Well, folks, things are going down hill for Wargaming at break neck speed now. This would of course explain all the blatant money grabbing bullshit over the last year-and-a-half to two years.
Now, for those of you not familiar, we started this site up going on two years ago. One of the first post we made was about the financial shenanigans of Wargaming. You might want to refresh yourself with that before you go any further. You go ahead and catch up. We’ll wait
Now, in order to understand what was actually going on, you have to go a bit deeper into the banking sector that we didn’t really cover in that story.
You see, back in November of 2013, right about the time they were getting their stocks frozen on the Cyprus Stock Exchange, they bought into Hellenic Bank in Cyprus.
Why would you do that? Why would you refuse to release your financial reports and get your stocks frozen on the exchange and ultimately kicked completely off it if you had so much money you were buying into a fucking bank in Cyprus? And not just buying into it, but buying a nearly 30% (26.2%) stake in it?
Well, I can think of two reasons:
- You didn’t have the money. You were lying about your financials (as we pointed out in our original article two years ago) and taking out a shit ton of financing you didn’t really qualify for.
- You were getting HUGE influxes of cash from outside sources and couldn’t explain where it came from legitimately. In other words, you’re fucking laundering money.
Now which of those two it is remains unknown. Frankly, I’m leaning towards number 2. Anywho, on with the show.
So in November of 2013, Wargaming bought in to Hellenic Bank in Cyprus. Now, according to the story, Wargaming spent 40 million Euro for a “near 30% stake” (which we now know was actually 26.2%) making them the second largest shareholder in the bank.
Now, at that time, shares of that bank were running at €4.15 per share.
So if you shelled out 40 million Euro back then, you got 9,638,554 shares. OK. So what’s the problem? Well, the problem is that just two years later they allegedly sold off 50 million shares. Or at least that’s what the article says. But there’s a problem with that – it’s called FUCKING MATH.
Now, Hellenic Bank presently has 198 million total shares outstanding. That’s it. That’s all there is.
Now, if Wargaming owns a 26.2% stake in that bank per the article, then that would be exactly 51,876,000 shares total. So how the fuck can you sell 50 million shares and still own 24.8% of the bank?
You fucking CAN’T. It’s clear it’s a completely bullshit article with no basis in reality written by a fucking half wit that figured nobody would ever bother doing the math.
But most articles concerning Wargaming are, so why are we surprised? Well, frankly, we’re not.
So what we have to do is go back to the beginning and see what the hell happened. If Wargaming bought in for only 40 million Euro, and own 26.2% of the bank at one point we know that comes to just short of 52 million shares by today’s statements on total shares outstanding, but it doesn’t make any sense based on the stock price at the time and the claimed amount they spent. Doing basic math, they only originally bought 9.7 million shares. How the fuck does that work?
Stock Splitting, folks. It’s clear that’s what they did. They bought in and split the flying fuck out of the stock in very much the same way they did their original projections for getting listed on the Cyprus Stock Exchange. It gives them much more stock shares, but they of course have their value absolutely fucking gutted.
So in reality, in late 2015, Wargaming actually sold roughly 726,000 shares if you go by the percentages of the article. The problem with that is that at the time they sold those shares (October of 2015) they were only worth €1.44 each
So that means Wargaming made right at 1 million Euro. That’s it, folks.
Now why the fuck would you do that? Why would you sell stock that had already lost 65% of it’s value?
Well, I can only think of one reason: ABSOLUTE FUCKING DESPERATION.
It gets worse, folks. Thanks to our man in South East Asia, we now know that Cyprus Banks and investors are fucked. He posted this little tidbit of an article the other day:
FINANCE: Foreign capital invested in Cyprus banks takes a battering
02 January, 2019
Foreign investors who put money in Cyprus banks have got little in return, with some seeing the value of their initial investment more than halved.
Despite a promising upturn predicted for Cyprus banks, hedge funds and foreign investors have lost up to 70% of their initial investment.
Source: Cyprus Banks and Investors Royally Fucked
And that fits, doesn’t it?
