While doing my weekly EVE Blog roundup, I was reading through a blog post by Neville Smit that mentioned he would be on EVE Radio. In that same post, Neville mentioned that DJ Wiggles, the host of the EVE Radio show, has predicted EVE's end in three years.
I do not agree with this prediction.
Predictions are notoriously difficult to make. They're based on the knowledge, and to a certain extent, the experience, possessed by the person making the prediction. In the post written by DJ Wiggles, he points to a few bits of information to support his case.
First, he points to CCP's poor communication with the community as an indicator of trouble. Specifically, he talks about how CCP is vague on when certain features will be delivered, if they're delivered at all. He also mentions the problems around how CCP addressed the SOMERBlink controversy. Unfortunately, he doesn't explain how this translates into solvency issues for the company. And really, these issues are normal for any company. Some of the most successful gaming companies in the world (Blizzard and Valve) have a release date of "when it's done". And most gaming companies do not communicate their intentions nearly as well as CCP does with their regular and detailed Dev Blogs. As for dealing with controversies, I think CCP has shown that while they make mistakes, and big ones, they're usually pretty good at adapting. So to me, this is not an indication of collapse.
Next, DJ Wiggles talks about people leaving the company. This is a more serious problem. When several senior employees start leaving the company, management needs to pay attention, because it could indicate internal problems. But it's not necessarily the case. Good people are always in demand, and in a competitive environment, it could simply mean they got better offers. In the case of the employees that left CCP, this is a very real possibility, since many of them left for Riot Games, the maker of League of Legends, which is currently one of the hottest games on the market.
And finally, DJ Wiggles talks about employee sentiment as reported on GlassDoor. He also uses this to support that the employees who did leave CCP did so because of CCP's poor results on the company ranking site. Again, I'm not convinced that poor reviews on GlassDoor are indicators of anything. For example, Blackberry has a 3.5/5 rating on GlassDoor, and their CEO has an approval rating of 77%, and their bleeding money. Anheuser-Busch on the other hand, has terrible ratings, and they're still making tons of cash and they're nowhere near collapse.
But none of these are really credible indicators of the health of a company. What really matters are a company's finances. And fortunately, CCP makes all of that available.
The good news is that, except for 2013, CCP has been a consistently profitable company. For 2013, CCP reported $21mm loss on revenues of $74mm. This was due to a one time cost of getting rid of assets from their books, as accounting rules require companies to derecognise assets that aren't likely to be profitable in the future. The financial report doesn't go into details, but many suspect the assets in question are everything related to World of Darkness, the game whose development CCP shutdown last year. If you remove that expense, 2013 likely would have been CCP's most profitable. As well, revenue has been growing consistently, year over year since 2008.
I really don't see any indications of imminent demise, or even a 3 year demise. Of course, things can change unexpectedly fast, especially in the gaming market. But based on current information, I don't see any reason why EVE would be gone in 3 years' time.
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