ITEM 1. BUSINESS
General
AppSoft Technologies, Inc. (“we,” “us,” or the “Company”) develops, publishes and markets mobile software applications for smartphones and tablet devices (“Apps”). We generate revenue from sales, or downloads, of our Apps and from advertisements published on our ad supported game titles. We currently own a portfolio comprising over 400 Apps titles including games designed to appeal to a broad cross section of consumers. Consumers download our Apps through the Apple App Store, a direct-to-consumer digital storefront.
Over the last several years, we discontinued updating our catalogue of legal-related Apps because they did not generate revenue sufficient to support continued investment and no longer offer those products.
We offer some of our game titles in both a free advertisement-supported version and a paid version that does not display ads. We believe that the ad supported versions allow for wider dissemination of our titles to consumers who might not otherwise spend money for an App without first playing the game.
We may purchase App titles directly from developers or enter into agreements with third-party developers to sell us titles under development or to create new Apps for us. Over the last several years, we have not developed, acquired or released any new App titles because of our lack of financial resources.
During 2021, we focused development efforts on our esports segments, which include e-gaming platforms and a digital publication titled “Esportsreporter,” a news channel covering esports and professional gaming.
During the first quarter of 2022, we launched a video game incubator, Gamerfy.com, through which we intend to identify develop and commercialize new games.
Over the last decade, mobile devices, including smartphone and tablets, have proliferated extensively around the world across a wide range of demographic groups. The mobile Apps industry has experienced corresponding growth in the number of downloads, the number and types of Apps published. We believe that there will continue to be an increase in the number of smartphones and tablets sold. In addition, technological advances to these devices, including more powerful smartphones and tablets with larger screens provide a platform for more diverse Apps and make games more fun and visually appealing. We believe that technological developments will continue to drive growth in our industry for the foreseeable future.
History
We were organized in the State of Nevada in March 2015. In April 2015, we concluded a transaction in which we issued 2,000,000 shares of our Series A Preferred Stock in exchange for the sum of $50,000 and a portfolio comprising over 400 Apps titles.
On March 31, 2016, we closed our initial public offering of common stock, which we refer to throughout this report as our IPO. In our IPO, we registered 1,000,000 shares of common stock for sale at a price of $0.50 per share and sold 252,500 shares of common stock to the public for an aggregate offering price of $126,250.
On December 4, 2018, the holders of a majority of the outstanding shares of our common stock approved an amendment to our articles of incorporation to reduce the price at which shares of our Series A Cumulative, Convertible Preferred Stock convert into shares of Common Stock from $0.005 per share to $0.0002 per share. See the disclosure under Part II, Item 13 “Certain Relationships and Related Transactions, and Director Independence” for a discussion of the amendment. The amendment was filed with the state of Nevada on April 10, 2019.
Our App Portfolio
Our Apps portfolio includes approximately 200 products and comprises game titles that are designed to appeal to a variety of age groups ranging from younger teens to adults. Currently, we offer products only for Apple operating systems. We offer some of our games in both a free advertisement-supported version and a paid version that does not display ads. We believe that by offering free ad supported versions we can build a significantly larger customer base more quickly than we could if we charged users an up-front fee to download our games since they may be reluctant to purchasing a game without first playing it. If a consumer enjoys a title, they may purchase the game and play without interruption from pop-up ads.
The markets for our products are characterized by rapid technological change, particularly in the technical capabilities of mobile phones and tablets, and changing end-user preferences. Therefore, we will be required to continuously invest capital to innovate and publish new games, regularly update our games, and modify existing games for distribution on evolving platforms. We cannot assure that we will have the capital to develop new and update existing game, that we will be successful in selecting new games to bring to market or that our updates to successful games will allow us to retain market share.
App Development
We seek to develop and acquire new Apps to supplement our portfolio. We may engage developers to create games for us or acquire titles and concepts directly from independent developers. We are seeking to develop a pipeline of independent game designers, developers and programmers who provide us with new ideas and titles to publish.
In cases where we engage developers to create games for us, we may enter into services or consulting agreements with independent developers that may provide us with exclusive publishing and marketing rights and require us to make development payments, pay royalties based on product sales and to satisfy other conditions. Our agreements with third-party developers generally provide us with the right to monitor development efforts and to cease making development payments if specified development milestones are not satisfied.