Which brings us to where Wargaming is now in that little bank of theirs. According to everything we now know, Wargaming is still holding on to roughly 51 million shares of Hellenic Bank in Cyprus.
Those shares are now valued at €.728.
That is NOT a typo. They’re not even worth one single fucking Euro anymore.
That means that Wargaming have lost their entire ass on that deal. Stock once worth €4.40 when they bought in has lost 83.5% of its value.
HO
LEE
SHIT!!!
No wonder they’re so desperate and launching these ridiculous fucking money grabs lately.
No wonder they’re shutting down offices.
No wonder they’re closing down servers.
No wonder they’re laying off hundreds of workers.
One wonders how much longer they can hold on with shit like this going down. I mean, now that your stock is essentially worthless, how the fuck can you get loans or anything else to keep going?
One thing is for sure: if they’re legitimate, they’re fucked. If they’re laundering money, they MIGHT just survive.
For now.
Very…. Interesting….
Yep. If they sold out the 51 million shares they have right now, they would wind up losing 2,872,000 Euro. They are well and truly fucked as far as that bank investment goes.
Oh my.
If their stock has gone negative to the initial investment, then I can only assume that the vast majority of their customers have gone the same route.
I mean, as a bank goes, so go its customers. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next several months. If customers start running on the banks, they could completely collapse.
With their tax exempt status, I don’t see there being any bailouts for them. They will be out in the street without even a bag to hold.
@Thing1
I wonder how long will Wargaming last in Asia including Japan, North America, Europe and recently they have a office in Melbourne, Australia along with their games World of Tanks and Warships.
There’s no telling dude.
Fact is, it doesn’t take that much money to run a server. At all. Although the idiots on the forum love to talk about all the costs Wargaming incur, it’s absolute bullshit. You can host your own game servers just like they do and the cost is down to how many players you have and how much data you use.
For North America for instance, they’re paying around $1,500 per month tops for the game servers. That’s enough to handle a million concurrent players with a peak max of around 50,000 players, which the NA server doesn’t even come close to having.
As cheap and fucking laggy as it is, they’re probably running a server of half that power and paying around $750 per month for it. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find out that they’re paying more to host their fucking forum in North America at this point than they are their game server.
So they can stay up and running for a long, long time. The problem is, they’re not going to be making jack shit. It’s not going to be anywhere near enough to pay off all the money they’re losing in their other business ventures.
That’s what’s going to catch up with them much sooner than anything else. When you go to log in one day and the server is just fucking gone, and then you go to the forum to find out what’s going on and it’s gone too, you’ll know they finally went belly up.
It’ll just be fucking gone. Don’t expect to get an email, or a notice, or a warning. When it goes, it’s just going to go fucking *POOF* and that’s it. Then of course Reddit will go fucking off the hook busy with the tears.
I wonder if Xmas sales are meant to make everything look palatable to a new buyer/investor in this grand pyramid.
You’d have to be insane to buy into this piece of shit game at this stage of it.
Over on Steam, I’ve seen reviews talking about the fact that it’s not even worth playing for free it’s gotten so bad.
The money laundering. I wonder who their source is, and how this will play out? They need the game for the “front” or the cover for the operation to work. This could helps expose those activities down the road, maybe? Then again, we are talking about Cyprus and those dodgy, shady, anything but loophole or lack of certain provisions or regulatory things in place which allow operators like Wargaming to “slither” around with their financial skullduggery like this. Yes, it will be interesting to see what’s next soon. As they say, “buckle up.” For what might be next?
The easiest tool for money laundering is real estate.
What is Trump into? Real estate.
Who are his biggest “investors”? Russia.
What’s the first thing Wargaming did after buying into Hellenic Bank? They got into real estate.
Who are their biggest investors? Russia.
Even as sceptical as I am, it seems highly unlikely that it’s a coincidence.
That’s it fucking exactly.
EVERYBODY got into the money laundering business. Why do you think it’s always real estate that fucks up everything? You really all think that Freddy Mac and Fannie May thing was just a coincidence?
