Star Citizen - Chris Roberts, lots of spaceship porn, lots of promises

The Dallas Morning News broke the “story” of the fiasco that was Ion Storm. And I doubt many of their readers cared about John Romero.

Thanks to those that replied. I’ve just been reading about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos and it’s made me wonder why no serious outlet hasn’t been prepared to take a run at Star Citizen or at least ask hard questions.

Eurogamer did a piece in January lamenting the state of the 3.0 release, but it didn’t really touch on the business practices at all. Pretty soft…

Mainstream outlets may not cater to the gaming crowd, but the Star Citizen story isn’t a gaming story, it’s a financial scandal with numbers big enough to matter, and content weird enough (for the mainstream) to attract attention. Once there’s enough to run with–and reputable newspapers, for instance, have to have more than internet outrage to go on–I’d expect this to appear in mainstream media.

Of course, that’s the sort of publicity gaming doesn’t really need, but…

That’s not what happened.

  1. TheEscapist wrote a scathing article, and hosted a podcast
  2. Chris wrote a lengthy diatribe attacking me (though I had nothing to do with the story), the editor, the writer. He also claimed that I had doxed (which was false) him and his family, stalked them online etc. You know, just because I was writing blogs about their on-going scam. I just let my attorneys deal with it - and that was the end of that
  3. Ortwin, his partner, then threatened TheEscapist with legal action if they didn’t retract (they didn’t) it. Even Popehat weighed in on the folly
  4. Almost a year later when Defy Media was downsizing, they reached an out-of-court settlement with CIG. Both parties removed their articles (ofc I refused and told CIG to go pound sand). I wrote a blog in Mar 2017 documenting how that went down

The End

ps: About a year later in late 2016, after months of research, Kotaku UK wrote a 5-part story about the debacle; including an article they had bought from a Swedish publication which documented my “feud” with Chris.

This is quite true. Plus, very few industry people trust the gaming media - so nobody is to talk to most of them. Especially not on the record. Which is the problem that TheEscapist also had, and why they decided to protect their sources nonetheless.

Once in awhile, there is some article with a measure of snark in it, but that’s as far as they’re going to get. e.g. this latest $27K DLC fiasco:

Forbes has avery hilarious lede

PC Invasion which regularly makes digs at them, didn’t disappoint this time around either.

Right now, if you Google “Star Citizen Legatus” you will see how a LOT of publications carried the story, each with their own slant.

I personally don’t believe that any major stories are coming from this unless the project is either dead, or Chris wakes up one morning and declares it “released” when still nowhere near that status.

The Crytek lawsuit aside, what’s currently playing out behind the scenes, is going to set the stage for what happens in the remaining months of 2018.

As I wrote in my latest article, they don’t even have that luxury. My guess is that it will be all over even before the trial.

I agree. And the angle is going to be all about the money raised, wasted, and the project crashed and burned. I expect to see headlines like this Wired (Fans Have Dropped $77M on This Guy’s Buggy, Half-Built Game) one from Mar 2015, which was barely 4 months before I wrote my first blog in July after doing my own research and talking to people I knew working on the project.

If the govt (FTC, State Attorney, Attorney General etc) get involved (I fully expect that they will) at some point, that’s an even bigger story.

I’m more than a little surprised that there hasn’t been a consumer class action yet.

The biggest issue that Star Citizen has with media is that they have a massive rabid and toxic fan base. Sure, not to the tune of 2m (that’s just pure bs, as the number is more like 500K), but those guys are very prolific in their defense of the project. Some of them are involved in money laundering and Grey market sales. So they have every incentive to defend the project at all costs. As Paul, Erik (the Forbes guys) and others keep pointing out, nobody wants to write about Star Citizen due to the toxicity. Which, to me is bs, because that just a cop out.

The other issue is that some of the media already had relationships with Chris and some of his buddies on the project. Not to mention that David Swofford (who never left the industry) also has a lot of friends in the media. And since he handles PR for them, he relies on those relationships to keep positive news on the project. e.g. nobody takes Charlie Hall (now at Polygon) seriously anymore for that very reason because after a while it got so transparent.

The final part that I want to add is that, though I have lots of friends in the industry and in media (most of them have since left), some of those guys really didn’t want it to be me being the one who is now noted for tracking this train-wreck and being right about their inability to complete it in any way, shape or form. I have had discussions with 2-3 media people who have flat out said so. Which is hilarious when you think about it because I still remain the only developer in history who has attempted (with my Battlecruiser / Universal Combat series) to build the game Chris later scoped Star Citizen to be, but with fps inside ships and a much higher visual fidelity and production quality. Literally nobody else has attempted it. So I remain the only person who is capable of laying out all the pitfalls of attempting it. With Star Citizen, having raised the money and team that it could have taken to pull it off, he somehow squandered it, thus dooming the project with the continuous scope increase.

Anyway, because the media kept dancing around it, while seemingly appearing to not wanting to make it a “Derek Smart v Chris Roberts” thing (Chris won’t have won because he had failed to deliver on proimises), because of how my brain works, that’s primarily why I kept investigating and writing about the project. Anyone who thinks I have altruistic (implying that I care about what other people do with their money) intentions, doesn’t know anything about me. That’s why I have laid out - for the record - how I got involved, and why I remain involved.

Since I wrote that first blog in July 2015 in which I blew the whistle saying they couldn’t build that (the new scope) game, and even if they could, not for less than $150M (3 yrs and +$100M more later, they are still not even 18% there).

