Cloud Imperium Issues Official Statement about Rumored Financial Issues

Dan_D said:
I wouldn't say it's net rage. Sure there are some people who are foaming at the mouth when this game gets mentioned, but it sparks a discussion because of how bad the situation looks. You've basically got three kinds of people involved in these discussions.

1.) People who backed the game, and make excuses for it.
2.) People who backed the game and are concerned about the game's future.
3.) People who didn't back the game and watch from the sidelines who may play armchair game developer.
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1a) People who backed the game realizing it was an investment, and would like to see it succeed, but realize it may not. And also realize that "investing" is not a guarantee on return.
 
Why should only people who have "bought in" be able to state their opinion?

For those of you with that opinion, has it ever occurred to you that other people would like to see the game succeed for various reasons? I know there are people who want to play the game that was promised. They want to buy the finished game and play it. There are people who want to see the game genre succeed and grow again.

However, the train wreck we've viewed so far generates absolutely no confidence in the game. Not only do many think this game will never be released in a completed form for purchase, they also believe it's going to harm the genre. I think this is more than enough reason for people to speak their minds.

I haven't put any money towards the game for various reasons. One reason is because I don't pre-purchase anything and that includes crowd funding. While the initial descriptions and promises sounded great, I simply won't buy into hype and will wait until a finished product is out. I may not have put any money into the game, but that doesn't mean I don't have an opinion. It doesn't mean I can't state my opinion.

And here is my opinion. I think the game currently is a shitshow. I don't think there will ever be a released game that's finished. I'm not even talking about the current vision for a completed game. I'm talking about the initial concept for the game not even showing up. The much simpler concept which had people excited for the game. The game which could have and should have been done already or at least damned close to it. Once that was done it would have been quite a bit easier to work on the other feature creep aspects and add them later.
 
NoOther said:
1a) People who backed the game realizing it was an investment, and would like to see it succeed, but realize it may not. And also realize that "investing" is not a guarantee on return.
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Paying for the game or in-game content is not an investment. Backing the game on kickstarter is not an investment. Best case those are purchases, worst case donations.
 
When our children and their children ask us how gaming died, this will be the story on how NOT to make a game.
 
capt_cope said:
Paying for the game or in-game content is not an investment. Backing the game on kickstarter is not an investment. Best case those are purchases, worst case donations.
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Yes, yes it is.

You are giving a company money in the hopes of a return in the form of a game or some other reward.

Otherwise you are merely donating if you are not expecting any kind of return.

What it is not is a retail sale. There is no guarantee of a return here.
 
Dan_D said:
Squadron 42's delays could simply be a matter of gross incompetence, negligence or mismanagement by the people in charge. That list has Chris Roberts at the top of it. Whether or not the people at CIG are all fucking idiots, or we are all being scammed is something we won't know until the dust settles. Regardless, Squadron 42 and the concept behind a squadron based, single player / multiplayer combat game is a relatively straight forward and should be a simple game to deliver compared to the broader Star Citizen concept. The estimated budget for such a project has long since passed and it's hard to imagine the developers not wanting to get that out the door to bring in legitimate revenue which would aid in developing the other modules and persistent universe.
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SQ42 should have been relatively straight forward. Just a wing commander sequel. Maybe some coop or whatever.

Then it got Chris Robbertsed into an open world GTA 5 in space with tens of millions of dollars of performance capture. True Believers will scream that Chris HAD to do mocap and HAD to have top tier talent because they were stretch goals that got met but what that actually means is he had to call up his buddy Luke Skywalker and spend a couple hundred grand on a decent mocap rig. What it does not mean is using the Imaginarium and hiring Scully, Commissioner Gordon, Gimli, Gollum, and a million other people.

Go watch the wing commander movie and tell me those tens of millions of dollars were probably well spent.

Maybe 3.0 will be amazing or SQ42 will be extremely well received but AC and 2.0 and 2.6 or whatever the last jesus patch was haven't really impressed me at all.
 
