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The Star Citizen Thread v5
- Thread starter Brett C
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I agree, it must have hit them very hard if they decided to start the Polaris cash-only sale with that discount. Nevertheless I'm sure they can survive until Gamescom when they are going to push another self-contained, severely limited tech demo and get few more million.
The accounting records they promised to publish if SC wasn't released by May 2016?
If they've not been released, then it appears you just proved my point: without the numbers, any sort of "running out of cash, can't finish" statement has no basis in hard facts.
Your implication that they have enough cash doesn't have any basis in hard fact either. We can guesstimate CIG's spending by looking at 2015 numbers submitted in UK branch, which accounts for around half of their workforce, though.
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"If they've not been released"? You know full well they haven't, and that they wrote it out of subsequent versions of the ToS. I wonder why that is.
My severely flawed order-of-magnitude estimate: according to Foundry 42's accounts, they have burned through 14.5 million pounds in 2015, with GBP/USD exchange rate at around 1.5 dollars per 1 pound (1.48 on 31st of December 2015), and 5.5 million pounds in 2014, at 1.6 dollars per pound, let's say (1.5580 on 31st of December 2014, although it has reached as much as 1.7 exchange rate in that year). If we assume that a)total spending in all other locations in 2015 was roughly equal to UK's, b)the number of employees didn't change between 2015 and 2016, which is doubtful, c)their spending didn't change between 2015 and 2016; it gives us:
2014(F42 only): 5.5M x 1.6 = 8.8M $
2015: 14.5M x1.5 x 2 = 21.75M x 2 = 43.5M $
2016(equal to 2015): 43.5M $
So, as a really weak order-of-magnitude estimation, CIG has spent no less than 87 million dollars in two years in all their locations, and no less than 95.8 million dollars if we include F42 in 2014. This number doesn't include CIG's spending in their offices outside UK before 2015, and we don't know if the number includes actors' wages, motion capture studio fees, contractors (does anyone know if there were any rumours about what Illfonic was paid?) and multiple other things I can't think of right now.
(Yeah, I'm bored)
2014(F42 only): 5.5M x 1.6 = 8.8M $
2015: 14.5M x1.5 x 2 = 21.75M x 2 = 43.5M $
2016(equal to 2015): 43.5M $
So, as a really weak order-of-magnitude estimation, CIG has spent no less than 87 million dollars in two years in all their locations, and no less than 95.8 million dollars if we include F42 in 2014. This number doesn't include CIG's spending in their offices outside UK before 2015, and we don't know if the number includes actors' wages, motion capture studio fees, contractors (does anyone know if there were any rumours about what Illfonic was paid?) and multiple other things I can't think of right now.
(Yeah, I'm bored)
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MOAR shows! Just what we always wanted!
A distinct whiff of the discovery scanner, fuel scoop completion and frameshift sounds in there around 3:00 though
A distinct whiff of the discovery scanner, fuel scoop completion and frameshift sounds in there around 3:00 though
In recording industry we call it "De Fillerz".
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Out of rep and karma, but can do this +1
Impressive. So they *can't* do both Squadron 42 and SC and live at this point. LOL.
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Out of rep and karma, but can do this +1
Impressive. So they *can't* do both Squadron 42 and SC and live at this point. LOL.
There are a lot of indirect red flags that they have a lot of issues with project..like its already 2017 and all they have is semi-broken Pre-Alfa with almost no gameplay to show...
They now have >350 employees so monthly expenses are very high - several m per month and to release anything they need to run this company at least 5 years.
Finance is the biggest worry when it comes to keeping the dream alive. I don't think A-list actors and the best Mo-Cap studio in the world come cheap. It's extremely unlikely that income is keeping pace with costs, and I doubt that The Chairman's extensive skillset includes delivering a product within budget. Unless he pulls a rabbit up of a hat, or unless there are a lot of backers who want twelve Idrises (Idrisii?) in their fleet, the chances are the money will run out before we get a game.
I'm really hoping they manage to get S42 Episode 1 out before they go bust and that it doesn't rely on CIG servers to run.
Viajero
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By the same token we can not conclude in any way the project financial health is sound either I am afraid then. Can't recall you pointing that out to Orlando or some of the other funding-triumphalist posts in the thread.
But even if you ignore the Foundry 42 figures, all the cost structure estimates out there, some of them quite reasonable, or even if you ignore all the circumstantial evidence pointing to a not so rosy situation we still do have the very CEO of CIG stating that even after more than doubling the amount they asked for for all the stretch goals now they do not have enough to complete SC proper and need future revenues to do it.
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MOAR shows! Just what we always wanted!
Who would have thought that the biggest crowdfunder for a game ev0r would end in releasing awkward shows that seem to have the sole purpose of gaining time (and some goons spending much of their freetime to watch and comment this stuff and mocking a disabled individual like a clique of cool, smoking 8th graders during breaks between classes). I hope it ends soon.
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As far as I remember, the numbers seem to match against the number of staff increasing at F42, so it's unlikely that it includes any one-off payments. (e.g. that is just the cost for F42, it doesn't include mo-cap etc).
In terms of mo-cap, I think TheAgent has said that the mo-cap project cost somewhere $5-10M?
I did the same calculations and came to the same figures. It's not a lot of money left over at all and we know they grew in 2016 so you've been very generous there.
You can do it similarly with numbers of employees and average wage calculations and it's not pretty either.
This alongside Ben Lenslock (I love whoever thought of that a bit) saying they need more ship sales to be able to finish the game, then CR himself saying they only have enough for Sq42 too all add up to it being so squeaky tight only dogs can hear it - however the fans want to view it.
The fans who are still ignoring CR's definition of alpha.
Pretty much, and it's from those kinds of estimates that you get the daily burn levels, which have to be counteracted by the daily pledging. Even a very conservative estimate of their costs puts them at ~$100k a day, just for regular staffing and overhead costs — never mind the numerous various external services they employ, be they one-shots or as extended contracts.
As much as they use it as a source of cheers and celebrations, looking at the daily funding graph is a sobering experience with that in mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvule1cD_zk&t=644s
Chris Roberts saying in interview last summer that
he then waffles a bit about # of users for an online game, then talks about concept sales for getting users content early and
These quotes are as verbatim as I can make it. There's some other stuff, including saying that they have to pay for Google & Amazon, petabytes of data bandwidth, etc.
So, my take-away from this is that as of last summer CIG were managing their scope based on current monthly income and also that concept sales are at minimum helping to support running costs.
They are so screwed.
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