Meanwhile, they’re using every trick in the book to continue raising money because Chris knows very well that it’s going to take a lot longer to get to any kind of final release - and that means more money. They’re already tapped out on investor money, backer money, loans here in the US and the UK etc. So short of a complete buyout (by a fool with money to burn), there is no way out for him.

Oh, Derek. You’ve shattered my cherished beliefs with your cold, remorseless prose.

Hey Derek, no slight intended here but I’m curious how you square the issue of citing CIG’s monthly fundraising numbers to indicate slowing interest while simultaneously casting shade on the veracity of the overall numbers. Are you envisioning a scenario where CIG is being selectively truthful about the numbers they’re presenting (eg, them applying a constant scalar), or do you think the values being presented are totally out of whack – in which case, why cite them?

I guess I don’t quite understand why the person who has probably drilled into CIG’s business more than any other outsider and who apparently has so little respect for said business, would even bother mentioning the unverifiable numbers, even in passing.

The big problem with a lot of this stuff right now is that we’re all a little ahead of things. I mean, I think the writing is on the wall here. I think a lot of us think that.

BUT…let’s say you’re an editor at the Wall Street Journal or Washington Post. Your nightmare is publishing a story on this debacle but then the next week the game comes out, meets its promises and ends up reviewing well. Now…you’re screwed well and truly.

I think that’s a pretty far-fetched scenario. I think most of us here do, too. If you’re an editor though, you can’t relax your story standards for this; if Roberts and company pull this thing out of the fire, your career is ruined. And this story isn’t quite at the Theranos level yet. I’m also reading the excellent book on the Theranos fraud and collapse, and we just don’t have the level of whistle-blowing going on from inside the company just yet. At Theranos that happened when people inside the company who realized the product was never going to be able to do what it purported to got the willies about how much exposure they might have to legal action and civil claims and started blabbing to a reporter. Someone at CIG/RSI or whatever is likely getting close to that same feeling of unease, I’d wager.

Because it’s not possible. They have made several changes (I have tracked each one) to the ToS which not only says you’re not due a refund (which, as I had warned, they stopped giving when 3.0 released in Dec 2017), but that they don’t even have to deliver a game - of any kind. And the new versions all have an arbitration clause. Which means no lawsuits, and especially no class action. There’s no getting around that because lots of case law have found these sort of agreements binding. So any attempts to bypass arbitration, will fail on merits alone, and just be a waste of money. And in arbitration, corporations always tend to win because the process favors them more than it does the consumer. That’s why it’s popular, and there have been lots of lobbying efforts (all have failed) to curb forced arbitration by companies.

The end result is that, short of govt. intervention, the whole project could collapse, and Chris would get away with it. I’m sure that some will file arbitration, even for a failed or BK company, but piercing the corporate veil to get to the money that Chris and his cronies squandered, will be a very difficult and expensive venture.

LOL!! Well, if it’s one thing that those who know me are aware of, it’s that I’m brutally honest, and don’t pretend to be somebody I’m not. :)

For me, the whole Star Citizen thing is personal because of what they and their toxic backers did to me just because I wrote a blog about a freaking video game. They found the one person who doesn’t put up with bullying, and started a war to silence me into submission. A war which, hilariously would have been over by now if Chris had shipped a finished game - of any kind.

Now that I look back, it’s obvious that Chris and his cronies knew that I was onto something; that’s why, instead of just ignoring me, they took that first step to vilify me in an industry that I’ve spent almost 30 yrs in. He wanted to use his media connections and toxic backers to silence me via incessant attacks and harassment.

Because the financial numbers are patently FALSE. I have seen what I believe to be concrete evidence.

They are used as a marketing tool to show interest (to potential backers, public etc) in the project. The fact that word is already going around (in investment circles, due to them looking around for money) that their own accounting doesn’t hold up to those numbers, and which is something I have been hinting at these past few weeks, is enough to get people thinking. Unfortunately for them, everything (even people doing due diligence) leads right back to me. And while I am never - ever - going to breach confidentiality, they (Chris and his cohorts) know that I know - and that’s enough for me.

The issue with their financials (which btw backers were entitled to, until the took that away with a ToS change) is also the reason that when Crytek immediately started discovery process by requesting the financials, CIG freaked out, objected and petitioned the court for a protective order until the ruling on the motion to dismiss which they filed.

The accounting is the biggest smoking gun in all of this, and the fallout from what happened to the money is going to pale in comparison to an unfinished game that only a few backers care about. Just wait and see.

Finally, the reason that I mention their unverifiable numbers is because that’s what they have publicly stated. It’s no different from companies doing the same thing with anything related to metrics (e.g. 100 subscribers, vs 10 paying subscribers; 100 accounts, vs 10 real actual accounts). Until everything comes to light, what I think won’t matter - so I continue to use their numbers. If they claim to have raised $185M, that’s on them. And when it eventually comes out - and becomes another thing that I was right about - it will be even more hilarious. And that day is coming sooner than most people think.

If those doing due diligence have spotted this, aren’t they under an obligation to disclose these facts?

Not only are they not obligated to disclose anything publicly, they are likely prohibited by an NDA from doing so.

Not sure if an accounting firm is required to report crimes to the authorities, though.

Ah, they’re not auditors - they’re operating privately?

(Thank you for the clarifications, by the way.)

That I don’t know, and again I’m not sure if an auditor is required to report a suspected financial crime it uncovers during the process of the audit. They are in a business relationship with their client and likely have an NDA of some sort.