Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

[VR] Merkir

[VR] Merkir
Sanya V. Juutilainen said:
"easily covering their operating expenses"

No, they are not. This year, only two months were able to cover the expenses for sure, May and June, with January possibly being in black too. We know how much they roughly spend because of 2018 financials - and it's a lot. In 2017 they were already spending cca. 4 million USD per month, and that's before inflation and their growth - today they are almost certainly near 5 million USD spending even after dropping to ~500 people from the peak of 600 employees.

And yes, that's spending 60 million USD a year for unplayable alpha. In 2018 it was reported that 2012 to 2017 they've spent ~190 million USD. Over 2018 and 2019 they've likely spent at least 120 million more. There's certainly below 100 million on their account, and dropping every month that's not as big as May/June; July in particular was a loss of few millions for sure.
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You should take a look at the funding tracker here. What you're describing above is the 2018 situation which was definitely a loss. 2020 is a completely different situation. They've already exceeded 2019 income and we're only in August. And 2019 income itself was 20% higher than 2018 income. 2020 may end up being double the 2018 income.

Just do some of the same calculations you (and everyone else) did for 2018 and apply those same calculations to 2020. See what you come up with.
 

Iron Golem

Iron Golem
Merkir said:
You should take a look at the funding tracker here. What you're describing above is the 2018 situation which was definitely a loss. 2020 is a completely different situation. They've already exceeded 2019 income and we're only in August. And 2019 income itself was 20% higher than 2018 income. 2020 may end up being double the 2018 income.

Just do some of the same calculations you (and everyone else) did for 2018 and apply those same calculations to 2020. See what you come up with.
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Never trusted their tracker just like I never trusted that travesty of a roadmap.

I find it so hard to believe with all the info out there now and even the hallowed grounds of spectrum spewing salt that people are buying in harder than ever.

You folks who play are you seeing that many new faces in game pulling up in majestic Idri?
 

Tippis

Tippis
Merkir said:
Just do some of the same calculations you (and everyone else) did for 2018 and apply those same calculations to 2020. See what you come up with.
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Bigger losses than ever, since reasonable estimates for the last 5 years have all put CI¬G well in the red. And every time they've published any kind of numbers, those estimates have always turned out to be far less grim than reality turned out to be.

This is not a company, and definitely not a set of executives, who knows how to live within their available means.
 

PiLhEaD

PiLhEaD
EUS said:
This whole scam is perfectly encapsulated by the video of CR flinging his hands around like a spaz.
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Nah mate, THIS is THE video that tells all. It's also my favourite CIG video and always worth re-running and what always really amazes me is how utterly unprepared and amateur the whole event seems to have been.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWq8ynUq7wM

"It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it" -George Carlin
 

[VR] Merkir

[VR] Merkir
Re the business model and CIG's figures, of course noone should ever trust anything CIG says. I'd have to be one of their most vociferous skeptics. But having said that, I note all the naysayers regarding the accuracy of their funding tracker and ask, where's the evidence that it's a lie? The evidence I see comes straight from their public tax filings and financials for 2018 and prior, in which their funding tracker matches closely the official filings. So I'll stick with the evidence I can see, which so far shows 2020 to be a bumper year for CIG, as it has been for most game companies in this pandemic. Although if anyone has evidence that the funding tracker this year is a lie, please do tell.
 

[VR] Merkir

[VR] Merkir
One final comment re CIG's quite hilarious business model before bedtime, (and apologies, it's only hilarious to me because I'm not a backer)...

I fully expect that regardless of the bumper income they might be getting this year, CIG's modus operandi will be to spend up as big as possible to make sure they "achieve" another loss. After all, how else can they keep spruiking for ever increasing pledges donations to ensure year-on-year revenue rises. Buy an Idris! 😄
 

n4p0l3on

N
Merkir said:
Re the business model and CIG's figures, of course noone should ever trust anything CIG says. I'd have to be one of their most vociferous skeptics. But having said that, I note all the naysayers regarding the accuracy of their funding tracker and ask, where's the evidence that it's a lie? The evidence I see comes straight from their public tax filings and financials for 2018 and prior, in which their funding tracker matches closely the official filings. So I'll stick with the evidence I can see, which so far shows 2020 to be a bumper year for CIG, as it has been for most game companies in this pandemic. Although if anyone has evidence that the funding tracker this year is a lie, please do tell.
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seriously, you believe that a business/scam like that only have single accounting record?

we can never prove it, however we can still ask educated questions like one asked in the previous page, does sc have huge influx of new in game players this year (or any year in the last 5 years for that matter)? not during free play event, but during normal days. I've asked this since years ago : who are buying what for every month in sc? with the amount of alleged recorded income, there need to be from just hundreds to tens of thousands transactions from backers buying various things from cig store each months, for every single month. Sooner than later even the most deluded devout whales would run out of stuffs to buy years ago for various reasons. If we're expecting newcomers, then the previous questions stand, do you who are still playing the alpha continuously see new faces every single month? do they (these new backers) also continuously buy stuffs every month?

