jdreyer wrote on Sep 14, 2017, 12:39:
El Pit wrote on Sep 14, 2017, 12:35:
$45K spent on a game in development... Optimism? Madness? Both?
Investment. I'm sure they were either planning on selling the packages when they were no longer available (i.e. when the game "shipped") or selling off ships individually.
^ this
I haven't checked the "grey market" (bullshit term) in a while but you could always make some nice money in the past from selling ships or game packages with LTI (life-time insurance).
The best time was early on when LTI was kept rather limited (it was originally even meant to never be available again past November 2013 IIRC but that became one of the many broken promises). I have personally also sold off ships and packages for 100%+ profit back then.
Ever since, there have been many changes and you can now get LTI on most of your ships via cross-chassis upgrades (requiring some investment in a new ship with LTI to begin with, of course).
The LTI market certainly isn't what it used to be and with interest in the game dwindling, I can totally see why these huge investors are pulling out. It will be interesting to see whether this refund did really happen and if it will maybe cause a domino effect. I am quite sure that a significant portion of game assets is held by investors.
The way how fast ships would sell sometimes in the past and in such vast quantities... this wasn't just rabid fantards but a huge part of it was always grey market resellers.