http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles...-of-the-Company


this is kinda scary

$90 million is a scary figure.Look what E:D has done with a fraction of that.

I'm glad I didn't buy into SC.That's not to say I wouldn't purchase it in the future,I just need to see that there is an actual game in there,somewhere.

I watched this earlier this evening...

You honestly can't pick any truth from that article. Its sensational writing with nothing confirmed by the protagonists. the article is shoddy in itself as there is no actin taken from the reporting body to substantiate these claims aside from posing a few q's to Chris Roberts.

However, saying that, what I have seen presented to me as a backer (in the form of released content/letters to the chairman/dev diaries/conceptual posts etc.) is bugger all.

I am getting the same feeling here with star citizen as I did with fighter-ops. The only difference here is, I never put any money into fighter-ops

As a backer, I am regretting my decision to back for several reasons with the most predominant being no real tangible presentation aside from some very poor modules which are extremely limited in scope.

Now that's not to say that the game won't complete, and by the same token it may be grandeur by scale. But a competitor has jumped out of the gate with the largest payable area ever in a space game for a fraction of the price. For what star citizen has shown, I have found to be a buggy (expected in early dev) and poorly fleshed out, leaving nothing really that is wetting my whistle except for the concept I have of a game that is in my head.

My spidery senses are not tingling, I am awash with convulsive shocks of impending danger.

If I had the option to ask for a return of my pledge money, I would do it first thing tomorrow.

But that is my sentiments only.

The Escapist magazine appears to have jumped on board the Derek Smart bandwagon... which ought to tell people plenty.

I don't worry about CIG completing the game.

I do have concerns about how they are dealing, or not dealing, with the space flight/combat controls. To my way of thinking, that should have been sorted out satisfactorily, a long time ago. For now, I just have to keep watching and waiting. I haven't put an additional dime into the game since late 2013.

Im not worried about CIG. What they have given me to play with is proof they are working and have a working game. They are saving a lot of it behind closed door because they want the SP to be fresh.

With that said I wouldnt get a refund but Im not putting any more money into the game. I have faith they will deliver though.

Mine is on the way, but hasn't shown on paypal yet. I was polite and asked for a refund the other day. They agreed.
They said it would go out in 5-10 days on paypal.

Got a refund for my Freelancer upgrade. Keeping my starter backing ($35??) though.

If they deliver I may throw some more money this way, but as far as I am concerned they are not showing enough progress considering the funding they have received.

my .02

Moses and Chucky, thanks for posting those links and videos. I was set to melt and invest in the Endeavor, but after reading and watching all, I too now have pause about investing more.

At this point, I have a fair investment and would be a bit crushed if they did not follow through. I think the mission creep has set in and they are indeed trying to put too much our there at once, rather than do as ED is doing with a module release after tweaking their current engine. I would feel much more confident if they released stuff, at least in a beta format, knowing bugs will exist. I just want to use some of my assets for something aside from dog fighting. I want to explore and plunder or even rescue someone in deep space that's suffered some sort of equipment failure...I want to see progress beyond what's been available for almost a year.

Anyway, looks like I'll pass on the Endeavor for now. I don't want to contribute to his mortgage payment till he's given us more substance.

Also, please let us know how the refunds went. To me, that's a bit of a tell regarding their truer intentions and integrity. I've always liked much of what was produced before and I have faith, but it's waning.

My refund already went through. They paid via paypal. Was pretty quick and the customer service guy I dealt with was very good.

The process actually gave me some faith and keeps the door open for me to lay down some $$'s in the future.

I asked nicely for a refund on my $45 package 4 days ago, but no one has replied and no status change on my ticket yet.

Fingers crossed.

BTW The Escapist posted an update on the sources for that article:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles...tting-and-Respo

I think the part that worries me the most is if it's true that they spent $82M of the $90M funds.

Never contributed 1 cent to Star Citizen. Right from the start, I thought Roberts was hustling for money without any idea of the effort he needed to deliver on the actual product that was promised.

Just grab as much cash as you can right now and worry later about feasibility.

Still, he managed to press the right buttons in a lot of backers and I find the mindset of the funding crowd to be as interesting as Roberts' self-delusions. There are actually people out there willing to hang out their wallets for some serious cash to some guy promising them the moon.

This guy might just turn out to be the Bernard Madoff of the computer gaming industry.

I know a few of you here had been critical of the way Elite is being funded in terms of modules. Personally I don't care to defend any game developer but comparatively it would appear Elite is not suffering a PR crisis for asking more money because unlike Roberts, the Elite outfit is not a castle built on air.

You can only ride the PR machine for so long. You take public funds,...... especially if the amount is large..., and pretty soon you are expected to cough out some tangible results to justify the money you took. No amount of PR spin is going to sell without tangible and commensurate results.

Hope I'm wrong about all this.

It's one week until citizen con where they plan to have a few big reveals. Lets all just wait with the pitchforks and torches until after then.

Haven't gotten my refund yet, but I'm going to be patient. For a while.

I don't think CR is a con man or anything, I just think he let things go to his head and now it's going to be incredibly difficult to deliver.
I've just lost interest.

