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[NEXT LEVEL lames™] ResetEra sold to M.O.B.A. Network for USD$4.55 million

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Kev Kev

Member
whoa man the posts on page 76 are just...

owen-wilson-owen.gif
 

Star-Lord

Member
I don't think you understand my post, grift maybe isn't the word buy I wanted to conclude the winner in all of this was solely Cerium. I don't give a fuck how he got to it, but he won you can't deny that. Coming up with the idea and getting free labour and becoming the sole owner and selling and making a profit and lieing and stating ads and Era clear to keep the lights on. He cheated everyone and won. But that's capitalism for you that's how the world works and I hope Era folks learned a lesson of the real world.
He didn’t really come up with any idea. He ripped off NeoGAF pixel for pixel, said a few fancy words about it being a more ‘socially free’ forum, and then, once a user base had been installed, changed his mind and reverted to authoritarian mode. There are no real winners here. The mods got duped into working for free, the user base is full of known sex offenders and creeps (I’m really not understanding why this isn’t a bigger issue), and the owner is a lying, cheating, pedophile-sympathising scumbag. Tell me, why should we be celebrating this in any shape or form?
 

KAL2006

Banned
He didn’t really come up with any idea. He ripped off NeoGAF pixel for pixel, said a few fancy words about it being a more ‘socially free’ forum, and then, once a user base had been installed, changed his mind and reverted to authoritarian mode. There are no real winners here. The mods got duped into working for free, the user base is full of known sex offenders and creeps (I’m really not understanding why this isn’t a bigger issue), and the owner is a lying, cheating, pedophile-sympathising scumbag. Tell me, why should we be celebrating this in any shape or form?

I'm not celebrating I'm just stating a fact. Cerium won. I know if I made 4.5 million I'd think I've won. I'm not agreeing or cheering or anything I'm simply stating at the end of this Cerium won.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Reeee Users and Mods. Get Ready! Fight!

The mod Morrigan joined the past page or two and going ape shit there.

Instead of taking a back seat approach and let users vent or whatever, and come back another day with a cool and collective message from mods (assuming they are all on the same page), some of the mods are in the mix battling it out as they cant help but respond.

Fantastic stuff.
 
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godhandiscen

There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
Forgot all about him. He went by Amirox. He was a mod for a long time before he got demodded for somehow altering conversations (deleting posts) or something like that. I believe he also asked for money and ended up not using it for what he claimed it was for.

Anyway yeah he ended up in jail and I think he ended up reoffending right after his first release.

I find joy in the fact that every time we go back to re-telling the history of NeoGAF, we don’t forget about Amir0x. His rise and fall was epic. He made many enemies here and when he finally got jailed it was a moment of celebration.
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
Sory I made a list of problems.

Yeah those were the days. I'll give Evilore props for not selling up in the heights of GAF (even though likely he probably regrets it, I know I would).
I enjoyed what I was doing and felt a responsibility to keep the torch lit. There was always such an outpouring of support from the community and the gaming industry as a whole, to keep the site going and keep it independent, appreciation from tons of indie devs for giving them a spotlight compared to the mainstream outlets. I was happy to oblige and firm in my ideals. Those ideals built the community, so there’s no reason to regret sticking with them.
 

KAL2006

Banned
I enjoyed what I was doing and felt a responsibility to keep the torch lit. There was always such an outpouring of support from the community and the gaming industry as a whole, to keep the site going and keep it independent, appreciation from tons of indie devs for giving them a spotlight compared to the mainstream outlets. I was happy to oblige and firm in my ideals. Those ideals built the community, so there’s no reason to regret sticking with them.

This is what pisses me off, you didn't sell to a corporation, but the lefties who left GAF, and moved to ERA there owner sold to a corporation within 4 years when the site was making money, while lying about ads and paid subs to keep the lights on. So in retrospect GAF is more honourable than the crazy leftie ResetEra site. The fact that the site has yet to implode as quickly as GAF did for something much worse is a fucking joke.
 

Coolwhhip

Neophyte
So the big implosion not happening then? Are they so spineless that even when their "ideals" get betrayed they will just keep on spamming their insane bullshit on that forum?
 

Raven117

Member
I enjoyed what I was doing and felt a responsibility to keep the torch lit. There was always such an outpouring of support from the community and the gaming industry as a whole, to keep the site going and keep it independent, appreciation from tons of indie devs for giving them a spotlight compared to the mainstream outlets. I was happy to oblige and firm in my ideals. Those ideals built the community, so there’s no reason to regret sticking with them.
And that is why this forum remains and getting stronger by the day.

