Guild Wars 2

Is it possible to make real money donations to the Anet/Guild Wars 2 development team—not for the purpose of dictating or directing creative content, but to advance, expedite or implement features already on the drawing board?

Say, in the order of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of dollars?

I’m sure if you wanted to do such a thing, the best way to go around doing it would be to email them directly rather than asking players on the forums

If you were part of some organisation or company, you could do such a thing more indirectly by purchasing hundreds of gem cards and holding a competition/lottery to disperse them.

Honestly, while they do want your money, they will never take money on the stipulation that it would direct work flow. It just won’t happen.

Putting more gas in the tank won’t make the car go any faster. Anet is profitable and as long as it remains that way they won’t need donations.

Chances are that all the money you donate or put towards the project via whatever channel just increases their profits and the extra would end up in the pockets of their investors/shareholders, not on the employees paychecks.

It would seem like if you want to spend money to direct their workflow that what you’d have to do would be to become a significant shareholder.

No. Arenanet is what is known as a business.

Sorry your money in the “order of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of dollars” will have to go unused. Or maybe you can donate it to an actual charity where it can do some good?

jweez.7214:

No. Arenanet is a what is known as a business.

Sorry your money in the “order of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of dollars” will have to go unused. Or maybe you can donate it to an actual charity where it can do some good?

I find your comment somewhat unfair, because despite its’ legitimacy, one could apply it endlessly to the ‘resting place’ of any amount of money, placed there by any person.

For example, a movie ticket at $15 – that money could also have been given to charity, should one have chosen to forgo the viewing experience. Would you view those who chose to see the movie with equal disdain, as you seem to be doing in your post above?

Pure Heart.1456:

jweez.7214:

No. Arenanet is a what is known as a business.

Sorry your money in the “order of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of dollars” will have to go unused. Or maybe you can donate it to an actual charity where it can do some good?

I find your comment somewhat unfair, because despite its’ legitimacy, one could apply it endlessly to the ‘resting place’ of any amount of money, placed there by any person.

For example, a movie ticket at $15 – that money could also have been given to charity, should one have chosen to forgo the viewing experience. Would you view those who chose to see the movie with equal disdain, as you seem to be doing in your post above?

What? He isn’t trying to pay for a service. He is trying to donate money to a for profit company where it will most likely not go to anywhere he would like it to go, such as to the staff pay checks or to hiring new people. At least with a charity you have some idea where it is going.

Donate your money to the poor.

Just send them a cheque via mail.

It’s highly irregular to donate money directly to a for-profit company, rather than a non-profit. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but they probably don’t have any fixed procedure for it.

If it’s really something you want to do, and it is “thousands, perhaps tens of thousands” of dollars, then you should get in touch with them directly about it. (Although, to be honest, I’m not sure how you’d do that. Mail them at this address? Call 425-247-2500 and ask for someone from sales? I don’t know.)

I don’t know if they’d even accept it, because of all the potential complications, but maybe you could ask to sponsor their internship program or something?

You’ll need to convince whoever you talk to that you’re serious, and not just a fan with an idea of doing a Kickstarter/fundraiser to donate money to a business. (Which is what Anet is.)

If you want to just give them money, that’s called “Buying Gems.”

If you want to give money to them without a product purchase, that’s called “Being an investor.” buy stocks or whatever.

They can’t just take your money, otherwise. that’s a legal issue for a company. And if they could, it would do nothing to “expedite” the dev process. The game will be “ready when it’s ready” as they like to say.

Redenaz.8631:

I don’t know if they’d even accept it, because of all the potential complications, but maybe you could ask to sponsor their internship program or something?

You’ll need to convince whoever you talk to that you’re serious, and not just a fan with an idea of doing a Kickstarter/fundraiser to donate money to a business. (Which is what Anet is.)

Huh, sponsoring an internship program is actually an interesting thought. That is, if the OP is in fact rich enough to throw around enough money to do that.

It’d actually help people advance their careers (the interns), and said interns might be able to contribute something to the game, so it could potentially be a somewhat ‘worthy’ cause that still gets the OP’s personal goals met. A few thousand bucks is enough for a paid intern or two for a summer, so the dev team gets and extra pair of hands and anet gets a free employee.

I don’t know what sort of internship program they already have in place though. But if that’s something you’d seriously be interested in trying to work out, yeah, you’d need to talk to them directly. Though that said, some of the staff on the forms, like Gaile Gray, might be able to put you in touch with someone who can do that. Try PMing her.

Buy gems and convert it to gold, send me the gold. If you do that you would have been a great person twice. Think about it; it’s genius.

ronpierce.2760:

Buy gems and convert it to gold, send me the gold. If you do that you would have been a great person twice. Think about it; it’s genius.

Or he could send half to you and half to myself. Three times great!

You should just buy a ridiculous amount of gems.

See if you can buy shares in NCSoft?

Pure Heart.1456:

jweez.7214:

No. Arenanet is a what is known as a business.