I doubt it, the reputation of this project hasn't been good in the last few years already, and keep in mind how limited the audience and target demographic really are, they have to be pc gamers who like space sims (an ancient genre that have only just relatively recently resurfaced)... and even then, pc gamers who plays dota, gta online, fortnite, pubg etc, who made up for the huge majority of the pc market... they do not play space sims nor they are interested in this tarnished image of a project...

I think there are going to be far more people who will try the new ms flight simulator than jumping into this project. and you buy ms flight sim only once, not continuously buying new plane jpeg every single month, so even if there's as much new bloods who buy aurora with those who buy ms flight sim this week, this doesn't change my suspicion that the numbers are probably don't match (with cig's recent continuous record breaking income numbers every month) after initial purchase.

so, again, who are buying what from this project every single month? how many citizens are there that the counter/tracker now say? have they grown proportionally with the last few years of continuously record breaking income that the funding tracker suggest?

as for the covid trend, that is true, IT an game industry see increases in their market due to covid, but again, these customers are buying finished hardware and finished games, I'm sure of this, they're not donating to new (or old for this matter) KS projects. covid situation doesn't magically widen the audience for space sims in general and sc in particular.
 

Mole HD

Mole HD
As for Ci¬G and their financials, most seem to be under the assumption that the Calders are the only investors. What I see in the business model and sparse (Public) financial records points to there being other behind the scenes sources injecting some form of capital, probably off the books via the shell companies. None of these investors have even a passing interest in a space game...that's not what Roberts...or more likely, Freyermuth... is selling them.

As for the grey market, there's some that make fairly substantial amounts bulk buying then re-selling accounts...and ships... so there must be some shadow accounting going on via that resource...and it is a resource for Ci¬G or they'd have shut it down very quickly had that not been the case. Re-selling accounts is against TOS...but the accounts are still being re-sold none the less, and quite a few of them at that.

If you look at the grey market as an account re-seller with Ci¬G making a substantial income from it rather than merely a ship shop, it might be clearer why Ci¬G don't enforce the TOS regarding it...or open up their own official store to get rid of the artificial rarity they purposely induced by severely limiting what it has available for sale :)
 
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Fishy

Fishy
Mole HD said:
If you look at the grey market as an account reseller with Ci¬G making a substantial income from it rather than merely a ship shop, it might be clearer why Ci¬G don't enforce the TOS regarding it...or open up their own official store to get rid of the artificial rarity they purposely induced by limiting what it has available for sale :)
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Difficult to argue that people shouldn't sell ships when you claim you haven't sold them anything in the first place. The grey market is just donators enjoying donating to each other after having donated to CIG, there are no sales involved, you hater!
 

MTBFritz

MTBFritz
well we know about Caulders because they were mentioned but yeah, there probably is a list of investors by now. The backers just wont ever know about them. In hindsight Star Citizen has been one of the least transparent projects I ever watched. Nothing is ever clear, everything thats provided is changed or adjusted to fit the situation. There never was any kind of reliability except for the worst (delays will happen, bugs are there and there will be ship sales). And trying to hold the company above everybody else because they are trying so hard or doing new stuff let me laugh out loud because they didnt manage so far and I refuse to praise people for stuff they didnt do.

So many small companies tackle insane challenges and overcome them via skill, determination, grit and also luck. I look to those and am in awe then I look at Star Citizen and I m getting angry because that behemoth is using up resources that it doesnt deserve anymore. Just my opinion of course and I m not saying supporting any other company would ve resulted in an actual Star Citizen game. For all I know the actual experts in their fields deem such a project if not impossible then at least unprofitable due to technical limitations and development duration.

Now we have CIG, going in blind, having not only no idea what they want to do but also no idea what they need to do it. They just stumble from blocker to blocker and figure out more and more problems they cannot overcome and simply run around erratically like a mouse in a maze without an exit.

The way this project is going I can easily see it breaking multiple billions of funding without ever reaching 50% of completion. The question simply is "where is this money going to come from?" because backers dont have the financial foundation to keep it rolling (backer funding was impossible back in 2017 when Caulders got on board) and once people with power get involved its only a matter of time before this thing blows up.
 

Fishy

Fishy
What mystifies me is that young Calder was mostly in the movies funding business before I think? Maybe still is? Wouldn't he have done some homework and watched the Wing Commander movie before investing into CR? And he still went in? 😮

I know nothing about business/finance/investment apart from the terms of my mortgage, but if a guy who spends his life investing into movies to make money out of it invested into the producer of one of the worst movies in the history of cinematography, he must have seen something pretty convincing. That would tend to make me believe in the funding tracker numbers, personally.
 

Fishy

Fishy
LittleAnt said:
The Agent ?
The same one claiming for the citizencon 2019 that CIG will reveal an Internal planet build of Earth and the start for land's selling ?
Or that SC will be remade with Stadia ?
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Well, that's believable at least. I mean, it's not like if The Agent had said that SC would release with 100 systems in 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 at some point (as a beta preview roadmap). That would be ridiculous.
 
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