Starting from October 5, 2009 Virtonomics won’t be free-to-play any more. The new game model will be Shareware, which means that free playing will be possible for 14 days only.
There will be 2 options provided for Virtonomics players:
1. Subscribers game – “Anna” realm has been opened on September 29, 2009. (Here are ).
- all enterprises and game functions (except for decorative, like office decoration) are free
- game situation updates require payment
- the minimum cost of monthly subscription is $8.25 (in case if purchase the whole year)
2. Game with obligatory minimum payment for services – “Mary ” realm (Here are .)
- game updates function is provided in addition to purchased game services
- 1 game point spent by the player for any kind of game needs will ensure 6 full-scale game updates (but no more than 90 in total). It means that every player must spend at least 5 game points per month to ensure himself a normal game process
- the player can choose any kind of services or enterprises to spend game points required for game update
There will be two different game modes: Demo mode (DM) and Full mode (FM)
I. Regulations of DM
a) For 14 days starting from the moment of registration, the player can play the game in demo mode for free;
b) Every time the player spends game points, it will change his mode from DM to FM for 6xP (P = number of spent game points). However, the total duration of paid period can not exceed 90 game updates. The rest of unspent free period will be added to the duration of FM, when the player switches from DM to FM;
c) When the player loses his DM status, he keeps all his actives, qualifications, achievments, etc.;
d) Every new expenditure of game points will add to FD duration 6xP updates. However, the total duration of paid period can not exceed 90 updates;
e) In case if after 14 days of DM the player didn't switch to FM, his game character will be expelled from the realm;
f) The DM companies have following restrictions:
- it is forbidden to take part in competitions and promo-actions of the realm;
- it is forbidden to use massive messaging function.
g) The restart will return 14-days DM period back to the very beginning;
h) Registration in the game is only possible after e-mail confirmation.
II. Procedure of FM conclusion
a) In case if the comapny officially goes bankrupt, it WILL NOT disable the rest of the utilization regulations;
b) 10 and 5 days before the end of paid period, the player will receive a notification;
c) After the first non-payment, the company will be "frozen":
- all the workers will be set on vacation;
- advertising campaigns will be suspended;
- sales of all enterprises will be cancelled (except for auctions);
- all the market offers on technologies and licenses will be cancelled;
- all the market requests for licenses will be cancelled;
- all the offers for goods sale will be closed;
- all the contracts will be zeroed.
The player will receive a notification, his access to company will be partially blocked;
d) After 5 unpaid updates, the company will be ultimately terminated - the contracts will be cancelled;
e) After 90 unpaid updates, the game character will be expelled from the realm;;
f) The restart will return all the counters back to zero, and bring the company to the regular 14-days DM..
III. Procedure of switching to the new system
a) Counters of DM and FM will be activated on October 5;
b) All players registered before 28.09.09 , who had spent game points, will automatically get a paid period of 6xP updates (P – number of spent game points) and a 14-day bonus. However, the total duration of paid period in FM can not exceed 180 updates;
c) The players without any spent game points, will also be switched into DM, their assets won’t change.
IV. Other changes, related to the new game model
a) First payment bonus is cancelled;
b) Restart in FM will bring the player back to the step of company creaction, without any restrictions on the validiy of FM. The player will get back half of game points, spent for qualification, in form of undistributed points, which can be spent on qualification growth ONLY;
c) It is forbidden to post any kind of announcements about credits, sponsoring funds etc., as well as requests for credit. Credit-related announcements will be deleted, their author will receive a warning. Violators can be blocked or expelled from the game;
d) VIRTs and bonus points (gained as a prize in competition, etc.) are equal to paid points, and therefore can be used for Full Mode prolongation.
V. The expected modifications
1. Within the nearest 180 updates (until the end of November) some will be implemented. Besides, we’ll introduce a system of several characters amalgamation (subject to they belong to the same player).
2. In future we’ll introduce non-manufacturing business industry.
What the heck is this???
I read the shareware realm policy... This is to much... Try to revised some of it, and make it more attractive to players.
I still wandering why is it that all of a sudden this become a online payment game... Aren't this site making any profit from us and advertisement?
Anyway i just stated my point of view, its up to the management to do something about it.
2.10.2009, 15:37
comments from facebook
Jeffery Ngui (Malaysia)
What the heck is this???
Its a good game! If the initial plan to charge players after 5th october stil carry on, i think i will stop playing..bye bye virtonomics!
Khetkan Dumrongthai
Even you can play it free, it is very difficult to stay in black. All of raw materials must be paid. You can't produce high quality products unless you control upstream industry. So pay to play won't be good for all stakeholders.
Joseph Araneta
Yes this is a very good game that is not only entertaining but it also teaches people how to handle business properly even though it's not the real thing. Some people may not be able to afford to pay for it, people who just rent from internet cafes or try to borrow someone elses computer and connection to play the game. It is understandable that the developers would need funding to improve the game some more. My advice would be to charge people who'd agree to use advanced capabilities of the game and just let the basic version be free.
Charbel Ghsoub
Not a wise "business" move by Virtonomics.. eventually they'll lose everyone..
even those who carry on playing after a while they'll get bored.. because only few remained in the game!
so i suggest to the "genius" who thought of this to simply "Think before you Act"
Take care everyone.
Kyle Cadwallader
Its a great game, gives me something to do in the morning and in work. I pay for online games like aion wow and warhammer online... i get to play them 24/7 if i want. i update virt onec a day takes 15 mins. Not allot of value in that one in all fairness.
i would like it to stay free so i can grow my business, but it dont look like im gonna have that fun any more.
I’ll try to give a more detailed explanation to why we’ve decided to stop the relatively-free business-mode of the game. I won’t say much about technical reasons like the need of unified standards of work in different markets and concentrate mainly on economical reasons which are understandable to most of you.
The decision to stop Free-to-Play mode was hard for us and we tried to delay it for as long as possible, as we tried to apply some action which would help us to provide economical efficiency of Free-to-Play realms and avoid such radical measures. Unfortunately, we couldn’t succeed and below I’ll give a more detailed explanation. The understanding of impossibility of Vitronomics development on the basis of relatively free game-mode became finally clear about half a year ago and can be explained by the following reasons:
1. Vitronomics is quite a hardcore project which is strictly applied to its niche, which leads to the limited amount of its potential audience in comparison to most of other typical online games.
2. This specific character of the Vitronomics determines a much lower “website visitor – registration – active player” conversion (this is where the difference between the 500 000 of registered users and the amount of current active players takes place), which naturally determines a rather high price of attracting one active player. And this number is relatively invariable.
3. The “active player – payer” conversion (a “payer” is a player who has bought at least one game point within the whole game period) is standard for most of the free-to-play games, the particular number is 10-20%, although the understanding of a “payer” is different for different projects. In 2009 this index in the Vitronomics is minimal despite of the appearance of new paid services like artifacts etc. It might be explained by the economical crisis.
4. Every attracted player needs 3-4 months only to fulfill the advertising expenses for his/her attraction.
5. The average period of a player active presence in the game is 4-5 months, and by the 4th or 5th month has payments become close to zero.
6. Considering that for now the expenses for attracting clients are not more than 50% in the project’s expenses structure, it’s not hard to count that the project’s income is far from covering its expenses. Very far.
7. Where in this model is the room for increasing efficiency of the project? The efficiency of attracting clients? – Yes. If we are speaking about the industry rates and acceptable periods – the maximum is 10-20%, that is for how much it is possible to lower the cost of more or less target clients. The rate of optimizing is approximate to the rate of the growth of advertising costs. The percentage of players attracted via “100 friends” and partners is no higher than 7% so far, but we keep developing our partnerships. Speaking about the “registration – active” conversion – its rate has increased. There appeared quests and other features. It has increased from 10% to 15%. The period of a player’s active presence in the game has also increased thanks to quests and other features again. Within the last year it grew approximately from 3.5 to 4.5 month. There are still many things to improve, including gameplay which will give us the rise of efficiency by some percents but not by times. And the latter is what we need.
