Star Citizen Departures?

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Blue's News has posted a bunch of juicy details on rumored departures from Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games. Hit the link for the complete rundown.

The developer turned crusader says a couple of employees quit and a couple were fired as the result of the leak, and while the details of his post are not officially confirmed, a tweet from James Pugh does confirm this Community Manager's departure from the company under "odd" circumstances.
 
Good ole Derek Smart. Still pissed his 2000AD game never got off the ground.

Poor baby.
 
I recant my above statement. Derek Smart has tossed a metric fuckton of fuel in the fire and there are many people that are going to burn for this. There is more going on behind the scenes at Star Citizen and I'm grabbing my Mangorita and some Popcorn for this ride.
 
If this game ends up as complete trash, or even vaporware, how upset are the people who spent thousands of dollars on ships going to be? It boggles my mind how much money some people have spent on a game that hasn't even been released yet.
 
1. Fire some employees
2. Draw some new space yachts in 3D modeler and post them up for sale to short sleeve buttondown virgins with star trek power fantasies and $400 to spare

= Success guaranteed!
 
Pringle said:
If this game ends up as complete trash, or even vaporware, how upset are the people who spent thousands of dollars on ships going to be? It boggles my mind how much money some people have spent on a game that hasn't even been released yet.
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I can think of a few of the more "enthusiastic" fans in [H]'s Star Citizen thread being suicidal or at least locking themselves in their rooms for a year+

The popcorn will be real.
 
I am so glad I limited my "investment" to this company to only a couple of hundred bucks. I know people are free to spend their money anyway they want to, but I am also free to comment on how I thought people were complete idiots to spend thousands on ships, let alone for game that's wasn't even in alpha (at the time when the ships were on sale).

When they kept releasing ships for sale something didn't feel right to me.
 
Quick just say you're going to move to dx12 and let the gpu fanboys argue who's company fault it is it's not working.
 
There was basically zero chance of Star Citizen being successful given the high hopes and hype, but I don't see why Derek Smart needs to take it upon himself to fan the fire. He's a baby and hasn't been relevant in....well ever.
 
I am sure when the district attorney gets involved and it will happen at some point given all the money people have invested, they are going to uncover several crimes taking this whole Star Citizen issue from worse to terrible to ultimately ..... nightmarish.

When I saw they were selling virtual ships on eBay from $50 to $130 to maybe even $200+ plus I told myself I would never ever play a game like that.
 
SixFootDuo said:
I am sure when the district attorney gets involved and it will happen at some point given all the money people have invested, they are going to uncover several crimes taking this whole Star Citizen issue from worse to terrible to ultimately ..... nightmarish.

When I saw they were selling virtual ships on eBay from $50 to $130 to maybe even $200+ plus I told myself I would never ever play a game like that.
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Well, for the longest time it was nothing but a virtual space ship store and hangar that acted as a gallery. Heck, before stuff was being sold on ebay they were doing $1000 bundles of ships.
 
Pringle said:
If this game ends up as complete trash, or even vaporware, how upset are the people who spent thousands of dollars on ships going to be? It boggles my mind how much money some people have spent on a game that hasn't even been released yet.
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hahaha, if it teaches just one person a less to NEVER pre-order shit or makes them never buy DLC again then I'll call it a success.
 
SixFootDuo said:
I am sure when the district attorney gets involved and it will happen at some point given all the money people have invested, they are going to uncover several crimes taking this whole Star Citizen issue from worse to terrible to ultimately ..... nightmarish.
.
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Well my view of what Kickstarter does for games is basically that the developers simply don't want to or can't get a job elsewhere, they want everyone else to pay essentially pay them a salary, often a very good salary, and of course new computers, other stuff you normally wouldn't do, and yeah sure I'm sure some other people get hired out of this as well.

So unless you can prove there was negligence in spending the money, i.e. trips to Fiji, strippers, or that they didn't do much work, then good luck getting your money back.
 
I find it incredible to see posts in that RSI thread they linked actually PRAISING the price as it's ONLY $425...
 
Derek Smart is a fucking moron and if he says its true, that just makes it more certainly not true. I for one don't believe a word of it.
 
Who knows if this letter is even legit or not.

The letter merely generically reiterates the negative points of Chris's personality. We all knew the deficiencies when we backed the game. We also knew that in spite of them he's had past successes.