Tried few alphas, mocap in 1st person did look terrible. Maybe devs wanted to play with some nice toys, but the end result is meh.
Yes, it is nice to have a fully animated sequences of your characters climbing up into the space ship and turning things on, but if that takes 10 seconds+, after 100th time you'll be screaming and punching the screen because of this tremendous time waste.
 
ashmelev75 said:
Tried few alphas, mocap in 1st person did look terrible. Maybe devs wanted to play with some nice toys, but the end result is meh.
Yes, it is nice to have a fully animated sequences of your characters climbing up into the space ship and turning things on, but if that takes 10 seconds+, after 100th time you'll be screaming and punching the screen because of this tremendous time waste.
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True, but every game has that, it's just the nature of the beast. Hell, that's life. I climb into my truck every day and drive to work... for years... and there's no real way to shorten that and still be "sim-like". That's called the game. what's the reward of finding some lost outpost deep in space if you just pressed a button and were there because the time between A and B are just wasted time? Every game is going to get repetative because you can't put all the variables of real life in there.

Like BOTW. Playing the shit out of that game and it's huge and fun but the repetition is real, even the parts you can skip. Someone did the math, if you find every shrine in the game, the loading screen and entry/elevator/forced dialog box for every shrine would take up almost a whole 2 hours... Every game has that shit. Just the nature of the beast.
 
Lizard Testes said:
SQ42 should have been relatively straight forward. Just a wing commander sequel. Maybe some coop or whatever.

Then it got Chris Robbertsed into an open world GTA 5 in space with tens of millions of dollars of performance capture. True Believers will scream that Chris HAD to do mocap and HAD to have top tier talent because they were stretch goals that got met but what that actually means is he had to call up his buddy Luke Skywalker and spend a couple hundred grand on a decent mocap rig. What it does not mean is using the Imaginarium and hiring Scully, Commissioner Gordon, Gimli, Gollum, and a million other people.

Go watch the wing commander movie and tell me those tens of millions of dollars were probably well spent.

Maybe 3.0 will be amazing or SQ42 will be extremely well received but AC and 2.0 and 2.6 or whatever the last jesus patch was haven't really impressed me at all.
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When they announced SQ42 was cancelled/delayed indefinitely I lost all hope in this game.

I was on board with it with the original goals as a Kickstarter. The extreme feature creep slowly made me worry, and that announcement was a huge red flag. Especially considering how much money they spent on motion capture / A-List actors like Gary Oldman for the SQ42 singleplayer game.

I'd have been fine if all they ever released was a solid singleplayer experience out of SQ42, but deciding to drop that for the massive feature creep open world game that they will never finish was the final nail in the coffin in my book.

A friend of mine got a full refund about two years ago, and I wish I would have done the same before they stopped issuing refunds two summers back.
 
Mchart said:
When they announced SQ42 was cancelled/delayed indefinitely I lost all hope in this game.
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When did that happen? I didn't hear about that. I know it's been delayed but never heard anything about indefinitely or cancelled.
 
MavericK said:
When did that happen? I didn't hear about that. I know it's been delayed but never heard anything about indefinitely or cancelled.
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It hasn't been 'cancelled' but it's been delayed indefinitely.

The best case scenario is the funding falls through for CI and they release what little work they completed on the SQ42 campaign and we get a half-completed singleplayer game. I believe this is a very realistic scenario.
 
Pringle said:
They've stopped issuing refunds?
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Yes, over a year ago. There was a small window where original backers could still get refunds but Sandy put a stop to that. My buddy still has his email communication with Sandy that I will say is quite interesting. He was a bit early with his refund as he had a bit of insider knowledge as he's friends with someone who left CIG a few years back.. He told me to refund but at the time I still had hope - Should have listened.
 
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Taking on secured lending based on existing "assets", stopping refunds...not saying this is that, or that those 2 things make it a guarantee, but that is absolutely a certain stage in a ponzi scheme.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Taking on secured lending based on existing "assets", stopping refunds...not saying this is that, or that those 2 things make it a guarantee, but that is absolutely a certain stage in a ponzi scheme.
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Right or not they had to stop refunds because most original backers have given up hope on this game due to the feature creep. We funded a game with certain development goals in mind. It's gone so far and beyond the original stated goals that it's laughable.
 