8. The main sourse of income for Vitronomics is the increase of paying players amount while keeping the average month payments the same. Throughout the year the Vitronomics has faces quite many changes aimed at the solution of this task. Among other innovations there appeared the possibility of creating government enterprises, artifacts, additional features in personal office, new payment systems etc. However, not any of these innovations separately or in complex with others has given an increase for “active gamer – payer” conversion rate. As I mentioned above there is a graduate decrease in this conversion’s rate.
9. Some time ago we conducted a research (in the Vitronomics and also in some other friendly projects and businesses). One of its results made us draw a conclusion which might seem questionable, but also quite obvious. This conclusion is valuable for me now, because it is not just speculative, but is statistically supported and experienced by myself in my work with Vitronomics. Shortly it can be defined as follows: “If a person has a choice between paying for a service and getting it for free, but with the quality reduction and some restrictions in 85% of cases he/she will opt for the latter”. The price (1$ or 10$) does not greatly change the percentage. And the subjective estimate of the fair cost of a new service varies a lot among the payers. If to keep the same offer the same group of people the percentage of choosing the second option increases. So, in dynamics the effect is cumulative.
There are two main reasons for this kind of behavior:
1. The existence of the choice between to pay or not to pay itself. Humans are lazy and do not tend to make an effort without any strong need. The need to choose is already an effort, not speaking of the payment procedure itself and the moral tension when parting with money. And in most cases the price itself does not really mean anything.
2. The “crowd effect”. That is “if the majority uses this service for free why would I pay for it?” And, as people tend to embroider the motivation for the action or its absence, the reasoning of the refuse to pay normally is quite dramatized – “principles”, “unfair game” etc.
These two factors together give us a psychological barrier of change of group behavior which is very hard to overcome.
The only way to change the group behavior is to eliminate the possibility of choice.
Besides, there is another factor, not that fundamental, but quite tangible considering the amount of money that we lose. At the moment there is the whole business of reselling accounts and other “assets” parasitizing on the game and depriving the project of serious money. Used and upgraded companies are massively resold to new players by the users who do not want to play any more or by those who specializes in collecting companies of the people who leave the game. This phenomenon has recently became quite popular. Many accounts have already changed more than a few owners. Sa a result, there is a decrease of payments by new players. However, I repeat that despite the significance of this phenomenon and direct damages which it leads to, it is not the main reason why we decided to stop the old business-model. The main reason is described above.
Why the free-to-play mode is working and economically reasonable in other games? This kind of model can only be reasonable for mass projects where the critical amount of users is quite easily achieved and the cost of attraction a client is much lower. The amount of payers and the period of active playing is comparable to Vitronomics’, although the average period of active playing in many games is higher than such period in Vitronomics and reaches the number of 9-12 months. Besides, the costs of maintaining and developing an average online game in the same language segment is often much lower than the same costs for the Vitronomics.
2.10.2009, 16:28
i was just starting to build my business and now it has come crashing down.
I will not pay because I only pay this game about 1 hour a day at most and because of that I am not willing to pay such a high price for it. But i can see the reasons why you have chosen to make this move, just you have to have a more even balance between price and use age.
Thank you so much for your explanation MEN. It really helps to explain what has been going on with the project.
After reading through what has been happening on your side of the table, I understand that things has been going bad for you all especially on the income side. So I won't deny or try to say anything against the points that you have laid out for us. I would want to add a few comments on your situation, if I may, to some extra points in which I think you all already know about but just in case, I'll just put it here.
