your mother

First of all, my forum name is my "in game" name. I am not here to spam or to make a post and get banned. I know a post in a thread such as this from a user with just 1 post would raise eyebrows. Rest assured this isn't the case. I am an adult, and this post has been well thought out before I actually clicked the button to register. I would like to add a disclaimer that I am not seeking a reply from the general public, nor do I expect one from BI. I'm merely speaking my mind here, and just wanted to vent. A friend introduced me to Arma II, maybe 2 years ago now? After seeing the game, and already a huge fan of military simulation FPS gaming, I finish my PC build.....and bought an Arma II package from Steam. I was hooked from the start. Being Arma II had been out for some time, the game was well developed and already had TONS of mods anyone could add to their servers. After playing a couple hundred hours, I found a gaming community that I have pretty much called "home" since. This community had multiple servers online from each variant of Arma II......from DayZ Overwatch to Wasteland to Epoch....you name it. I found my home in their Wasteland servers......between two different maps they had hosted. Within this community, I pushed my play time to over 1000 hours. I don't have my own stats, but I know that about 95% of my Multiplayer has been in their servers. At this point I will clarify that I played a few hundred hours of Wasteland with this community solely, and decided it was time to pay them back. I became a donator, and signed up to have a recurring payment withdrawn each month from my account. With my donation, I did receive a few perks.....which included some cash, a med kit, and a repair kit. I found this to be a nice perk for helping support and keep the servers alive. Not only did I support the community in which I played, and also got a perk for it.....I am also part of a community that has their own forum online. This forum has admins and moderators from around the globe, and usually there is someone on nearly 24hrs a day to help support the community. This support comes at NO fee. The forums include a help section, to help you get going initially with a gaming/PC problem......on up to an issue with a server. The support staff is always there, and always willing to take a listen and help out if possible. Not only that, but there are a few admins that specialize in the different styles of Arma II, and are constantly updating and modifying their game files to best suite their community they have built. I will also take into consideration that the community I call "home" isn't the only one like it. I am certain there are many more......of varying size. I am pretty sure the one I chose to call home is one of the larger in the communities also, it surely is known while talking to others out there. Now on to Arma III. After submitting myself for monthly donation, Arma III was released. Being it was still fairly new when I decided to pull the trigger (and wouldn't be on sale for a while), I purchased Arma III through Steam......at the $60 full price. I purchased this game along with 4 other friends. We had played Arma II for countless hours together, and decided we would all give III a go. Obviously, with everything being new.....there were lots of edges to be sanded, and we all knew it'd take some time. However, the development of Arma III seemed to be very slow. After a period of about 3 months, we played Arma III at least once or twice a week. With no new updates to fix problems such as spawning in randomly as a bird.......and no new vehicles, weapons, etc......we all pushed Arma 3 to the back. We will still sharp in Arma II though, so we just went back to our default. In turn, we ended up losing interest of 2 friends.....and that goes for Arma as a whole. With spending $60 on a game that didn't seem to be getting much development, I can hardly blame them. What a disappointment Arma III was. A few more of us were getting burned out from Arma II at this point. Whether it was just the gameplay, the scripting hackers, or just the common and unavoidable Arma II issues that everyone has problems with......it came from several reasons. Out of nowhere it seemed, my gaming community decided to build an Arma III Wasteland server. I was pretty excited to say the least. After playing so much on their Arma II servers, NOW I really get to see what I expected from Arma III. As my community developed their Wasteland server, I played Arma III at least or twice a week. Getting a feel for the game, as well as seeing what changes were made. The first big surprise was logging in to Arma III and seeing a HUGE update. Things were finally moving along and being fixed. As time progressed, the Arma III Wasteland server in my community was just awesome. I was still a donator, so I received a few perks in-game as well.....some cash, a decent rifle, and an RPG (Alamut). With the amount of missions and customizable payouts as there were, it really wasn't hard for non-donors to get the cash to buy premium weapons or vehicles. The donators just got a little bit of a headstart, and that is depending on how often the non-donors played. Since you now had ATM's, you could deposit your money and it saved until you took it out. I had established a small group of players that would get in my communities A3W server......about 50/50 for donators vs non. About everyone I played with had at least $300,000 in their account. Now we enter present day. BI pulls the plug on all communities who accept donations and give perks in return, basically giving the community the choice of removing donator perks....or be on the other end of legal action. BI announces the reasoning as "profiting" from the donations. I am sure some larger communities do indeed profit, but its surely marginal. Regardless of the donation intake, people can probably determine pretty quickly by the size of their community if their admins are above margin on the donations. Being I partake in a larger community, I am sure at times the margin has been above the cost. I don't mind, these guys are still spending their time off to develop the game for their community.....and to keep it running. Now the speculation is BI was afraid of losing Arma II players...because of donor perks in Arma III. From a gamer's standpoint.......I can understand BI is not getting any sort of royalties from the communities that are profiting. If there are some gaming communities that are profiting enough to pad their pockets, I can really understand BI's approach. At the same time, it seems that BI has more so shot itself in the foot. Your gaming communities are a solid foundation to your player base in all of your games. Each community has a unique player base.....and therefore a unique compilation of game mods and add-on's. These different characteristics are what attract players (like myself). Now with BI's newly enforced regulations regarding donations, these communities are starting to break down. My community has already consolidated several servers....after reducing the total number. Their Arma III Wasteland was constantly full (I believe a 64 slot, it was with Stratis map)....and in fact it was in a rating amongst the best rated BI servers online. Their A3W server is one of several that have been cut off. It is all I have played for the last ~400 gaming hours. Nothing I've found is remotely as fun, again knowing this is my opinion. Either way, the new regulations of BI have done a whole lot more than remove donator perks.......its killing the communities that support BI and thrive off of your own game development. As the donations come in less and less, more servers will be shut down.....ultimately killing communities. From some of the talk I have seen, there are talks with BI and some of these communities to restore donations to these communities.....and its a matter of agreeing on terms. I certainly hope this indeed is true, and something truly can be worked out with the communities and BI. I think its pretty obvious that the major core of your current Arma II player base aren't going anywhere soon......since III has been out for some time now. An agreement to terms would certainly not only help these communities, but also help Arma II survive. Meanwhile, I'll continue to search for another use for Arma III.....while the only thing I've found remotely fun is Battle Royale. I truly miss playing Arma III Wasteland in my community with my friends. Regards