0 A.D. Financial Report, November 2015

[Jeru]

In the interest of transparency, the Wildfire Games team would like to report on the finances of the project as of 2015-11-25.

0 A.D. has funds in three places:

1. Funds earmarked for the project and held in trust by US-based non-profit organization Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (hereafter "SPI");


2. A private account in the US, under the name of former project leader, Jason Bishop (Wijitmaker). This account is a legacy of the time before we became affiliated with SPI;


3. Flattr, a Sweden-based microdonation provider.

SPI Earmark for 0 A.D.

As of 2015-10-31, the 0 A.D. earmark is USD 34,410.05.

• Web hosting costs about USD 85-90 per month, or about USD 1,000 a year, and are paid directly from these funds.


• Some of these funds (approximately USD 5,200) will soon go towards reimbursing Erik Johansson (feneur) who has bought the perks we promised our donors. Edit (2016-01-08): The perks ended up costing USD 5,611.10.


• We know donors have been waiting for their perks for a long time. We sincerely apologize for the long delay in perk fulfillment.

Other Accounts

In our "legacy" US bank account, we have USD 332.82.

On Flattr, we have EUR 619.75 available, which are approximately USD 662.27.

Total

In total, we have approximately 35,405.14 USD in all three accounts.

Concluding Remarks

The 0 A.D. project finances are managed by the Treasury Committee: Erik (“feneur”), Adarash ("MishFTW") and Aviv (“Jeru”). We welcome your comments and suggestions.

Edited January 8, 2016 by Jeru
The perks ended up costing USD 5,611.10.

[bagelslice]

Hello, I recently found this game and I love what you guys are doing with it. I was not aware of you guys when you had the 2013 fundraiser, but is there anyway I can still support?

[feneur]

The best way to support the development is to help out if you are able to. Even if you are not a programmer or 3D modeler there are still things you can do. Everything from helping out with translating the game, to improve the documentation, to telling people about the game. And most importantly to play the game

If you want to support in a financial way, please see http://play0ad.com/community/donate/ for more information on ways to do so.

[iainhallam]

Web hosting costs about USD 85-90 per month, or about USD 1,000 a year, and are paid directly from these funds.

How come the web hosting costs so much? Is there a lot of traffic to the domain?

[feneur]

How come the web hosting costs so much? Is there a lot of traffic to the domain?

The biggest reason is probably that we have a dedicated server (which means that it is just the Wildfire Games content on that server, we don't have to compete with a lot of other sites). This does cost a bit more, but it does give us a lot of freedom and capabilities. Both in that we can do things like have it host some automated tools for the development (I'll leave it to those who knows more about that to explain it in more detail), and use it to host the downloads ourselves (and don't have to rely on other sites like SourceForge). And of course that the web site and forums takes less time to load and interact with which is nice for everyone who uses it.

We could probably have gotten it a little bit cheaper, but as with most things: you get what you pay for.

[Bugeater]

I went to go donate and Bitcoin is not an option. How is that possible?

[Yves]

I didn't know we take Bitcoin donations.

Everything about donating is described here: http://play0ad.com/community/donate/

EDIT: I misunderstood your question. I thought you wanted to donate but don't want to use Bitcoin but it appears you meant the opposite.

[implodedok]

How come the web hosting costs so much? Is there a lot of traffic to the domain?

As Erik pointed out, the description of "webhosting" doesn't really cover what we're paying for. Wildfire Games rents a dedicated server in a very professional data center, with a lot of tools to remotely manage a server and a lot of bandwidth available. We do this because we host some very specific things, such as:

- a torrent tracker for game downloads

- the multiplayer lobby server

- an autobuild server which compiles the game code and checks for errors every night

And of course our websites, forum (with attachment database) and game files, requiring roughly ~200 GB diskspace. Plus, we use up about 5 terabyte (!) data traffic each month, with 1.5 terabyte on a single day during game releases. We get a lot of bang for our buck, so we are actually getting a very good deal on the hosting.

[feneur]

I went to go donate and Bitcoin is not an option. How is that possible?

The trouble with Bitcoin is that it is hard to find good uses for it. Receiving donations is one thing, but if we can't spend them the money is useless for us. So far we have not been convinced that there are any good ways to do that with Bitcoin.

Then there is also the issue with how to best get them. Setting up an account with another service that can handle Bitcon would complicate things.

[Firingsniper]

I cannot support this awesome game through money but I do have other options to do so.

I know 3 languages - English, French and Japanese - if you guys plan to translate it to French or Japanese please let me contribute to this game

[Lion.Kanzen]

I cannot support this awesome game through money but I do have other options to do so.

I know 3 languages - English, French and Japanese - if you guys plan to translate it to French or Japanese please let me contribute to this game

https://www.transifex.com/wildfire-games/0ad/

[sanderd17]

I cannot support this awesome game through money but I do have other options to do so.

I know 3 languages - English, French and Japanese - if you guys plan to translate it to French or Japanese please let me contribute to this game

French is available in the default installation. The game is also fully translated in Japanese, though because of the font system we use, using Japanese fonts is still experimental so the translation is included in a separate mod: http://releases.wildfiregames.com/locales/

You should know that the extra fonts needed for Japanese require extra memory, and the app may crash if that memory isn't found.

[GunChleoc]

You can still help with proofreading though

[DGMurdockIII]

http://bitcoinvpshosting.com/ or https://propster.me/ like Flattr but they accept bitcoin as well

[Jeru]

Update: The perks ended up costing USD 5,611.10.

Many thanks to Erik for taking on the perk fulfillment project, paying for the perks out of pocket and waiting patiently to be reimbursed.

Your commitment to the project is nothing less than admirable. Big hug!

[skaparate]

Hello!

Since this is some kind of startup, wouldn't it qualify for Bizspark?

Anyway, I'd like to thank You for all your work

[fcxSanya]

On 21.01.2016 at 4:41 PM, skaparate said:

Since this is some kind of startup, wouldn't it qualify for Bizspark?

(a bit late answer, but better late than never)

I'm not sure whether an open-source game without plans to generate any income can be considered a startup, but in any case the linked page says "Your startup qualifies if it is less than 5 years old, is privately held, and earns less than $1M annually."; 0 A.D. is more than 5 years old (the project can be considered to be in development since 2001 or 2003 based on different considerations according to this page: https://play0ad.com/about/the-story-of-0-a-d/) and Wildfire Games is not a private held company; the last requirement is satisfied, but it's joined by 'and' with the other two, so it doesn't help.