Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

It used to be much more ! When i backed the project it was to be tens of thousands of procedural generated systems, warranting the exploration and long range ships that are now completely useless.

Not to say you are wrong, but i never recall CIG talking about so many systems.

There again, CR said so many things over the years, its easy to believe they would say anything.
 
It was supposed to be 100 systems at launch.
And then more added, as the pipelines would be fully functional.
Thousands? Don't think so, but may very well be wrong in this.
 
If I may compare them in one way, I like the learning curve of both games it takes hours just to set up your controls and days to work out what is going on.

If I may compare them in one way, they're both doomed to be nothing more than good-looking space-arcade because of the decision to make them multiplayer. :p
 
Wow, your talk so much about this game... more than 850 posts since june.
If its already dead, don't waste your time on it. Why spending so much time talking about it ?

CIG also talk a lot about the game they are supposed to be developing, which often provides us with things to discuss.

And its not dead yet, as long as backers keep giving money to CR it won't die, unless CIG shut it down.

Keep in mind as well, and i'm not the person who screams SCAM in relation to SC, but people kept trying to give Bernie Madoff money even after he was exposed as running a scam :p

CIG continue to provide good entertainment, and as long as they do, we will continue to talk about it.
 
Yes it's cool discussing. But I wanted to respond to someone that quoted me and this post is 50 posts far away now. Everyone had switched to another topic. I don't really like when someone get back an old post, so I will not do it myself.
I'm afraid this forum is too active and fast for me.


If it was my mega post, just go for it :)

The topic is always SC, and there is always more to discuss ;)
 
I believe its heading up to the second anniversary of the Calder loan. We seem to have been in a relentless funding drive over the last several months. Do we have a debt servicing milestone incoming? We still have no release of anything, could there be penalty clauses factoring in here?

I think the Calder money was an investment rather than a loan the initial $46,000,000 gave them a 10% stake. So it is not a debt or outstanding. (correct me if I missed a loan from them)
CIG did take out loans from a bank in the UK that was no doubt dissected here 3 or 4 years ago. I presume that they have been paid back when they got the UK government rebate. My understanding was that they would take out this loan annually and repay it annually as long as it made sense financially with the interest rates and £/$ exchange rate. Given the 2020 low interest rates I would not be surprised if they were still doing so. If at any point they fail to repay those loans then I presume the bank would own the company a bit like getting your house repossessed.

If CIG collapse then Calder probably loses all their money or has to try to reclaim what they can from the ashes. I do not know how that would work or which jurisdiction it would take place in. If anyone knows the terms of the Calder investment they may be able to enlighten us. The terms of the bank loan are probably available in the UK.
 
I think the Calder money was an investment rather than a loan the initial $46,000,000 gave them a 10% stake. So it is not a debt or outstanding. (correct me if I missed a loan from them)
CIG did take out loans from a bank in the UK that was no doubt dissected here 3 or 4 years ago. I presume that they have been paid back when they got the UK government rebate. My understanding was that they would take out this loan annually and repay it annually as long as it made sense financially with the interest rates and £/$ exchange rate. Given the 2020 low interest rates I would not be surprised if they were still doing so. If at any point they fail to repay those loans then I presume the bank would own the company a bit like getting your house repossessed.

If CIG collapse then Calder probably loses all their money or has to try to reclaim what they can from the ashes. I do not know how that would work or which jurisdiction it would take place in. If anyone knows the terms of the Calder investment they may be able to enlighten us. The terms of the bank loan are probably available in the UK.

You're right, it was an investment.

However, investments can come with strings attached. For example, do X by Y or you have to do Z. Or if you don't do X by Y we can do Z.

An example here (and not saying it is what is going on with Calder and CIG) is Company must develop something by a deadline. If they fail to do, they investor gains another voting seat on the board of directors. Or if they fail the company has to buy back X% of the shares to provide the investor with a get out route. Alternately, a 10% stake allows the investor to topskim 10% of money coming in.

That last one would be rather interesting if 14% (its 14% now?) of income from backers is going into Calder's pocket. That might upset the apple cart if it beame publicly know. I think the mental gymnastics from the faithful would reach new heights.
 
Yes it's cool discussing. But I wanted to respond to someone that quoted me and this post is 50 posts far away now. Everyone had switched to another topic. I don't really like when someone get back an old post, so I will not do it myself.
I'm afraid this forum is too active and fast for me.
That is pretty aligned with how CIG does things. They talk big about it for a bit. And then never again.
 
