Isn’t he a Norse God or something?
Ok, so I decided to run the numbers to see how these developments are really affecting the project.
I was having problems figuring out the situation when this all started, fortunately DS did show a screenshot from July 10th on his blog.
This is the current graph as of today:
So in three months they have raised $5.250.000 (under $2 million a month) and have got 66k new backers. Since the average money per backer is $91.25, those 66k new backers should have amounted for around 6 million (so the new backers are backing at below the average). Which seems to imply that the funding in these last three months has not been mostly fueled by already existing backers upping their pledges, but by new backers coming in (it’s a guess, but the data seems to support it unless those new backers are backing at really low pledge levels).
Since in June and July they were making $1 million a month (so there has been a significant uptick from new backers), we might have to consider the idea that DS is maybe working for CR… :P
And yes, all these replies online are indeed helping in keeping eyes on the project. They might look (they do to me) unprofessional, but I don’t know how to raise $90 million and these guys do…
mok
1504
Yeah, I see this all as a marketing win for SC. It is possible this could get national attention from the non gaming press at some point as well.
Yeah, so Roberts et al have taken the nuclear option.
The letter, drafted by Ortwin Freyermuth, General Counsel to Cloud Imperium Games, demands in no uncertain terms that the outlet personally apologize to Chris Roberts’ wife Sandi Gardiner, the company’s HR manager, publish said apology, and hire an independent party to investigate The Escapist’s production of their article including “any bias of your staff and their involvement with other interested parties and any conspiring arrangements between them.”
It is unclear yet whether Keefer’s ritual suicide will satisfy the demands of honor, or if his immediate family must also meet the blade.
Assuming Roberts really wants to sue over this is he really prepared to have to give over his “books” during discovery?
Timex
1507
I don’t think he’d have to, given that a big part of the issue is what seems to be totally unsubstantiated claims of racism.
Fair point, maybe that’s why the lawyers letter doesn’t mention any of the financial issues.
JonRowe
1509
Well, if they want to spend backer money on a court case. So be it.
Additionally, I think that Escapist is pretty safe here, they never made libelous claims personally, just reported them. Threatening legal action is bad, because now they have to follow through with it (providing Escapist doesn’t recant) and that will be a publicized shit show.
It also may come to the defense’s attention that the “libelous” claims came amongst a large uptick in support of the project, which, at the very least, proves that the company itself wasn’t damaged by these claims.
Basically, CIG is throwing back the mudball lobbed their way.
Yeah, it’s bravado, pure and simple. Or stupidity. Or both, because those two tend to go together very well.
Razgon
1511
I have no idea how the court is in the States, but in most European courts you can’t as the press say what you want, and then claim that you “just reported what you were told”. You have liability for the things you print, whether its you or someone who says it.
Doesn’t RSI have a studio in London? I expect a libel claim in the UK, which is a much friendlier venue for a lawsuit, and for it to focus on the allegations of illegal actions in HR (allegations of age discrimination and racial discrimination).
I would imagine that the argument would be that the reporting of acts of racism, ageism, etc. by a specific person harms that person and their future career prospects, but in that case I would think you’d see the letter from a lawyer representing that person, rather than the corporate entity. But what do I know.
I would say that all of the focus on Chris’ wife and her role at the company comes across as creepy and stalkerish (i.e. posting pictures from the IMDB page of their kid). I think that the Roberts were pretty clumsy about trying to obfuscate their relationship, but I also sort of get it. My wife worked as a production assistant for me for a few years while she was in school, and she used her maiden name in that capacity in emails and such with clients.
All of the criticism about their VP of Marketing’s “lack of experience” is also fairly dumb. The big secret about marketing is that no one knows what the hell they are doing. The majority of people I’ve dealt with in marketing don’t actually have marketing degrees. They have degrees in English, or Psychology, or whatever, and often fell ass-backward into marketing despite any direct experience. Common sense is the #1 prerequisite. Also, I’d say that the fact that Star Citizen managed to generate ten-gazillion dollars post-kickstarter means their marketing department is apparently doing pretty well (heh, better than the actual game development, right?)
Timex
1514
I pointed this out before… the one thing that you can’t criticize is Star Citizen’s marketing. They pulled in bazillions of dollars. The one thing which functioned better than anyone could have possibly expected, was their marketing.
I’m not strictly disagreeing with this, but be careful with the distributions here. If they are anything like the Pay-To-Win style Facebook game distributions, then you have a vast number of people at the bare minimum, and a few rare people pumping vast sums of money into it.
JonRowe
1516
It would be pretty hard to file a suit in England, if the alleged activity happened in the U.S. and if the affected parties (Chris’s Wife) live in the U.S. and are U.S. citizens. (I don’t know) If this allegedly happened in the UK office, that is a big win for RSI and Cloud Imperium, because libel laws in the UK are very media unfriendly.
I agree. I was just assuming a similar distribution in the new 66k backers as in the previous 900k. Big enough numbers to make that assumption.
The average backing in the period ($80 per backers assuming only new backers) is lower than the average $92 per backer up to that point. Also, the cheapest pledge level is $37. So assuming all the new 66k backers pledged at the lower level possible, that makes at least $2.445.000 (about half of the raised money in that period) from new backers. The bare minimum here is big enough to matter, specially when the average is over twice the bare minimum but doesn’t get to thrice it.
Are you speaking on the basis of some actual legal knowledge? I’m a US lawyer, but I’ll confess to knowing very little about the UK’s standards for libel, particularly with respect to internet publishing.
Popehat weighs in.
If he had stuck with the factual refutation, Mr. Freyermuth would have done well. But he had to go and (sort of) act like a lawyer. His letter is full of quasi-legal references, has a closing threat to file suit in both America and the United Kingdom, and includes a cc: to two lawyers. And so Mr. Freyermuth stepped in it.
If you know what you’re doing, you bring in the litigators before you start running your mouth. The litigator is there to tell you, in the most supportive and affirming way possible, to shut the fuck up. That way your CEO and key fact witness isn’t writing long, angry emails about the facts of the situation, probably getting some of them wrong and probably saying things the legal significance of which he doesn’t know. It’s not easy to tell the CEO to shut up and stop writing things if you’re his underling. Some people get to be CEO by having a Trumpian level of self-regard that makes Derek Smart look like Dobby the House Elf. If you’re a sensible GC, you use your outside litigator as the bad cop to control your difficult executive. That way your executive doesn’t do don’t-take-me-seriously things like post angry messages referring to written statements as “slanderous.”
Finally, the threat to sue in the United Kingdom is an empty one unless the Escapist has assets there. It’s much easier to get a defamation judgment in the UK, but fortunately under the SPEECH Act such judgments aren’t enforceable in America unless the plaintiff’s case satisfies the requirements of American law — which it won’t.
I’ll take Popehat’s analysis over much of what I’ve seen.
Escapist is owned by Defy Media.
It would not surprise me to learn that Defy Media had some UK based assets, but I haven’t been able to figure out if they do.
From my reading, it seems this has kind of blown up in The Escapists face as far as the legitimacy of their sources. Their big piece of physical evidence, the blacked-out “ID card” for the CIG employee, turns out to be a generic security card common to millions of businesses. Notably, current employees of the Star Citizen studio showed that their security cards do not have names printed on them, so the blacked-out part was a bit of theater on the part of the person supplying it.
Also, it seems other sites were approached by these same, or similar sources, with the same CIG horror stories, but those journalists either refused to go any further, or they’re still investigating.
The Escapist may have been duped. Not that the excuse clears them of doing a poor job of investigation. It remains to be seen if the story’s author was in on it, or if she was fooled as well.
