The Star Citizen Thread v5

[lysan]

Is there any point? I'm not sure he plays the game, it's abundantly obvious he doesn't read up about it.

This is just a damage control exercise and has been reading exactly like the RSI forums where everything has an explanation, everything bad is a fake and nobody else is coming close to what SC has already achieved. It's got as much point as trying to convince a guard dog that it's owner's business practises are under investigation so you need to come inside and expecting it to actually understand what you're asking.

It's the same tactic all the faithful use, twist information, raise and repeat until it becomes the "truth". We all know that ED do have many issues, however meeting release dates is not one of them. Moreover despite the issues with parts of the game it is a complex game made within the projected timeline.

1.0 released in 2014
2.0 released in 2015
3.0 no release date yet.

 

[Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat]

I dont know about other Communications.
But I can tell you this.
Last time I talked to Support in regard of an Launcher Error.
Their Layout of the Answer as well as the Decorations were very Different from this Letter.
Their writing was much more professional. And the Header looked different as well.
So no matter how I look at it. But this Letter simply looks faked.

Well in that case, I'm sure it will be simple enough for you to provide a copy of said correspondence to back up this claim of yours. (With necessary redactions made to any sensitive/personal info made to it of course.)

 

[ianw]

Right now it's self-sustaining. If people are throwing money to CIG then CIG will keep going. The instant that this stops happening, assuming what CR and the letter implies is true, they will collapse very quickly.

Ironically if CIG produce a "gold" release and halt ship sales it seems that this may well sink them.

EDIT: If this is the case then you're getting close to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_bubble or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme

EDIT 2: Wow, I love wiki as this describes the grey market to a tee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory

Yes - it's impossible to say how much is left - it's definitely somewhere between something and nothing though!

As others have pointed out they have said in the past they had enough money to finish the game.

But as always things change and as we know CR recently said they need to continue ongoing funding.

That's it - they have established their business model. Whether they sell ships after "gold" or they come up with some other name/concept for whatever they sell it seems clear they won't stop selling stuff as long as they can get away with it - whether it be ships, clothes, packages, upgrades or whatever. They won't turn it off.

A successful Cit Con should bring in even more than the last thing did - that should keep the whales going for another spending spree at Christmas.

The miracle patch 3.0 is going to be huge for them. If that goes well - fixes the silly bugs - big improvement in networking and adds new stuff that will buy them some more time.

If that goes badly it could trigger another wave of reluctant refunders and would seriously damage confidence in all but the most dedicated whales..

 

[Voivod]

I developed a hatred for the nowdays overly common. *we dont promise anything so we cant break any promises* approach.

What? Overly common practise of not promising any features while advertising you their game?
Would you mind giving some examples?

Or the somewhat lighter. *we only promise stuff and announce it after its 80% finished anyways.* approach.

So you hate it that developers only announce features they are guaranteed they can deliver instead of promising features they might not be able to deliver? Really? You HATE that?

 

[Sunleader]

You mean like the letter written by Ortwin Freyermuth that has had one of my colleagues (one of our company lawyer) laugh out loud?




Well, they still get money pouring in. But hey, how about some of that amazing transparency that they claim for themselves? You know, the bit they removed from the TOS?

Just tell us how much $ has been spent so far. One number. Can't be difficult. It's backer money after all, not theirs.

Didnt see other letters so far.
But feel free to show me.


And if you work for a Company of Lawjers this Question aint speaking for you.

Contracts with other Companies mean Money will be *Planned*
You hire another Team for a Project and put Money for that aside as spent.
The Money has not yet left your account. But as you Contracted this Payment its basicly gone.

Since SC funded specific Goals.
You can assume all of that Money was booked for this Goal project right away.
As such all that Money is not actually spent. But already part of an certain project or goal.
As such any such number would simply result in weighting the money in yet non contracted goals against the money already contracted.
Which is misleading. Because effectively they could have contracted 100% of that money and thus not have a single cent.
But are funded for 10 years cause thats how long these contracts keep people working.

Or more accurately. You wont get any such number except very very rough guesses.

 

[Zieman]

Yes - it's impossible to say how much is left - it's definitely somewhere between something and nothing though!

We just don't understand something.

But even the die-hard CIG apologists could claim that we understand nothing.

