Big Bang Trailer!

Because posting profit is a wonderful and simple way to inform everyone that a company is performing up to par and is, more importantly, healthy. Companies go at great lengths to try to give the impression they are profitable, some so far as to manipulate accounting books to make a company look profitable (Enron scandal).

Well you would ask, "But I'm not an investor, so why should I care?"

If an MMO is causing a company to bleed money, gamers won't invest too much into it for fear of the company pulling the plug on the MMO. It also spells for catastrophic events on the MMO.

Take Ijji for example. They hosted Gunbound North America. They were really milking the cash items they had. The cash items gave such a large advantage over the 'free gear' that other players couldn't compete. Players didn't even need a quarter of the skill other players had to win. People stopped playing the game.

It created an endogenous situation. With revenue falling because of massive player drop out, Ijji put even more cash items up, with bigger benefits. This alienated people who originally bought premium items, as their gear was now considered useless.

Then Ijji increased the cap on stats. Is this sh!t starting to sound familiar?

Eventually the game became so unprofitable that Ijji dropped the game and did not renew its publishing deal with Softnyx. All players were transferred over back to Gunbound International, only to face the reality that the situation there was even more grave.

The microtransaction model is profitable for the short-term but its effects on games creates broken games, and so it is not viable for the long run.




Telling profit is also important for someone like me, who has been trained in the world of finance, not just economics.
There are two overarching strategies in finance, among others. These two are the biggest:
profit maximization
value maximization

If I see Nexon profiting too much, that is also a bad sign, as they may be encroaching profit maximiation strategies (aka milking a game to the ground, aka the Activision effect). You want to see the company maximize value, because that will ensure steady growth and for consumers, value. You don't want to see Nexon do to this game what Ijji/Softnyx did to Gunbound. You exchange long term viability and stability for short term profit. Then everyone loses.

Companies publicly listed on the stock exchange do that to keep confidence in their shares and their share prices up. Privately owned companies like Nexon have no need to do that, most prefer to keep their profits private. I dare say Nexon is doing much better than anyone thinks...