Thread: Valve pays out $$$ to polycount contributors

Originally Posted by Arreo

Is that a good thing?

I'm not sure... The game will definitely change a LOT. But I would expect some balance to find itself in the midst of it all anyways.

Variety is the spice of life after all.

Originally Posted by smokenspliff

Cha-Ching, Peer to Peer Content is the BOMB.
Finally recognizing the modders.

Team Fortress was a mod. It got Robin Walker to where he is today. Talk about recognizing modders. :-)

Originally Posted by QuickLightning

I'm not sure... The game will definitely change a LOT. But I would expect some balance to find itself in the midst of it all anyways.

Variety is the spice of life after all.

I don't expect them to go hog wild and release 50 weapons in the next 6 months. Maybe a couple polycount-ish packs a year. I am sure one reason for Valve time is lots of beta/play testing these new unlocks for balance.

once a year?! pppuuhhhleeeaaazzeee a year from now every class will have 50 weapons to choose from for every slot.

except the spy, cuz f him


(thats the wats signal^^^)

Originally Posted by Veovis

Maybe a couple polycount-ish packs a year.

Originally Posted by Cojiro

once a year?!

Couple ≠ one.

Although, I actually meant to say few, not couple.

Yeah, id expect atleast one more update before the end of the year, if not two. This game is going to have a very massive amount of weapons, because each update just earns them more and more money, so why would they stop? They might start selling weapon skins and they can always pull out that 10th class if things get slow

Originally Posted by Oozish

Good for them!

+1 Thats awesome. Especially since they werent expecting it. Could you imagine opening some mail from Valve with a $50k check in it?

Also.... hahahahaha @

Originally Posted by Cojiro

except the spy, cuz f him


(thats the wats signal^^^)

I posted some "polycount payout math" to the SPUF:

Polycount payout math - Steam Users' Forums

Ok, since some people (myself included) expressed skepticism about the polycount payout amounts, I decided to try to back it up with some guesses and math. As described in another thread, I have found a way to estimate the total number of TF2 players, using limited items like soldier medal, where the item quantity is known (from tf2items) and the percentage player ownership is known (from tf2stats). Using 3 different items:

soldier medal: 11,111 / 4.5% = 247,000 players total
poly pin: 72 / 0.06% = 120,000 players total
golden wrench: 109 / 0.08% = 136,000 players total

Those results have quite a wide variance to them. One obvious source is that the tf2stats data is sampled from an incomplete subset of players (78k). But, they are all somewhat in the same ballpark, so let's average them for the hell of it. We get 167,000 players. Maybe not accurate, but as close as we're going to get. We certainly have more than 100k and we certainly have less than 1M, so at least we're in the right order of magnitude.

Average 2 week polycount payout per pack = $42.5k

Payout x4 (gross sales) x5 (all packs) = Total gross sales for all packs = $850k

Average money spent per player = 850/167 = $5.09

But: spending such a small amount on poly items is unrealistic/uncommon. Most people either bought a complete class set or two, or the entire 5-set package.

Assuming (pretending) every polycount customer bought 1 pack each... $850k/$20 = 42,500 players bought one poly pack
OR
Assuming (pretending) every polycount customer bought the $50 complete package... $850k/$50 = 17,000 players bought all poly packs

So:
25% of all players bought one poly pack.
OR
10% of all players bought complete poly package.
OR
Somewhere between 10% and 25% of all players bought somewhere between 1 and 5 poly sets.

Of course, buying more than 3 sets individually costs MORE than buying the 5-set package, so I wouldn't expect many did that. I would guess most either bought 1, 2, or 5 sets.

Also, out of 167,000 "total players," I'll bet less than half of those ACTIVELY play TF2. Wild ♥♥♥ guess, but pretending it's accurate:

Somewhere between 20% and 50% of all ACTIVE players bought 1, 2, or 5 poly sets. Sound believable? I'm not sure, especially based on the people I game with. But I guess it is highly possible. Also, I have a gut feeling that my (active / total = 0.5) guess above is actually high. I'd guess even more than 50% of all owners of TF2 have it collecting dust permanently (which would mean even more than 20-50% of active players bought poly sets). But no way to know, really.

Originally Posted by Cojiro

except the spy, cuz f him


(thats the wats signal^^^)

Eh, you're just butthurt.




But I don't think Valve will release as many weapons to the game, there's already a lot of crap in this game. The first thing that needs to happen is the game needs to be optimized.

Even so......damn, Chemical Alia just got rich. :O