I just don't know how this company survives, will POE make it to release?

I love this game, it has given me great entertainment and sometimes solace. But, I just don't know how this company can survive.

Chris just mentioned that he has not been paid until recently (that's 6 years of no money, how does this guy pay his rent, eat, and basically support his family- WTF?)

How does this team exist at all? They just hit over the 1,000,000 mark, a million dollars might sound like a lot- reality is it's really nothing.

Employees salaries, benefits, server costs, bandwidth, rent, electric bills, life issues, etc ALL add up to ridiculous costs.

I feel like my 25 dollar donation is really nothing, if I could donate 5 grand I would but can't. I love this game so much and don't want to see it fail at all- I think I'll give GGG more money today.

These are my thoughts....

Don't quote me on this but I think this game started as a personal project by dedicated people who wanted to create the ARPG game that pays a tribute to great titles as well as adheres to the vision the devs have for it. So I am more than sure life savings were involved in development of the game up until very recently. They made a great game and now people are willing to throw money at them, for all the right reasons nonetheless. So I think this game will do fine, I really want it to.

Understandable.

I'm guessing the GGG team have considered all of the relevant factors and are working to a budget.

If they're smart enough to make an excellent PC game, they're more than smart enough to plan ahead.

Cost cutters.

There is no rent, they sleep under their desks.

If they do have families, put those family members to work; whats the legal age in NZ you can send children into the workforce?

Ramen is dirt cheap, even imported i'd warrant.

Dunno how NZ health care system works but its so nice there how can anyone get sick?

Contract work on the side?

They also may sell themselves on the side

In Blizzards early days (dunno if they were still called Silicon and Synapse back then), they had to take credit cards and severely overdraw them, just to pay their programmers (themselves?) their monthly salary.

Although, I am sure that there are other companies that also did this, but never reached the same success, and you never hear from those...

I think that at least currently they get a steady trickle of cash.

One video i watched with Chris in it think it was the maps video with totalbiscuit i heard chris say in response to a question that before PoE he was a millionaire but not anymore lol he kinda sounded serious and he is listed as a co-founder of poe so add in another money man and it's not hard to believe. Maybe he was jk go watch the video and take from it what you will.

AFAIK start up capital was provided by the project founders. So just some guys putting their money where their mouths were.

Chris not getting paid is likely a good example of that - Investing a huge amount of money in the project and not taking a salary out of that until there is revenue is not an uncommon business practice for entrepreneurs who are putting in their own capital.

League of Legends is fully free to play and they make tons of $. GGG will make it well considering how well this game already is, I trust GGG more than large companies like Blizzard.

I've bought 4 beta keys already for friends and will buy some of the cosmetic things in the shop once the game is released, they will make their investment's worth in time.

I just want the game to see a full release, that's my biggest concern.