Nothing, if you know it’s fake.
MOAR PURPLE FLAVR-AID!!
The recent comments are no more fake than the Star Citizen crowdfunding pitch or development schedule :)
Well, the one thing I’ve been saying and writing about for over two years now, has now been proven. Chris Roberts and friends took money out of the project by buying the IP and company from themselves, then selling it back to their entities. And we don’t know how much further this was done on the US side, as those financials are private.
The latest UK financials, which I’m sure were sparked by the Coutts loan from this past Summer, have all the details.
MY Twitter storm: https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/923510084046598145
I am working on a blog about this. But the long and short of it this: they’ve scammed gamers and got rich doing it, while not delivering either of the games
Well done Derek.
The sad part in all this is that the award winning TheEscapist magazine who reported on this back in 2015 after reaching out to sources who confirmed what I’d written, were incessantly attacked by both Croberts and his minions. Liz Finnegan even went on to win an SPJ award for that 2015 article. That article (as I wrote here a few months back) was since removed earlier this year after CIG threatened (back in 2015) a lawsuit when it was published. With the recent downsizing at Defy Media, it makes sense now why they would have wanted to settle the matter, rather then engage in a lengthy legal battle. Years from now, most of us will bear witness to what happened there.
Is a crobert related to a cronut?
I’m eating a croissant right now, so thought I’d ask.
Back on topic, I want the project to succeed because if Monsieur Smart is correct (and it appears he is) then this will generate bad press for the industry/hobby as a whole.
Is the $36M in pledged income for Star citizen based on new/existing customers pledging more money for the game or in-game content? How close is that to reality in 2017? We are now 10 months in so they should have pulled in another $30M this year so far if they are on target? If people wise up in terms of pledges and they do not meet their targets then there will be huge cashflow issues.
I am a UK chartered accountant, I’ll take a look at the financials myself over the next few days.
It’s a combination of both new and existing customers. Mostly, from our on-going metrics, they have about 2000 whales who are buying everything that shows up. Like you would trading cards.
e.g. They put up a new ship JPEG for sale yesterday. Last I checked, about 1000 of the whales had bought it. This is for a ship that i) doesn’t exist in model form ii) is not in the game ii) and for which NONE of gameplay mechanics mention, exists in the game
In the image below, the Citcon 2017 (pre-sale) starts out at a record-setting pace, then there’s some weird $139,115 dip in the tracker – which is not a temporary glitch because there is no compensating positive spike later. Things are now settling back to Citcon 2016 pre-sale levels.
https://i.imgur.com/JRlM5gB.png
They are already having cash flow issues, hence what is seen in the 2016 financials.
Sources have told me that the funding chart (live Google Sheet here) is not accurate, that’s it’s mostly used to give an outside appearance of healthy interest. So we really don’t know. We do no for certain that it doesn’t take anything like refunds etc into account.
The Star Citizen fun starts on p18
https://issuu.com/newbayeurope/docs/mcv928_27th_october
Below is the sort of thing that’s going to put him behind bars over this project if he’s not careful. Wow. He’s not even hiding the lies anymore.
This is crazy, it is like the gaming equivalent of Scientology.
Well even if the Google Sheet was accurate, let’s assume that it is a best case scenario as well, then they have a huge issue, it shows that they have raised $21M so far this year although the cashflow forecast would need them to raise $30M, a difference of $9M. With projected cash reserves of $13M at year end, assuming that their costs were as anticipated and that they did not take in any more debt then cash reserves are probably down to $4M right now. If this trend continues, losing around $1M a month in cashflow, then they would be illiquid by Feb 2018. Again, this is purely speculation based on the forecast, they would have to start reducing team sizes and costs, if not already done so, to try and balance the cashflow. Of course, if they start getting more negative press then this would only detract further pledges from the community leading them into a cash leaking spiral.
Yup, pretty much. It’s been that way since 2016. Hence the need to keep selling imaginary JPEGs, taking out loans etc, in order to keep raising funds. Oh, and now refunds are apparently off the table as well.
Meanwhile, neither of the games is even 15% completed. So there’s that.
Would you rather be a lion tamer?
Wouldn’t we all?
So now they’re working with Intel on a new SSD? Did we need that?
Intel today announced the launch of the Intel® Optane™ SSD 900P Series, the first SSD for desktop PC and workstation users built on Intel® Optane™ technology. Intel, in collaboration with Roberts Space Industries*, announced the new SSD at CitizenCon, a Star Citizen community gathering in Frankfurt, Germany.
Sigh.
The fuck?
Optane is a stupidly-fast new SSD technology that is so fast that it’s speculated that they could use it to eventually replace RAM. But for now it’s still really really fast SSD.
But it’s also very expensive. $389 will get you a 280GB Optane drive, when you can easily find regular 1TB SSDs for far less than that. And for 99% of users, regular SDDs are blaaaaaazing fast enough.
So who is the market for this new Optane SSD? Intel turned to their old friend, gamers who too much money on their hands.
Specifically, Star Citizen players (“players”), in this case