We have to pay now?

#1

won 3 wars but we have to pay $10 per person to cover the cost of site maintenance?

Site maintanance shouldn’t cost $10 PER person, that’s just pure profit after a certain amount lol

#2

1st war is free if you’re in the top 10% in engagement you get an extra free one. Honestly I think it’s fair

#3

I think you may not fully appreciate how expensive it is to run an online website and maintaining site stability. Websites like Conquered Self rely on freelance developers who charge hourly rates ranging from $50-100/hour.

Let’s assume generously that 200 people actually pay the $10 during a war. That would be $2000 income for the site. And lets equally generously assume that the developers are only charging $50/hr (likely more). That amount of income would provide 40 hours of dev work, or roughly one dev’s work for a week. Adding features costs hours. Fixing bugs costs hours. Reviving soldiers who forgot to checkin costs hours. And also consider that a site like CS could easily have taken a month or more of dev time to create in the first place (4 weeks => 120 hours => $8000). Plus the cost for artwork/levelup images, etc. And presumably the owner has to eat. I can’t imagine CS has much if any money left over after all is said and done. Add onto this that some people have been creating new accounts each war to avoid paying and the income drops further.

Hopefully this helps show how quickly a company burns through cash. The only reason companies like Facebook or Twitter could get away with not charging fees is that they had large venture capital investment and those investors were footing the bill.

EDIT: I realized my calculations above neglected to include one additional factor – corporate tax.

#4

I truly believe it was a very generous move from the website developper to put the first war for free at the begining
It was as well just a basic marketing strategy to allow peoples to discover the website, then charge them when it becomes more popular.
If you truly care about the benefits this type of site gives you, you will pay the 10 bucks, because it is nothing compared to the benefits!