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Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

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Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#211

Post by arrrg »

NegativeK wrote: post #154
arrrg wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still sell around 10k PC copies per day … It’s not growing, but it’s also not exactly shrinking (I remember obsessively checking those stats years ago and they always hovered around 10k), and hasn’t for years. Minecraft might be a different beast than other video games, truly more like Lego than video games actually. There are always new young people you can sell the game to and with constant maintenance for fre…

10,000 copies per day at $26.95? That's nearly $100M per year. That's a fuck ton of revenue if there are only 40 employees. Growth might not be increasing, but I can't help but see that as a lot of sales.

That’s only the PC version, not including console versions, their online service (they rent servers), merchandise and Mojang’s other games (which aren’t very successful at all).

We do know their revenue and profit for 2013. Revenue was $322M, profit was $128M. (http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/20/5531046/minecraft-mojang-pr...)

I think the large difference between revenue and profit is mostly down to licensing fees that Mojang has to pay to Notch. At any rate, it seems unlikely to me that a 40 person company could cost nearly $200M to run per year, especially since I really struggle to come up with any significant costs besides just labour (and even if every employee costs half a million per year that’s still only $20M). But I obviously don’t actually know this for sure.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#212

Post by abeld »

ntaso wrote: post #204
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8% interest on present cash is high. Anyhow, the easy rule of thumb for converting between income streams and present value is simply "multiply by 20". In rough numbers, it $1/year is worth $20.

How do you come up with the factor of 20? On a smaller scape, if you try to buy a website or an online-business (say, on Flippa), oftentimes the sales price is around 2-3x yearly income. For my own business, I'd love to see a factor of 20, but I can't see how anyone would offer that much money.

Consider the difference between income and profit. For the present value calculation, you would need to use the profit, not the revenue. (After all, once you take the payout, you don't have any expenses.)

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#213

Post by icebraining »

simonh wrote: post #203
lotharbot wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that annual income above five million is almost definitely coming from investment of both labor and capital (ie, working to manage/direct a business you own, and seeing gains from the value of that business -- or working to manage your stocks and seeing gains from their value) rather than just from labor. This comes with very different risks, including the ability to lose your capital, which is why…

> This comes with very different risks, including the ability to lose your capital, which is why it's taxed in a very different way. Exactly, there are good reasons for this. The problem is that it would be grossly unfair to tax a small business owner or small investor at say income tax levels because their risks are so much higher. On the other hand a big investor will millions or billions ends up paying the same ta…

Why can't a small investor spread their investments? Isn't that what index funds are for?

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#214

Post by deciplex »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #166
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and in a month a new game comes out and minecrafters realise this is what minecraft should have been all along ...

A few dozen "this is what minecraft" should have been games have come out in the last few years. Nothing has the staying power of Minecraft.

Eh, can you name one? There are several "Minecraft could have done this as well" games, I guess, but nothing really stands out as anything like a spiritual successor, or whatever. There's Terraria, but that's not quite the same either is it.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#215

Post by deciplex »

farmerjack wrote: post #86
readerrrr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then he changed his mind. https://twitter.com/notch/status/500214489136910336

Probably around the time Microsoft proposed this deal.

Apparently Microsoft didn't propose anything. Notch went to them.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#216

Post by bjourne »

Houshalter wrote: post #172
arjunnarayan wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For US citizens/residents with billions, taxes are pretty much a constant 25%, since 1. almost everything is capital gains (which comes to 23.6%). Note that this was 15% under GWBush, so it was even better back then. 2. You can avoid state taxes by relocating to WA/TX (If I recall correctly, this was Bezos' motivation for starting Amazon in Washington). A lot of billionaires live in 0% state capital gains tax states,…

Notch is Swedish isn't he?

Ingvar Kamprad is too, doesn't prevent him from not paying any taxes. It's not very hard to find exploits in the tax system. Even in the worst case, the corporate tax is 22%.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#217

Post by makomk »

DanBC wrote: post #200
lotharbot wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that annual income above five million is almost definitely coming from investment of both labor and capital (ie, working to manage/direct a business you own, and seeing gains from the value of that business -- or working to manage your stocks and seeing gains from their value) rather than just from labor. This comes with very different risks, including the ability to lose your capital, which is why…

The UK has a variety of schemes of tax planning[1], tax avoidance[2], and tax evasion[3]. Using such schemes usually requires someone to be wealthy enough to afford accountants and access to the scheme. Rich people do have ways of reducing their tax burden, sometimes to surprisingly low amounts. [1] planning is normal reduction of tax burden and is unlikely to be challenged by tax authorities. [2] avoidance is legal,…

Many of the recent tax avoidance schemes that celebrities have tried to use in the UK were outright fraudulent - for example, one involved them falsely claiming that they were used car dealers and reporting fictious losses which were large enough to offset their income for the year. Another involved reporting that they'd invested money in UK film production when they hadn't.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#219

Post by zo1 »

simonh wrote: post #203
lotharbot wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that annual income above five million is almost definitely coming from investment of both labor and capital (ie, working to manage/direct a business you own, and seeing gains from the value of that business -- or working to manage your stocks and seeing gains from their value) rather than just from labor. This comes with very different risks, including the ability to lose your capital, which is why…

> This comes with very different risks, including the ability to lose your capital, which is why it's taxed in a very different way. Exactly, there are good reasons for this. The problem is that it would be grossly unfair to tax a small business owner or small investor at say income tax levels because their risks are so much higher. On the other hand a big investor will millions or billions ends up paying the same ta…

"Yes it would be unfair to tax them at a higher rate for doing fundamentally the same thing - how would we justify one tax rate for one investor in a company, but another rate for this other investor?"

Because taxation has gone way beyond what it was initially meant to do. That's why it's a hard problem; we're trying to make value and fairness judgements and using that as a basis for applying tax.

To me, personally, people can't claim fairness if they're treating people differently based on their arbitrary value judgements. Until we start treating "fairness" as a universal, with no subjective component.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#220

Post by rmc »

Houshalter wrote: post #172
arjunnarayan wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For US citizens/residents with billions, taxes are pretty much a constant 25%, since 1. almost everything is capital gains (which comes to 23.6%). Note that this was 15% under GWBush, so it was even better back then. 2. You can avoid state taxes by relocating to WA/TX (If I recall correctly, this was Bezos' motivation for starting Amazon in Washington). A lot of billionaires live in 0% state capital gains tax states,…

Notch is Swedish isn't he?

IKEA is Swedish as you get, and it's technically a dutch charity.
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