Sorry your money in the “order of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of dollars” will have to go unused. Or maybe you can donate it to an actual charity where it can do some good?

I find your comment somewhat unfair, because despite its’ legitimacy, one could apply it endlessly to the ‘resting place’ of any amount of money, placed there by any person.

For example, a movie ticket at $15 – that money could also have been given to charity, should one have chosen to forgo the viewing experience. Would you view those who chose to see the movie with equal disdain, as you seem to be doing in your post above?

I don’t care what you do with your money. Whether you spend it on lollipops or send it to help a charity. It’s your money whatever.

It’s just your question is dumb. A business that just accepts donations and has a streamlined method to do so? Its highly irregular and weird.

And then you throw in the amount of money for no apparent reason other than to just state the amount. As if someone was going to be like “well donations of less than $999 go to this pay pal account and donations of greater than $999 go to the other pay pal. Oh and if you donate tens of thousands make sure you get the complimentary Arenanet Charity shirt. It has the cutest Quaggan on the back and signed by Colin Johanson!”

If you’re looking for something like Kickstarter where you can put $10 towards the development of specific projects you like the sound of then it’s not going to happen.

If you’re serious about spending thousands or tends of thousands of dollars (fully funding the development of a feature or addition they may not be currently working on) then you could contact them and ask. They may still refuse if it’s not something they want to add to their game, but you’d have a better shot than if you’re expecting to throw them some loose change and demand changes to the game in return.

Buying gems is donating, why would you want to donate and get nothing in return?

Pure Heart.1456:

Is it possible to make real money donations to the Anet/Guild Wars 2 development team—not for the purpose of dictating or directing creative content, but to advance, expedite or implement features already on the drawing board?

Say, in the order of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of dollars?

Talk is cheap, buy gems = support the business. Your post is simply a thinly veiled attempt to conceal your need for attention, despite your posturing.

I doubt they would accept donations towards any projects from one individual. To many headaches from that as typically the donator will want to see progress on the project on a regular basis and also wants to remove parts of the project that aren’t to his liking. And then the problem of what happens if the project is scrapped. Is the donator informed? Does he get a voice in this decision?

If your going to donate money to Anet with expectation of anything out of it, you looking at 10million+. Anything less wont suffice to sway their current projects.

Just sayin…

However, if you wanna donate just cause? then buy Gems. Thats the ‘only current’ method that works. I guess you could buy stocks though….

Mightylink.3816:

Buying gems is donating, why would you want to donate and get nothing in return?

It is a bonus we get something out of it, but pretty much anything in the gem stre is not needed to play the game, so it donating with a bonus, and should not be acted like your paying them for something you deserve more back, kinda thing.
As i said before, at least it how i feel.

I think your scale is off OP. Giving Anet $10,000 would not speed up any projects. To speed up a project you’d need more people on it, which means hiring developers. At a minimum that’s $70,000 per person.

Buying stocks is not an effective means of giving Anet money. At this stage buying stocks would increase the value of the stocks on the market, but wouldn’t bring Anet any direct money unless you bought it from Anet (I doubt this is possible).

The only known means of giving money directly to Anet is to buy gems through the gem store in the game.

Buy gems for 1000 dollars and send them to me. This way you, Anet and I profit

Assuming that this is not a troll thread, there about 50 bazillion charities that would appreciate the donation and would use it for more good then “accelerating” game content.

Either search for one that inspires you or take a walk through a local children’s hospital and just hand them your wallet.

The thing is, genuine or not, the OP does raise an interesting question.

How do you try to get a company, you like the work of, to grow and become more effective and productive, if they don’t charge everyone a set amount?

Or, in fact, even if they do.

I would never think of throwing large sums of money at a company, like the OP is suggesting, but if he is a multi-millionaire, or a billionaire (so has more than enough cash to spare), maybe he thinks it would be worth it, to him, if he did so and it helped speed development up?

As I was saying on another thread, I think this is an interesting (and disturbing) sign of the times, as in the past there were simply far more lower and middle incomed people, who still had enough spare cash to contribute to the development of products.

But, now we have moved back to a time where, due to lack of work, low wages and high living costs, it would appear almost no one has much (if any) spare cash, except the 1%.

That means, if things don’t change, we may be moving back to a time of rich benefactors sponsoring the arts, rather than everyone paying their own small contribution.

Hopefully, this situation will soon change again, as it is obviously not healthy.

just buy the game in bulk , and give them away as free gifts……

buy me 100$ HoT , trust me you will support anet

This is ….. sad.

Stochastic.1398:

This is ….. sad.

Not to mention extremely …weird.

Odyssey.2613:

Stochastic.1398:

This is ….. sad.

Not to mention extremely …weird.

Boo-hoo for altruism? But if you really want to support A-net do what we all do: buy gems. I like you mindset and while giving real money donations will prob require a real life ho-ho-tron that can travel the world and back to A-net HQ (A-net hint hint). You could put yourself a “sub fee” and buy 10$ gems a month, thats usually what I do sometimes