Rather than worry about internal company drama which all companies of that size will have, I'll just say that in the last couple of weeks I've actually started playing quite of bit of Arena Commander. There are still big balance issues to work out, but there is some seriously solid core gameplay forming. The REC system lets you spend rental credits from matches of various kinds that you play, to rent guns/ships/whatever for a week at a time. This encourages testing, encourages keeping load on the servers and lets backers try out various stuff that's been made so far. It's working solidly, if not 100% elegant yet.

What really surprises me is that this "letter" hits today, what should be only around a month before the "mini persistent universe" gets launched. Once that happens then we will begin looking at having the game be more beta than alpha.

It's more than a little suspicious that someone or something is taking this hard of a public relations shot literally right before the game becomes real and the 3 pieces (Space, FPS, Persistence) becomes one whole for the first time.

It has seemed to me for the last couple of weeks that CIG has been pretty excited and nearly buzzing with the anticipation of getting this out to us.

Then this letter hits out of nowhere today.

Perhaps coincidence, perhaps not.
 
There is also the issue of whether we should come down on them for too much development of engine and not enough moving forward with content.

Perhaps. Only time will tell on that, but I've been very satisfied with the reports and showing what they are working on.

The technology they are working up, being able to enter and exit ships, stations etc and have the internal physics be isolated from the outside yet still have it all present in the game world at once, such that you can look out the window of a ship and really SEE what's going on outside, while you can still move about the ship... it's pretty intense.

We are talking the same kind of "wow, damn this is COOL!" feeling you got the first time you played Battlefield 1942.

Can they pull it off and build a game around it? We will find out. But yes, the tech is absolutely real. It's turning the tech and the vision into an actual game. It's happening. Slowly, but it's happening.
 
ocellaris said:
This is what happens when people have too much money and no concept of meeting deadlines or trusting employees.
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Yep. Money does NOT solve all problems in development, and in fact can make it worse. When you get a "nothing will stand in the way of the vision, we will make a game that does EVERYTHING!!!11" kind of situation, well problems usually happen. Duke Nukem' Forever is of course the famous one, but another good example is Shadowbane: Really overly ambitious concept, developers with lots of funding so no publisher, long drawn out development process, broken poor quality launch.

There have been lots of warning signs that Star Citizen has real problems like that, but of course the fans won't hear any of it and keep insisting that it'll all be great.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Well my view of what Kickstarter does for games is basically that the developers simply don't want to or can't get a job elsewhere, they want everyone else to pay essentially pay them a salary, often a very good salary, and of course new computers, other stuff you normally wouldn't do, and yeah sure I'm sure some other people get hired out of this as well.
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I guess I have had a different experience with Kickstarter ... I am enjoying Grim Dawn and think Crate has done a good job with it (especially given the limited amount of money they got off of KS ... less than 1 million) ... inXile and Obsidian have also delivered quality titles that would have been of little interest to publishers to fund ... there are certainly some scam artists out there and some budding Chris Roberts (whose eyes are significantly bigger than their stomachs or their talent) ... but I think there are some responsible developers who use KS to produce high quality Indie titles without sacrificing capabilities due to low budgets or IP due to having to sell their souls to get publisher money ... But that is just my opinion :cool:
 
Sycraft said:
Yep. Money does NOT solve all problems in development, and in fact can make it worse. When you get a "nothing will stand in the way of the vision, we will make a game that does EVERYTHING!!!11" kind of situation, well problems usually happen. Duke Nukem' Forever is of course the famous one, but another good example is Shadowbane: Really overly ambitious concept, developers with lots of funding so no publisher, long drawn out development process, broken poor quality launch.

There have been lots of warning signs that Star Citizen has real problems like that, but of course the fans won't hear any of it and keep insisting that it'll all be great.
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Chris Roberts initial video trying to lure investors all sounded too good to be true. I love the space combat sim genre, so I kicked in the $45 to do my part to make it happen. That's all I was willing to give in case things like this happened and ultimately the game never sees the light of day. I hope it is still on track or gets back on track. Sad fact is this was a risk from the start. I know a guy who's got a few thousand dollars in this. He'd be crushed if the game ended up dying on the vine.
 