We develop and publish free-to-play games. Free-to-play games are games that a player can download and play for free, but which allow players to access a variety of additional content and features for a fee, through “in-app purchases” utilizing virtual currency they may be purchased through digital storefronts, and to engage with various advertisements and offers that generate revenues for us. Several large game publishers are successfully employing this business model. In order for us to achieve success using this model, we must develop and publish games that are widely accepted and commercially successful, which will provide us with the largest base from which to monetize our in-App sales. In addition to building strong core gameplay, successful monetization will require that we continually create new content within games and otherwise find ways to retain players and incentivize them to make in-app purchases. As these games gain wider acceptance and mature in the market, we may seek to improve monetization and increase awareness of our games by building social media communities around these titles and by delivering additional features, such as tournaments, live events and more frequent content updates.
During the first quarter of 2022, we launched a video game incubator, Gamerfy.com, which will seek to acquire and commercialize the next generation of game titles with particular focus on community play, the Metaverse, a virtual reality world where users can interact, game and experience things as they would in the real world; and non-fungible tokens, or NFT’s, each of which would allow us to sell into rapidly growing market segments.
Game developers will submit ideas and even partially developed games to us through the Gamerfy site. Our panel of experienced gamers will select from many possible titles presented to us through our Gamerfy site to select the most appealing and exciting games. We will explore the commercial viability of the concept and undertake an analysis of the cost to develop the App against its potential economic return. We conduct these analyses in-house and do not rely on independent third parties undertake these services. Subject to available capital, we plan to provide funding and access to studios, designers, coders and other resources to successfully launch and market a new game titles. We will seek to acquire an ownership interest in the projects that we fund and commercialize. We expect Gamerfy to be the principal source of new games for us for the foreseeable future.
In addition, we may seek to acquire franchises around which we develop games. Franchises may include movies, television programs, toys and other cultural phenomena that lend themselves to gamification. We will have to obtain a license from the owner of the franchise for each App we publish that is based on a third-party franchise and we likely will be required to pay ongoing royalties to the franchise owner.
The description of our development efforts throughout this report statements is subject in all events to acquiring the capital required to undertake such activities and we cannot provide investors with any assurance that will have capital available to us in the future.
Esports Platform
During the second quarter of 2021, we launched an Esports/E-gaming platform which we refer to as Esportsreporter.com. Esportsreporter.com is a news channel for a broad spectrum of esports and gaming. The site publishes the most relevant breaking news for esports and gaming, including coverage of industry trends and guides on the business of esports and gaming for investors and aspiring esports and gaming professionals. The site covers the most important news in esports on a daily basis while also diving deeper with coverage of events with live reporters as well as conducting face to face and virtual interviews with professional players.
In addition to becoming a leading source of esports news, Esportsreporter.com has its own editorial and digital content creation team that will continue to publish original content covering the latest trends from the eSports and gaming industry. We currently staff numerous qualified journalist and editorial gamers, as well as social media expert/ gamers, and video editors, graphic designers, and production engineers – all also gamers. Our platform is quickly becoming one of the highest trafficking eSports news sites, with a heavy and popular presence in the gaming and eSports communities via content both article and video, and social media, on its way toward becoming a major broadcaster of eSports tournaments and gaming events, with its own large in-house family of avid content creators.
The content we create includes: recording clips of tournaments for montages, similar to highlights of a major sports game. Recording clips of professional streamers for montages, a very popular genre of content that YouTube and Netflix are offering as their own channels, which we hope to emulate in the near future. We record videos of our own staff explaining latest game patches, eSport team news/drama, new game trailers, new game features and convert personal streams into montages for the site and channel.
We expect that our reporters will attend important events, including Play NYC, and interview top players from eSports teams that are sponsored Game Team Players. As capital permits, we will continue to grow and add more high caliber interviews as well as emerging game coverage and reviews, indie games still undiscovered, peripherals and gaming hardware systems, streaming video gameplay, competitive, walkthrough as well as industry technical topics.
According to Newzoo, a global source for games and esports analytics and market research, the Esports audience will grow to over 645 million globally by 2023 with “Esports enthusiasts” accounting for 45% of the total. The global Esports market is currently worth $1.08 billion and is expected to reach $1.62 billion by 2024. In 2018, over $2.5 billion was invested by venture capital into areas such as game development, event organizing, media platforms and consumer products. Esports is gaining popularity in regions where a high percentage of the population is young. Newzoo estimates that 57% of the total global esports viewership resides in the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, Latin America is the fastest-rising eSports market, with its revenue hitting $18 million in 2018 and possibly reaching $43 million by the end of 2023. According to Influencer Marketing Hup, eSports revenue streams arise from the following sources: sponsorship – 40%; advertising – 19%; media rights 18%; game publisher fees – 13%; merchandise and tickets – 11%.
