The Downfall Of Online Catan

in this video I'd like to talk about the state of colonist.io and how I personally am disgusted by their business practices and changes made colonist.io is the most active and most used platform to play the board game Settlers of Catan while this is an unofficial product and is no way correlated at all with Katan Studios it's crushed the official product and it's not even close calling us.io has recorded 1 million monthly active players and is still going strong originally founded in 2017 katana.io was a website that only four people could use at a time by 2018 its founder gok tug yomaz pursued the site full time when covet hit in 2020 business boomed yomaz was able to bring on hired employees most of its money coming from Paid ads on the site as quoted from yomaz himself he has two years of Runway which is how long a business can last before it runs out of money for reference this statement was posted in 2021 when they averaged 700 000 monthly active players and yes before you ask they can legally replicate the existing game because you cannot copyright the idea or concept to a board game yomas gives credit to Reddit on community for playing a large role in their success colonis has 12 current employees that are paid close to other game company salaries and it looks like they're attempting to hire five more but who are you and why do you give a about any of this my name is Shades more commonly known as the giver and at one point I was calling this most active players and supporters even playing back to the time where they offered something called a Founders pack this would mean that I would be investing in the company's future with any expansions they plan to release being included for free with over a thousand recorded games on their website being one of their top paying customers and even making my own partnered content needless to say I was obsessed with the game and its platform previously having played almost entirely on Katan Universe At first I was skeptical with the unfinished product for those that don't know Katana universe is Katan Studio's official branded app that can be played both through Steam and mobile devices without going on an off-subject rant Katana Universe has had a lot of its own problems but was best known for having strong Graphics ease of access and its own ranked ELO and leaderboard but more importantly it had expand that you could purchase for five dollars this video was prompted by an announcement recently made by Katan Community Donnie that colonists was no longer supplying Katan Community coins for their tournaments Katan Community was a server that was partnered with conus since 2020 which up until yesterday supplied its currency that users could use to purchase expansions from their website I as an individual that no longer plays the game offered to donate my 17 000 coins to the players that host these events and was denied despite having previous coin transfers completed for me these are people that volunteer entire weekends every weekend of their time to support this platform I guess that's only relevant when you're a paying customer these coins are completely free for the website to generate by the way Katan Community contributed calling this countless of active users hosting three tournaments every weekend making it their only supported platform coincidentally Katan Championship another incredibly active Community was also partnered with conus and suffered the same fate no longer even being mentioned on their website my experience was with the originator of online competitive Catan king of Katan this was a Discord Community founded back in 2019 with well-known individuals such as trichosaurus and delighted being on its first established Council Team all in all these communities have contributed greatly to calling a success as a whole and founded the structure of mainstream online competitive Katan originally being listed on Khan's front page these partner communities encourage users to play competitive games which drove up colonist numbers as more and more content creators came into play which resulted in a significant Revenue increase for colonists colonists has and still allows up to four people to play the base game completely for free while previously requiring a one-time purchase for expansions where an expansion owner could act as a host allowing their friends to play with them this means that only one person in your friend group needed to own the expansion much like a physical board game in my opinion conus has taken a turn for the worst you now no longer have that option to purchase the expansions as they now own a subscription with three tiers available you now need to pay at minimum of 19 a month to rent these expansions previous costing around 20 to completely own one with the introduction of the rank system it's clear that the removal of Community Support is a business decision in fact it wouldn't surprise me if they plan on removing the listed communities from their website entirely considering as at first listed as a banner on its front page to now being shown as a minuscule button on the bottom for a community tab these other communities are now seen as competition rather than being recognized for helping contribute to what colonists is today and is now being discredited as a statistic being quoted as not moving the needle and that our big role was a contribution of less than one percent this video is not discrediting the platform's current and previous accomplishments and what they've done for the game as a whole but is a statement on how I and many other statistics feel as of late to give you some more statistics callness.io is visited 10 times more than both katan.com and its official platform katanuniverse.com one of the biggest gaming companies of all time Hasbro which owns Magic the Gathering Dungeons and Dragons and Monopoly has less visits and usage time than con as well website maybe someone with a bit more experience in this field can speak up to this point but I'd like to mention that in order to pay close to other game companies salaries they'd have to be putting at least half a million dollars into their team on a yearly basis let's assume that one percent of their monthly active players are paying for the monthly subscription and let's even give them the benefit of the doubt and assume these individuals are paying the lowest tier pledge available at nine dollars a month at one million active users monthly at one percent you have ten thousand players ten thousand players multiplied by nine dollars a month multiplied by 12 months in a year and we're at over a million dollars collectively a good friend of mine who works in Game Dev told me that one percent would be considered a failure if it were their only Revenue stream I'm positive their income is much higher than this one percent I personally hate seeing something that I was so passionate about turned into a Cutthroat business but unfortunately when you create a better platform the katana Studios themselves that's what you're bound to get burn the bridges keep the riches surely because someone can do better than this right there's a lot more to talk about regarding this topic but speaking as a long-term user and fan of the game I've gone incredibly frustrated at the lack of options and path that Connie seems to be taking do you agree with their business model and structure do you have any issues with colonists that stand unaddressed let me know down below I'd love to reply to you with a comment as always thank you guys for watching stay safe out there give her out

Channel: ShadesOnBroadway

Views: 28,660

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Id: 5sAbHAjaOO8

Length: 6min 23sec (383 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 09 2023