I'm one that thinks this should have been presented in plain sight on the site. No, it doesn't sound like you were trying to "hide" it if you sent all those press releases, but... First, I never saw it in any press release on a gaming news site. Someone posted about it over at Yucata. (Sorry for the mention, but that is where I saw it.) I came over here to find out more. Your press releases did no good in helping me find information here. I went to Announcements first, and then had to go digging cause it was buried down in Discussion. I mean, regardless of where else it is, shouldn't it also be prominent here? Is this not important enough?
As to the volunteers... like many others, I think your statement that the free games provide "maybe a little" benefit is a bit hokey. I can't figure out if this is arrogance or ignorance. Everything that goes around comes around. Anything economical (globally, in a country, within a company, etc) is a big circle, a symbiont being. And whatever affects anyone, or any company, or anything else, ends up affecting everything else. Both premium and non-premium members play those free games, and people like me who are not premium have brought other people to the site who become premium. (I know of at least three people from my group, which has been playing here through the pandemic, who became premium, and I suspect at least one of them will stay for quite some time, and won't care about this buy-out as long as things work for him. And one member brought a lot of other people here, some of whom probably became premium.) Of course those free games provide benefit, maybe not directly into money, but indirectly by just helping out the site. Trying to run any business, that needs understood.
Some of the volunteers will stay and enjoy what they are doing, and do it for the sake of the games, the community, themselves. Others feel they were contributing to a community, and don't feel that way anymore, and may stop. You can say all you want that you intend to keep using volunteers, but it doesn't mean they will keep using you.
Your dismissal of the other questions about the volunteers sounds like your typical dismissal of anything you yourself don't understand, and therefore don't make any attempt to understand about other people who are not you. I get the sense that whatever you think, is what everyone else should think, and agree with, and very often without trying to see other opinions or sides to things, or why people disagree. (I'm going way back - not related to just this.) It's one of the biggest reasons I don't support this place with premium. Now, I don't get the idea of why anyone should worry about what did or did not happen in the past. But, as to the future... I totally get why some volunteers don't want to do free work for Asmodee. That's a point of view, really, but it's their point of view and therefore legitimate. I get why some of them feel they should get a share of profits for their work. Some people are going a bit overboard with that, but I get it. I think it would be useful if you tried to get it too. If you want volunteers, it would behoove you to try to at least understand where they are coming from.
Look at your "heading" to that section: "Why would the volunteers want to develop for a 'big' company?" Do you honestly believe you have a right to answer for those people? I think you can give reasons why there might be benefit in it, but you can't really answer for those who don't want to "work for Asmodee." Maybe for them it is not "unchanged." That's what I'm referring to when I say you have a habit of only understanding your point of view and sometimes don't want to see another side.
As to alternative solutions... well, some of what you addressed I didn't see asked. But in the end I don't know the details of your agreement, and you may honestly feel this is the best deal for you. While I think you often don't try to take a look at other sides of things, you certainly have the right to do what you want with a site you run. I just think it might be a bit ignorant. I don't know all the in's and out's about Asmodee - mostly rumor I hear from other people. I try not to take things at surface value and I'm aware some people exaggerate, etc. But I've just heard way too many rumors and it does indeed sound like there's issues with them.
But in addition to that, one concern some people have is when they hear that "nothing will change" or it's "business as usual." But things always change, eventually. Will next week be different from this week? Of course not. You think it's next week we're worried about? It's the slow trickle of changes that we expect will happen. Because they always do. I work for a small company, that got bought out by a smallish company, that was already owned by a big global conglomerate, that I already hated because I was already familiar with them. We were told it would be "business as usual." Inside of several months things started changing, as we knew they would. There's only been one change that was actually good. I'm a capitalist, so it's not even about that. (And I hate how that word is slug around and slandered due to brainwashing. As a capitalist, I'm into entrepreneurship and small business.) It's about when something is so huge and so caught up in themselves and so busy eating the small companies, that they lose sight of anything and half the time don't even know what they're doing.
In the end you don't know what will happen. You can only say how you hope things will be. You may be seriously disappointed. It might go well, but I'm not holding out high hopes - I'm just willing to keep on keeping on until I see bad stuff. OTOH, you guys change stuff so often I already can't keep track of it, can't explain things to my friends cause you just changed it again or made it more difficult, so I already don't like many changes. But I'm not ready to dump the site solely because of Asmodee. I'll wait and see. But I think it's ignorant to think nothing will change directly due to them.
I think this goes back to trying to grow really big, be the "best" go-to game site online, etc. You reached for the stars. And very often when small businesses try to do that, the day comes when they can't handle it anymore and have to look for someone else who can "lend a hand." And this is the result. So be the biggest, best site if you want to be, but this is what comes with it. Sometimes you have to give things up, and sometimes you have to give up control of certain things. While I don't know a lot about Asmodee, I get the comments about being the EA of board games. I'm an Ultima fan and I know where that went, including loss of control of nearly everything they worked hard for.