In regards to the audience that you're targeting to be players for this game. It is true, that the audience that you have been aiming at is focused on only one group of audience that, as you called it, your niche market. Your audience had always been those who are either learning about business, already doing a business of their own, and/or wishes to play a game that has business and economics as its theme. The amount of people online that are into these things are a minority compared to conventional online games because to most of us here, we see the Virtonomics project as a learning tool. Only that we're having fun while we're at it.
For the issue on having active players. Virtonomics isn't a simple game to play, I will admit. It is highly complicated and requires both time and patients in order to learn the curves on that game and eventually, be able to get that golden formula that will make your enterprise profitable. I have two friends that I have invited to play the game, and sadly, one friend of mine is just plain dumb when it comes to business. There are many players, in which I'm sure it does happen to some of us, just have no sense of business at all. Business, Trading, Economics, Finance and all is an art, it isn't science. Its not easy for people to learn it, nor teach it.
So with regard to this, I wouldn't be surprised if players would actually stop playing after 4 to 5 months. So in this regard, help files, faqs, Wikis and a lot of helpful guides or so would actually be very helpful for beginners. My dumb friend has read through your articles and all, but still just can't get it as certain vital information isn't available. Thankfully for him, he has me as his reference as since I have played the game for 3 to 4 months now, I can advise him on what to do and what not to do. So like for this case, I can understand that you spend a substantial amount of cash on getting more players. But I think you guys need to focus a little bit more on keeping your players. Game support especially. Also game support doesn't have to be just the responsibility of the Virtonomics team, but also the responsibility of experienced and old players in the game. If most of the time, they chose not to contribute with the forums, incentives would be a good motivation for them to contribute. It doesn't need to be Virto Cash or Game Points, just normal recognition and all would suffice.
I have to hand it to you MEN, I love your work with the game. Being a developer myself, I can appreciate the hard work that you and the team have put into making this great game. It does have its rough edges, but nobody is perfect. The game just have to continue to improve. I wish you guys can polish up the pricing plan especially for the Shareware Realm. The current price plan is a bit pricey. Although, I will try to bear with the cost somehow if I can still afford it. But I won't be able to afford playing the game in the next few months as I will return to be student again. Guess I will be sticking around a bit longer.
Thanks , Hafeezi. You are largely right. In particular, indeed, we still have difficulty with the quality of game support, user training game, game development community. Only a few days ago, we now have interpreters for these tasks. In addition, we are always happy to help the most active players and are willing to pay for unlimited game players are ready to serve as a forum moderation, attracting new players and their training. In addition, people are ready to bring new players into the game we are willing to pay real money under the program "100 friends" () or under the terms of the affiliate program ( ). For many players, these opportunities can be very good sources of real income.
Sincerely, Administration
2.10.2009, 21:09
Last time edited : 2.10.2009, 21:23
MEN
Thanks , Hafeezi. You are largely right. In particular, indeed, we still have difficulty with the quality of game support, user training game, game development community. Only a few days ago, we now have interpreters for these tasks. In addition, we are always happy to help the most active players and are willing to pay for unlimited game players are ready to serve as a forum moderation, attracting new players and their training. In addition, people are ready to bring new players into the game we are willing to pay real money under the program "100 friends" () or under the terms of the affiliate program ( ). For many players, these opportunities can be very good sources of real income.
Sincerely, Administration
But as an internet base game..
Been through face book and all those other same programs. Millions of ppl. get in there and play stupid games. Like typing and stuff.. But ppl. love playing them because the WHOLE point of PLAYING is to have FUN. What fun would there be if you have to PAY for playing a GAME! lol
I have contemplated on DONATING into this game to have an advantage or have an OIL industry for my enterprises. But never in my mind thought that i have to PAY just to PLAY.
Ohh and i highlighted the phrase above because, I think you don't have to buy off an individual to come have fun with your game. He's giving you his personal knowledge and advice for free(laying down all of his cards)..
NOT that no1 wants some cash of some sort. But for me, i think He's doing this to help improve this game and to make it more enjoyable for every1.
