EMC financial Situation?

I think the reason he posts things like this here is because he enjoys fighting. He said that he hoped to community would go to "hell" and then said he was exiting out of his own thread. Hes a whiner and i think his main goal was to try to start a huge fight. He seems to be in a state of mind of where he thinks he is always right. @nerone stop trying instigating community fights, you are just digging yourself a hole.

I missed this part, lol.

What your talking about is a publicly traded corporation, or a 501c (or nearly any other) charitable organization. Kalland Labs, and by association, EMC, is neither. It is a limited liability corporation, which is very typical of a privately held corporation that is run by a small number of individuals.

Generally it's used to keep liability for damages from effecting the person's involved, and only the corporation (unlike a partnership). That being said, a private corporation can do as it pleases with it's revenue.

You could look at it two ways:

Kalland labs is selling you benefits (benefits of being a supporter) for X dollars a month as an option.
Or you are donating X dollars to the corporation and was being given a gift in kind (much like almost every charity, where they send you a picture or a blanket etc).

First off, sir, I only said such after the community proceeded to go after me. I did exit out, because I did not WANT it to turn into a fight. I had my say, and left it at that. And I come back, and it is nearly 7 pages long. I did not carry this on so far, you guys did.

Secondly, I do not enjoy fighting at all. I enjoy debate, and conversation over topics. But I do not, in any way, enjoy fighting. I would much rather this topic have stayed ON topic, adult, and mature. I cannot control what other people post.

I assume I am right on a topic until I am proven wrong. I keep an open mind that I am wrong, and wait for somebody to show me that I am. If they cannot, I assume I am right still until somebody or something else can show me I am wrong. There is no harm in this.

I have instigated nothing. I am only reacting to your reactions.

This I did not know. Which is why I asked how, and what, they did with our money and how they treated the money we send towards them. I don't think it is wrong to ask to know more about a company you support, since none of this information you have provided was public knowledge, as far as I know. A simple answer that nobody tried to supply is:

EMC does both. They take donations, and offer you perks in return, AND they take your subscription and sell you perks in exchange.

That was such an easy answer. And not worth 6 pages of flame and fighting. Thank you ignoramoose.

Many times I do something similar to that. Ask Aikar about my devil's advocate posts on the new shop system. What you've got to realize is that there's ways to keep it under control, and it comes down to keeping cool even if someone else explodes on you (which is tough).

If you throw out a tough question, you've got to be ready to hold your ground with it, and keep the straight and narrow path. Then you'll come out clean on the other side, while other people are exploding at you.

If you come out swinging with that as #4, you'll poison the discussion no matter what

Wha?

i don't understand this

Me neither :/

i do believe that sure you know the extra money after paying the bills and doing other things go to them that's fine if i had the money to donate or support i would. and the world has always's been this way the truth hurts only sometimes when it is covered up with lies Justin and Jeremy never lied about what they do with the extra money but why should we care with all the effort that is put in from them and all the other mods and this community to keep emc going why should we care answer me that.

I dont think either of those is possible. I am a very easy target for people to take shots at now, because I do have a reputation as a devils advocate. I intend to. Some people have to. The flames came so early in the thread that I just wasn't ready to deal with it. I expected at least a half page of posts before it devolved into mud slinging. It didn't even make it that far lol. My reaction when people come after me is to defend myself. Which is often wrong, and the reason I left this topic, hopig to end the fighting.

That was not the case and I had to return to defend myself, against the community and, unfortunately, the staff as well.

My points about the community are still valid, although they should not have been voiced in an aggressive way or used as insults. I stand by the fact that all of you have behaved deplorably, and that this community is devolving into something I am not sure I want to be a part of. You all need to get ahold of yourselves.

There are good, nice people, but they are few and far between.

Regardless, I am sorry if my posts offended anybody, they were not meant to as I have stated several times.

You're welcome. It's a valid question, but I think it would actually be pretty difficult to work out. If we don't count jeremy and justin's time as paid for, I know for certain that justin has paid his own money on several occasions for upgraded hardware or more hardware. He's probably bought stuff with money from EMC for himself too. I don't know what's exactly going on behind the scenes, but I bet it's not extremely simple.

