CCP touts EVE growth, considers IPO

will we be able to exchange share in CCP for isk, Aurum or plex ?

well if they do this they are going to get loads of pressure from investors to dumb down the game and stretch it's appeal to as many kinds of players as possible. All investors care about is profit you know. Would be interested to see how this all plays out. I left EvE for SWTOR in September when I got beta and have not looked back. I will say this, I miss EVE's open space and multilayer features.

Too bad it's just the revenue growing and not subscriber numbers. This probably just means people are buying more PLEX. I wouldn't be surprised because they've been advertising them a lot, not to mention their in-game sale price has just about doubled since they were introduced.

i'm curious to see the new level of meta gaming it will introduce

Ugh. An IPO? Really?

Here's my prediction for a publicly-traded CCP:

Year 1: Very little visible change. They'll probably put a few more things in their store, but they won't do anything drastically different. It usually takes about a year to start ruining a company.

Year 2: Some corporate restructuring. A few people will leave in the company, especially the developers who feel stifled by corporate red tape. The in-game store will have even more things for sale. Players will start to see emails about in-game store sales on a regular basis. Some of the more hardcore elements will be toned down to gain more subscribers ((longer invincibility timers at lowsec gates, for example).

Year 3: The in-game store will be the main focus of development. Special deal emails will be common. Any actual game content development will be focused on gaining new players, not improving the game for the existing player base. Some of the most hardcore elements of the game (theft, scams, fraud, gate-camping, etc.) might become bannable offenses, because shareholders don't want to scare off new players.

Year 4: EVE? That's that space game that used to let players fight wars and scheme against each other, right?

You think the players are demanding now, Heh! Wait untill they are shareholders lol.

i'd be down to own a piece of ccp.

I would buy some shares as well.

""We want to be ready for an IPO from a policy standpoint," he explains. "We're quite a substantial company, so we're thinking, OK, what is the next step?"

...perhaps World of Darkness?

I wonder if they're closer to breaking 400k or if they're holding stead and the profits are from previous players. The TC articles says 'about 400k' which I read to mean 'not 400k' but it would be interesting to know the trend.

I was expecting a higher annual revenue from EVE. 66 million is great, don't get me wrong. But Rift in its first year made 100 million dollars!
That should put things in perspective to everyone that says that Rift is close to failing.

66 million in revenue doesn't say much, without knowing how much their expenses were. There is still room for a disastrous result if they lost 100 million in the same timespan. ;-)