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ResetEra Ownership Update
- Thread starter Cerium
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I think there's a difference between being critical of an admin that sold a forum to a company that profits off of games by toxic games during a time where there's a valid discussion about whether we need to promote these companies and being critical about mods. I think there are valid reasons to be concerned about the former while being respectful to those who had nothing to do with the decision.
I don't think that adding fuel to the fire in a thread where it seems the staff is trying to calm things down helps things. Just my two cents.
is that possible right now?MOBA is a Swedish company, they need to comply to GDPR, even for non-eu members.
So, if the users want to be sure their data is completely scrubbed, they have to request a GDPR conform account deletion
Everything you need to know about the "Right to be forgotten" - GDPR.eu
Also known as the right to erasure, the GDPR gives individuals the right to ask organizations to delete their personal data. But organizations don’t always have to do it....gdpr.eu
Cerium was an opportunist from the beginning. It shouldn't have taken the site's sale to an online gaming business to really expose that.
Will even a small portion of the sale proceeds only he receives be donated or go towards the causes that the community supports? If no, why not?
Will even a small portion of the sale proceeds only he receives be donated or go towards the causes that the community supports? If no, why not?
There have been multiple instances of the mods showing their ass and then pretending they're the victim for being a shithead, and then other shit head mods banning users/defending the first shithead mod.
Some users are shitty and take pleasure in making the mods feel bad, yes.
but this insane mod attitude of "we're above it all" while forming little private cliques and carrying grudges and showing favoritism is also shitty.
There's a power discrepancy between "I'm mad and can't do anything about it except rant" and "I hope this person does anything that I can use to justify banning them"
I hope the new owners were aware that the site has been bleeding users and communities for a while now before they bought it 🤭
There's more than a single person posting on Era, so it's likely different groups of people saying these things.
Also, I don't think it's contradictory to simultaneously think mods should be paid (they should) and that they eff things up sometimes (wtf at the SalesEra fiasco, why does this exact same thing happen repeatedly).
lol
He was pretty active on GAF back in the day but I hardly recall him ever posting here.
So those paying Era Gold...still gonna do it? Lol.
I dont mind the ads to be honest so never found a need to pay. What once started as a joke became true but now Era isn't independent. Feels like what happens to some kickstarters.
I'm gonna stick around and hope nothing changes though I think to be safe everyone should join the Era Discord. (Need to find it myself)
I dont mind the ads to be honest so never found a need to pay. What once started as a joke became true but now Era isn't independent. Feels like what happens to some kickstarters.
I'm gonna stick around and hope nothing changes though I think to be safe everyone should join the Era Discord. (Need to find it myself)
I'm not going to stand in the way of mods going for pay if they want it but I also won't pretend for a minute that collecting pay will make mods happier or more willing to take abuse from some members.
I don't know, but it should have been possible for EU users from the point that GDPR was implemented. Even non-EU sites have to be GDPR compliant if they have EU visitors (or they need to block EU visitors when they don't want to implement GDPR rules.)
Now that they are a Swedish site, they need to be GDPR compliant for all visitors of this site.
They usually don't
at least it was that way when I was on staff. I never saw a dime, but I also didn't care about money.
My two cents about this, is that I didn't really care that much about which invisible owners owned the site at the time (I barely remember Cerium or the others from GAF), so it's hard for me to get worked up that some company I've never heard of taking ownership is setting a dangerous precedent. It just seems kind of melodramatic to me.
I'm also not likely to jump ship to boards about jerking off to sales for billion dollar corporations, or fanboy boards dedicated to said corporations so eh
I'm also not likely to jump ship to boards about jerking off to sales for billion dollar corporations, or fanboy boards dedicated to said corporations so eh
He's still very active on Twitter. So is Shinobi and Zhunge.
As a minority member of the mod team, who was present during those initial conversations and expressed a desire to keep this position volunteer (a position I personally maintain), I want to say that the extent to which tensions on the site sometimes make things feel bad, money would not have made them feel better.
Speaking for myself, but I never signed up for this for the money, out of concern for money, or with any future intentions on the money Era generated. Call me foolish, but it was never about the money, nor would money have made anything easier.
Speaking for myself, but I never signed up for this for the money, out of concern for money, or with any future intentions on the money Era generated. Call me foolish, but it was never about the money, nor would money have made anything easier.
Don't have Twitter but I've seen Twitter posts from Zhuge posted here and Shinobi opened a thread here yesterday but never seen anything from him.
Community Managers get paid but I think they also do social media stuff and press stuff(?).
They must be really insignificant for a payout like this.
Epic grift.
Can someone perma my account or whatever? Not interested in getting my user data sold. Thanks
Can someone perma my account or whatever? Not interested in getting my user data sold. Thanks
Nope, mods are generally unpaid. I don't even know if paid mods would necessarily be an improvement, but it is a choice to aggressively monetize a forum so that it generates revenue far in excess of what's necessary to keep the site running. Totally different situation from having unpaid volunteer mods on a project that is not profit-driven.
Big oof energy.I do think is extremely hilarious that they managed to sell a graveyard at such a premium price
Mods should re-evaluate their commitments and attachments to this site either way. The testimonials speak for themselves, and it doesn't sound very healthy. But paying employees of a company is essential, in good times and bad. Stop giving big companies your work for free.
Thanks for posting this.
If people care, simply, be a bit kinder to one another FFS.
It's not hard! Not everything needs to be an argument! Not everyone is evil and out to get you! Everyone who posts on this site just another person like you!
This is what happens when you just type "BEES" into every Quiplash answrer.
you can be critical of the staff while also believing they should be compensated for their work
these aren't competing ideas
Gonna post this again, when was Era 'owned' by someone? Didn't it start out as a trust so that there wasn't an owner?
Era: "pay your mods"
Also Era: "mods should be in tune with their communities and understand all the nuances thereof, and not be beholden to corporate interests, and should not be robotically following the ToS but should instead work organically, and also if I am mad at them I should be allowed to dogpile and attack them and aggressively demand they resign, and..."
Y'all are tripping if you think paid mods will give you what you what you want as a community or as a user.
Also Era: "mods should be in tune with their communities and understand all the nuances thereof, and not be beholden to corporate interests, and should not be robotically following the ToS but should instead work organically, and also if I am mad at them I should be allowed to dogpile and attack them and aggressively demand they resign, and..."
Y'all are tripping if you think paid mods will give you what you what you want as a community or as a user.
Lol please. Spare me your faux concern, especially as you're one of those people always in these threads stirring drama.
Basically, yes.
What is GDPR? Everything you need to know about the new general data protection regulations
General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, is here. Here's what it means, how it impacts individuals and businesses - and how to ensure compliance.
www.zdnet.com
It was owned by multiple people, but Cerium later bought them out and became the sole owner. I don't know who these people were or how many.
I'm surprised moderators aren't positioning themselves for compensation after this sale. If the forum is worth 4.5 million to a corporation, the work you're doing now isn't for the community. It's for the company's profit margins. They should be compensated for the work they're doing since this forum's goals have shifted from community building to profit building, you don't spend that much money to not make money from it.
Engaging with this thread, but to be clear I am not commenting on the sale except to say that I believe Cerium did his due diligence, and I do not believe much will change going forward.
Yes, that is the original list of ResetEra staff. To be clear, I have never had an ownership stake in ResetEra. I cannot speak for others on the original admin team.
That was never the official logo from what I remember, but that was one of the mocks that were created when we were trying to figure out branding.
Yes, that is the original list of ResetEra staff. To be clear, I have never had an ownership stake in ResetEra. I cannot speak for others on the original admin team.
Original logo.
That was never the official logo from what I remember, but that was one of the mocks that were created when we were trying to figure out branding.
To think of it another way, what other kind of multi-million dollar asset would be grown and maintained by volunteers so the owner can sell for personal profit at a later stage?
They never signed up to get paid or get an equity stake. Simple. They knew what they signed up for.
The mods aren't stupid. I doubt they are shocked at these events.
I completely agree, truly some of the absolute biggest problems to this place long term. And to me a very very obvious one, that somehow no one seemed to care to fix. It's been extremely frustrating for so long now, as I know this community can be better. Especially after seeing this sale now though, I wonder where the direction of the admin team came actually from.
Definitely an assumption, but I can't help but feel as though that at a certain point it all could have been a play for something like this. Once again, discussion doesn't actually matter. We just have to keep it looking like a pristine safe-haven until a sale goes through.
It was a pretty big eye opener for me when the site finally launched and within days there were already heated discussions and anger about whatever. I always thought because of how things played out and the new forum was born, we (all Era users) would have become somewhat of a close group and talked nice and fought less. I guess it was me being incredibly naive but I always thought we deserved better from our fellow members. And it never got better from there. Luckily there are nice people still around, but the constant arguing and nit picking is something that continues to slowly drive me away.
Gonna have to submit a ticket if you want your account closed.
Well, we know a few things:
-Majority control sale
-4.5M valuation
-Paid in cash
-6.5x revenue multiple
-80% EBITDA margin
Now, the cash part is normal, but the other components are a little unusual put together. To begin with, this valuation is *extremely* small, among the smallest I've ever seen get announced. It's penny change. It's virtually nothing, and confirms what I had guessed when no one else I know in the gaming corporate finance world had heard of Era. The fact that they settled for that vs trying to raise, say, a seed round (4.5M would be a high-ish pre-seed valuation in this market, which would be a very easy raise normally with those operating metrics), which would have still retained control, is pretty eyebrow raising.
It gets moreso when you consider a)the meh/lower end revenue multiple alongside the b)high EBITDA margin. Now, normally, that's a pretty good EBITDA margin. In fact, having EBITDA at all for a company this small is a little unusual. So why then the low-ish multiple? Why the majority sale and control loss?
My guess is *heavily* stagnant growth prospects, an owner who just wants to cash out ASAP, or, more likely, both. It is, in my professional opinion as a tech/media M&A banker who does some venture work on the side, pretty silly.
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Well, this can't be good news. At best things will remain the same. Until things actually change, nothing has changed. But it just seems like a matter of time. Eventually and inevitably, in the aim of growth, I expect they'll either change something about this site that will mess things up, or they'll close it down because they can't figure it out.
I haven't been a mod in years, but when I was asked to be a mod way back in the early days of the forum, not once was the concept of pay even discussed, and I didn't even consider it. I did it because I cared about helping build the community and wanted to help people.
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