BuzzerBeater Forums

At the same time, we are faced with the usual dilemmas of a start-up web company. Buzzerbeater employs a full time development team, and it is run off an ever expanding server farm. These costs aren't cheap, so in order to support ourselves as a real live business, we have introduced BuzzerBeater Supporter. It gives users the opportunity to help with the development of the game, and get some value out of their contribution through some extra, server-intensive features.

This does not sound at all vague as to the nature of this business. Supporter is, in fact, a donation. You do not have to pay to play this game. If you do pay, however, I see no reason for the company to refund anything. No one forced a payment out of anyone.

What's more, to buy Supporter and then, after a few months, say you want a refund because it is not fun anymore is like ordering a pizza, eating two slices, and asking for a refund because you would rather have pasta.

There is a difference between a donation, which is defined as something given to help a person or organization, and a tax-deductible donation. IF I choose to pay money to help this free game, I donate it to help offset the costs of running the business. In return I receive benefits.
My point is that BB never claimed to be anything other than a company running a business. You seem to think they are trying to walk some gray area , which is not at all true or defensible, in my opinion. There are, however, many business models in the world. Because an online company accepts donations to offset their operating costs in exchange for bells and whistles does not mean that what is given is not a donation. It is a semantic argument, and not worth more time wasted considering it. I consider the money I pay the game a donation to help them offset operating costs, and I gladly accept the benefits that I receive in return. If I suddenly ( or not so suddenly but after months and years of making sure to let everyone who would listen know how upset the game makes me) decided to leave the game, I would think about the fact that I freely chose to cough up a little less than ten cents a day before I wanted it back.

You are right about my analogy. It would be more accurate to say that I went to a free all-you-can eat pizza party where I could give an extra two bucks to get mushrooms on my pizza, paid the two bucks, ate a bunch of the mushroom pizza, then said I wanted my two bucks back because I didn't want to eat any more mushroom pizza.

Actually, It seems to me that BB sells advertizing space. In lieu of advertizing space, you can pay about 11 cents a day.

What's more, to buy Supporter and then, after a few months, say you want a refund because it is not fun anymore is like ordering a pizza, eating two slices, and asking for a refund because you would rather have pasta.

Not even the same. It's more like ordering a pizza and you take a bite and you find out it is cold and the crust is stale. Yes, you would get a refund in that case.
I don't know where you got the.."rather have pasta" bit, but in that sentence it would be referring to me asking for an exchange. I don't want an exchange as I stated in my earlier post.

But as you stated yourself, you are a long time Supporter. What you get when paying for Supporter didn't change, price didn't change. So unless you were having and liking cold pizza with stale crust, you can't complain out of the blue that's what you are getting now.

That is silly...You can go to the same coffee shop everyday for a year with no problems and then all of a sudden get served a crap cup of coffee. What? You wouldn't ask for another better cup of coffee? I hope you would.
Yeah, I have been a supporter for a long time, for all that time the game went from fun to so-so and now it's past the point of not fun anymore. And to be honest, I really don't think I will or anybody will ever get a refund. It was just interesting to hear a BB say that if the game ended, supporters would get their money back.
BTW..Things can change...I have until next June to see if the fun factor comes back.
Also....
Last week: 33,342
Friday peak of 33.461
Monday's new total: 32,882
A loss of 579 users from the user peak last week...Yikes!!

Last edited by Yellow cake at 10/28/2013 4:29:34 AM

A loss of 579 users from the user peak last week...Yikes!!

It's gonna be is what it is.

Just accept reality, this game will shrink for the next few months until it reaches a level of stability (my guess its will stop at around 12-15k users). As long as there is no way to retain new users, the downward trend will continue.

I think that my suggestion of putting new teams into the lowest bot league availiable, would really help. Instead of being gang raped every game, new users would get easy wins and sustain a high level of motivation while learning. Losing 10% of its manager population would not hurt nations like Spain, Italy, Poland or the US - in a smaller country with half full/no DIV II or DIV III its a desaster.

Maybe change micronation league structure to 1-1-2-4 or something like that - be creative once in a while and make it much easier for the noobs.