In fact, I have often drawn parallels to the Theranos fiasco because it eerily mirrors my own investigative pursuits, as well as the harassment that John Carreyrou went through in pursuit of the story once he first blew the whistle. While I’m not John, that CIG came at me in the same fashion, tried to tarnish my rep, engaged in legal threats, harassment etc all mirror those same experiences.
The problem that credible media are going to have is that NOBODY is going to talk on the record. It’s a very small industry, and doing so would be career killer, regardless of merits because altruism doesn’t pay your mortgage. So they are going to have to rely on trusted sources, while quoting them without revealing them. Even so, if it’s not a publication like NYT, NYP, WaPo, Daily Beast, or even HuffPost, it’s not likely that ANY source would come forward - even on the record.
Unfortunately for Chris and his gang of merrymen, having the distinction of being the largest fundraiser in history, comes with a lot of attention. So with all that money at stake, when the final collapse comes, it’s the money that’s going to be the main attraction. Remember 38Studios? And that was their own money. Yet, over $75M, the whole thing became a media fiasco. That is was State money made it worse. And people went bankrupt, went to jail etc over that one.
Whenever I am behind on my development work (which is basically always) I can read a little bit about this project and feel like I must be brilliant at my job.
So while the collapse will be hilarious, my ego is cool with how long this is taking to explode.
No. They would be under an NDA. Sure if they detected fraud, which puts them squarely in bank fraud territory, they have a duty to report it to the authorities. But saying that you’ve raised $1m, when your books show you only went through $250K, isn’t fraud. At best, it’s lying. You just have to make sure that you go with the $250K in your financial paperwork.
They are. If they don’t, and the govt comes snooping, they’re in trouble. There are so many cases of this happening - even to big firms - that it’s not likely that all but the shadiest of accountants and attorneys would mess with that.
They are required by law to report it. An NDA doesn’t protect them from not reporting criminal conduct which they could very well be seen to be participating in.
Having been an arbitrator myself, I can say that is a myth perpetrated with great skill by the trial lawyers, because the truth is that plaintiffs in arbitration don’t tend to win as much. That’s because, unlike juries, arbitrators tend not to be swayed by sympathies and stick to the facts. For consumers of games, like the employees in the recent Supreme Court case, the problem with no class action is the risk/reward ratio for the trial lawyer. Unless an individual consumer has spent tens of thousands on Star Citizen, there’s not enough potential reward in the trial lawyer’s 33% share, to risk pursuing the case.
That said, a couple of thoughts: 1) I’m not sure that a court would uphold everything in the TOS, especially the no-refund clause; and
2) If this continues for more years, without the complete promised game, at some point, an enterprising trial lawyer might allege that the whole affair, including the TOS, was part of a fraudulent scheme and a court potentially could rule that is outside and not governed by the TOS.
Anyway, going by the fact that he asked for $2M to build the game pitched on Kickstarter, then in Nov 2014 - the month he was supposed to have delivered it - he had raised $65M by increasing scope via stretch goals, it doesn’t matter now if it collapses. It’s all about when. And that would have come if about 2000 whales weren’t still giving them money.
Get this…
As of this moment, having raised $186M (they had raised $85M by July 2015 when I wrote my first blog), now in year 7 (this Nov), they still haven’t even completed the original game pitched at $2M. And had they not stopped raising money, of course this would have been all over by now in 2015 because regardless of the money, they’re still not even 20% to completion.
This is why TheEscapist story was so damaging and freaked them out. A lot of people knew they only had 90 days of funding left at that time because they had meetings in which management was harping on this, and explaining why they had to keep raising money etc. And like how analysis works, they managed to raise money to continue the farce. A normal company would have taken out loans, got new investors etc in order to remain in business. They just continued to sell JPEGS to gullible backers who, above all else, would rather help Chris Roberts, than see him fail, thus admitting that I was right - about anything.
Also, last Summer when they took out a loan in the UK against tax credits and I blew the alarm, again, some of those toxic clowns were attacking me and trying to spin it as a “forex move”. Of course that was bs.
I agree. However, in them sticking to the facts, therein lies the rub. As I have pointed out in my analysis of all the ToS changes, they took away every safeguard they had previously given backers - then got them to click on “I AGREE” in order to continue. Those are the facts that are going to prevail because those types of agreements are 100% legal and enforceable.
[quote]That said, a couple of thoughts: 1) I’m not sure that a court would uphold everything in the TOS, especially the no-refund clause; and
2) If this continues for more years, without the complete promised game, at some point, an enterprising trial lawyer might allege that the whole affair, including the TOS, was part of a fraudulent scheme and a court potentially could rule that is outside and not governed by the TOS.[/quote]
That’s also what I have maintained. But it would be a long drawn process which only govt intervention has the power to sidestep and just go straight to the specifics. e.g. any lawsuit filed, is going to be faced with both a motion to dismiss, and a petition to remand to arbitration. That could be almost 6+ months just to resolve that argument. e.g. we are now in month 5 waiting for the ruling on the motion to dismiss CIG that filed in the Crytek case back in Jan.
hmm, so the board doesn’t support nested quotes. what fuckery is this?!?!
For a (UK) company’s actual accounts, the auditors sign off on them being a true and fair view of the state of its affairs and that there are no material misstatements in various reports of the directors. In practice, though, you routinely see companies develop massive holes in their balance sheets after their accounts are signed off.
Also, none of the Star Citizen UK companies’ accounts explicitly say anything about the amounts raised, and may not have seen any of the money directly anyway - Derek would no better than me which entity received the cash initially. Besides, software development accounting is weird (see the whole HP/Autonomy blow-up for an example of just how much can be fudged). So it would probably be pretty hard in practice to pin anything on the auditors, absent emails saying “We’re going to cover up this fraud, OK?”
They don’t list it because none of the UK companies receive that money.
It’s brilliant how they set it up. RSI-UK gets the money from the US, which it then pays F42 (UK) through CIG-UK to make the game. So the only reporting is what comes to the UK from the US, as well as the loans (taken out by F42 and CIG which guarantees them against ALL company assets, including Squadron 42 IP). My analysis of the 2016 UK filings.
Have they started offering models of the ship models yet? Like little 3D models you can hang from whatever the space equivalent is of a rear view mirror? Seem like an untapped market.
