So it’s a pretty big assumption to say that the cost to run an Episode server is anywhere near 72,000 a day, especially considering the highest server price for an online game I could find (an MMO, not a more basic game like Episode) was 250K a year. Episode could make that in less than 4 days. I will continue to do research on the subject, but I know for a fact that it costs nowhere near 72,000 a day to run.
Assuming that the website is accurate, that is 26,280,000 a year, rounding down to be generous (since the platform doesn’t just disappear or go down on national holidays).
As a blogger, I would be betting on the side of accurate, to be honest. A single blogger alone can earn upwards of 250,000 a year for their blog if they’re successful without the inclusion of intrusive ads like Episode has. You get a lot more for ads consumers are forced to view. That’s why YouTubers made so much before the algorithm failed. And that’s with the middle-man, YouTube, making the bulk of the profit. Episode is its own platform so it cuts out that middle-man. Technically individual writers would be more like YouTubers, except they don’t get paid as much. Now, Episode is more than successful. It has millions of users.
Okay so taking that into consideration, let’s say that they spend the same as an MMORPG on their server, even though that’s grossly inaccurate and way more than it would be. That would be 250K.
Then you have the wages of employees. Let’s say Episode is a massive team (if they were, it would be disgraceful that they pump these out so slowly) with 50 team members. We’ll take a nice average of 60K a year for the 50 members. That’s 3 million.
So they’d spend 3,250,000 on the general running and staffing of Episode. Of course, there are other things to consider such as advertisement, software and office costs, but unless we act like that would all cost 20 million a year (which it won’t. I’d be surprised if it cost more than 2 million), Episode is still making a sizeable profit of about 20 million.
But even factoring all of that in, what does that have to do with creating new content? If they already have the software and the staffing (which they do, since you did mention staffing when you were talking about costs to Episode and the software is obvious or they wouldn’t be able to run the app at all), there are very few other monetary factors they need to consider when it comes to producing assets. You need people and software. That’s all you need. You don’t need to buy resources or raw materials to code a new asset. Why does it matter how much profit they make? Especially if we’ve established they’d make a great profit even with 50 staff members earning well over the national average.
