Look, I get it. But even half that amount is criminally reckless spending, and it really all depends on their staff size. Believe it or not one time expenditures like statues, buses and PAX booths can be expensive, and incredibly wasteful, but they don't add up to a crazy ludicrous number like 130 million. In software development staff and salaries are nearly your entire cost, so the cost is almost entirely dependent on people.
Actually, if you can find some decent staffing level numbers over the course of those 7 years I can get a pretty decent high/low estimate for you. I Googled around but couldn't find anything helpufl. For 130 million to have been spent they would have had to be close to 200 people full time for most of those 7 years, or about half that number but with a per person spending atdoublethe standard industry rate.
As the staffing levels get lower the per person spending goes up and either The9 is run by such utterly incompetent people that they didn't even look at the most basic financial statements, or 130 million is high. Their burn rate would need to be close to Schilling's to get that kind of number, so there is precedent for that kind of waste, but he had to get money from the public in a way that was unethical and criminally suspect.
So, you can see why I am alittleskeptical.