 

[Tuub t Tute]

Just like the fact that Star Marine was "delayed indefinitely" and then claimed to be "in the game already" - only to now be "possibly implemented soon" after all.

Also, anyone claiming that the words in this letter don't mean that they spent the money already:


If I fund something, and then I ask for a refund, there's two choices:

1) The company has not yet spent my money, so they just take that money out of their bank account and give it back to me. Problem solved.

2) The company has already spent my money, in which case they have to either go into debt or ask their other customers for money to be able to pay back my money.

3) There is no point 3. If you think there is, you need to think this through or take an economics class.

We are at Point 2 with CIG, according to their own words. Which is a problem because they previously vehemently denied having spent all the money, claiming that there's way, way, WAY more than enough money in the bank to finish the game.


Wishful thinking doesn't overrule facts and logic. Anyone still thinking that everything is fine simply does not understand how this "money" thing works.

There is a possible point 3 which is: We still have enough money to keep going, but by laying on emotional blackmail we want to keep it that way. Also when this gets leaked, our faithful backers will be so incensed that evil non-believers are bleeding us dry, that the ship sales after Citizen Con will be our biggest yet, so win-win for CiG!

 

[Voivod]

Dude, just... don't. Leave him. Put on ignore. DO you realise what he's doing?
Here, take an ice tea and sit. It's a beautiful day.

I try to relax but that "CIG will be worth 2 billion in 2 years" comment is now etched into my very existence

 

[Komemiute]

I try to relax but that "CIG will be worth 2 billion in 2 years" comment is now etched into my very existence

I know. But guess what- no matter how much SC will be worth in two years, Elite will have received two more years worth of content.
Focus on that- with the consistent rate of deliveries so far, man oh man... Seriously I'm soooo happy!

 

[SkUnimatrix]

Didnt see other letters so far.
But feel free to show me.


And if you work for a Company of Lawjers this Question aint speaking for you.

Contracts with other Companies mean Money will be *Planned*
You hire another Team for a Project and put Money for that aside as spent.
The Money has not yet left your account. But as you Contracted this Payment its basicly gone.

Since SC funded specific Goals.
You can assume all of that Money was booked for this Goal project right away.
As such all that Money is not actually spent. But already part of an certain project or goal.
As such any such number would simply result in weighting the money in yet non contracted goals against the money already contracted.
Which is misleading. Because effectively they could have contracted 100% of that money and thus not have a single cent.
But are funded for 10 years cause thats how long these contracts keep people working.

Or more accurately. You wont get any such number except very very rough guesses.

If you are hiring another team money is going out of your account as people generally don't work for free. The number one killer of start up businesses is cash flow. So that money may have been budgeted at one time, but what happens if you budgeted say $5M for goal X and goal X ends up costing $10M? Well where does that money come from? Mostly likely that answer from another goal's funding gets raided in order to pay for goal X. Then it comes time to start on goal Y only instead of having $5M to do it you now suddenly have $0 because the budget allocated for Goal Y was spent trying to make Goal X happen.

Edit: As far as an exact number...maybe not. But we do have a very good idea of what their burn rate is as myself and several others using slightly different methods all have arrived at a burn rate of around $3M per month. That doesn't include any one time expenses such as hiring voice actors and doing mo-cap for squadron 42. While they are a private company in the US, in the UK private companies have to file their financials and based on what the UK is spending that $3M per month number seems to be on par.

 

[Toumal]

Didnt see other letters so far.
But feel free to show me.


And if you work for a Company of Lawjers this Question aint speaking for you.

No I build stuff for air traffic control, military and space for a relatively small company of a few thousand employees. But we have corporate lawyers.

As for the letter, gladly:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14979-Chairmans-Response-To-The-Escapist

Popehat wrote up a pretty concise analysis:

When he writes a five-page semi-legal rant, he's just creating cross-examination fodder.
...
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      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.

My colleage response was that if Ortwin ever got pulled over by the cops for a license check, he'd probably talk himself into jail.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

There is a possible point 3 which is: We still have enough money to keep going, but by laying on emotional blackmail we want to keep it that way. Also when this gets leaked, our faithful backers will be so incensed that evil non-believers are bleeding us dry, that the ship sales after Citizen Con will be our biggest yet, so win-win for CiG!