Im glad they aren't ok releasing a half-assed game and are taking the time to make things correct.

Watch how many people this line of thinking will upset :)
 
0neTwo said:
Im glad they aren't ok releasing a half-assed game and are taking the time to make things correct.

Watch how many people this line of thinking will upset :)
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It's a continuum, not a binary equation. Taking too long means your game is obsolete by the time it's released - see Duke Nukem forever and their, what, 3 game engine changes?

edit: Semantics beat me to it!
 
0neTwo said:
Im glad they aren't ok releasing a half-assed game and are taking the time to make things correct.
Watch how many people this line of thinking will upset :)
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Since I spent exactly $0.00 on the game, I'm also happy they're taking as much time as they 'need.' :ROFLMAO:
 
Mchart said:
Yes, over a year ago. There was a small window where original backers could still get refunds but Sandy put a stop to that.
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Nope. You can still get a refund. I just did about 3 months ago. It took a slapdown from the CA Attorney General which forced CIG to follow their own TOS. Refunds are flowing like water. Go here for help:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen_refunds/

And my advice: Get a full refund. Now.

I'll PM you my e-mail verbiage to CIG, which got my refund, if you want.
 
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I've been a really forgiving of this game and have ignored criticism of it for years...but honestly reading a lot of the well-measured responses in this thread, I'm starting to think that there's a lot of merit to the critics that this game is at best going to be a huge failure.

The positive is that this game helped really put a lot of life back into the space sim genre.
 
NoOther said:
Yes, yes it is.

You are giving a company money in the hopes of a return in the form of a game or some other reward.

Otherwise you are merely donating if you are not expecting any kind of return.

What it is not is a retail sale. There is no guarantee of a return here.
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No, it ain't an investment because there is no return nor entitlement.

You donate money in the hopes that something nice will come off of it. Nothing else.

trick_m0nkey said:
I've been a really forgiving of this game and have ignored criticism of it for years...but honestly reading a lot of the well-measured responses in this thread, I'm starting to think that there's a lot of merit to the critics that this game is at best going to be a huge failure.

The positive is that this game helped really put a lot of life back into the space sim genre.
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The negative is that when it goes down, not only many people will find themselves without money, but the whole crowdfunding world will take a huge hit.
 
LightsOut41 said:
Nope. You can still get a refund. I just did about 3 months ago. It took a slapdown from the CA Attorney General which forced CIG to follow their own TOS. Refunds are flowing like water. Go here for help:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen_refunds/

And my advice: Get a full refund. Now.

I'll PM you my e-mail verbiage to CIG, which got my refund, if you want.
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Didn't know that - Thanks. Although this still looks iffy. I'm not certain how i'm going to get any money back as a Kickstarter.

I concur - Get a refund before they declare bankruptcy. The only people getting anything out of a bankruptcy will be the bondholders of the secured debt. Everyone else is fucked.
 
prava said:
No, it ain't an investment because there is no return nor entitlement.

You donate money in the hopes that something nice will come off of it. Nothing else.



The negative is that when it goes down, not only many people will find themselves without money, but the whole crowdfunding world will take a huge hit.
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IMO crowdfunding has already taken a huge hit due to Star Citizen. I refuse to early access / back anything now honestly unless it's a company with a proven track record of operating on shoe string budgets and generally delivering a decent product. In this case i'll back anything Unknown World's does because they've been operating under the backer/kickstarter model and delivering even before 'kickstarter' was a thing. I don't really trust anyone else anymore.
 
prava said:
No, it ain't an investment because there is no return nor entitlement.

You donate money in the hopes that something nice will come off of it. Nothing else.


The negative is that when it goes down, not only many people will find themselves without money, but the whole crowdfunding world will take a huge hit.
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Except there already is a return. Sure, it's not a full game but I've got 30 GB of data on my drive that wasn't there and it does stuff, just because it's not the whole return doesn't mean there is no return. Just like with a stock that only goes 1% when it should have gone up 50%, you still have something.

