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What We Require From Gaia Online |
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Most people believe the point of this website is to shut down Gaia Online. While it would certainly please us a lot, there are indeed other ways around it. Nothing would be easier than starting to improve Gaia Online. And here is how:
First, Gaia MUST stop accepting cash by mail and ask for parental or tutor agreement for money orders. I KNOW this will make them lose a lot of money but it's the number one concern against children.
Second, Gaia should really start adding content. It's almost ridiculous that they perpertually delay new conten without any advice. More specifically, they should put a calendar of upcoming items, and respect it.
Third-- and this is the main point -- Gaia should go much softer on bans. First, there should ALWAYS be a real investigation before any kind of bans. We understand that there are people that deserve to be banned, but this should always be after all other options have been envisaged. There should be temporary bans first and permanent bans only after the offender has been throughfully warned. There should also be ''Last Chance'' warning before a complete ban is initiated, and the ban should be by IP too.
Four, Gaia Online must take more severe measures against *****. They already warn users about scam, but children abuse should be their priority, not just a lost cause somewhere in their ToS.
5th, Gaia should make the 5$ advertising in their shop buyable by gold and not real money.
6th, Gaia should stop selling gold, or at least sell it at a better price so you don't need to empty your pocket just to get gold. 1$/5000$ would already be better.
7th, Gaia should stop putting so much pressure. We KNOW they have new monthly items, but it's not a reason to put it on every single page.
8th, remove the 1,49$ surcharge for payment by mail.
9th, make severe penalties for flaming, trolling and stupid posts. Have negative gold cause you to lose items and even be banned from forums (until you pay your debts)
10th (or however you say it), limit the number of accounts a single IP can have to 10.
11th, make gold penalties over time much more sever. For example, after one hour, the gold income should be reduced to almost 0 for all actions, until you have stopped playing for 1 complete hour. After four cumulated daily hours of playing, gold income should be negative for every action you do.
12th, put the PG13 warning on the main page and clearly visible at registering.
13th, change the marketing plan and stop directing it at children.
UPDATE November 12: Gaia Online actually removed the surchage for mail orders! Incredible, one down, 12 to go!
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Analysis of Gaia Online Cash Flows |
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Frank Lau, student in mathematics/economy and Vice-President of Chaos Programming (www.chaosprogramming.com), has agreed to help us against Gaia Online by providing us information on Gaia’s financial state. Since Gaia does never releases any financial data, we asked him to estimate their relative income for us to verify if Gaia Online was indeed making money. The result is presented under the form of an interview, although, it was more his job. Again, I do not take credit for anything said here.
JIM BOOSH, administrator at GaiaOnline Sucks.
FRANK LAU, Vice-president of Chaos Programming
Jim Boosh : Hello Frank. We are here to discuss of Gaia Online financial report.
Frank Lau: Correct. The first thing I’d like to say is that by remaining privately-held, Gaia Online manages to do two things:
1) They are capable of keeping all profits for themselves while still enjoying the benefits of no taxes.
2) They do not need to emit financial reports, meaning they can hide all their profits from the general public.
Jim Boosh: You mean there are publicly-held companies?
Frank Lau: Correct. In fact, most companies (of that size) are publicy-held, meaning they do redistribute a (good) part of their profits to public holder. Stock holders, for example, or bond holders.
Jim Boosh: Why would a company do that?
Frank Lau: Privately held companies are usually going for profits. This is normally utilized by small businesses that cannot afford to go onto the Stock Market, or for big companies that prefer to generate a lot of profits. Publicly held companies are here for one reason: to make a big annual income.
Jim Boosh: Why so and why do they need to go public?
Frank Lau: They do it because while they may make less profit, they can keep growing. The main problem of a company is and will always be to get cash for new project. By emitting bonds and stocks, they can keep the interest they have to pay low, while still having enough funds to continue growing. That means that Gaia Online does not intend to grow but to continue to make profits.