Dan_D said:
Chris Roberts initial video trying to lure investors all sounded too good to be true. I love the space combat sim genre, so I kicked in the $45 to do my part to make it happen. That's all I was willing to give in case things like this happened and ultimately the game never sees the light of day. I hope it is still on track or gets back on track. Sad fact is this was a risk from the start. I know a guy who's got a few thousand dollars in this. He'd be crushed if the game ended up dying on the vine.
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Ya I love space shooties but when I heard all the hype I said "This sounds too risky to me, I'ma sit this one out." I hope I end up being wrong and a great game comes out because I want more great space games. However at this point, I see all kinds of massive warning signs and I think failure is likely.
 
Dan_D said:
This is literally the only industry that will tolerate bullshit like that.
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Legit question; when does it become a legal matter? When someone can sell a virtual item that may or may not exist, for hundreds of dollars, they're legally obligated to release the game at that point right? At least, I would think so. I'm ignorant as fuck when it comes to the legalities of it.
 
Dan_D said:
This is literally the only industry that will tolerate bullshit like that.
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Not at all ... which is why the Internet bubble burst in the early 2000's (companies collecting lots of money with no viable product or service)
 
Pringle said:
If this game ends up as complete trash, or even vaporware, how upset are the people who spent thousands of dollars on ships going to be? It boggles my mind how much money some people have spent on a game that hasn't even been released yet.
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Exactly why I haven't payed hardly any attention to it. It seems like it will never be a finished product.

DPI said:
1. Fire some employees
2. Draw some new space yachts in 3D modeler and post them up for sale to short sleeve buttondown virgins with star trek power fantasies and $400 to spare

= Success guaranteed!
Click to expand...

lol.
 
Smelled like a scam during its kick starter and I said as much. Is only getting more obvious by the day. I seriously have zero pity for the backers. As for those who have dropped 100's to thousands of dollars on what amounts to pretty 3d rendered models, you're all fools.
 
there should be some cap to how much can be donated to these Kickstarter projects...they need to show a return on investment before more $$ can be 'borrowed'
 
polonyc2 said:
there should be some cap to how much can be donated to these Kickstarter projects...they need to show a return on investment before more $$ can be 'borrowed'
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Note he only did a portion of his collection through KS ... he collected money directly (with no KS interaction) both before and after the KS campaign ... most of his funds came from this collection and not KS so I don't think we want to hold up SC as the posterchild of KS risks or poor management (only 2 million of the 70+ million he collected from folks came in through KS) ... SC is in its own special class of douchebaggery (if he fails to deliver a viable product)
 
Scope Creep, Moving Targets, Gold Plating ... Yes, they affect game development too ;)
 
Pringle said:
Legit question; when does it become a legal matter? When someone can sell a virtual item that may or may not exist, for hundreds of dollars, they're legally obligated to release the game at that point right? At least, I would think so. I'm ignorant as fuck when it comes to the legalities of it.
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That was what Derek Smart brought up in his blog post. Basically, if they don't release the game that fulfills the promises, they owe everybody a refund. So Derek says he expects them to deliver a broken ass game that just scrapes by meeting the requirements and then nobody has any kind of legal recourse to get a refund.
 
chili dog said:
That was what Derek Smart brought up in his blog post. Basically, if they don't release the game that fulfills the promises, they owe everybody a refund. So Derek says he expects them to deliver a broken ass game that just scrapes by meeting the requirements and then nobody has any kind of legal recourse to get a refund.
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I expect that is true since I suspect that a fair amount of this money was collected on credit cards and the credit card legal protections are very clear (you must receive the product or service you bought or the credit card company must refund your money ... and then they can go fight with the other company to get compensation) ... since I don't think CR wants to be tied up in lawsuits with dozens of credit card providers I suspect he will release something (even if it is another Duke Nukem Forever or Battlecruiser 3000) so that no one gets refunds and he doesn't have to deal with the banks

Someone could still file a class action suit against him for fraud or the quality but that type of suit is much tougher to win than a credit card trying to get their money back ;)
 
chili dog said:
That was what Derek Smart brought up in his blog post. Basically, if they don't release the game that fulfills the promises, they owe everybody a refund. So Derek says he expects them to deliver a broken ass game...
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That's fucking hilarious coming from him. Wow.
 
ianken said:
Gonna play some elite now. L8R. :)
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I remember the point in time when people were debating which game would gather the most players, assuming they were going to be released at relatively the same time.


Sheeeeeesh
 
im excited when they dont deliver and everyone loses their money. Best business model ever
 
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