Greetings

Lets start by saying i'm quite oblivious and unskilled about the inner workings of big businesses and market practices, but i had a nasty surprise the other day while playing:

My company had an estimated worth of 1.5 billions somehow, and i had 900 millions in ready-to-use cash.
I also gradually over monthes purchased up to 90% of a competitor (so, 90 000 shares of it)
the more shares i would buy and own of this competitor, the lower and lower the studio's estimated worth would drop

at the point of the event that puzzled me, the competitor's worth was around 85 millions, and the share's price was around 14.5$ (which means roughly 1.3 billions of shares's total worth)

and THEN: i receive a mail from a big competitor (one that is listed with a worth of 260 millions) and here is what the mail was saying, roughly:

"Hello, we want to purchase (name of the small competitor) but we cannot do that without reaching you as you own a signidficant amount of shares of said company.
Here is the deal: we give you (money amount x) for all your shares as a non negotiable offer and you get out of the picture and we purchase said competitor so that you dont have to keep bothering about handling it yourself anymore, pretty neat, uh ?

If you refuse, we go to court and our lawyer's fee will be of (huuuuge amount of money y)... XOXO"

My problem is that money amount x was 7336$ (so it wasnt a coma misplacing or a typo or a shortened display of my 90 000 shares's current worth)
My other problem was that lawyer robbery/extortion money amount y was... 135 millions !!!

What is the logic here ? Is it how businesses are really working ?
I mean you own 1.3 billions worth of something and someone comes in and request you to give him 1.3 billions worth for a mere 7.3 k or will legally rob you off 130 millions in court if you refuse ?
IRL is someone rings my door with such ludicrous final offer "deal", i'd ask 'ma to bring me the shotgun and would tell the twat to get of my lawn.

so question 1: is this all logical or making any sense given the method, and the amounts ?
quesiton 2: how do you purchase a competitor completely ? (i mean aside from purchasing shares)

I mean: a) you can only buy 20% worth of shares at a time (which makes the value rise instantly, which seems logical... so there is no option to put your big fat cash on the table and purchase 100% of the shares in one go) and b) how can you purchase a compêtitor for it's current total worth instead ? and c) is the AI "cheating" somehow by being allowed to purchase a competitor in a whole in a single shot ?

thanx for answers

thanx for your answer and for taking notice of the feedback.

what you says addresses the fact that the UI doesnt let player purchase more than 20% of shares at once, which is one of the issues

i'd however would like your insights or explanation about the whole competitor email's content, though.
I mean:
- competitor wanna buy the company i have shares in
- competitor offers me a ridiculously low amount of money for all my shares (is it a bug because of a shares threshold number after which a formula derailed ?)
for reminder, i had 90% shares, worth a total of around 1.3 billion, and the email from competitor offered 7336$ (so it's not a misplaced colon or a typo, or they would have offered something like 1300 or around)
- competitor threaten me to either accept this deal OR send me to court and have me pay 130 millions in lawyer fee

even if my question raised a non intended behavior regarding competitors interactions for shares purchasing, the core of my puzzleness was more about the competitor's email and its content

i mean, irl afaic it would translate as a rather blunt attempt of extortion BUT a possibily casual/legal/normal one for people used to business practices ? maybe ? which i'm not...

thanx a lot for any insight

Thanx for the answer... To be honest the ingame email was a bit ambiguous, as it displayed this amount as their offer without mentioning "per share" and the amount per share felt ridiculous: at that time, the company i owned 90% of had a price per sher of something like 14.5$

so, i tried to deduce and eliminate: getting 7k for 14$ for each share felt overpriced by very far... so i thought about a coma typo on total worth... then i thought about total worth at all...

sure at that time i had 900M myself so it doesnt feel too strange that a competitor has 600M to spend/waste, but to buy back another company which was worthing a grand total of 85M and a share unit price of 14.5...

so, thank you very much for the insight, and feel free to see if this feedback would outline or not an unintended value range in formulas regarding competitors interactions...

PS: the game is great... it goes beyond/further than game dev tycoon which was already pleasant...

I can compare the original template with the mail i saw, which helps me a lot. On the template i cannot know which ingame numeric variable each part of the text is calling on though.

I was playing in french localization, but i admit at that time i didnt have the reflex of trying to check the original english version; and i purged my emails by accident before i'd ever have such idea. But now i'll doublecheck between localizations if i happen to encouter other ingame messages that puzzle me.

You were very helpful in letting me know that the numbers seemed to be within the intended range of the ingame formulas even if they felt overly generous to me at that time, hence why i dismissed them as possible and was misled into thinking about a bug.

Excuse me in advance if i sounded nitpicking or pesky; i really like the game and feel it's a great step further gamedev tycoon or some other tycoons games on same theme. as such i am very eager to watch it evolving into an as polished version as it can be.

regarding a way to improve the template sentence or the localized version, i think that even if it feels insisting a bit too much on the captain obvious side, it could be made clear that the numerical values displayed are either individual share prices or grand total worth of said shares
Also i can see how/why the french localization, though litteraly correct, is idiomatically misleading.

Because in english when you say "your shares are worth (a number) $" i assume that native speakers will feel it implied that you are talking about the individual value of one share even though you are using plural (shares are worth); but in french, it is different:

if we are using plural (your shares) then the number displayed after would mean to be the total worth of all the shares, otherwise it would say something using a phrasing built upon singular, that would roughly translate back in english in somethign that you might feel clumsy but would sound like this: (i put in italic optional addition, sentence can be read with or without it)

Aujourd'hui la valeur (unitaire) de l'action de companyname sur le marché est de sharevalue$ et nous voulons vous racheter vos actions pour proposalpricepershare$ pièce.

which roughly means

Today, companyname's share value on the market is sharevalue$ and we are willing to give you proposalpricepershare$ per unit.

(the english part is just an overview of how the french phrasing would feel/sound, even if it obviously feels clumsy or incorrect in english but it's to give a rough idea... i'm not talking or suggesting about changing the original english template)

Another way would be to display the total worth of player's owned shares (market price * number of shares) and same for the second half of sentence with competitor's proposal offer price.