Jim Boosh: Are you saying that Gaia does not really care about their growth?
Frank Lau: Precisely. Gaia has a very large community; and by becoming a public company, they could not only have much more free cash flow, but be able to hire many, many more employees and help serve their many customers much better.
Jim Boosh: Interesting. Gaia Online states that it can barely pay for its hosting bills. What do you think of that?
Frank Lau: That is total bullshit. They can not only pay their server hosting multiple times, but also have a large portion of profits.
For this analysis we are going to take pessimistic hypothesis. In the evaluation of discounted cash flows, especially when using Gordon-Shapiro techniques, there is always three types of scenarios: pessimistic, neutral, and optimistic. When a company compares a new project, it will always look at all the possible outcomes; however, I do not have the time nor the interest to make all three. You have to understand that whatever I am saying is pessimistic, meaning that things cost more in my planning that they should and that Gaia gets less than they should.
Jim Boosh: In other words, you take consider the worse possible scenarios.
Frank Lau: Exactly. There are two types of Cash Flows (Cash Flow is the money that enters and leaves a certain portfolio). For now we are going to consider the negative Cash Flow.
Jim Boosh: Alright.
Frank Lau: There is no technical support. There is no customer support. There seem to be very limited upgrades in Gaia Online if you consider that they only have to put two new items per month. There are no material costs. Gaia does not need to have offices, it does not need to buy materials to make its products (except for the store, but they are considered in our evaluation). They do not have music, bosses, levels or anything that would require man power. Their forums are on freely hosted PhP site. Their games were designed ages ago and are not considered in our analysis (they are not even complex to make). Also, most content is user-generated.
We are in the situation of a perfect project where costs and work have been reduced to a minimum. I must remember you that we are still taking pessimistic hypothesise.
Now, let’s calculate their only real costs: the servers. On big-boards.com, Gaia Online claims that ‘’It has 80+ web servers, 11 database servers (4 dedicated to forums), 3 session database servers, 1 memory cache server’’. From the interviews, Derek Liu claims that these servers are
‘’ 1 x Celeron 1.3 w/512k RAM, single HD
4 x P4 2.6Ghz w/2GB RAM, single HD
1 x Dual Xeon 2.6 w/4GG RAM, 4 80GB HD running as 2 sets of RAID 0 arrays
1 x Dual Opteron 240 w/4GG RAM, 4 x 15,000RPM 16GB HD as 2 sets of RAID 0 arrays from Raid Array controller, 1 80GB HD for OS’’
These are quite old news, but we can safely assume that Gaia uses similar type of servers now, although they use more. This is a server similar (and even stronger since these are dual cores servers) than what Derek Liu states :
http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/pedge_6800?c=ca&cs=CABSDT1&l=en&s=bsd
The most expensive of these cost 7,316$. We are going to assume Derek Liu got no discount for the number of servers he bought (although a 15-20% discount would be reasonable for someone who buys 80+ servers!). This would make 95 servers at 7,316$ each. Let’s assume each server is 7500$ (a bit more) and that he has 100 servers. This makes it a 750,000$ investment.
Jim Boosh: Really? Wouldn’t the servers cost more?
Frank Lau: 7,500$ is already too much. Hell, if I was realistic, I’d say that his 80 servers cost 2,000$ each. The server linked above could probably run a World of Warcraft server alone without lag. And I must remind you that this is a forum and some flash animation, not a full-scaled, MMO developed game. I am only taking the worst scenarios; I highly doubt Gaia’s server costed 750,000$. 400,000$ would be reasonable.
Jim Boosh: What about the server management?
Frank Lau: If by that you mean making sure the servers are always connected and restart the servers that bug, then it’s mostly 500$ per month tops (300$ in electricity and 200$ in maintenance). Hell, the most expensive maintenance is probably to clean the top of the servers. Don’t believe rumors of servers costing millions.
Today, you can get a pretty solid dedicated server for 299$/month, at least one similar to one like Gaia Online has. That is, in my opinion, the same cost if you choose to lend a 12,000$ car (such as Honda Civic). However, the 299$/month counts all the money spent into engineers, handling, insurance, profit margin, marketing, meaning that if you purchase the servers and handle them yourself, they will indeed be much, much cheaper. On the 299$/month, maybe 125, 150 dollars go to pay the servers. Finally, you must remember that like cars, servers have no value after 10-15 years simply because technology will have evolved so much. This would be like running a MacIntosh today, it’s completely outdated.
Also, but by buying the servers, Derek Liu saves a good bunch of taxes.
Jim Boosh: Interesting. Continue!
Frank Lau: Let’s go back to our 750,000$ investment and let’s assume it is true (I have just shown it was way overpriced but let’s assume it was not. Also, one count argue all the servers were not bought at the same time but rather over time, leading to even more taxe saves). Assuming MACRS 5 years depreciation (any good company will use this, especially on this short-handled project), Derek Liu will be able to save a lot of taxes. First, since he gets commercial taxes, he only get 30% tax rate and can also deduce all servers cost from his tax report. Second, he does not have to pay the whole 750,000$ and can use MACRS depreciation over five years, leading to tax credits of around 40,000$ per year. To conclude, this makes HUGE taxes saves.
Now, let’s go on positive cash flows. To proceed, we need to establish a few hypotheses. Here is every single of them with a description of whether or not it is acceptable.
H1: We are going to assume everything said by Gaia Online is true to their last word. That seems reasonable because they already say very little about how much they make, so why would they lie?
H2: We are going to assume that Gaia Online is a medium-risked company and use a company internal rate of return of 10%. This is a bit too much since risk-free rate is around 4%, but for the sake of argument, let’s stick with this one
H3: We are going to assume every item is purchased at the end of the month to simplify the maths. This is wrong but it decreases the positive cash flows and thus doesn’t go against our calculations
H4: We are going to assume Gaia online lives forever. There is no reasons why it should close and this is a good approximation if Gaia remains at least 10 years. This seems reasonable because nothing indicate they are going to crash
H5: We are going to assume servers have no residual values and are simply thrashed at the end of their life. This seems a bit underrated but again goes again decreases positive cash flows (since we ignore what happens with them).
So let’s begin with the main source of income: advertising. There is an average of 50,000 players logged at any time of the day and night. Because of the large quantity, the IP redundancy is ignored, meaning each page loaded loads a different page.
We are going to assume a 0.10 CPM (cost per 1000 impressions), a VERY low price. If I could advertise on such a popular website at this price, I wouldn’t hesitate one second. I calculated this after evaluating the position and number of advertisements.
From the 50,000 players, we are going to assume 20,000 (only) are in forums talking, others being playing games. We are going to ignore publicity placed on PMs.
We are going to say each of those 20,000 players loads one ad per 5 minutes. This seems pretty low because I highly doubt anyone would spend 5 minutes looking at a thread doing nothing. Finally, we are going to say 70% of these players have nothing to prevent ads loading (that’s the real percentage in the population). This is a bit low since most are children and have no idea how to block ads, but oh well.
So this makes : 20,000 x 0.75 x 0.10/1000 x12 (number of ads a regular player load per hour) x24 (one day) x 30 (a month, all months have 30 days)
=12,960$ per month through advertising.
Now, for the monthly collectibles. A bit harder to estimate, a correct formula is:
6,750,000 (current players) x 0.10 (still playing) x 0.01 (one person out of 100 will buy a monthly collectible, very low estimate, I can hardly see a company selling 1 items for every 100 customers, but oh well!) x 2,20$ (cost of the donation after the handling fees of from donations
=14,850$
Gold selling:
6,750,000 (current players) x 0.10 (still playing) x 0,001 (one person out of 1000 will buy gold which is kind of stupid, but we are going to assume less people buy gold) x 9,56$ (We assume average order is 10$ minus a 0.44$ fee, which makes a 20,000g order, low again. This was a bit harder to get and is a very rough approximation. I suspect average gold order is most likely at 20-25$, who would take this much time for only 20,000gold?)
= 6,453$
Again, there is more than 600,000 players playing, but we are taking pessimistic hypothesises.
Store (counting the ads):
This is a bit harder to estimate, but I am going to go roughly
6,750,000x0.10x0.001x5$ (average profit for an item sold, meaning a plain t-shirt would cost 10$ to make and ship) and their “ad system’’ giving a plain 5$ profit, transit fees excluded)
=3,375$
Which makes a total monthly profit of : 37,638. This is where it gets fun. We are going to estimate the NPV (Net present value) of Gaia Online as it is:
Note that we chose 0.10 ANNUAL RM rate (company rate of return); this gives monthly interests of:
(1+0.1)=(1+ i(12)/12)^12 è i(12)= 0.7974%
Using the perpetuity formula:
NPV = -750,000$ + 37638/0.007974 = + 3,970,007.17$
Or, if we compute the IRR (internal rate of return)
0= -750,000$ + 37638s_12[1,04^(1/12)-1 ]/(i)
Where 4% is our risk free interest (meaning money is reinvested at 4%, which is odd because it’s easy to reach 6-7%, but again pessimistic hypotheses), s_12 the accumulated value of a 12 months annuity, 1,04^(1/12)-1 = 0,327373978% the monthly-calculated interest corresponding to a 4% annual rate of return and ‘’i’’ our IRR.
We get i=61,3170299%
Meaning that a person putting 1,000$ into Gaia Online would get 1,613$ at the end of the year. This is simply crazy and is from far one of the strongest IRR I’ve seen.
Jim Boosh: Are you saying Gaia Online pays a lot?
Frank Lau: A lot isn’t even the good word! I used the worst hypothesis ever made, such as 10% of players active (this would make it the less active forum ever made), and only 1% of people buying monthly collectible (this would make it the worst company ever) and I STILL comes to a NPV of +4 millions! Also, I calculated super expensive servers, meaning that the reality is probably close to 1.5x this, possibly even double!
Jim Boosh: According to you, how much does Derek Liu has?
Frank Lau: Easily over 10 millions dollars.
Jim Boosh: What do you think of: http://mashable.com/2006/06/19/gaia-online-gets-893m-for-anime-community/
Frank Lau: If it’s true, then this would be the biggest joke ever.
Jim Boosh: Do you think advertising could pay server upcost alone?
Frank Lau: We can see advertising brings about as much as donations (although I suspect more people than 6,750 buy collectibles), but I believe that 10.000$ is already enough to pay for servers. If you use Gordon Shapiro again:
NPV: -750 000 + 15,000$/0.007974= +500,000$
We still get a very positive NPV. That’s easily enough to pay for all future needs Gaia might have in server maintenance. So yes, advertising does pay for servers.
Jim Boosh: Why does Gaia shows so little advertising?
Frank Lau: What do you mean so little advertising; they have it at the entrance of every forum and in each PM form. They could hardly put more without having customers pissed at it and moving to a new forum. Plus, it’s a commonly known fact that the more ads you put on a page, the less CPM each one pays. Advertisers love to be alone putting their messages on a page. Otherwise, the user will simply ignore it. Plus, the ad is very strategically placed. 0.10$ CPM seems very low considering these are banners and not text links and considering their targeted audience. Hell, for each 1000 persons that see an ad, you pay ten cents. If advertising was really like this, chances are that people wouldn’t even bother putting ads. On Chaos Programming, I used to get 1-2$ CPM, and it is much, muchhh smaller, with text ads, and with a single ad at the top.
Jim Boosh: Very interesting. So would you say Gaia Online lies?
Frank Lau: They do not lie since they do not say anything, but even with pessimistic hypothesises, we can easily see they do gain hundreds of thousands every year out of little kids wasting their parent’s money.