As to the volunteers... like many others, I think your statement that the free games provide "maybe a little" benefit is a bit hokey. I can't figure out if this is arrogance or ignorance. Everything that goes around comes around. Anything economical (globally, in a country, within a company, etc) is a big circle, a symbiont being. And whatever affects anyone, or any company, or anything else, ends up affecting everything else. Both premium and non-premium members play those free games, and people like me who are not premium have brought other people to the site who become premium. (I know of at least three people from my group, which has been playing here through the pandemic, who became premium, and I suspect at least one of them will stay for quite some time, and won't care about this buy-out as long as things work for him. And one member brought a lot of other people here, some of whom probably became premium.) Of course those free games provide benefit, maybe not directly into money, but indirectly by just helping out the site. Trying to run any business, that needs understood.
Some of the volunteers will stay and enjoy what they are doing, and do it for the sake of the games, the community, themselves. Others feel they were contributing to a community, and don't feel that way anymore, and may stop. You can say all you want that you intend to keep using volunteers, but it doesn't mean they will keep using you.
Your dismissal of the other questions about the volunteers sounds like your typical dismissal of anything you yourself don't understand, and therefore don't make any attempt to understand about other people who are not you. I get the sense that whatever you think, is what everyone else should think, and agree with, and very often without trying to see other opinions or sides to things, or why people disagree. (I'm going way back - not related to just this.) It's one of the biggest reasons I don't support this place with premium. Now, I don't get the idea of why anyone should worry about what did or did not happen in the past. But, as to the future... I totally get why some volunteers don't want to do free work for Asmodee. That's a point of view, really, but it's their point of view and therefore legitimate. I get why some of them feel they should get a share of profits for their work. Some people are going a bit overboard with that, but I get it. I think it would be useful if you tried to get it too. If you want volunteers, it would behoove you to try to at least understand where they are coming from.
Look at your "heading" to that section: "Why would the volunteers want to develop for a 'big' company?" Do you honestly believe you have a right to answer for those people? I think you can give reasons why there might be benefit in it, but you can't really answer for those who don't want to "work for Asmodee." Maybe for them it is not "unchanged." That's what I'm referring to when I say you have a habit of only understanding your point of view and sometimes don't want to see another side.
As to alternative solutions... well, some of what you addressed I didn't see asked. But in the end I don't know the details of your agreement, and you may honestly feel this is the best deal for you. While I think you often don't try to take a look at other sides of things, you certainly have the right to do what you want with a site you run. I just think it might be a bit ignorant. I don't know all the in's and out's about Asmodee - mostly rumor I hear from other people. I try not to take things at surface value and I'm aware some people exaggerate, etc. But I've just heard way too many rumors and it does indeed sound like there's issues with them.
But in addition to that, one concern some people have is when they hear that "nothing will change" or it's "business as usual." But things always change, eventually. Will next week be different from this week? Of course not. You think it's next week we're worried about? It's the slow trickle of changes that we expect will happen. Because they always do. I work for a small company, that got bought out by a smallish company, that was already owned by a big global conglomerate, that I already hated because I was already familiar with them. We were told it would be "business as usual." Inside of several months things started changing, as we knew they would. There's only been one change that was actually good. I'm a capitalist, so it's not even about that. (And I hate how that word is slug around and slandered due to brainwashing. As a capitalist, I'm into entrepreneurship and small business.) It's about when something is so huge and so caught up in themselves and so busy eating the small companies, that they lose sight of anything and half the time don't even know what they're doing.
In the end you don't know what will happen. You can only say how you hope things will be. You may be seriously disappointed. It might go well, but I'm not holding out high hopes - I'm just willing to keep on keeping on until I see bad stuff. OTOH, you guys change stuff so often I already can't keep track of it, can't explain things to my friends cause you just changed it again or made it more difficult, so I already don't like many changes. But I'm not ready to dump the site solely because of Asmodee. I'll wait and see. But I think it's ignorant to think nothing will change directly due to them.
I think this goes back to trying to grow really big, be the "best" go-to game site online, etc. You reached for the stars. And very often when small businesses try to do that, the day comes when they can't handle it anymore and have to look for someone else who can "lend a hand." And this is the result. So be the biggest, best site if you want to be, but this is what comes with it. Sometimes you have to give things up, and sometimes you have to give up control of certain things. While I don't know a lot about Asmodee, I get the comments about being the EA of board games. I'm an Ultima fan and I know where that went, including loss of control of nearly everything they worked hard for.