2.10.2009, 23:12. Subject: QUESTION
Hi
I have a question, is there any way to monitor days left in FM... i mean if you payed, you need to know when do you have to pay again instead of just counting days from previous payment...
P.S.
Haven't decided yet if i stay in the game cause to many people are leaving now, and there is a chance there will be no people in game to play with.
3.10.2009, 00:27
Last time edited : 3.10.2009, 00:34
nice explanation...sounds kind a greedy
i am playing ogame since years and it is for free! they have thousands of players and make a lot of money with their adds and additionally with the real hardcore players that want to have the last edge out of it.
but no, you guys want to make real money and now you are explaining us at length that we have to pay for it and you knew it since half a year. this means your adds for a free game were simply a fake!
your gamers community was belied and told the untruth, why cant you guys bring your heads together and think of better ways to make the game work?
- loading times are incredible, to switch from one point to the other takes ages
- server downtimes
- easy menues, it takes a lot of clicks to get somewhere
take a look at all the other free games, kapiland, ogame, superstar racing, the west...these are great games and they are totally free and better maintained than this one.
for me it is clear, once the GP are used off, i am gone.
but now I also understand the troubles i was facing with my payment and the bonuses promised with the first payment......
did you guys ever wonder why not everyone was willing to pay for your game? and think about a change of it? doesnt look like, you simply say it is a niche product that needs higher payments because it is the fault of the players not to pay....
last and most important: if you play any of the games mentioned above, you pay 5$ / month, but you can play all day long and can be busy 24 hours. here you are done within 1 hour and wait for the next day, and what if the next day you can't get online? I'd rather pay 7$ / month for a game that I can play 24 hours whenever I want, then for one I can / must play 1 hour a day to get my investment back
3.10.2009, 00:44. Subject: Free consultancy... (not trying to be the smart-ass, but professional feedback)
Thanks for the elaborated answer, MEN.
Virtonomics is indeed a niche online game, which requires a different marketing strategy than for typical online games.
- Niche games benefit from mouth-to-mouth advertising (free), whereas the typical online game benefits from regular (expensive) advertising.
- Niche games tend to have lower growth rates than typical games, but longer retention rates from their target audience.
By spending on normal advertising to increase growth, you are likely to target the typical audience. As the game is great (thanks for that), the typical audience will also play this game and stay for a while. But not being the niche audience, they will leave after a while...
I worked for a commercial business-simulator provider; we did not spend money on advertising but only relied on mouth to mouth feedback. Very powerful and successful.
Virtonomics is not strong enough to be either a business simulator or a mainstream online game, yet it is the only decent online business game that builds the bridge between professional simulators and mainstream online games (as far as I see).
Next to this, changing your strategy is not a good option (see this forum). One golden rule: Better to have a bad strategy and stick to it than having a good strategy and not stick to it.That is how companies become successful; hopefully you guys too!!! Please reconsider your strategy-change to a paying model; for your own sake...
All the best...
3.10.2009, 02:38
I will be gone, bad idea to get rid of your F2P section. Your going to lose half, if not more of your players. While it's sad to say, this game will fail and eventually be gone with the removal of F2p.
aww man. thats to sad. i really liked this game, and i thought it could really help me. that really is too sad. i think its a better idea to just set up another realm for subscribers only, if somebody wants to play with other people playing. also, im pretty sure you guys are gonna lose alot of people. im really not happy about this. i might aswell quit now, and sell everythink to those who want to pay. and i would think that you guys make enough money already. and besides, this game is to unfinished to have to pay 8.25 a month, and that is IF you pay for A WHOLE YEAR. if not, you pay 18!!!!!!! WAY TO MUCH. (((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
well, i thought i finally found a good game. ahh, looks like a failure once again. i dodnt get it, cuz i seem to never ever ever find a good game. that is my good bye.
i was just starting to build my business and now it has come crashing down.