I just had a quick look and at the time of the investment Forbes did an article which said :unsure: "Los Angeles-based Cloud Imperium said Thursday the new capital will go towards marketing the single-player Squadron 42 for a summer 2020 release date"
I then saw that in March 2020 Calder invested another $17,250,000. I presume that they are aware of how likely a summer 2020 release is/is not. No doubt this was discussed in March but I missed it
 
Oh wow, imagine if they actually kept a tracker of how much money they have. Pretty sure if they did that they would have crashed and burned in 2018 at the latest as the Calder thing wouldn't have been a 6 month late announcement for the forums would have already been asking 6 months earlier, where has all the cash gone!?
This is the nearest we get as reported in DEC 2019
Does it mean as of 2018 they had $6,995,000 left before the investment?


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Yep, for all the talk about how much money they have they already ran out once. The only thing that saved the project from caving was Calder. Of course the most open development in the world didn't tell anyone about it until months after the deal was done. No reason to think they won't run out of money again, despite what the money chart says.
 
This is the nearest we get as reported in DEC 2019
Does it mean as of 2018 they had $6,995,000 left before the investment?


View attachment 180359View attachment 180359
Pretty much, yes. They had been operating at a loss for quite some time — I don't remember any more if it was in 2016 or 2017 that they had to get a payday lone tax rebate advance to make it to the Christmas sales period where they'd get enough to cover expenses until the rebate came in.

By the time they got to the Calders injections, they were running on fumes. Note the trend 2016–2017–2018: 2016 was already down by about 100k; by 2017 they had eaten in their reserves to the tune of $5M; by 2018, that deficit had increased to $8M(!). At a similar pace (and especially at a similar accelerating deficit), that last buffer would have been gone some time mid-2019.

Now, remember, this is Chris “I got thrown out of two separate industries for mismanaging other people's cash” Roberts we're talking about. What do you think the odds are that, with a $8M yearly deficit — and probably increasing — and having just been handed $46M “for marketing”, he actually decreased spending to where that influx would last more than a year or two…?
 
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I just had a quick look and at the time of the investment Forbes did an article which said :unsure: "Los Angeles-based Cloud Imperium said Thursday the new capital will go towards marketing the single-player Squadron 42 for a summer 2020 release date"
I then saw that in March 2020 Calder invested another $17,250,000. I presume that they are aware of how likely a summer 2020 release is/is not. No doubt this was discussed in March but I missed it

Yup, and this also ties in with what i've been saying about how investment can come with strings attached or conditions. As we understand it, as part of the deal, Calder had a "one time option" they could exercise. This gives them a bigger stake in the company and CIG gets more money. Why Calder decided to exercise that option is ripe for speculation. Backers will tend to assume that Calder liked what he was seeing and decided to take a bigger slice of the pie. Skeptics might suspect they want more control because they don't like where things are going or they are as i speculated getting to skim all incoming pledges and see how people are willing to keep giving CIG money.

Still, even at 14%, its going to be a while before they get those millions back, so they must have some belief that CR can deliver.

What is also interesting is how Sandi got on the board of directors about the same time as she stopped being a public figure at CIG.
 
This is the nearest we get as reported in DEC 2019
Does it mean as of 2018 they had $6,995,000 left before the investment?


View attachment 180359View attachment 180359

That's how many interpret it. Its worth remembering though CR and co own a number of other companies and CIG itself is made up of several companies, and on top, CR and Ortwin spent years in Hollywood learning how to do Hollywood accounting.

For all we know CIG had millions in one of the other companies or those other companies were "loaning" CIG money to make their financial position look better than it was.

Back in the early days CIG promised their finacials would be open, but it was only that one off report that gave us decent insight, and even then, it only tells the story based on what CIG are showing up, we don't know what is going on with the other companies he owns and what transactions go on between them. Are we seeing an accurate picture?

However, its hard to imagine CIG would want to present a worse picture than they had to, so if they had millions squirreled away, you might think it makes sense for CIG to show those millions to keep backer confidence high.

So, on the balance of probability, i presume they were actually down to just over 6 million.

Fortunately backers seem willing to keep funding the game no matter what, no matter how long it takes, no matter what CIG do or don't do, and this year has shown that despite the slow down in progress, backers are willing to give even more.

The show must go on!
 
Now, remember, this is Chris “I got thrown out of two separate industries for mismanaging other people's cash” Roberts we're talking about. What do you think the odds are that, with a $8M yearly deficit — and probably increasing — and having just been handed $46M “for marketing”, he actually decreased spending to where that influx would last more than a year or two…?

That's the genius of "pledges". With publishers there are always those looking to get their money back. Calder of course, as an actual investor, is probably taking on some of the role of publisher, expecting CIG to actually produce a finished product with their money. But backers, hell, CR can keep taking their money, and if it all goes south, he owes them nothing. They have no claim on him. He can walk away scot free.
 
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