APB has 130,000 registered players

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 24 August, 2010

Paying players average $28 per month.

Dundee developer Realtime Worlds has revealed a raft of APB statistics as administrators seek a buyer for the embattled studio.

APB has 130,000 registered players, apparently, and the average player plays for four hours a day.

Paying players average $28 per month, "a combination of game time and user to user marketplace trading".

Administrator Paul Dounis said: "These are healthy numbers and reflect positively on APB as a ongoing concern.

"They prove this is a very sticky and enjoyable game, which is shown by the average player daily playtime and an ARPPU (Average Revenue per Paying User) that is highest of any game out there."

Realtime has suffered a torrid time in recent weeks.

It went into administration following lackluster sales of APB, and is now up for sale.

Last week sources revealed that staff were told whether they had lost their job via a PA system announcement, although Eurogamer has since been contacted by an ex-Realtime staff member to refute this claim.

Reports suggest a new studio may arise from the ashes of the developer - one that will ensure social gaming project MyWorld meets its projected spring 2011 launch.

Administrators claimed to have restructured the studio to ensure the game's future, promising a "pipeline" of future updates and game improvements.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (44) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Haloboy #1 2 years ago

    That's a lot of folk with nothing else to play right there.

  • yoomazir #2 2 years ago

    And now, let's see how many will stay...

  • towser #3 2 years ago

    PA system. Seriously? I mean outside of a factory or Sainsbury's which workplaces including professionally run offices have a PA system in place?

    Surely you mean a megaphone or something...

  • riceNpea #4 2 years ago

    well good luck to them.they've tried somthing a bit different as MMOs go. lets see how it is in a years time. what will the turnover be then i wonder.

  • sneetch #5 2 years ago

    @towser
    PA system. Seriously? I mean outside of a factory or Sainsbury's which workplaces including professionally run offices have a PA system in place?

    Surely you mean a megaphone or something...

    A conference call speaker phone I'd imagine.

  • cianchristopher #6 2 years ago

    130,000 players includes those who bought the base game and haven't yet used up their 50 hours. I'd say the number of players who actually have a monthly subscription are far less.

  • chrisjm #7 2 years ago

    The springfield nuclear powerplant has a PA system too.

  • drchocapic #8 2 years ago

    Yeah, that number is crap. I'm still a registered member because I got bored before I finished the 50 hours that came with the game and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

  • Chris Gardiner #9 2 years ago

    "the average player plays for four hours a day"

    Holy God. Clearly, the average player doesn't have kids.

  • Eraysor #10 2 years ago

    I'm amazed that someone could put up with playing it for 4 hours per day. And that price is ludicrous; TF2 is almost as MMO as APB and costs nothing after the initial purchase.

    Plus, if they have such a "healthy" amount of customers, why was it necessary to shut down RTW in the first place?
    Edited by Eraysor at 24/08/10 @ 11:14

  • urban #11 2 years ago

    PA announcement? No we fucking weren't...Dave Jones told us himself!

  • Eldritch #12 2 years ago

    And how many players are playing on after spending their initial time budget?

  • SAMagic #13 2 years ago

    Last week sources revealed that staff were told whether they had lost their job via a PA system announcement, although Eurogamer has since been contacted by an ex-Realtime staff member to refute this claim.

    Since when was Alan Partridge in charge?!
    Edited by SAMagic at 24/08/10 @ 11:35

  • butler` #14 2 years ago

    I call bullshit on that average play time / day.

  • Boomerang #15 2 years ago

    @urban,

    We'd be interested in more insight if you're able to shed any more *factual* light on this please.

  • lordofthedunce #16 2 years ago

    Its a shame the studio closed down and everything, but it was never a great game to begin with, hence them closing so why go on about it?

    TBH people bang on about EG not doing any 'proper' news and then when they do some journalism people moan!

  • urban #17 2 years ago

    @Boomerang - I worked in the QA dept at RTW, I'd been on Monday and came into work on Tuesday for what I thought was going to be a normal working day but we were told not to bother starting work and to head through to the canteen.

    Everyone in the company was there, sitting around with rumours saying liquidation etc

    After about 15 minutes, Dave Jones, Gary Dale (I think) and 4-5 suits walk into the room - shuffling past all the angry employee who knew what was about to happen.

    So Gary Dale or Brian Ulrich tells us the company is insolvent and we're in big doo doo, administrators will now take over.
    Dave Jones apologises that this has happened this way, he understands people will be angry but he hopes people agree that RTW treated their staff very well until making them redundant. (lol - true ish)
    Steps forward Paul Dounis (dumbass) who within 1 minute of opening his mouse, his phone rings.

    Basically went home that day seeing as we were all effectively redundant bar some people, went and got drunk.

    Came into work on Wednesday to be told that we'd get our redundancy forms at about 3pm, which we did and I went home...to get drunk.