(Nobody (that matters) would fault you for selling though if you ever decided that you had enough of this).
 
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Yoda

Member
Armchair take: If you trust Alexa site rankings for a general gauge as to whether the site is becoming more or less popular (rank is most likely wrong), then ResetEra has been trending down for awhile. (https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/resetera.com) I don't think ad revenue is really substantial, I suspect most people block ads (I can't see anything when I visit the page on Firefox which I have a heavy amount of ad blocking plugins on, I can on Chrome (what I use to view GAF), which only had minimal ad blocking plugins). Weak or negative YoY [D/W/M]AU would really kill the price anyone would pay for the site, which is why I think it only got 5M despite looking at the forums raw activity and it seemingly being nothing to scoff at. I think the saving grace is people willing to pay for the service despite getting very little in return. I'd categorize the subscription in the "I want to support this" vs. something like a Netflix subscription. The profit margin on those users is ridiculous when you think about it, which probably helped (slightly) offset the dwindling user activity. In shrinking user activity, I think boards like these are limited to older folk, which is a shrinking ceiling on total user growth, if they could figure out a way to turn it around. Also getting all cash vs. some sort of equity in the new owning company is a good sign the owner had little faith in the future prospects of the company.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
The great thing about thread too is it seems nobody has been banned yet. If so, must had been only a couple that whizzed by fast.

Given the nature of the thread and high emotions they cant ban people or lock the thread as that would be a sign of being anti-poster not allowing people to vent. So even people trolling mods are fair game.

This free for all might go on all weekend.
 

UnNamed

Banned
This proves again that people who start a revolution because of a supposed better morality, ends to be more stupid, evil, and in general way worse compared to those they want to replace. But in particular, more stupid.

These guys, Emily, Shinobi, Zhuge, they really didn't imagine a site like resetera could generate a good amount of money so it is was a smart move to invest on it? They really weren't interested in something they largely contribute to create? Because, Cerium was and still is an unknown guy, the only reason Resetera had a credibility after its creation was because people like Emily, Shinobi, maybe Wario, etc worked on it. They promoted Resetera in this way, otherwise Resetera would have been just another site, a satellite made by some people on Neogaf.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
It's pretty well known in shitposter circles that the craziest trans folks on era are all trolls.

Hell we've had GAFers admit they were some of them in that old thread.

Like how one of the more obnoxious black culture thread posters (I like most of those folks myself TBH) turned out to be a white dude trolling.
 
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KAL2006

Banned
Armchair take: If you trust Alexa site rankings for a general gauge as to whether the site is becoming more or less popular (rank is most likely wrong), then ResetEra has been trending down for awhile. (https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/resetera.com) I don't think ad revenue is really substantial, I suspect most people block ads (I can't see anything when I visit the page on Firefox which I have a heavy amount of ad blocking plugins on, I can on Chrome (what I use to view GAF), which only had minimal ad blocking plugins). Weak or negative YoY [D/W/M]AU would really kill the price anyone would pay for the site, which is why I think it only got 5M despite looking at the forums raw activity and it seemingly being nothing to scoff at. I think the saving grace is people willing to pay for the service despite getting very little in return. I'd categorize the subscription in the "I want to support this" vs. something like a Netflix subscription. The profit margin on those users is ridiculous when you think about it, which probably helped (slightly) offset the dwindling user activity. In shrinking user activity, I think boards like these are limited to older folk, which is a shrinking ceiling on total user growth, if they could figure out a way to turn it around. Also getting all cash vs. some sort of equity in the new owning company is a good sign the owner had little faith in the future prospects of the company.

Very good analysis there. We can see that Cerium did believe he can sell the forum on formmuch higher though. When exactly did Cerium decide to buy shares off the tech team. I think around that time I reckon Cerium knew he would be selling the site. Obviously data for traffic and profit want shared with mods or else I think the introduction of Era clear to help keep the lights on wouldn't have sit well with some of the mods. It's quite obvious quite early on Cerium was on the ball to monetise what he had for a helfty profit, perhaps it started off well with good intentions but I reckon around the time the former mods left due to not having any shares that's when greed kicked in.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Armchair take: If you trust Alexa site rankings for a general gauge as to whether the site is becoming more or less popular (rank is most likely wrong), then ResetEra has been trending down for awhile. (https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/resetera.com) I don't think ad revenue is really substantial, I suspect most people block ads (I can't see anything when I visit the page on Firefox which I have a heavy amount of ad blocking plugins on, I can on Chrome (what I use to view GAF), which only had minimal ad blocking plugins). Weak or negative YoY [D/W/M]AU would really kill the price anyone would pay for the site, which is why I think it only got 5M despite looking at the forums raw activity and it seemingly being nothing to scoff at. I think the saving grace is people willing to pay for the service despite getting very little in return. I'd categorize the subscription in the "I want to support this" vs. something like a Netflix subscription. The profit margin on those users is ridiculous when you think about it, which probably helped (slightly) offset the dwindling user activity. In shrinking user activity, I think boards like these are limited to older folk, which is a shrinking ceiling on total user growth, if they could figure out a way to turn it around. Also getting all cash vs. some sort of equity in the new owning company is a good sign the owner had little faith in the future prospects of the company.
Regardless of alexa ranking and any other metric, the article said the past year Resetera made $700k of revenue at 80% profit margin (before tax). That's $560k before taxes. So he cleared a good $400k+ after taxes paid. And that's just the past year. Who knows how he made the first 3 years. I'd estimate he cleared $1M total just on annual operations.

Add the $4.5M sale price on top of it. After tax, he'll lose around a quarter of that. But add back the $1M net from above, and he probably made overall net profit of around $4.5M.
 

Yoda

Member
Very good analysis there. We can see that Cerium did believe he can sell the forum on formmuch higher though. When exactly did Cerium decide to buy shares off the tech team. I think around that time I reckon Cerium knew he would be selling the site. Obviously data for traffic and profit want shared with mods or else I think the introduction of Era clear to help keep the lights on wouldn't have sit well with some of the mods. It's quite obvious quite early on Cerium was on the ball to monetise what he had for a helfty profit, perhaps it started off well with good intentions but I reckon around the time the former mods left due to not having any shares that's when greed kicked in.

Regardless of alexa ranking and any other metric, the article said the past year Resetera made $700k of revenue at 80% profit margin (before tax). That's $560k before taxes. So he cleared a good $400k+ after taxes paid. And that's just the past year. Who knows how he made the first 3 years. I'd estimate he cleared $1M total just on annual operations.

Add the $4.5M sale price on top of it. After tax, he'll lose around a quarter of that. But add back the $1M net from above, and he probably made overall net profit of around $4.5M.

Don't get me wrong, I think he did well (for himself), I just think it's a sinking ship and wanted to try and underpin my thought process as to why.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Very good analysis there. We can see that Cerium did believe he can sell the forum on formmuch higher though. When exactly did Cerium decide to buy shares off the tech team. I think around that time I reckon Cerium knew he would be selling the site. Obviously data for traffic and profit want shared with mods or else I think the introduction of Era clear to help keep the lights on wouldn't have sit well with some of the mods. It's quite obvious quite early on Cerium was on the ball to monetise what he had for a helfty profit, perhaps it started off well with good intentions but I reckon around the time the former mods left due to not having any shares that's when greed kicked in.
According to that former admin tweet, she claimed Cerium bought out the rest of the shares off everyone in "late 2018". So roughly he took sole ownership around 1 year after Resetera started.

And if he's going to take on full ownership, that was a good time to do it. At that time, the message board was still in growth mode, getting settled and they didn't have all those ads and Era Clear shit which made more revenue later. So he basically scraped up all the shares at dirt cheap prices off the others and then rode off revenue generating features and a sell out when he had full control.

Nicely done. That's a business man thinking.
 

PaintTinJr

Member
Think MOBA realises yet they made a huge mistake?
Even though I know very little about resetera, and have only been on neogaf a year or so.... I believe that the vast majority of the userbase in an large forum are fundamentally similar (natural distribution and all that) so that 70% of those on that forum wouldn't look out of place anywhere on the internet, like neogaf, if less extreme people were in control, and is probably the reason why those coming/returning from resetera over the years have been welcomed.

Even if the result of this acquisition means resetera has lost industry relevance to Neogaf, and cancel culture weakened, I still don't fully believe this will be bad business for MOBA, even if they have to pay that other $1m.

The resetera name/domain is far more known than MOBA or anything they've bought so far imo - looking at the names - and online numbers for sites seem to work like gravity - where a large mass attracts smaller masses - so if MOBA unite behind the resetera domain/brand - once dealing with their most extreme users in all their websites/userbases when consolidating on resetera, then they'll probably cover the money in a few years, just from being more efficient and driving up advert revenue from their numbers being less fragmented so demanding more.

I think their relevance to neogaf as a competitor in the gaming adult forums is probably gone, but I can't think of a good reason they couldn't continue to operate with much less relevance, while providing a unified home to all their other site userbases .

Hopefully this acquisition has been a win for neogaf, a win for the industry, and a win for moba's moderate gamer userbases 70%s.
 
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