It’s how they launder money. You buy a shit hole house and pay 10 times what it’s worth and finance through your own bank. BOOM. Fucking done.
That’s why Trump has never released his tax returns. They’ll see all kinds of fucking money coming from all kinds of different places that don’t make sense. They’ll see Russian money buying a 400,000 dollar suite in Trump Tower and paying 50 million dollars for it.
It’ll bust his ass clear to fucking Mars.
Has anyone on here heard of mail.ru? Those guys are comparable in sheer stupidity with Wargaming. These guys had resorted to selling us Tier 10 premiums(that’s right, TIER 10 PREMIUMS!!), from what, LOOT CRATES!!! And the idiots who keep buying into loot crates are helping them out!! I know this is off topic, but the premise is the same. Wargaming and Mail.ru are both super stupid companies that screwed the Western World over. I’m honestly venting how frustrated and mad I am about these two brainless excuses for companies!!! Both are heads-up-their butts moron companies that should be destroyed by a freaking air strike!!! Oh, and include a MOAB from two C-130s(yes, that’s right, that’s currently the only method of deploying such a weapon in the US military right now): 1 for Mail.ru, and the other for WG to further destroy the rubble!! Appalling isn’t even enough to describe how asinine, infuriating, and downright upsetting how both these companies are!!! Anyway, here’s the story with Armored Warfare: Circa 2015, this game was great when it came out, after being developed by Obsidian Entertainment. Suddenly, Mail.ru got butthurt and got themselves into a battle with Obsidian(which, by the way, is American) from Obsidian(who did NOTHING WRONG), and cancelled their contracts. So, the RUSSIANS took over an American-made game, and made things worse. Oh, the loot crate thing, I’ll name ALL vehicles that should’ve been progression vehicles(purchasable with credits)1. My favorite video game tank of all time, the Object 640 Black Eagle. Originally, it was going to be a progression vehicle, but these stupid inbreds made it a premium!! Seriously, tier 10 premiums are just too pricey, and they just don’t work in the long run. But wait, there’s more! Fail.ru then took the 152mm gun from the T-14 and 140mm from the Type99A2 and made them PREMIUMS!!!! Then, they took the Japanese Type 90(There’s the Chinese Type 90 also) and made that a premium, followed by the South Korean K1A! MBT, then the Turkish Altay, and now, the Oplot-M aka Oplot-BM. My gosh!!! Ok, for those of you who have seen SpongeBob, you probably heard the Texas joke, when Patrick’s response to SpongeBob’s joke is this: “What’s the difference?” Yup, what’s the difference indeed. >:(
Mail.ru is a massive Russian internet company. They’ve been busted several times for all manner of bullshit. I wouldn’t trust those assholes as far as I could pick them up and throw them.
That explains why AW suddenly crashed the way it did, apparently when I was playing it for the time frame I was there. Probably about the time Obsidian and Mail.ru got into it with each other. It was crashing and burning.
Yeah, that fucking joke of a game is gone. They’ve even shut their forums down and moved to Discord as of a couple days ago. (I have people email me about that shit game as well.)
It’s fucking laughable how bad all of the Russian money pits are doing with the exception of War Thunder. As hard as it is to believe, they’re holding their own.
Maybe, they will collapse within this year. This explains all of the pushes for premium time and tanks every week now. How long till it all is gone, I wonder? It would be funny, to start a countdown clock at the top of the page predicting when their money will run out. Just imagine the people at Wargaming running around in panic lol.
The population on the NA server is pathetic now. I logged in a few weeks ago, and the server population stayed around 5k most of the time. Only during prime hours, did it struggle its way up to approx. 19K, but it didn’t last very long. Population starts failing off fairly fast now, than in the couple of years in the past.
Of course if you listen to the forum shills like Striker_70 or NeatoMan, they’ll tell you it’s teaming with action 24 hrs a day and the fun never ends, with so many players the Match Maker just can’t handle the load. ?