CIG Demands Escapist Retraction; Threatens Lawsuit

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Apparently Cloud Imperium Games has raised so much money from crowdfunding that it has funds o' plenty for lawyers that write scary letters.

An update to the Chairman's Response to The Escapist on the Roberts Space Industries website has the latest on Cloud Imperium Games' response to a recent Escapist article alleging troubles at the developer of Star Citizen, the upcoming crowd-funded space game. The post has been updated to demand a retraction of the assertions in the article, threatening legal action if this doesn't happen by the end of today.
 
I'm sure the "CIG scam" conspiracy theorists will have a field day with this one.

As will the fans.

The fact that the Escapist relies on "sources" that could easily be Googled to anonymous Glassdoor reviews that were posted very close to when the article was published is suspicious. Further claims about an "employee ID" verifying that the "source" was credible don't appear to offer much support seeing as no IDs with names/photos are issued by the studio.

Accusations like this have to draw a response of some kind--seeing as the Escapist pretty much alleged CIG violated several federal and state laws...

If you don't like the game, that's fine. If you think the backers are morons, fine. However, I really wish everyone would stick to known, credible sources rather than "I heard from someone's message board that repeated a tweet from a party that has a clear interest in the case that ___!"
 
Good for them. The Escapist article was a hit piece written without facts. I fully endorse the usage of my crowdfunding dollars to go after these guys, as they are doing a lot of (potential) harm to the game.

I remember when [H] went after that wanna-be-console company. The [H} gathered facts and reported on them. The Escapist did none of these things. They deserve to suffer the consequences.
 
Didn't the Escapist use pay statements to help verify their sources? It'll be interesting to see how this plays out
 
Is Star Citizen an actual game or is it more of an expensive ship collection program?
 
Its an actual game in development that pays for its development in small part by people collecting ships. The vast majority of backers have just one ship.
 
EODetroit said:
Its an actual game in development that pays for its development in small part by people collecting ships. The vast majority of backers have just one ship.
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I'm sure they will have a special sale of limited edition ships to fund lawyers here soon.
 
The among of people sucking Chris Robert's cock is amazing. He's made enough money to retire to Tahiti and all you get is some stupid ships (if that).
 
Hope this goes to trial. The standards for libel and defamation are fairly well established. Either the Escapist has verifiable information or they don't. And RSI will have to prove that the Escapist's allegations are false by producing some level of proof to the contrary. If the Escapist squeaks and runs under a rock, we have our answer as I am sure there are a fair number of lawyers that would love to work a big company vs small journalism site case pro bono as a way to earn a better job offer.

And so far SC seems more like a ship collection effort then a shippable game. And for the record, I only have two small ships.
 
Dead Parrot said:
Hope this goes to trial. The standards for libel and defamation are fairly well established. Either the Escapist has verifiable information or they don't. And RSI will have to prove that the Escapist's allegations are false by producing some level of proof to the contrary. If the Escapist squeaks and runs under a rock, we have our answer as I am sure there are a fair number of lawyers that would love to work a big company vs small journalism site case pro bono as a way to earn a better job offer.

And so far SC seems more like a ship collection effort then a shippable game. And for the record, I only have two small ships.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actual_malice :rolleyes:
 
Gotta work on that PR image before the upcoming CitizenCON :)
 
EODetroit said:
Its an actual game in development that pays for its development in small part by people collecting ships. The vast majority of backers have just one ship.
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I am a backer, so I am aware of its intentions, however I can fire up Elite: Dangerous and play that game .... Star Citizen not so much.
 
SilverSliver said:
I'm sure they will have a special sale of limited edition ships to fund lawyers here soon.
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The ship sales schedule is pretty consistent. Usually every couple of weeks a new ship or past limited is on rotation, with them also having a special sale at big events like Citizencon or Gamescom or the Anniversary sale in November.

The only special sale coming up is for the unknown/unseen ship they plan to sell at Citizencon to celebrate SQ42 + the limited ships they plan to offer up during the event.

CiG doesnt need to alter their schedule to fund lawyers, they already saturate every week with enough sales to cover any expenses.
 
Ah, yes, the limited ships that are so limited they end up on sale every so often, while being limited, so buy them as soon as you can, until the unlimitly limit them again.
 
Meeho said:
Ah, yes, the limited ships that are so limited they end up on sale every so often, while being limited, so buy them as soon as you can, until the unlimitly limit them again.
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Reminds me of World of Tanks ;)
 
Wildace said:
The ship sales schedule is pretty consistent. Usually every couple of weeks a new ship or past limited is on rotation, with them also having a special sale at big events like Citizencon or Gamescom or the Anniversary sale in November.,
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They're frequently pumping past limiteds back into the sales pipeline? Things must be worse financially than I thought.

CiG doesnt need to alter their schedule to fund lawyers, they already saturate every week with enough sales to cover any expenses.
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They're not even close to covering their burn rate recently, so how can you say this?
 
They are talking out their ass or they would have just went straight to a lawsuit. The fact that they haven't means something is amiss.
 
CR could just show the single player part on this week at his citizencon, and release the game at december as promised to shut everyone up. Timing couldn't have been better to show off.

Instead the guy wants to shush everyone up. I guess the game is delayed again.
 
viscountalpha said:
They are talking out their ass or they would have just went straight to a lawsuit. The fact that they haven't means something is amiss.
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They'll never do it. If they did initiate a lawsuit, CIG would then have to open their financial records. And all of the demons contained within.

Escapist should tell them to Fuck Off.
 
infojunkie said:
CR could just show the single player part on this week at his citizencon, and release the game at december as promised to shut everyone up. Timing couldn't have been better to show off.