Like I said before, I'm fine with my money going to justin or ICC as well as the servers. Justin and ICC run them, so indirectly, we're paying for them too

I never said I was not fine with it going to them, or that they did not deserve it. But the difference between running something you never intend to make money off of, and still taking money from it for personal use and running somethign you intend to make money off of are two very different things.

Agreed. I think at some point it changes though.

This server started just as small as all the others, and I'm sure at the beginning it was just a server someone had lying around and there was no plans to make any money, and it took very little time to manage. Now it's grown large, and at some point it has to make that conversion.

If anything, I'd look at it like the following, and like server hosting in general. If you buy server hosting from rackspace or wherever, they will charge you lets say 100 dollars a month. Part of that 100 dollars is going to the network / systems admin (my job) to manage those servers, but you don't really notice it because your pie piece is so small. As you get more and more servers, eventually you'd be better off hosting your own rack and hiring your own network admin.

I think EMC is nearing a transitional period to the second part. At some point, I honestly think we will have to be paying someone's salary to manage all this, keep up with the programming, etc. It will fold into the cost of running the server. To answer your original question, I don't know what EMC does with it's money, but I'm sure you'd have to PM justin to find out.

I believe pretty much everyone's good and nice on here. There's 40,000 people, so there's going to be different viewpoints, and disagreements, it just happens.

I've got to run for a bit, but to quote ghandi (since I've been seeing your ghandi quote quite a bit):

The moment there is suspicion about a person's motives, everything he does becomes tainted.

Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.
Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.
Faith must be enforced by reason, when faith becomes blind to it.
In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.
Truth never damages a cause that is just.

- Mahatma Gandhi.

Plus, it is impossible to PM justin, since he has it turned off.

Look, this is why I was considering leaving.

All, except a few (i.e. Jabr, ICC, couple others), are fighting and hating on each other.

This should stop, nerone and the players of EMC. Look, I'm sure our point was across a while, and yes, I will say it, this thread disgusts me.

I hate seeing you guys fighting. Hopefully a Mod may close this thread.

~D

Not sure if this discussion is still going, but from what searching I've done, the SMP servers alone (1-9) cost $16,800 a year, according to a post by Justin a long while ago. Adding the cost of the other servers, and that probably puts it more around $17,000 to $18,000 a year. It would take almost 1,000 diamond supporters to cover that yearly cost, and I am almost completely sure that EMC doesn't have even half that amount of (full year) Diamond Supporters.

Even if every single Utopia Residence was owned by a Diamond Supporter, that still leaves nearly $10,000 in expenses to be payed either by Justin himself, or the players themselves, through donations. (Buying Rupees)

These numbers may not be entirely accurate, of course, but if Justin somehow has any supporter funds leftover after all of these expenses, he deserves the bonus.

(or I could be completely wrong.)

Crazy you missed a key point.

$18,000 per year.

1000 diamond donators.

That doesn't work out. There are 12 months in a year, so divide the 1000 by 12 and you get about 84 diamond donators needed per month. I am quite sure we have may more than that.

It does make a difference, because donations are not something to be taken advantage of. If the owner of Red Cross were to take left over donations, and buy himself a fancy house, would people react angrily? Of course! That money is a gift, and using it in that way is an abuse of that gift.

However, if you donate money to Microsoft, and they go out and buy a new car, that is different. Because that excess money is not their lifeblood. They get paid to render services and products to people. Your donation, unless it was specifically towards something, is given with the knowledge that, while they appreciate it, they don't need it to survive.

THe difference between the two is that one is offering a product, and the other is offering a free service that some people choose to donate two. Two very different things.

Those look like big numbers. But let us break them down. 17k a year is 1,700 per server for a year. Divided into 12 months of the year, that is 141$ per server per month. It would take 7 Diamond supporters per month to keep 1 server running. Sir, I do believe we have that many when you include not just diamond, but gold also.

There is no possible way that Justin is paying 10k dollars a year to run these servers. Unless he is insanely rich.