Is GOM's decision also partly a revenge?

If the picture was prepared in good humor then why did you delete it after you posted it? If you had not made personal attacks, I perhaps would have taken this in good humor, but in the context of your attacks to discredit me, this cartoon basically reinforces the aim to discredit my opinion and I consider this a personal attack.

This is an arguement pro-GOM that keeps popping up and I thought I would inquire as to where you can read their actual business financials that gives this statement creedance?

I mean other then what the owners have said?

I am sorry, but I like to base things on facts mostly, but this is hyberbole until such a time as I see the actual quarterly returns.

And to run some numbers, even with a 4GB bandwidth and a co-located server at the volumes they were trading over there I find it extremely hard to believe, even if they only took in 0.02 cents per block for every single trade, they made next to nothing. I host, and co-locate, and run bandwidth into the gigs and we don't come close to the payment they would have had over there, unless by gross incompetence or fraud/theft/ripoff prices of the host.

I could get a fully dedicated server and 4 gigs of bandwith at a permium, for example, at 900 month. Giving a 200-300 return just based on 2000 in volume a day for 30 days at 0.02 per block.

So unless those numbers are someplace.....

You are only taking the numbers into account that you know of. What about office space, insurance, payroll, accounting, legal services, filing, rental of equipment, purchasing software licenses, etc? Lots of expenses go into deciding whether a business is profitable or not. They've already made the statement that they had to purchase extra L$ because of an XML issue, so there is another expense.

I'm just pointing out that if you are running a business and you perceive that you are losing money with no options available, you would either sell it or close it out quickly. If it won't sell for a reasonable price, and reasonable is in the eye of the seller, then you shut it down and walk away.

While extra business expense is a fact, they have made numerous statements that this was not yet a full time operation.

Given those statements, here and on GOM forums, if they had actually purchased things like office space and insurance for said space, that would have been a premature move on their part.

Also, hiring a payroll service and an accountant for 2 people would be overkill.

Equipment rental would fall mostly on their hosting service, cause I really do not see a need to get a fax or copier ?

Long story short, I think they jumped in before having a business plan AT ALL (while it was great someone jumped on the fact no exchange existed) largely at the bequest of LL, but they did so with no forethought to any potential risk vs ROI.

Running a business model on hope (that LL would one day offer them a great deal) is pretty shortsighted.... or am I wrong?

Remember that they were working on being an exchange for more than just L$, so they had more working goals then just being bought out by LL eventually as well.

While extra business expense is a fact, they have made numerous statements that this was not yet a full time operation.

Given those statements, here and on GOM forums, if they had actually purchased things like office space and insurance for said space, that would have been a premature move on their part.

Also, hiring a payroll service and an accountant for 2 people would be overkill.

Equipment rental would fall mostly on their hosting service, cause I really do not see a need to get a fax or copier ?

Long story short, I think they jumped in before having a business plan AT ALL (while it was great someone jumped on the fact no exchange existed) largely at the bequest of LL, but they did so with no forethought to any potential risk vs ROI.

Running a business model on hope (that LL would one day offer them a great deal) is pretty shortsighted.... or am I wrong?

Granted. So then, what exactly happend to those plans?

IIRC, they stoped trading other currencies a while ago, and were only focused on $L ? no?

So that would in fact imply steps backwards on their part, not forwards into a full exchange market.

I think the writting was on the wall from the moment they stopped dealing in other game currencies honestly.

I loved GOM and will miss the service, but I am not going to question the persons that ran it and say they are bad businessmen, just becasue they closed up shop.

Where you around when they stopped? Do you know why they stopped? They stopped dealing in other games when they were victims of fraud, something on the order of $3000USD. The other games told them, basicly to shove off, they would not help. Since teh volumes in the other games were not that great, it made better business sense to stop trading in other games.

Um, yeah I was, and yeah that just proves my point.

Jumping into somehting like this without a plan for security/fraud protection and the lack of checks for IP rights against the very games they marketed currency under, does not speak to research, but jumping the gun.

So, you have never made a mistake running a business?

If you ever run a business, you will know you can have the best business plans in place, but sometimes the real business just doesn't pan out they way you hoped.

Which is why i am sure they will try and do something down the road. Hopefully learning from this go around that business plans/models are MEANT to be broken and to adapt or die again.

Their current rationale was to just shut it down altogether without even attempting to compete in what is shaping up to be a more competive marketplace.

How is a marketplace in which one particular competitor can PRINT UNLIMITED MONEY ON DEMAND FOR FREE in anyway a competitive one?

Not saying it was a bad decision, as no one here has any numbers except the hyperbole figures they throw out there, but to just throw your hands up is not nessicarily the approach I would have taken given the large number of users I had out there giving me support.

I think Tom and Jamie know much more then they are saying too.