Instead the guy wants to shush everyone up. I guess the game is delayed again.
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It really is baffling how they took an engine built for a First Person Shooter, and can't even manage to deliver a first person shooter. Like for all the millions they've taken in, by now they couldve just re-skinned Crysis 3 with S.C. badges and pushed it out the door. And all the $900 ship buyers would've been weeping tears of joy - "SEE?! We just had to BELIEVE!"

NLFgIpE.gif
 
Sovereign said:
Accusations like this have to draw a response of some kind--seeing as the Escapist pretty much alleged CIG violated several federal and state laws...

If you don't like the game, that's fine. If you think the backers are morons, fine. However, I really wish everyone would stick to known, credible sources rather than "I heard from someone's message board that repeated a tweet from a party that has a clear interest in the case that ___!"
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It works for Mike Freeman at Bleacher Report. He loves doing "anonymous" source articles just to clickbait people.
 
Greggy_D said:
They'll never do it. If they did initiate a lawsuit, CIG would then have to open their financial records. And all of the demons contained within.

Escapist should tell them to Fuck Off.
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Yep.

Discovery would be a nightmare for them.

Chris Roberts is like John Romeo; he used to be part of a team that made good games (and answered to publishers and their deadlines) but on his own, he simply has no clue how to run a company or a project.
 
This Star Citizen debacle is getting more entertaining every week, I love it!
 
The Popehat article describes DS well.

Don't any of you dare let his crap build any preconceptions of anything going on with Star Citizen.

Smart's a master at stirring up disasters. Can we please not TRY to burn down a game that is still in active development?

So Smart finally managed to piss CIG off enough to do the dumb thing and make a legal threat that they might not be able to back up. Who are we going to blame here? The guy TRYING to pick a fight for days on end or the guy who finally screws up and lets the troll get a rise out of him?

This isn't a vaporware game. It's being worked on, and I'm more pissed off that even one damn penny of the funding would go to anything related to the human company wrecking ball that is Derek Smart.

I can't even believe that his name is even being invoked today. It's mind boggling. He has nothing to do with anything relevant today or with Star Citizen but he's doing a damn good job of worming in somehow.
 
damicatz said:
Time to let the real lawyers weigh in :
https://popehat.com/2015/10/04/in-space-no-one-can-hear-you-threaten-lawsuits/

As I said before, actual malice.
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Very good points the guy raises. Something just seemed very all-bark-and-no-bite about the 5 page "legal threat" letter from CIG.

This paragraph in particular really nails it:

Freyermuth is a founder, Vice-President, and in-house lawyer. He's a fact witness to what's going on at Cloud Imperium. When he writes a five-page semi-legal rant, he's just creating cross-examination fodder. Moreover, "look, I am referencing lawyers, and even cc'd them" doesn't convince anyone who knows how litigation works. If competent outside litigators are substantively involved, they write the threat letter, not the personally-involved fact-witness client. "Do what I want or I'll bring in our outside counsel" and "look at me cc'ing lawyers" is the "my brother will beat you up" of the business world. Freyermuth cc'd the head of the Litigation Department in the Los Angeles office of Cooley LLP, an 800-lawyer firm. Dropping his name signifies that (a) he's citing a big scary lawyer to seem serious even though the lawyer is not substantively involved, so he should not be taken seriously, or (b) the head of LA litigation for Cooley is involved, but has no client control whatsoever because his client is writing five-page rants, which means the client is not to be taken seriously, plus (c) if Cooley is actually involved it signifies that Cloud Imperium is going to spend a truly stupid amount of money to pursue a defamation case against a hit piece that doesn't actually impact its core function, right at the time that it's fighting rumors that it is in financial trouble. So: some messaging issues.

If you know what you're doing, you bring in the litigators before you start running your mouth.
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Advil said:
The Popehat article describes DS well.

Don't any of you dare let his crap build any preconceptions of anything going on with Star Citizen.

Smart's a master at stirring up disasters. Can we please not TRY to burn down a game that is still in active development?

So Smart finally managed to piss CIG off enough to do the dumb thing and make a legal threat that they might not be able to back up. Who are we going to blame here? The guy TRYING to pick a fight for days on end or the guy who finally screws up and lets the troll get a rise out of him?

This isn't a vaporware game. It's being worked on, and I'm more pissed off that even one damn penny of the funding would go to anything related to the human company wrecking ball that is Derek Smart.

I can't even believe that his name is even being invoked today. It's mind boggling. He has nothing to do with anything relevant today or with Star Citizen but he's doing a damn good job of worming in somehow.
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Problem is, there are simply too many questions now to be able to sweep under the rug of one guy that's "just a meanie and a troll". It's gotten much bigger than him. But I get why fanatics with money in the game don't like him, he stirred the pot and now other people are asking questions.

If CIG has nothing to hide then it won't hurt them to be more transparent.
 
For those that didn't bother to read what i linked:

"To be clear on further allegations: None of our sources were Derek Smart and we did not get our information from Glassdoor. However, we do know that a couple sources did post on Glassdoor after talking to Lizzy."
 
DPI said:
Problem is, there are simply too many questions now to be able to sweep under the rug of one guy that's "just a meanie and a troll". It's gotten much bigger than him. But I get why fanatics with money in the game don't like him, he stirred the pot and now other people are asking questions.

If CIG has nothing to hide then it won't hurt them to be more transparent.
Click to expand...

My guess is that the actual truth lies somewhere between "everything is totally fine guys!" and Derek Smart's trolling.
 
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