    P.S This news story is the administrators trying to drum up some PR so they can sell APB
    Edited by urban at 24/08/10 @ 12:15

  • Boomerang #18 2 years ago

    Shit. Thanks for sharing man. Sorry it's turned out this way.

    Incidentally, for all you fuckers saying "good, they deserve to go under", here's the consequences of when things go bad.

  • Sunyavadin #19 2 years ago

    I'll stick with paying half that for unmetered play on a real MMO...

  • a8a #20 2 years ago

    A lot of people are getting very worked up about APB. It's harsh that RTW melted down, but in perspective, APB isn't a bad game.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm not a devotee - I bought it, haven't used up my 50 hours by a long stretch, and I no longer play it. It still represents a purchase that wasn't worth the money I paid for it. But it's not the toxic waste that people seem to be claiming it is either. 6/10 seems about right to me.

    It has a LOT of problems, many of which would be fairly straightforward to fix in patches (these are the ones I would consider to be standard MMO launch speed-bumps). I'm not convinced the core gameplay is actually that much fun, which is a more concerning issue - that wouldn't be an easy fix. Perhaps a little more content would be helpful - at the moment the game dumps you a bit unceremoniously out of the tutorial. Unless your game is the pinnacle of all that is good about shooters, the player is going to need a little something else to care about before just telling him to get on with it. That said, the secondary customisation gameplay is nothing short of ground-breaking, however. At that kind of early stage though, my guess is that most people just mess about with it for a few minutes and then leave it alone.

    I can see why some people (and I know a few people who do) spend a lot of time in-game though. I think that in a similar manner to most MMOs, the more you invest, the more you get out of it. It reminds me of EVE in that sense, particularly - that's a game with a rocky start, that really blooms if you invest yourself. Both are games that create tools instead of creating content, playgrounds instead of rollercoasters.

    On a business level though, if your plan is to maintain a low but loyal user-base, and grow steadily over the years, you really need to produce the goods at a lower cost. You can't make a slow-burner that costs 100 million and expect no-one to bat an eyelid.

  • a8a #21 2 years ago

    I'll stick with paying half that for unmetered play on a real MMO...

    Incidentally, someone I know who still plays a lot is paying nothing at all for the game now. She got really into the customization stuff, and makes more than enough to pay for her unmetered subscription in RTW points and have spades left over. It's not like EVE in that respect - it's ludicrously easy for someone semi-talented to sell their wares for RTW points, and it doesn't cripple your ingame character to do so.

    In fact, it seems to be so easy that I'm surprised that there is any money at all to be made from their subscription model - but I guess the system works as long as there are players who are happy to pay real money for RTW points, and use them for ingame items.

    [Edit - Spacing]
    Edited by a8a at 24/08/10 @ 13:51

  • Stratix #22 2 years ago

    would consider myself an average player of the game. I think I have paid somewhere around £12 on the game since release, and play a couple of hours, a few days a week. I think these figures are either: Warped by a few players spending a rediculous amount of cash on the game or just plain wrong.

    I wonder if 4 hours includes action district time (paid for) or social district time (not paid for)?

    Not a bad game, but they could have done with a few more patches before releasing it. I don't know whether the keys to the city open beta helped or hindered the game really, many people saw the problems that were present and stopping playing then and there.

    The current patch that is being tested does totally change the gameplay however, I hope Eurogamer can review it after it comes out.

  • Tzetrik #23 2 years ago

    So if these 130,000 players continue to pay $28 each month for 28 months - APB will have made its dev costs back!

    Edit, and this is post 28. Clearly something magic is happening.
    Edited by Tzetrik at 24/08/10 @ 13:59

  • jeffgoldman #24 2 years ago

    @towser

    [link url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_address
    ]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_addr...[/link]

    Look up what a PA system is.

    Yes, seriously they used the PA system. In the Cafeteria area there is a microphone/speaker setup. The Administrators used this to announce who was being kept on at the company, and to let everyone else know they were redundant.

  • dingo75 #25 2 years ago

    Hope they don't include the beta players.
    I played 3 hours of it on the last day until the server went down before launch.
    Enough time to not waste money on this...

  • butler` #26 2 years ago

    Thanks for the story urban.

    Guessing it was quite a cool place to work, even if they did only pay their testers 12k p/a, while expecting them to be a) degree educated and b) actually giving a shit day-in, day-out.

  • kikilkiki #27 2 years ago

    Quick calc: 130k players x $28. Assuming a generous 25% margin and that these numbers stay the same in the future. That's almost 10 years to recoup the $100 mil they put in it.
    Not sure who the investos are, but they did a big p00p00 in excel to invest that kind of money

  • kristo #28 2 years ago

    The game cost 50 bucks/euros/whatever right? And, its been out about 1 or 2 months now.

    50/2.....plus a tiny bit extra.....

    I think I can work this out.

  • towser #29 2 years ago

    @jeffgoldman

    Thanks for that. I was wondering what a public address system was...

