Star Vault’s CEO Henrik Nyström updates around the recently announced rights issue and Mortal Online 2
I would like to start by emphasizing that the rights issue we announced last Friday is in no way linked to a failure of Star Vault, quite the opposite. We could launch Mortal Online 2 at the end of December this year but feel that we, and many others with us, including leading game streamers, have something really big that has taken shape and want to take opportunity to give Mortal Online 2 the best possible conditions to successfully be fine-tuned and launched under optimal conditions. The game is expected to go persistent live during March 2021. In addition, we have interesting conversations with possible launch partners that could give Mortal Online 2 a real extra boost regarding visibility and future user base. In that perspective, I assess that a small share issue of approx. USD 600 000 with very low dilution (approx. 4.75%), where all shareholders are welcome to participate and defend their shareholding, is something positive and in the shareholders' best interest.
As many of you know, over the last several months we have been in a combat alpha status with our soon to be released MMO sandbox game, Mortal Online 2. During this time, we have been adding new features at a regular cadence, on-time and consistent with the roadmap we have published on our website. The response to the game thus far has been overwhelmingly positive and frankly better even than our expectations. Our original expectations for a persistent live release, which means that from that time on we commit to not ‘wiping’ the server for any reason and for us is also going to be the time when we begin to charge monthly subscription fees, was to launch persistent release by year end. We believe that our schedule would have permitted us to meet that timeline with a successful release. However, upon reflection, we have recently come to the decision that releasing the game at year-end would not be in the best interest of any stakeholders - not our passionate loyal current player base, not the player base that played Mortal Online I, at some point but left the game, and not the players who have yet to experience Mortal Online at all; and also not in the best interests of our shareholders. As such, we have decided to delay persistent release by up to 3 months. In conjunction with this decision, we decided upon a modest and fully secured rights issue that will bring in approx. USD 600 000 with preferential rights for existing shareholders.
We believe, based on concrete feedback from our player base that you can see by reading our forums (www.mortalonline2.com) or our Discord channel (www.discord.com/invite/mortalonline), that by incurring a small delay in the game’s introduction that we will have an outsized impact on its ultimate success. We will take this time to ensure the game’s stability and balance, as well as add a couple of features that we had not intended to be in the game upon launch but which we believe will have a significant impact on the excitement level of players at launch and thus ensure that our player retention rate remains as high as possible. With a subscription business model and players who, if we provide the compelling experience we intend to, will often play for years, the lifetime value of a player is very high. As such, a short delay that we believe will entice more players into the game and decrease players churning out of the game is a no-brainer in terms of return on investment. It is our very strong belief in the very sizable opportunity that we have, a belief that has been generated by the overwhelming enthusiasm of our community, that guides our decision. The important point we want to express is that this decision is borne of greater than expected optimism, based on community input. It is not a decision we feel we have to make in order to be successful; rather, it is a decision we want to make because we believe the opportunity is very large and this short delay will have significant incremental impact on our success. We suggest all shareholders read the forums on our website and spend some time on the game’s Discord channel to see for yourselves the level of engagement, enthusiasm, and excitement that our community has for the game and the content we have been releasing. If you do, we believe you will get a sense of the opportunity we have before us and also understand why these actions are clearly in the best interests of the company and that the short delay and small amount of dilution will turn out to have been a small price to pay.
Henrik Nyström, CEO Star Vault AB (publ)
For further information please contact:
Henrik Nyström, CEO
E-mail: ir@starvault.se
Web: www.starvault.se
Star Vault är ett spelutvecklingsbolag baserat i Malmö. Bolaget utvecklar onlinespel, Mortal Online inom genren Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) samt enklare spel Kitten´d och Mortal Royale.