to their 2009 levels. In fact, croda extrapolates a 16%Â subscription dip for EVE.
“EVE Online Revenues in 2012 were $64.1m vs $53.7m at the end of 2015. That is a fall of 16%. If we dangerously assumed that the proportion of Plexed accounts stayed constant then that would indicate that Subscriber numbers have fallen 16% to 340,000 and that they still represented 75% of revenues leaving the Plexed accounts to represent 25% (=$53.7 x 25% = $13.4m). At $20 a shot per month that would indicate 56,000 Plex accounts and so total players at the end of 2015 of 396,000. And then add in however many Trial Players there are were.
“Alternatively, we could merely observe that in 2009 EVE Online Revenues were $51.8m and in 2010 EVE Online Revenues were $57.4m. We know that the Subscribers in 2010 were 360,000 (China was not around back then) so that indicates that the above 340,000 subscriber number is in the right area.”
Croda concludes that “CCP has been cleaned up and has plenty of cash to invest in new projects” but rightly wonders whether that cash will be reinvested to grow old projects like EVE, spent on newer projects like Valkyrie, or pushed toward future projects we have yet to see.
EVE Online, which lost several developers earlier this year amidst company celebrations over its record financial year, is currently seeing an uptick in activity thanks to the player-sparked World War Bee conflict and the impending Citadel launch. EVE: Valkyrie and EVE: Gunjack launched on the Oculus Rift last month, while DUST 514 will sunset in May. The company announced last fall that it was planning to reinstate full expansions for EVE. Stay tuned for more from EVE Fanfest later this April!