The Esports ecosystem is made up of both software and hardware companies developing technologies that enable video games to be played on computers/consoles by professional gamers. Such technologies include: broadcasting and streaming services, marketing for competitive gaming, communication & social tools, game developers and publishers and professional grade gaming hardware. Non-technical areas include events & tournaments, organizations and teams.
We are currently building a following on digital media and expect to monetize the site and our audience utilizing an array of proven techniques, including generating revenue from sales, sponsorships, merchandise, and advertiser supported content.
Sales, Marketing and Distribution
We market, sell and distribute our games Apps exclusively through Apple’s App Store, a global direct-to-consumer digital storefront. From time to time, we may also sell development services to other business for products they will take to market. We expect to develop our new Apps for both Apple and Android devices and will seek to offer our products through Google Play.
We generate revenue from downloads of our paid Apps and from advertisements published on our ad supported game titles. We have entered into an agreement with each of Apple that governs our relationship as a developer/distributor on its storefront. We are party to two agreements with Apple, one that relates to App sales and one that covers net revenues generated from in-App advertising, for which we pay Apple a fee equal to 30% of net advertising revenues, which are defined as gross advertising revenue recognized through the delivery of ads by Apple less: a) any allowances actually made or taken for returns, credits, cash discounts and promotional allowances; and, b) agency and agent fees, discounts, commissions and referral fees and (c) certain adjustments and allocations specified in the agreement. The agreement provides that we will continue to own all rights to our Apps, subject to a license we grant to each party to market and promote our products and further define permissible and prohibited activities of the parties.
We had marketed our legal titles through Google Play and may seek to re-engage with Google’s storefront in the future as we develop new games and Apps for Android devices.
We may partner with other App publishers to develop and market new titles. These types of arrangements will allow us to defray development and marketing costs among a wider range of titles and increase our chances of publishing a successful title.
We employ advanced analytics, a means of analyzing data we collect about users of our Apps, to develop and publish more appealing titles and features in our games.
Our ability to market our Apps successfully on direct-to-consumer digital storefronts depends on a number of factors, including our ability to build a relationships with storefront owners and educate them about our title roadmap so that they feature or otherwise prominently place them within the storefront. If we are able to achieve these ends, we believe that consumers are more likely to find our Apps, which may result in greater downloads and more revenue. We believe that a number of factors may influence the featuring or placement of an App, including:
| · | the perceived attractiveness of the title; |
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| · | the level of critical or commercial success of the App or of other Apps previously introduced by a publisher; |
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| · | incorporation of the storefront owner’s latest technology in the publisher’s title; |
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| · | how strong the consumer experience is on all of the devices that discover titles using any given digital storefront; |
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| · | the publisher’s relationship with the applicable storefront owner and future pipeline of quality titles for it; and |
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| · | the current market share of the publisher. |
We also expect to undertake a number of marketing initiatives designed to attract consumers to download our Apps, including:
| · | using social networking websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, focused directly at the target users of our Apps; |
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| · | paying third parties to advertise or incentivize consumers to download our Apps through offers or recommendations; |
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| · | using “push” notifications to alert existing and prospective users of updates to our Apps and new product offerings; |
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| · | cross-promoting our Apps through banner advertisements in our other Apps, as well as advertising our Apps in our competitors’ product offerings; and |
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| · | undertaking outreach efforts with video game websites and related media outlets, such as providing reviewers with access to our games prior to launch. |
Competition
Developing, distributing and selling Apps is a highly competitive business, characterized by frequent product introductions and rapidly emerging new platforms, technologies and storefronts. With respect to competing for consumers of our game related Apps, we will compete primarily on the basis of game quality, brand and customer reviews. We will compete for promotional and digital storefront placement based on these factors, as well as our relationship with the storefront owner, historical performance, perception of sales potential and relationships with licensors of brands, properties and other content.
We believe that our small size will allow provide us a competitive edge for the time being and allow us to make quick decisions as to product development to take advantage of consumer preferences at a particular point in time.
With respect to our game Apps, we compete with a continually increasing number of public and well-funded private companies, including Supercell, Niantic Tencent, NetEase, Machine Zone and many others. We could also face increased competition if large companies with significant online presences such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook or Yahoo, choose to enter or expand in the games space or develop competing games.