Jim Boosh: Thank you, mister Lau.
Frank Lau: My pleasure.
Frank Lau is working towards his CFA while still studying for his MBA. He is also studying to get a master in economy and works as CFO for Chaos Programming.
NOTE (1): In this project I spoke of the IRR only in a comparative manner. What I meant to say is that if someone spent 750,000$ today and got the popularity of Gaia Online, he would get an IRR of 61%. Note that most IRR are at around 15-20% maximum. However, it must be noted that no one knew how Gaia would grow before it started and that these are very hard to estimate, therefore our calculations are used in a retrospective manner. This means that Gaia is indeed making a lot of money but that it was very hard to foresee three years ago.
NOTE (2) I’ve tried to calculate the value of Gaia Online Stocks assuming it was emitting Stocks. Since it does not grow anymore, it would need to distribute every profit in dividends. If they were going on Stocks, they would do a lot of tweaking to increase Gaia Online rentability even furthermore (like World of Warcraft did). However, my calculations ended there, with a g= 0% and the obvious difficultly of estimating the number of stocks emitted. Also, where would the new funds go? Gaia could indeed improve its services a lot and also grow a lot, purely throught advertising, but Derek Liu does not seem to be interested in it. This would, however, be a good project to invest money in. I know I would buy Gaia Online Stocks if they did emitted stocks. However, being privately owned, they prefer to keep all profits for themselves, at the risk of not being able to grow. The money wins over the stuomers
NOTE (3) It should be noted that I’ve used pessimistic hypotheses all over this analysis. In reality, as I suggested, the cash flows are probably 1.5x or even 2 times what I said, giving an even higher IRR.
 Keiichi Mori · Fri May 16, 2008 @ 05:31am · 0 Comments |
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Sign the petition for Righteous action to be taken |
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Help us hit Gaia where it hurts them |
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Here is a quest you won't find on Gaia.
You might wonder: I agree with what you said so far, but how can I hurt them? Maybe you actually like a part of Gaia Online and don't want to quit. Well, you certainly don't need to stop playing to hurt Gaia. Here is how.
The best way to help us is to put our logos in your signature, in your journal, anywhere where people will see them. We need to teach more people the evil of Gaia.
The best way to hurt gaia online is to download an ad blocker. I personally recommend Firefox with adblock to prevent these ads from loading once and for all. You will reduce the income Derek Liu gets, and stop seeing these annoying ads.
Never send donations. These are pure rape. If you absoluly insist on getting donations, pay with a credit card. You will not pay extra and Gaia will pay 1,9%+0,25c per transaction. Odd to say but I prefer Matercard to be rich than Derek Liu.
Never buy gold in-game; this is pure rape. I highly suggest you buy gold from independant website; it will be 90% cheaper and available everywhere. Or better yet, bot it for yourself.
Don't talk of Gaia to your friends. We know you love the game and would love to see your friends addicted like you are, but this is the main reason Gaia grew so big without advertising. If you want to see your friends, see them in real life.
Refer this website to your friends that already play.
Sign our petition against Gaia.
Join another community. There are much better forums than Gaia out there, without the advertising and crap.
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Interviews with Derek Liu part 2 |
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A few months ago, one of our employees, Medley, had the privilege to meet Derek Liu The Great, the mastermind of Gaia Online and member of FBI Top 10 Most Wanted. Four months later, we were offered this unique chance again, and after sacrificing a lamb in a summoning ritual, Derek Liu appeared to us, fatter and nerdier than ever. It was a unique chance to interview him for the launching of GaiaOnlineSucks so naturally we weren’t going to miss it. Chaos Programmer, from Chaos Programming, led the interview for us!
Chaos Programmer: Dear Derek Liu, thank you for giving us this interview. As you know, we are here to celebrate the official launch of GaiaOnlineSucks.com. Any comment you’d like to make on this website, Mister Liu?
Derek Liu: Madam Liu.
CP: Oh. What happened?
DL: Do you need a picture?
CP: Uhh… No thanks. Tell me something, huh… madam Liu: Gaia Online has been around since 2003 or so. GaiaOnlineSucks.com domain name was purchased in 2007. Yahoo, wikipedia, google, world of warcraft, chacha, everquest and neopets repesctive ‘’sucks’’ domains have all been purchased by their respective owners. Why didn’t you do the same? A domain is only 2 dollars a year.
DL: Yeah… well… now that you mention it… I guess I didn’t expect anyone from Gaia Online to have the intelligence to make a website. Also, I must say I prefer to invest my money into estrogens.
CP: Or hot hentai porn on the fire!
DL: Ah, shut up. You’re pissing me off with this stupid gag I made.
CP: Sorry…what’s wrong, madam Liu, you seem so bitter and sad...
DL: Sorry, I’m in my week [he/she starts to cry with a sad face sad ]
CP: Alright. Just wondering… is there anything special you do in your… week?
DL: I ban hundreds of random people I tagged as ‘’obviously botting’’ although they never touched a ******** bot of their lives, just for the hell of it. I also release even more stupid donations crap with a big poster saying ‘’GIVE MORE MONEY YOU ASSHOLES’’ and generally just act like a ******** b***h that loves to piss off everyone I see. Wait a minute… that’s what I do everyday…
CP: Yeah, that’s true. A comment about the Automatic Unbanner Chaos Programming made. This was a long awaited project and led to a complete revolution on Gaia Online. What do you think of it?
DL: Well… it’s actually easier to unban an account using unbanner than using the PhP controls (that I never fully understood anyway). To resume, I purchased the unbanner to unban any account that would have been banned by mistake.
CP: You mean you already unbanned unfairly banned accounts?
DL: No, of course not, but that could happen in the future, and I prefer to be prepared. That’s called risk management.
CP: Like when you give kids gold after raping them?
DL: Exactly. That way, I don’t get any problem, and FBI don’t get any neither.
CP: I see. What can you tell us about the history of Gaia Online?
DL: It sucked from step one to now.
CP: Yeah but… where did the idea came from?
DL: Gaia Online was originally called ‘’Gay-a Online’’ and was a place for homosexuals and ***** to meet. Its goal still hasn’t changed, but it is now known as Gaia Online. Marketing purposes.
CP: Correct. What surprised you the most off Gaia Online?
DL: I originally though that only homosexuals would play Gaia Online. Boy, what I wrong!
CP: Indeed, as it is now one of the biggest English board on the internet, which shows Internet II might not be such as bad idea, after all. Anyway, could you please tell us an EXCLUSIVE ‘’secret’’ about the future of Gaia Online?
DL: It’s going to keep sucking hardcore.
CP: That’s… not a secret, madam Liu!
DL: It used to be one before GaiaOnlineSucks.com came out.
CP: Very true madam Liu. Before we move on the next part, can you tell us a bit more about your future projects?
DL: I am currently working on a website called ‘’***** Online’’ which will be a game similar to Gaia Online, except that the point of the game will be to undress the avatar instead of dressing it. That’s pure genius since all necessary items are already drawn. The avatar will come already fully suited and for 2.50$ per month you will be allowed to remove one cloth of your choice. We expect the first avatar to be fully naked at around 2044.
CP: Wow, nice! Okay, we are now moving to my favourite part of the interview: the rapid-fire questions. Whatever we ask, you have to answer in less than five seconds. Clear enough! Ready?
DL: No, but neither was Gaia Online when I released it.
CP: First question: What is your dream in life?
DL: To purchase a big boat called ‘’Inside pleasures’’ and put a lot of little kids from Gaia Online on it and then navigate to international waters. Bye bye, American laws! Bye bye, age of consent! Pff… like I respected age of consent anyway!
CP: Hmmm… that was longer than five seconds, but oh well, I can’t really expect you to follow such a simple rule. Alright, madam Liu second question, from forum members of Chaos Programming: why are you so strict on botters?
DL: Because I can’t tolerate to see programmers more talented than me.
CP: You must not tolerate to see a lot of people!
DL: How do you think I choose my moderators! (Starts to laugh)
CP: Ha ha ha! What do you have to answer to the people saying you are a ******** that you would do anything for cash?
DL: That they got a good sense of observation.
CP: What do you answer to GaiaOnlineSucks when they say Gaia Online has been incredibly boring and going downhill since 2006?
DL: I’d ask them where they were in 2004 because Gaia was still as boring and shitty.
CP: Very true, mister Liu! Next question: if you could go back in time to fix one mistake, which one would it be?
DL: My birth.
CP: Do you prefer to rape males or females?
DL: No preferences.
CP: Speaking of it, have you decided if you wanted to be a man or woman yet?
DL: Not really, no. My surgeon keeps changing it every week.
CP: But… isn't it hard to remove and put back the… you know, the p***s?
DL: Bahhhhh… it’s so small anyway.
CP: Huh, alright. What is your favourite travel location?
DL: Thailand.
CP: Ahh? You like Thai food?
DL (laughing): Yeah, the food, right *rollesyes*.
CP: What do you answer to GOS accusations of Gaia Online being a ***** heaven?
DL: Any place I will be will be a ***** heaven.
CP: If you could fix one thing forever in Gaia Online, what would it be?
DL: Everything.
CP: If you could have sex with one of Gaia avatars, would you do it?
DL: Why do you even ask?
CP: Do you have a pet?
DL(lol’ing): Yeah… a very ‘’special’’ kind of pet. ROFLMAO!
CP: Do you intend to have kids?
DL(lol’ing even more): Ha ha ha oh my god stop with the jokes!
CP: Ha ha ha sorry about that! Madam Liu, thank you, sincerely, for your time! Anything we can wish you for the future of Gaia Online?
DL: That it will be shut down.
CP: But then, where would the little kids go?
DL: In my bed.
CP: Ha ha ha! Alright, madam Liu, good luck in… whatever you are planning!
Keiichi Mori · Fri May 16, 2008 @ 05:04am · 0 Comments |
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Interviews with Derek Liu part 1 |
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Two days before Christmas, on December 23th, 2006, one of our staff members had the unforeseen privilege to meet GaiaOnline’s founder and mastermind, Derek Liu. For the benefit of all members of ChaosProgramming forums, we have decided to post the interview that followed, between Medley, of Chaos Programming, and Derek Liu.
Medley: Good morning Mister Liu! First, I would like to personally thank you for according us this interview.
Derek Liu: No problem! I love giving my customers the impression that they are important to me.
Medley : Very kind of you, sir. What kind of name is Derek Liu by the way?
Derek Liu: It’s a gay name. What else would you expect from someone that made such a gay game?
Medley : Very true, mister Liu! So, can you tell us what is a typical Derek Liu day like ?
Derek Liu: Sure. I wake up very late in the morning, still tired from all the bullshit I see on my gay forums, and then proceed to ban 200-300 of accounts I randomly choose, depending on how I feel. I then do absolutely nothing all day apart from drinking martinis and masturbating all day to some hot hantai porn. I finally go to sleep at ten o’clock, still laughing at all the stupid, sexually insecure dumbass kids wasting their time and parents’ hard-earned money on some stupid virtual items to dress ugly avatars, not realizing they could probably dress themselves much better instead.
Medley: Looks like an exciting day, mister Liu! Have you visited chaosprogramming.com yet?
Derek Liu: Ha! Of course I did, I even bought their bot!
Medley: Really?
Derek Liu: YA R-L-Y [NOTE : He actually said that loud, what a nerd…], and it PWNS! SRSLY, aside from the overpriced and stupid donations that you morons keep sending, I believe it is the only actual way to actually make over 50,000 gold in my game.
Medley: Interesting, mister Liu. Can you explain further?
Derek Liu: Of course, the principle is simple: you ******** dumbasses keep sending me real money to get virtual items, while I always higher the prices by manually deleting the richest accounts and banning their IPs forever so they can’t come back and complain. And if they do complain, I simply tell that they were botting! This excuse now works even better since I can actually blame Chaosprogramming for it. I’m a genius, I tell you!
Medley: You mean that you use ChaosProgramming as an excuse to ban rich accounts, only to keep the ‘’offer’’ low while the demand is always growing?
Derek Liu: Exactly! In fact, not only can I easily blame ChaosProgramming for all the problems I ever get, such as stupid bugs, unfair bans, hacked accounts, server-side lag, and still go away with it, but I can create all the inflation I want and blame CP for it. That way, by the time you have collected 100,000 gold, your item is going to be worth 200,000! To resume, you will be forced to send MORE donations to have a chance to get the items you dream of! In other words, I make more money, and everyone is happy!
Medley: Except your customers…
Derek Liu: Like I gave a s**t about my customers…
Medley: Very true, Derek Liu. What do you think of the new Automatic Unbanner. Have you looked at the video?
Derek Liu: The video didn’t contain any Hot Hentai porn, so no, I haven’t looked at it. As for the ‘’automatic unbanner’’, which exploits a bug that would takes five, maybe ten minutes to patch (but that no one cares to fix), I believe there is nothing we can do about it.
Medley: How’s so? Can’t you get a programmer to actually fix it?
Derek Liu: Hey, it took us two years to introduce stupid, worthless house rating, and we still haven’t released 90% of the features we announced three years ago. The game is full of stupid bugs and numerous exploits that allows anyone to dupe gold and steal accounts, so do you really believe we can do something about it?
Medley: You could actually fix the bugs…
Derek Liu: I’m not god, damnit! I’m already extremely busy at the moment! Know what? If you guys at chaosprogramming are SOOOOOOOO good, why don’t you do it yourself!
Medley: Hmm, that would be an interesting proposition. How much would you pay us?
Derek Liu: Pay you? ROFLMAO! Yeah, and I’ll start paying my moderators too! And why not my employees as well!
Medley: You mean you don’t pay your employees for working day after day to improve your game?
Derek Liu: I’m not god, damnit! Stop talking to me like I was some stupid millionaire!
Medley : But you ARE millionaire!
Derek Liu : Clearly, but not stupid.
(ironic) Medley : Clearly not.
Derek Liu : Anyway, like I said, I only have only ten employees, which represents a mere excuse to avoid paying taxes. In comparison, ChaosProgramming has 15, and they are a much, much smaller company.
Medley : Impressive, how can you manage such a big website with that little employees?
Derek Liu : I don’t. In fact, most of my employees are only there to cash-in the numerous ‘’donations’’ I receive from some dumbass kids. I tell you, the day eleven years old kids stop accessing the internet and their parents’ credit cards, I’m going bankrupt!
Medley : Interesting, mister Liu. In other words, you must be pretty, pretty rich.
Derek Liu : Of course. Great men deserve great money. What is sad, though, is that although I am multi-millionaire, I am still a virgin, colon, open parenthesis.
Medley : How’s so? Can’t you use all your money to pay yourself a woman?
Derek Liu : A man, you mean.
(afraid) Medley: Huh…. Right. Before we end, could you please ‘’Buy GoldenGaia, it owns!’’ for us, please?
Derek Liu : Sure! Get GoldenGaia, it’s the only way you can get to compensate for how bad I rape you!
(afraid) Medley: Huh… thank you very much mister Liu, and good luck with gaiaonline!
Derek Liu : No problems, now if you’d excuse me, I got some hot hentai porn on the fire… Hahahahaha, ‘’hot’’, ‘’on the fire’’, do you get it?
Medley: I prefer not. Thank you again, mister Liu!
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