And you give humanity as a whole way too much credit, crowd funding isn't going anywhere. Anita S got money for fuck's sake. People have way too short of an attention span and most people don't even know what SC is in regards to kickstarted and indiegogo and the likes. It's been off those platforms for so long I doubt maybe 1 in 50 average users even know about it. between fidget spinners and cheap 3d printers I'd say people have already moved like 30 steps down the line onto the next things. It's going to take something massive that dies very quickly after it's off crowd funding and some government to step in to get people to get wary but even at that I doubt it
 
Vaulter98c said:
Except there already is a return. Sure, it's not a full game but I've got 30 GB of data on my drive that wasn't there and it does stuff, just because it's not the whole return doesn't mean there is no return. Just like with a stock that only goes 1% when it should have gone up 50%, you still have something.

And you give humanity as a whole way too much credit, crowd funding isn't going anywhere. Anita S got money for fuck's sake. People have way too short of an attention span and most people don't even know what SC is in regards to kickstarted and indiegogo and the likes. It's been off those platforms for so long I doubt maybe 1 in 50 average users even know about it. between fidget spinners and cheap 3d printers I'd say people have already moved like 30 steps down the line onto the next things. It's going to take something massive that dies very quickly after it's off crowd funding and some government to step in to get people to get wary but even at that I doubt it
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Yes you got something but to his point it isn't an investment. When you go to steam and buy all the games that are on sell you are not investing your money. At least not in the normal use of the word. Investing money means that you hope to see a monitory increase or reward. What he is trying to get to is the fact that most people don't understand the different between purchasing, crowd funding, being a partner and being an investor.

Lets say that you wanted to open a shop. Now. Lets say you need some money to open said shop.

Option #1. I give you half the money and then both of us own the shop. We are partners, we both put money into the venture and both get a return from the shop.
Option #2. I give you half the money, I am still on the paperwork as being an owner, but I decide that I don't want to be involved in the running of the shop and leave that up to you and just take a my share of the money. I am still a partner but I am a silent one.
Option #3. I give you half the money with a promise from you that once you start to make money I will get paid back what you own me plus something else (share of profits for X months, interest....) In this case I am an investor. I do not own any part of the business, I just gave you a loan.
Option #4. You go public and sell shares in your shop allowing people to buy small part ownership of the shop. For being part owner they get a share of the profits and depending on the type of share may or may not have the right to vote on decisions for how the shop is ran.
In these 4 options the people involved are expecting to come out ahead in giving you money for your shop. They are either part owner of the shop or they are waiting to get their money back.

Now
Option #5. You presell items so that you can get the money and say that once you open you will ship the items. This is preselling, the people giving you money expect to get an item once it is ready.
Option #6. You allow people to donate money to you with the promise that once you are able to open your shop you will give them a discount as a thank you, the amount of discount depends on how much they donated.
Option #7. You build however much of the shop you can, start to sell a few items and use the money as you get a profit to expand on the shop with the dream of getting it to where you want it to be.

With these three the people involved are not part owners of the shop, they don't get a share of the profit. In two cases they have expectations of receiving something but if the store doesn't open those donated to you don't get their discount as there is nothing to discount them on. If you presold items and something happen to keep you from opening the store, maybe the building had issues found during the remolding process and you didn't have enough to finish and open, they are probably going to want their money back but if you already spent it you have nothing to give. As a business you can file bankruptcy and then there is nothing they can do. And for the last one, people shop at the store knowing that you only have some items and that it isn't the best of shops, but assume that one day it will get better. Two many people want to take 5 - 7 however and make them be the same as #1 above and don't understand why they aren't the same. That is what prava was trying to say, that crowd funding is pretty much #6 in my examples not 1-3.
 
So if you pay me $100 to mow your yard, and I only mow 20% ofnit 3 months after you pay me, you would be happy right? It's not what I promised or what you paid for, but hey, at least you got something for your money right?
 
FearTheCow said:
So if you pay me $100 to mow your yard, and I only mow 20% ofnit 3 months after you pay me, you would be happy right? It's not what I promised or what you paid for, but hey, at least you got something for your money right?
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This is what people don't get about Star Citizen. When this thing started way back when as a Kickstarter Chris Roberts promised backers certain features and had a timeline.

All of this has been thrown out the window. At this point it's like we paid a kid 5 years ago to mow the lawn and instead he put down herbicide on our flower bed instead.

Most folks never considered this an investment, and largely Kickstarter is basically a donation. I treat the money as lost at this point.

But it's bullshit, and the writing is on the wall for this thing. Unfortunately a lot of people doubled down and have just kept throwing money at it. It's like throwing more money in a stock on the verge of bankruptcy. Sure.. It might survive, and you might make your money back + more.. But really you should have left the emotional attachment aside and sold out months ago.
 
How is taking time with this game OK when they have promised political drama inspired by fall of Roman empire and hired Oldman who is 60 years old.
Like he is gonna be around for chap 2, 3 and MMO when just chapter 1 is taking 6 years to progress in alpha. This goes for other actors as well.

The characters will be 'killed/moved' left and right on every chapter like a cheap generic TV show. So much for a story driven game.
 
Vaulter98c said:
Except there already is a return. Sure, it's not a full game but I've got 30 GB of data on my drive that wasn't there and it does stuff, just because it's not the whole return doesn't mean there is no return. Just like with a stock that only goes 1% when it should have gone up 50%, you still have something.

And you give humanity as a whole way too much credit, crowd funding isn't going anywhere. Anita S got money for fuck's sake. People have way too short of an attention span and most people don't even know what SC is in regards to kickstarted and indiegogo and the likes. It's been off those platforms for so long I doubt maybe 1 in 50 average users even know about it. between fidget spinners and cheap 3d printers I'd say people have already moved like 30 steps down the line onto the next things. It's going to take something massive that dies very quickly after it's off crowd funding and some government to step in to get people to get wary but even at that I doubt it
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Well, if the biggest crowdfunded game project tanks (and it is only a matter of time) the whole industry (related to games) will change A LOT.

I should have mentioned that I was talking about the specific software games industry, not the whole "crowdfunding platform".
 
Too many people to quote and reply so I'll try a blanket statement

Your examples are slightly flawed though. You are talking about physical goods which are all or nothing, and you are also making examples where you are buying finished products or completed services, crowd funding doesn't quite fit in those brackets. Paying someone to mow my yard is a task which anyone can do to completion, nothing needs invented to mow my yard, and there is an expectation on that purchase of an existing service that you are getting the service and then can complain when it's not done the way you paid for. Plus a lot of the examples posted are way out of scale for this conversation. We're talking about an individual level, not a loan to fund half of the business, we're talking about not even making it to #10 ordering each item on the Taco Bell menu.

Crowd funding has an inherent risk to it that is known and understood when going in (Kind of like stocks VS savings accounts in the risk aspect). You are giving someone the money with hope of creating X product or service that does not exist and needs to be invented. There is no guarantee with any invention or new service that it's going to be 100% spot on with what the original idea was. It's already known that the end product may not meet the expectations that's why it went to crowd funding instead of a traditional publisher picking it up, there's a risk and it's your choice if you want to buy in. The better example is if someone said he wants to invent a drone powered mowing service, and he mowed my lawn but it's uneven and not as good as someone just push mowing my neighbor's yard. Now I guess you could be pissed but in the end of the day the buyer knew the risk and chose to pay it so it's a moot point and the neighbor has zero reason to give a shit either way because the yard will be push mowed next week again anyways.

The other issue is that everyone is only looking at an investment as a financial return, like some how we are losing money every day on SC because ya know... reasons. Time is the most valuable resource, even more so than money, so if you give time a value, which I hope at this point in everyone's life you've made it that far, so you can call it an investment, not a donation. (This works for software examples, hardware not so much but I guess maybe in some cases it could work). If I look at my Steam library I've got literally dozens of games I've never put a single second into (Humble Bundle OP) and dozens of games I've put less than 20 hours in. Some of those games cost more than SC and while they may have been fun If I compare time v money spent, some of those games are shitty investments. I don't really care because it's only money and what's the point of having it and not using it, that's what it's for, but investment wise those were not good investments compared to something like Fallout 4 which I've already got over 500 hours in.

Now enter SC. Is it what it should be at this point? Nope. Only a fan boy would claim it is but honestly I've yet to see one of those on this board, quite the opposite. But, I can say that I've got no less than 50 hours already in SC already and once 3.0 drops in a few weeks I'll probably do at least another 20 plus over the coming weeks before I go back to something else and wait for the new alpha (unless it's really fun then who knows, maybe even more). So, yes, it clearly is an investment of a resource and has paid off that investment, and based on my Steam library obviously it's not my best investment but it's also far from a failure.

That's the point I keep trying to make, a lot of people can in fact actually be quite content with where it's at and where it's heading because we've already gotten our money's worth out of it, and while it's taking forever and who knows, may fail, it's already put out enough content that we can already use and enjoy and maybe that's why some people are getting tired of being told HAR HAR U WASTED UR MONEYZ!! Hell, at this point as long as the game keeps going and delivering stuff that just makes it a better and better investment
 
FearTheCow said:
So if you pay me $100 to mow your yard, and I only mow 20% ofnit 3 months after you pay me, you would be happy right? It's not what I promised or what you paid for, but hey, at least you got something for your money right?
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To convert that into what is actually the case with crowd funding, I am not paying you to mow my yard. Instead you asked me for $100 and then told me that as a thank you that you would mow my yard for me. If you don't mow my yard sure I won't be to trilled but I also know that I gave you $100 just to give it to you, the mowing the yard was just an extra I was getting as a result. I would just know then in the future not to believe that you will be a man of your word. However I also know that if my yard gets flooded during a storm that you can't do anything about that and can't mow the yard for me since the yard isn't there anymore.
 
Exavior said:
To convert that into what is actually the case with crowd funding, I am not paying you to mow my yard. Instead you asked me for $100 and then told me that as a thank you that you would mow my yard for me. If you don't mow my yard sure I won't be to trilled but I also know that I gave you $100 just to give it to you, the mowing the yard was just an extra I was getting as a result. I would just know then in the future not to believe that you will be a man of your word. However I also know that if my yard gets flooded during a storm that you can't do anything about that and can't mow the yard for me since the yard isn't there anymore.
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So in this example, Star Citizen is the yard?
 
hexamon said:
So in this example, Star Citizen is the yard?
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yes. Star Citizen is the yard. You are giving money to a company to help them make something and in return they said once they finish it you will get <insert item>. You are not paying for said item, you are giving somebody money with them offering you a thank you in the form of an item.
 
Exavior said:
yes. Star Citizen is the yard. You are giving money to a company to help them make something and in return they said once they finish it you will get <insert item>. You are not paying for said item, you are giving somebody money with them offering you a thank you in the form of an item.
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Ok so then that makes the storm.. the bank? So if the bank collects on its debts (floods the yard) then it's not the Kickstarter creators fault that they can't mow my lawn. I think I get it now!
 
prava said:
No, it ain't an investment because there is no return nor entitlement.

You donate money in the hopes that something nice will come off of it. Nothing else.
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Not all investments provide returns. It is an investment because there is an exptected return for the money. If you give money with no expected return, it is called a donation. Because when people gave certain amounts of money, they were expecting certain amounts of return for that money, therefore, it was an investment.
 
NoOther said:
Not all investments provide returns. It is an investment because there is an exptected return for the money. If you give money with no expected return, it is called a donation. Because when people gave certain amounts of money, they were expecting certain amounts of return for that money, therefore, it was an investment.
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Buying a hamburger at a McDonalds is an investment? If we follow your logic...
 
prava said:
Buying a hamburger at a McDonalds is an investment? If we follow your logic...
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No, because that is a retail product. There is no comparison to buying a hamburger at McDonalds and crowd funding. What kind of stupid analogy is that?
 
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