It's the particle-wave duality of business: Depending on who looks when at the emissions coming out of CIG, the company is either broke or filthy rich.

 

[SkUnimatrix]

No I build stuff for air traffic control, military and space for a relatively small company of a few thousand employees. But we have corporate lawyers.

As for the letter, gladly:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14979-Chairmans-Response-To-The-Escapist

Popehat wrote up a pretty concise analysis:



My colleage response was that if Ortwin ever got pulled over by the cops for a license check, he'd probably talk himself into jail.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -



It's the particle-wave duality of business: Depending on who looks when at the emissions coming out of CIG, the company is either broke or filthy rich.

My wife is a lawyer and spent her first decade in litigation. Now works as in house counsel and recently were named as part of a class action. Their CEO then goes on to call it frivolous at an all employee meeting. Yeah the GC had to sit down and explain to him why he can't do that. (He is relatively new to the whole CEO thing).

 

[Komemiute]

I try to relax but that "CIG will be worth 2 billion in 2 years" comment is now etched into my very existence

For example- Look what almost exactly a year ago SC follower were saying... (also the following one)

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/57576-The-Star-Citizen-Thread-v-3-0/page341?p=2870002&viewfull=1#post2870002

 

[Toumal]

For example- Look what almost exactly a year ago SC follower were saying... (also the following one)

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/57576-The-Star-Citizen-Thread-v-3-0/page341?p=2870002&viewfull=1#post2870002

Wow.

Yep, going back in time and holding SC fans to their fantasies one year later sure is.. weird.

DATE: September 2015

Immediately, no you're right - it won't have the "depth", however it will be clear that this depth is actually coming and probably not that far away. Over the next year I believe that what we'll see in SC will overtake Elite by far though. SC has working multi-ship crew, it has some kind of working FPS, it has flight (even if the flight model needs a lot of tweaking), it has planetary landings (even if they're not as "impressive" as Elite's should be they still have actual ground to stand on right now) etc.

Take the following scenario -

You're sitting in a bar on a planet with a few of your mates/guildmates. One of your mates goes out and comes back later with a mission to find an abandoned station. You walk to your multi-crew ship, take-off, evade various pirates etc on the way, actually spend time finding this abandoned station, dock your ship when you get there then 3-4 of you get out and explore it for whatever it holds (which could end up in a boss encounter or some pvp thing).

How far away is that kind of thing in SC and how far away is it in ED? This is what people will begin to realise when they play in the baby PU in a few weeks time.

That's a really good question. How far is it. Well turns out that it was more than one year, for starters
Here we are one year later, and what do we have? Kinda working multi-crew, kinda working FPS, flight (needs tweaking), planetary landings (well not now, but soon!!)

It's amazing to see how much has not changed in a year.

 

[frostypaw]

For example- Look what almost exactly a year ago SC follower were saying... (also the following one)

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/57576-The-Star-Citizen-Thread-v-3-0/page341?p=2870002&viewfull=1#post2870002

I almost replied to that thread without thinking. You really can't tell the difference can you - exactly the same "oh the next patch you'll see it'll wipe elite off the face of the planet" and fantasising about film plots being their multiplayer experience with no dot-joining at all.

Just a different imaginando at the flight controls

 

[Voivod]

For example- Look what almost exactly a year ago SC follower were saying... (also the following one)

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/57576-The-Star-Citizen-Thread-v-3-0/page341?p=2870002&viewfull=1#post2870002

I remember that guy. He made some fun posts sometimes

 

[Komemiute]

That's a really good question. How far is it. Well turns out that it was more than one year, for starters
Here we are one year later, and what do we have? Kinda working multi-crew, kinda working FPS, flight (needs tweaking), planetary landings (well not now, but soon!!)

It's amazing to see how much has not changed in a year.

Yeah, but NEXT year you'll ALL SEE!

 

[ianw]

I remember that guy. He made some fun posts sometimes

Me too - funny we didn't see him after the baby pee yew went live..

 

[Voivod]

Me too - funny we didn't see him after the baby pee yew went live..

He's probably having so much fun playing it he has no time to post here

 

[Tuub t Tute]

He's probably having so much fun playing it he has no time to post here

That is certainly a possibility we have to consider...