    /rolls eyes

  • Pinky_Floyd #30 2 years ago

    @butler

    They offered me 25k as a tester, not sure where you get your information from.

  • Ziggy_badMonkey #31 2 years ago

    25k for QA...Wow
    No wonder they went bust, that's very high indeed.
    Most companies I've worked for come in around 15-18k if you are lucky !

  • Trikk #32 2 years ago

    Heroes of Newerth sold 120k at $30 each the first week with zero marketing budget.

    It's pretty safe to say that for a big budget mainstream title, APB did horribly bad.

    For good reason. It was another Hellgate: London. Another game trying to rob its players.

  • Pinky_Floyd #33 2 years ago

    @Ziggy_Badmonkey

    £15-£18k is very poor and tells me that a company doesn't take quality seriously, their loss. I don't see how a company would get an experienced test engineer for that sort of money.

  • UncleLou #34 2 years ago

    Paying players average $28 per month, "a combination of game time and user to user marketplace trading".

    "Game Time"? The 50 hours you get when you buy the game, I guess? Which (as others have hinted ad) probably means they've factored in the price of the game in the 28US$ a month. Silly.
    Edited by UncleLou at 24/08/10 @ 22:20

  • butler` #35 2 years ago

    £15-£18k is very poor and tells me that a company doesn't take quality seriously

    which is why brought up the 12k stated in an interview with their head of QA

    They offered me 25k as a tester

    and i'd be surprised if most QA leads outside of London are on much more than 25k to be frank.
    Edited by butler` at 24/08/10 @ 23:49

  • Nephirion #36 2 years ago

    I bought the game played about 10 hours and thats been it so far, with 40 odd hours remaining of action play I don't see myself ever being a paying customer tbh. I predict it will go free to play in a year and gone in two.

  • jeffgoldman #37 2 years ago

    APB QA didn't offer anything close to 25k for a tester salary - I can't speak for MyWorld. Unfortunately careers in the games industry are highly sought after so it's easy to find people willing to do the job on a contract for cheap.

    RTW salaries were in line with average, but they don't compare at all pay-wise to similar job roles in other industries. A test engineer can earn between £18-25k p/a in the games industry whereas in another industry you can have engineers on salaries over 70k (contract based, but fixed and pretty much guaranteed).

  • Sir_TimAlot #38 2 years ago

    I have worked in QA in the games industry, i found it super lame, really poor wages, very little respect and most of my colleages were students or dossers and a strangely high percentage were deluded old men wearing suits who told lies about how great their lives were even though they had the same bottom rung job as me...
    I now work in a QA department outside of the games industry and its roughly 1 million times better, highly recommend it to anyone feeling that QA in the games industry isn't all its cracked up to be.

  • BobsUncle #39 2 years ago

    @Pinky_Floyd
    "They offered me 25k as a tester"

    Bullshit.

    I actually worked there as a programmer and I started on £18k. I know other programmers were there for a lot longer and on less than 25.

  • frou #40 2 years ago

    Game Tester
    Test Engineer

    Two different jobs. Get that straight before you continue arguing :-)

  • Pinky_Floyd #41 2 years ago

    Frou is correct.

    BobsUncle - sorry, you sound angry, probably rightly so, though no amount of calls of bullshit make any difference. It is what it is.

  • BobsUncle #42 2 years ago

    @Pinky_Floyd

    I'm not angry at all, I left over 5 years ago. So are you saying you was offered the job of Games tester, or Test Engineer?

    Because if you're saying you was offered 25k for games tester, I think you read that email wrong.

  • Ziggy_badMonkey #43 2 years ago

    @Pinky Floyd
    If it's Test Engineer then that's a slightly different pay scale and career path.
    QA Lead would get paid maybe 25k but a normal QA Tester 25k......No way unless RTW were seriously deluded
    QA tester is an entry level position at most companies (including EA which I am using as a guide payscale)
    EA's QA dept are incredibly focused on quality but no way in hell do they pay 25k for a normal QA tester

  • Pinky_Floyd #44 2 years ago

    Test engineer. I didn't take the job though so would have nothing to compare it against within RTW. I am however experienced and ISEB certified and also have scripting skills, so perhaps that's why I was offered a bit more. I will never know.

    The current pay band for my role in my current firm is £23-28k. That's for a software test engineer. I'm starting a new job on Monday after 8 years with my current firm and am starting on £25k with the new firm.

    I didn't mean to offend anyone or make people think I was telling porkies. I know I'm starting my new job on more money than a friend in the same role for the same company who has been there for 6 years. It's irritated him a bit which is understandable.

    I've had the same thing happen me so I know what it feels like.

    Regardless, I'm very sad to see RTW go under and was supremely chuffed at the job offer. It would have meant me moving country tho, and perhaps that's another reason for the high offer, to tempt me away.

    Peace chaps, and best wishes for the future.