In addition, given the open nature of the development and distribution for smartphones and tablets, we also compete or will compete with a vast number of small companies and individuals in all of our segments who are able to create and launch Apps and other content for these devices using relatively limited resources and with relatively limited start-up time or expertise. As an example of the competition that we face, as of the fourth quarter of 2020, Statista estimated that 3.14 million mobile Apps were available to download from the Apple App Store for various iOS devices. The proliferation of titles in these open developer channels makes it difficult for us to differentiate ourselves from other developers and to compete for players and users who purchase content for their devices without substantially increasing marketing or development costs.
Most of our competitors and our potential competitors have one or more advantages over us, including:
| · | significantly greater financial and personnel resources; |
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| · | stronger brand and consumer recognition; |
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| · | the capacity to leverage their marketing expenditures across a broader portfolio of mobile and non-mobile products; |
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| · | more substantial intellectual property of their own; |
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| · | lower labor and development costs and better overall economies of scale; and |
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| · | broader distribution and presence. |
Intellectual Property
Our intellectual property is an essential element of our business. We currently use a combination of trade secret and other intellectual property laws, confidentiality agreements and license agreements to protect our intellectual property. We may seek to file copyrights with respect to one or more of our titles in the future. Our employees and independent contractors are required to sign agreements acknowledging that all inventions, trade secrets, works of authorship, developments and other processes generated by them on our behalf are our property, and assigning to us any ownership that they may claim in those works. Despite our precautions, it may be possible for third parties to obtain and use without our consent intellectual property that we own or license. Unauthorized use of our intellectual property by third parties, including piracy, and the expenses incurred in protecting our intellectual property rights, may adversely affect our business.
From time to time, we may encounter disputes over rights and obligations concerning intellectual property. If we do not prevail in these disputes, we may lose some or all of our intellectual property protection, be enjoined from further sales of our Apps or other applications determined to infringe the rights of others, and/or be forced to pay substantial royalties to a third party, any of which would have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Government Regulation
We are subject to various federal, state and international laws and regulations that affect our business, including those relating to the privacy and security of customer and employee personal information and those relating to the Internet, behavioral tracking, mobile applications, advertising and marketing activities, and sweepstakes and contests. Additional laws in all of these areas are likely to be passed in the future, which could result in significant limitations on or changes to the ways in which we can collect, use, host, store or transmit the personal information and data of our customers or employees, communicate with our customers, and deliver products and services, or may significantly increase our compliance costs. As our business expands to include new uses or collection of data that are subject to privacy or security regulations, our compliance requirements and costs will increase and we may be subject to increased regulatory scrutiny.
Employees
As of the date of this report, we had one employee, who is our president and chief executive officers, who has other business interests and who is not obligated to devote any specific number of hours to our affairs. Our officer’s attention to his other business commitments may detract from his ability to devote time to our business and this may result in conflicts of interest that could harm our business.
We rely on independent game designers, developers, programmers and other IT specialists to develop new titles and update and maintain existing ones and from time to time we may have several contractors rendering services to us. As of the date of this report, we have engaged eight third party developers to assist with App development efforts.
Our employee is not represented by a collective bargaining agreement. We consider our relations with our employee to be very good.
Emerging Growth Company and Smaller Reporting Company Status
Emerging Growth Company
We are an “emerging growth company” as defined in Section 2(a)(19) of the Securities Act, as modified by the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 (the “JOBS Act”). As such, we are eligible to take advantage of certain exemptions from various reporting requirements that are applicable to other public companies that are not “emerging growth companies” including, but not limited to, not being required to comply with the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (the “Sarbanes-Oxley Act”), reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements, and exemptions from the requirements of holding a non-binding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. We intend to take advantage of all of these exemptions.
In addition, Section 107 of the JOBS Act also provides that an “emerging growth company” can take advantage of the extended transition period provided in Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act for complying with new or revised accounting standards, and delay compliance with new or revised accounting standards until those standards are applicable to private companies. We have elected to take advantage of the benefits of this extended transition period.
We could be an emerging growth company until the last day of the first fiscal year following the fifth anniversary of our first common equity offering, although circumstances could cause us to lose that status earlier if our annual revenues exceed $1.07 billion, if we issue more than $1.0 billion in non-convertible debt in any three-year period, if, at the end of any fiscal year in which the market value of our common stock held by non-affiliates exceeded $700 million as of the end of the second quarter of that fiscal year, or if we become a “large accelerated filer” as defined in Rule 12b-2 under the Exchange Act.
Smaller Reporting Company
We also qualify as a “smaller reporting company” under Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act, which is defined as a company with a public equity float of less than $75 million. To the extent that we remain a smaller reporting company at such time as we are no longer an emerging growth company, we will still have reduced disclosure requirements for our public filings, some of which are similar to those of an emerging growth company, including not being required to comply with the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements.