Star Citizen Guild Gets a $45,000 Refund

Megalith

Megalith

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More and more Star Citizen fans are getting fed up with the “lies”: one group has happily announced on r/starcitizen_refunds that they received money back for three of the game’s $15,000 “completionist” packages, which allow access to dozens of optional ship designs among other extras. Sharing photo and video evidence of forum discussions confirming the refunds, they state that they couldn't "wait any longer, and a new generation is joining also who have absolutely no interest.”

It was a nightmare getting the refund; we are a commercial org and pooled the money to buy the completionist packages and used a corporate card to buy them, so we had major issues with getting refunded to the same card, PayPal, and then providing ID. Total, it took about 5 weeks to get sorted. A lot of time was spent trying to explain the situation to some woman called "Schala" and just getting the same answers copied and pasted backwards and forwards; they definitely try to delay you as much as possible in the hope you'll forget or give up.
 
I think Christ Robberts is an idiot and the way they've used every slimy marketing 101 tactic in the book is deplorable, but if I were CIG I'd tell these people to go pound sand. They knew what they were getting into when they bought these packages and if they didn't then that's their fault, plus these boobs probably spent 5 years bragging about all their sweet ships.
 
LightsOut41 said:
They can't. CIG wrote refunds into their ToS.

Plus I think the EU has some laws about refunding a purchase.
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The ToS has changed a lot over the years. I think whether or not they're entitled to a refund is dependent on when they made the purchase and possibly whether they've been actively playing the PU with the account. I don't care enough to look it up though.

The point is more that I don't really think people should be entitled to refunds, rather than whether or not they technically are. I've been making fun of this flaming shitheap for four years, but people that did a dumb thing years ago and have played dozens/hundreds of hours of AC/PU/etc now wanting all their money back doesn't sit right with me either.
 
I went in for the $35 base package a couple years ago. I'm in no hurry to ask for a refund. It is a crowdfunded game. I knew that going in and also knew that it may/may not ever be completed.

I think the people spending huge sums on money on it are kind of silly for doing so though.
 
I was reading the Aug 17 message and was okay upto the point where "Schala" began with "The 3.0 publish will see the introduction of new technologies which delivers features promised in our funding stretch goals". So no plans on release soon!

If you were to make a judgement based on the facts instead of Derek Smart's crazy ramblings, then you'd clearly be aware that Realistic ship damage, Ship subsystem energy manipulation, Hired NPC's, Shuttles, Immersive haggling, Stellar Cartography, a Stock Market, Organizations, Radar information relay, Spaceports, Transportation, Cruising jobs, Voting for in game politicians, Player owned factories, Group mining, organization infiltration, Mineral refinement, Aliens, Scanning Software, Artifact hunting, Dynamic NPC social interactions, Electronic Warfare and Hacking, Space Monsters, Crisis-like vegetation and self-sustaining ecosystems, Black holes, cargo damage, Varied laws and rules for different enviornments, Base-building, Eating and showering, Space illnesses, contagion and epidemics and player-run medical facilities for players to treat them, 20 million AI agents, Science profession, Plant growth and Botanics, infrared, visible, and gamma spectrum universe scanning, Mining, refineries, Procedural wildlife and birds and weather, Farming, Trading, Sandworms and 99.5 Star Systems are all just around the corner.
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Oh shit.... Another Star Citizen thread. Can't wait to hear all of the die hards around here come to CIG's aide. Some of us saw this coming years ago. Others, well, they are usually the ones to purchase ice when visiting Alaska in January.

giphy.gif
 
So i've spent a little more thent he base $35, and have hopes for the project - I'm not as pushy and won't ask for any refunds... but what does concern me is that there is some shady marketing and hidden information @ CIG while saying they are totally transparent. I also think they do a poor job prioritizing work. like cranking out sellable ships over actually making a working game. I think they dedicate something like 50% of their entire DEV team to ships... wasteful.

For example, there were two games SQ42 and then StarCitizen. SQ42 was the single player game with all the famous actors. it was supposedly fined over 2 years ago and they let it sit there on the shelf... now, no one at CIG has worked on that "retail boxed AAA game" in two years. all the funding is going to the persistent MMO style universe game.

I do think they are doing some amazing things with the MMO game technology wise, but that's going to take years from now to realize it --- I think they scrapped SQ42 or are going back and refactoring SQ42 with the new tech.

They could have appeased a lot of backers by just putting the game out.
 
If they had just followed a similar release style to Elite Dangerous or Eve this game would be out and enjoying a healthy player base with a foreseeable future. All I see now is a dream stuck in development hell.
 
They are not going to release SQ42 until much closer to official launch of the PU.
They already made that mistake with Starlancer/Freelancer which were supposed to be connected games.
Starlancer got released then Freelancer got delayed for years.
That being said, I doubt SQ42 is totally finished and sitting on a shelf.
They're still massaging the lore and want a more complete tie in than Starlancer/Freelancer ended up being.
Imho
 
RogueTadhg said:
Of course it was fake. Do you really think a company would allow a $45,000 refund just go public? The damage that refund could cause by itself could be more than 45k. However, it seems that every refund is fake? Sure.


ITT: Star Citizen Defense Force taking turns screaming "fake" and "refunds don't matter!"
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Yeah just make up things to believe. Nice logical thinking.
 
I refunded my purchase/pledge a while ago - pretty-much right after they announced their transparency initiative. If they felt they needed to do that, I knew the game wouldn't be out for a very long time. While I do think that the game will be released, it won't be any time soon.

If Star Citizen comes out, and it's good, I'll be more than happy buy my grandkids a copy.
 
raazman said:
Yeah just make up things to believe. Nice logical thinking.
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It is quite logical. Wouldn't you, as a company, that depends on donations and crowdfunding not want to give refunds? When people see someone pulling $45,000 out of a project, that's no small taters. That's a pretty big tater and then a lot of smaller taters get wondering if they should do the same and pull their money. That's news making taters. Real or not, refuting the refund is the best recourse to salvage the damage. Maybe it's fake and was sending a message to finish the fucking game before adding new stuff.

But then there are those that are smart about it and realize that the money they gave to this project should just be written off as burning money. You never know if or when the project will be done.


Actually, it was a mod that said most of it on the reddit post. I'll quote his entire post for you, save you the trouble. A mod who moderates a public forum for Star Citizen has a little more weight than myself. I even colored the important bits pink. xoxo.

ITT: Star Citizen Defense Force taking turns screaming "fake" and "refunds don't matter!" lol

Congrats dude (or dudes, I guess) and thanks for sharing your story. You should use the money to do something more fun than playing Star Citizen (so basically anything, I guess)!

E: in all seriousness though this post has been/is being brigaded by a number of people from other subreddits, so if someone wants to get into a slapfight with you, consider whether or not it's worth it right now.

DOUBLE TRIPLE COMBO EDIT: Ars Technica has linked this post in an article with a response from David Swofford, CIG's Communications Director. Swofford claims that the refund was in fact for much less than the indicated amount, and that there was no extended discussion about it (I think he misread the part where /u/mogmentum indicated that there was extended discussion about it in his guild.) Please note that for the time being we're not going to be removing this post simply because he says it's fake. Every refund here gets accused of being fake from people who would prefer that refunds don't go public. The moderator team will discuss what we plan to do with this post internally, but for now it's not going anywhere. Swofford's response is below:

[Update: Cloud Imperium spokesperson Dave Swofford tells Ars that "a lot of the information was fabricated" in the Reddit post discussed the below. Swofford says the account in question was issued an individual refund of $330, not the $45,000 claimed in posted screenshots and videos which Swofford says do not reflect actual complaints requests logged by the company. What's more, Swofford says the refund was handled "in a timely fashion" with "no extended debate over whether we should."

FINAL EDIT (I HOPE)

While the modteam were discussing which actions to take with this post in regards to David Swofford's comments, the OP made our decision for us by deleting his account so that's that. For those of you unsure of what that means, it calls the integrity of the poster into question. Maybe the guy went through an insane amount of effort to fake a refund, and bailed when Swofford called him out. Maybe it wasn't faked and the guy was getting a ton of shitty PMs and bailed. I honestly have no idea what made him delete his account, and unfortunately now I can't dig deeper to find out. What I do know is that we'll be removing this post from sticky status and locking it to end the discussion, but it'll still be around if you want to link to your hot take where you totally called it being a fake or whatever later ;P
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Here's the gfycat video that's still up:

https://giant.gfycat.com/ComplicatedOpenLeonberger.webm

It shows him refreshing the website url.
 
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kring said:
So i've spent a little more thent he base $35, and have hopes for the project - I'm not as pushy and won't ask for any refunds... but what does concern me is that there is some shady marketing and hidden information @ CIG while saying they are totally transparent. I also think they do a poor job prioritizing work. like cranking out sellable ships over actually making a working game. I think they dedicate something like 50% of their entire DEV team to ships... wasteful.

For example, there were two games SQ42 and then StarCitizen. SQ42 was the single player game with all the famous actors. it was supposedly fined over 2 years ago and they let it sit there on the shelf... now, no one at CIG has worked on that "retail boxed AAA game" in two years. all the funding is going to the persistent MMO style universe game.

I do think they are doing some amazing things with the MMO game technology wise, but that's going to take years from now to realize it --- I think they scrapped SQ42 or are going back and refactoring SQ42 with the new tech.

They could have appeased a lot of backers by just putting the game out.
Click to expand...

OK, so I get you, but I would point something out. A graphic artist isn't a coder. A 3D modeler isn't going to switch hats and start righting physics code for atmospheric flight behavior. Now the project management guys are responsible for who and how much of these jobs they fill, but once they are hired, if you add stuff to the project, then you add work, and if your ships guys aren't busy you can always add more ships.

I'm not trying to say that they aren't fucking up, but yea, it's not always as easy as it sounds.
 
If you back an early access game, you are taking a risk. The game may not be completed and could totally suck. I don't think I backed Star Citizen (sad thing is, I can't remember). However, I've backed several other games from developers I like. Brian Fargo is on my list anytime I see him doing something. I back them because I want them to make good games.
I also don't always play the games I back. They become part of my Steam backlog. I always think I'll have time - but never do. Oh well. Maybe some day...
 
There was actually a run on refunds about 2 years ago. I thought they curbed them?
 
backed the original at minimum level, still waiting. worth the salt I guess. by the time it releases a mid-range system will run it comfortably. that's a plus, right?
 
In for $35. No regrets. Cool just looking at the stars. Not in any hurry. They will deliver something more than anything we have yet seen in space sims. Not everything they promised but still more than enough for $35.
 
If it were real, given it was converted back to pounds from USD they'd have actually done really well off the currency conversion.
 
Gweenz said:
There was actually a run on refunds about 2 years ago. I thought they curbed them?
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There is a subreddit dedicated to people posting their refunds. Mine is posted there ~1600USD. I got in in 2012 and out in 2016. Over the course of that time I concluded that I loved the project but hated the way it was managed. There is no doubt Roberts is a visionary; he just also happens to be a terrible manager and leader. There is no one there who can say NO to him and as a result the project exists in a semi permanent state of scope creep and rewrites while no one has ever seen the core mechanics. The broken things the community sees like the flight model and controller disparity have been sitting in their festering state since 2013. This erodes confidence. So much for open iterative development.
 
Master_shake_ said:
Didn't the pound drop after Brexit?
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Exactly. They'd have effectively made a $45,000 purchase from pounds. Coming back it's dollars to pounds so it'd be more. 1 pound buys 1.6 dollars. 1.6 dollars buys 1.2 pounds, Simplistically.

Fuck knows what they'd be doing with their accounts if it really was a commercial venture though. Can't see the tax man accepting a pre-order of an imaginary thing as a non current asset, and yet they've made money on it.
 
I have a hard time believing CIG statement considering they aren't exactly known for being honest, 3.0 being ready to launch a year ago being a good example.

As someone on reddit pointed out, SC has been in development for 5 years and yet they can't get more than half a dozen players on a server still. If nothing else, CIG not being able to get such a fundamental part of the game implemented yet should be a huge red flag.
 
Grimlaking said:
If you are in the US CIG does not issue refunds. I've tried.
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This is not true. You probably tried and depending on when you tried they might have told you no. They were saying no for a while at first but it was pointed out to them that they were required to give refunds for a few reasons. So now it is possible to get refunds even in the US. They might try to talk you out of it but they will eventually give in.
 
Still in on the project.

Still hoping something comes of it. The scope is too large at this point, but they're working on it still.

One of my biggest points of confusion early on was this: Who is so stupid as to spend $10k+ on this game's development? If you were talking about a MAXIMUM reasonable donation to the game, I'd use a WoW or other MMORPG monthly fee as a guide. $15 per month x 10 years of subscriptions (paying for an entire 10 years worth of play right up front) $15 x 12 = $180. $180 x 10 years = $1800.

That's a HUGE donation to a game that isn't even made yet.

The people or organizations that provided money like this... over $10k, deserve payback and frankly with some kind of interest. That's investor levels of money. There's no way you can pretend that money of that amount could ever be considered fair compensation for any type of play of the actual game. That's ludicrous. I was always hoping that there were special circumstances for anyone who gave that much.

So as far as I'm concerned, whether this particular story is true or not, after 5 years I'd think that anyone with more than $1000 invested in this thing should be able to reclaim the money if they desire. It was, after all, virtually an interest free gift. And the company should treat large donations as mini loans.

Of course, if they can't get the game out in time, that will eventually drive them under, although perhaps not also. The wisest thing for everyone involved would be if more people put in $50-200 and let it be. That way you don't end up in the "big money" messes where individuals have large enough wads of cash invested to justify personal lawsuits.

I'm not ragging on them. I still want the game they are working on. But I don't think the really large donations should have ever been offered or accepted. Expectation management is a bear.

EDIT - I just read the retraction. This story was truly a pile of made up BS. So really, it sounds like this mythical situation isn't an issue anyway. More fabricated drama. Carry on.
 
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