Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

VR Golgot

VR Golgot
LittleAnt said:
But promises are delivered each patch at a regular pace.
Click to expand...

There's been one patch this year (3.17), down from the usual 4.

Most of the things you are lauding as 'delivered' are part of a deeply unstable Wave 1 PTU and not available to the public. They are all either unfinished (Salvage Tier 0), unfinished and of negligible discernible impact currently (Gen12), or are the cause of said instability in the first place (PES).

(All were also, naturally, promised to be so very much more than this. And to be delivered so very much sooner than now.)

Yet somehow, in Ant-land, this year has been another one of regular bombastic success.

I imagine if CIG were to kick you in the balls you would compliment them on their aim...
 

LittleAnt

L
cigwatch said:
I think Google is not giving the awe inspiring scale of SC its due justice. You should stick to a much more fitting comparison - The Notre Dame.
Click to expand...
It's just to illustrate that talking about the cost of a database when you don't know its scale is just plain stupid.
And I don't understand why you talk about Notre Dame.
 

cigwatch

cigwatch
I know we are used to the fact that a Robertsyear is like a decade, but let's switch perspective for a second.

Imagine yourselves in 2012, or 2014, or whenever you backed this pile of hot, steaming dreams.txt. You get a Letter From the Future Chairman, in which he is telling you that one of the core layers of the backend is not guaranteed to be delivered, in its most basic form, in the 12th (!) year of development.

What are your past selves thinking? Keep thinking it :)
 
Last edited:

VR Golgot

VR Golgot
[VR] Merkir said:
CIG 2021 financials summary, posted 29 Dec 2022.

Cloud Imperium Financials for 2021

CIG's Chief Financial Officer Presents Our Accounting for the 2021 Financial Year
cloudimperiumgames.com cloudimperiumgames.com
Click to expand...

Immediate highlight for me...

The minority investment funds sitting on the balance sheet remain earmarked for future marketing activities as we approach the commercial launch of the games.
Click to expand...

Sure...

Interesting that there was no investor payout this year though. They hit a comparable '$5m in the black' state, according to the Duplo-tier accounting.

---

On the rest, I'm a Lego-tier forensic accountant, at best. But this bit struck me as potential weasel words:

Pledges / Sales (from Counter)

This line is taken directly from our daily published Funding Stats Counter, showing the net receipts from our backers and customers. The vast majority of sales are of starter pack sales granting access to the Star Citizen Alpha, as well as space ships and digital items immediately delivered and playable in the game. A smaller fraction of sales came from pledges for concept ships, which all come with an included “loaner” ship for immediate use and playability within Star Citizen Alpha
Click to expand...

Concept ships are a smaller fraction of sales? Sure. But do they account for a smaller fraction of $$$ taken?

Also this bit reads as meaning tax breaks:

Other income increased 45% to $9.4M, in part driven by the associated local incentives programs resulting from the growth of development staff in the UK.
Click to expand...

If so I find their argument that the shift from US -> Europe wasn't in any way planned to be curious.

---

Wonder what the actual audited UK accounts will show for '21, when they finally emerge.
 

LittleAnt

L
cigwatch said:
The scale is unprecedented. So is the number of fidels per cubic meter of Stanton.
Click to expand...
It seems that the number of fidels just for Stanton is indeed interesting.
46 million hours played in 2022. Nice !
I wonder how all those hours of playtime could have been spent in a game with nothing to do and all those nasty bugs that riddle the game every 5 min.

Let me guess... because the alpha is more and more fun to play each patch ?
 

Zetta

Zetta
LittleAnt said:
It seems that the number of fidels just for Stanton is indeed interesting.
46 million hours played in 2022. Nice !
I wonder how all those hours of playtime could have been spent in a game with nothing to do and all those nasty bugs that riddle the game every 5 min.

Let me guess... because the alpha is more and more fun to play each patch ?
Click to expand...

Most of those hours was from people just sitting with the launcher open after server crashes due to error 30k.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
My favourite from the Chairman letter was this:

There is no other way Star Citizen could be built except for the community-driven funding model. The investment both in time and money is just too expensive for a normal game publisher, especially a public one beholden to quarterly earnings reports and shareholders.
Click to expand...

No publisher with a decent dev team making it would produce so little for so much money. There would be oversight and accountability.
 

[VR] Merkir

[VR] Merkir
It seems Unigine have flown under the radar (my radar anyway) by releasing v2.16 in October, but for the very first time including double precision (64 bit positioning) in their free Community edition. This is huge.

It means anyone wanting to prototype near solar system sized game areas, without origin shifting, can do so free of charge with either Unigine, or Unreal Engine 5 with its new Large World Coords system. So much nicer to rely on the engine developer to provide reliable and well tested 64-bit positioning and 64-bit physics engines out of the box. No need to spend ridiculous amounts of money and effort trying to cobble this together from an older 32-bit engine, with all those ongoing bugs and code maintenance... I'm looking at you, CIG, with your frankencryengine.

For more info, Unigine v2.16 release announcement here.
And further confirmation of double precision positioning in Community edition here.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom