Important Announcement

n0name · Dec 4, 2012

Hello,

Pinion (the company which gives us money for players viewing ads on the servers) has decided to change their pricing policy.

Below a quote of the E-Mail I received:

Hi Everybody!
December, last month of the year – where does the time go? We have lots of important
news and announcements this month that affects everyone. So please take the time to
read this email fully.
Apologies, this email was sent on Dec 1st, however technical issues with Mailchimp meant that it didn't actually get delivered until now.
Effective 1st December 2012
For December Impressions:

Liverail

Since the beginning of time, we have been buying impressions from you, the community, on numbers out of Google’s
DFP platform. We are in process of changing to the LiveRail platform. Why, you ask? Well it’s quite simple. Google’s
tracking code counts every page loaded as an impression but sadly that is not what advertisers will accept. A number
of players don’t have the required flash software or block our ad server, meaning we are paying for something we can’t
serve an ad to, and do not get paid for. LiveRail works differently. It counts actual saleable impressions that we can
use and on-sell, as opposed to all the unusable impressions Google gives us.

Payment Base Currency

Since we are an Australian based company our default currency is Aussie dollars, however the majority of communities
are located across the globe. We will calculate the payment due to each community in USD; however, anyone in Australia
will be paid in AUD converted at the FX rate at the end of the month.

All payments to communities above $1000 will be via a direct transfer to your bank account; this will avoid issues with
communities getting their money frozen by red tape at PayPal. If you are due for a large payment, we will contact you
for your bank details separately.

Effective 1st January 2013

For January impressions, we can no longer pay for impressions when people do not watch an advertisement and
hence we will be calculating the rate for impressions differently. Pinion will shortly release a new version of the
Pinion Plug-In that has an option to force a minimum 85% duration of an advertisement. If you enable this feature
and you achieve a monthly average completion rate of 85%, your community will be paid $2.00 per 1,000 impressions
as opposed to the current rate of $1.50 per 1,000 impressions. If the average completion rate is under 85%, you
will still receive a rate of $1.50

Payment Terms

Unfortunately we have been put in the difficult position where we have been forced to change the payment terms to
communities from 30 days to 60 days as our advertising networks are paying us in excess of 60 days. From 1st January
2013 all invoices will be generated automatically and you will be paid on the 1st of the third month from when the
impressions were generated. For example, for impressions generated 1st to 31st January 2013 you would be paid
on the 1st April 2013. There will be special arrangements for Australian based communities that are registered for
GST and we will contact each separately.We understand this may be difficult for some communities, however, due
to continued demands on our limited resources, we have had no choice but to implement this change.

Effective 1st February 2013

For February 2013 and later impressions we must refine the way the rate is calculated for impressions: we will no
longer be paying for impressions of advertisements that people don’t watch. Our advertising partners only pay us
based on advertisements we serve over a particular duration and impressions from any community with less than a
60% average completion rate will not be purchased. Impressions with a completion rate between 60% and 85%
we will pay for on a scale of between $0.00 and $1.50 eCPM in this view range. The good news is that we will
continue to pay an eCPM rate of $2.00 for all impressions from a community that has an average completion rate
of 85% or greater.

We will change the way our plugin works which will be as simple as enabling a minimum duration timer. It will be up to
you, the community owner, to decide if you want this feature enabled or disabled, keeping in mind that at 85% or
higher completion rate you may get paid more than currently and that’s what we want for our community partners.
Some communities may decide that this is not for them and we respect that but we hope that most communities will
try the new method of operating.

The latest version of the Pinion plugin is almost ready, with a whole host of new features and safeguards. It adds
support for spawning additional MOTDs in Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, as well as Team Fortress 2. You the community can
decide if you want an additional MOTD spawned at the start or end of a round after a predefined ‘ad-free’ duration.
This means you can get additional impressions if you so choose. Under the new policy, players must remain
advertisement free for a minimum of 20 minutes after the first MOTD.

These changes are incorporated in a revised GSO Agreement that you will find at
http://www.pinion.gg/pub_agreement.html. You will need toclick and accept this revised agreement which will be
effective on 1st January 2013.

Thank you all for your continued support.
Click to expand...

Summarized this means that our earning will decrease by around 50-60% and as a result I won't earn more than approximetaly $100 a month (current server costs are 110€ ~ $144).
Therefore I have decided to cancel the US root until 08/01/2013 because I am not able to pay for it anymore.
Thus, the following servers will go down next year: Dustbowl, Rotation, Mkart #2, Trade/Idle #2, MvM #2 and also Minecraft (when it finally goes online).

This wasn't planned, but I had to take this step - else I would get very serious problems with the hosting company.
Also, once the new version of the plugin will come out (as mentioned in the E-Mail), every player will be forced to watch the ads by atleast 85%, else we won't even get enough money to pay the EU root. (This, however, is only every 20 ninutes, so If you leave after 5 ninutes and re-connect, you won't see the ads again)

Just as a heads up when several servers are going offline.

Downy · Dec 4, 2012

Thanks for informing us.

When I join one of our servers I always go grab something to drink, so I always watch the entire video without even being there.

Yayi'msupportingthecommunity.

Sky · Dec 4, 2012

Thank god 2fort is not on the "go-down server list"

I'll do what downy will. Yay.

Downie · Dec 4, 2012

Hmm. That kinda sucks. Though this means I need to get more drinks (Yes, Just like Downy) when I change servers...

cheatnow · Dec 4, 2012

hold on wait... is there an advertisement in the motd as you have to wait 6 secs to close it?
well and if there is an advertisement it always plays in the background not even knowing what it is unable to open/close it.
well it really sucks that you have to take this step.
on a side note... are you able to select what kind of ads you get?

Downie · Dec 4, 2012

I think the ads are based on your cookies.

cheatnow · Dec 4, 2012

on my cookies mhm.... maybe thats why im not getting ads,
Internet Explorer is disabled...

FoG | Tsunami · Dec 4, 2012

D'awww. Just got admin on there too. I'd be glad to watch videos if it means still playing on these servers. I practically spend the whole day on the servers, and I really enjoy them.

n0name · Dec 8, 2012

Received a new E-Mail explaining some things, maybe you guys are interested:

Hi Everybody!
A few people had questions, so we thought it best to provide another update to all community
leaders. As always please feel free to contact us with any questions.

Dear communities,

We announced some pretty radical changes in our last email, and since then we've heard from a lot of people with questions
around why things are changing. Hopefully we can clear some of that up.

Pinion started with a bold vision to make running a gaming community possible without outside funding - something nobody
before or since has managed to achieve, let alone sharing that recipe for success with any and all communities. Although
every business starts off unprofitable, we were confident that as advertisers learned more about the unique value of what
we could offer, our revenues would lift to the point where we, too, could exist without outside funding.

However, as we've learned, the advertising world is slow to adjust. In the world of video advertising the only thing that
matters is completion rate. No matter what we say, as soon as they hear the word "video" it's like "great, what's your
completion rate?" Bad completion rate means we don't get paid much for the ads we show, means we need to change
the model to one which works.

We're not going down without a fight, and we're hoping that you'll come and fight by our side. We just need to get those
completion rates up to the point where advertisers are paying us what the space is worth. Once we get to the other side
of this, we’ll all be better for it. These changes will enable us to pay more money to those of you that get higher
completion rates. We love seeing our partner communities thrive, but we can’t keep making that happen unless we make
this change.

We've already been working hard on initiatives (such as the Pot o' Gold and the new MOTD layout) to raise completions.
But we need to do more, and that's where the forced completion comes in.

Some of you are concerned about the effect that forcing an 85% completion will have on player numbers. So are we.
Some of you are worried that you won't be able to keep completions up any other way. We're right there with you. Pinion
was built for you guys, the communities, and you're still the foundation of what we do. We can't win this without you.

So we'd like to invite any interested communities to join us in creating a Pinion Community Council. This isn't a glamorous
job, nobody's getting any fancy cars or being flown anywhere in a helicopter, but stepping up for this role means a
chance to help guide us to do right by our communities in this critical time, and importantly also to lead your fellow
communities by finding ways to make the best of the completion-obsessed landscape we now find ourselves in.

If you're interested, drop a reply to this email telling us why your community should be on the council. We're not sure exactly
how many we're looking for at this stage, but if we get too many we'll have an election to keep it fair.

This has been a challenging year for us, but from where we're sitting things can only get better. We have a great team
working here, a great group of companies behind us who love the idea of what communities do, and want to provide
quality media in your servers. We've got great technology ready to take the advertising world by storm.

Pinion has gathered the support of hundreds of communities, Valve themselves, GSP's across the globe, Microsoft, incredible
investors, fortune 500 companies wanting to advertise and countless volunteers for this initiative. With your help, surely we
can get gamers worldwide to appreciate the effort and financial weight of making community infrastructure available to
support them. In exchange, we are asking that they support us with a few seconds of patience.

Some players will winge, some always do. We would appreciate everyone uniting together to respond to anyone complaining
on forums, to let them know why we (Pinion and communities) need to do what we're doing. On another note, we're upping
the ante on Pot o Gold, and have been working hard on a partnership with Razer, which will see tonnes of awesome hardware
going to gamers each month after they watch an ad.

gg,

The Team and Pinion
Click to expand...

Maybe I am gonna apply for that council.

㋛ Mahoney ㋛ · Dec 8, 2012

certainly can't hurt

TheCoffeeMan · Dec 8, 2012

That's bad, i will watch the adverts from now on if it means i am helping the community.

cheatnow · Dec 9, 2012

well i cant watch the advert... i get an error about pot o gold

Bunnie_Lord · Dec 13, 2012

Is it not possible to open a background player, just like the radio plugins do, but to watch the whole ad? Sure, some players are going to whine, but I guess the ad doesnt take longer that 5 minutes max. Plus, they'll "watch" the whole ad

Konsta · Dec 13, 2012

Cheatnow, you're not the only one that's happening to :/

n0name · Jan 1, 2013

Update:
Due to Pinion's policy that they won't purchase Ads from us below 60% completion Rate (Ad watched for atleast 60%), everybody is now forced to view the Ad for atleast 25 Seconds.

Downy · Jan 1, 2013

I can live with that.

Holoflash · Jan 1, 2013

I'm fine with it.

Bunnie_Lord · Jan 1, 2013

gud, but pot o gold is banned from my place

Sir Waffle II · Jan 1, 2013

What does this mean for the fate of the servers? Are they still getting cancelled?

cheatnow · Jan 1, 2013

yup pot o gold is blocked for dutch user's don't know about any other countries.
When i join a FoG server i just see the pot o gold error, at very rara occasion i see an adverisement.

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Log in

Important Announcement

n0name Administrator

Downy Retired Staff Member

Sky Member

Downie CEO of Downcorp Retired Staff Member

cheatnow The desert fox Legacy Admin

Downie CEO of Downcorp Retired Staff Member

cheatnow The desert fox Legacy Admin

FoG | Tsunami Member

n0name Administrator

㋛ Mahoney ㋛ Member

TheCoffeeMan Member

cheatnow The desert fox Legacy Admin

Bunnie_Lord Member

Konsta Member

n0name Administrator

Downy Retired Staff Member

Holoflash Member

Bunnie_Lord Member

Sir Waffle II Member

cheatnow The desert fox Legacy Admin

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