I backed it, the feature creep has worried me, but to be honest I think that at worse we'll end up with a scaled down project, ie a Freelancer 2, which wouldn't be bad considering how long I played Freelancer (despite hating the mouse control scheme). I've backed quite a few crowdfunded projects, and delays, even long ones, have not been what made or broke them (in fact most KS projects have had substantial delays, yet some of them are gems which I rank above AAA productions)>

The Escapist piece is appalling because of its lack of professionalism. You don't cite "anonymous sources" when just copying and pasting quotes from the totally uncontrolled website glassdoors, especially while the Derek Smart controversy is on - same thing here, if you prefer to listen to Derek Smart (someone with the most appalling track record regarding space games, a shameless cyberbully, and someone who bought a PhD from a degree mill) than Chris Roberts, you might as well listen to any sort of conspiracy theory out there. What annoys me is the revelation that a big crowdfunding project might be highly vulnerable to damage caused by rumours - there might be millions of dollars lost there just due to image damage caused by pure rumours - and they are that, DS had yet to show any of his evidence, and some of the stuff he said has been proven wrong (eg he claimed that FTC was investigating, which was later proven wrong).

Then there is this (Lengthy Rant About Star Citizen):


He makes some interesting points, in part from the perspective of a former software programmer / manager.

Not overly concerned at this point, I'm taking all this with a grain of salt. I am looking forward to what's going to be revealed at CitizenCon though.

That's very cool that they're refunding you guys, but I haven't gotten to that point.

I watched the video but that guy is attacking the game based on the article. He keeps reading quotes from the article and referring to them like they are fact. They are anonymous unsubstantiated rumors for the most part not fact.

Im not saying any of that ISNT true because I dont know personally but when you make a 1hr30 video about a snuff article and you are basically validating the article something is wrong.

He questioned the validity of those quotes himself. He made a rather large point of it in more than one place. He wasn't buying them all hook, line and sinker. I think his more salient points were in reference to the state of the game itself, and that Robert's own words in the Chairman's Response sometimes undermined his (Robert's) own cause.

I don't know how much, if any, of the allegations are true. I haven't been overly concerned about delayed delivery, etc.. As I have said before, my biggest concern has been the abysmal situation with the controls for space flight.

Hopefully, CIG puts it all together and has a big success.

"citizen con" ??

If the presentation falls short, those words are going to take on a whole new perspective LOL

lol

Some digital sleuthing has been occurring in the meantime, that has raised serious challenges to the credibility of the Escapist article.

Someone on Reddit found the apparent source for some of the quotes as being recent posts on Glassdoor Australia, which does not verify employment status. It develops further from there.

This opinion piece is a good place to start, for anyone who cares to look into that further:
http://totalgamingnetwork.com/entry.php?...-Imperium-Games

Also they claimed that they verified former employees by using pictures of their employee IDs which CIG refutes by saying they have never issued employee IDs at any of their offices.

(no idea if that is true or not?)

how do you get refunds?

Well, CIG is apparently using blank RFID cards of the sort which you can go and buy anywhere - so they're really not an ID proof of any kind.

But anyway, as I've said, there are plenty of things which I have disliked with Star Citizen (the concept ship sales, the feature creep before we get the basics, eg developping mini games for the passenger ship), BUT I'm not going to start paying attention to a rumour mill, which was first started by one of the worst trolls and cyber bully, and I would advise taking anything which came of this article or Derek Smart irrational campaign (he's been stating that he has evidence of wrong doing since July yet he never shows anything that makes sense). This is a credible as your average conspiracy theory on the net and it would pain me if that's all it takes to shoot down a crowdfunded project nowadays...

Email them through the site.

The first reply email went like this:


In order to move forward with the request as quickly as possible I just need to gather some information from you. Can you please provide as much as you can of the following information regarding your refund request:

The reasoning for your request in summary
Which pledges you would like refunding
Which pledges you would prefer to keep, if any
The total amount you anticipate
Your current PayPal e-mail address

Generally, we don't offer refunds outside of the 14-day grace period. Having said that, I am not dismissing your refund query as we like to consider each request on a case-by-case basis.

Additional information:

My manager will eventually have the final task of discussing the refund request with you. However, due to the large volume of tickets we are receiving at the moment there may be a considerable delay before he is able to respond. Rest assured that Patrick will respond as soon as he is able
If a refund is granted it will take 7-10 working days to appear on your statement
We cannot refund delivered Physical items
We cannot refund any and all subscription payments
We cannot refund any items that you have gifted to other users

Hmm that's me buggered then. I bought a package then gifted to a fellow SimHQ member who melted it into my desired package then it got gifted back to me.

Ohh well I guess I have learned a lesson.


The article may be bogus, but one thing is clear. CIG or RSI or whatever they call themselves have gone back on their word with LTI and are clearly money grabbing.

I guess I have to wait and see if I get to wear the "sucker for backing" hat or not. Only time will tell.

To be honest, my faith in this game diminished well before that article was released.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14979-Chairmans-Response-To-The-Escapist

Mine's on the way, 5-10 days thru paypal. I feel the same as you, I might back again once the dust settles, but it will only be the minimum package, and not the several hundred dollars I had in before.
It's not because of the escapist either, I jut think it's not going to be the game I originally backed.

They still haven't replied to my refund request ticket I submitted 7 days ago, maybe this Escapist article brought in a flood?

Some funny/interesting legal commentary on the situation here:

https://popehat.com/2015/10/04/in-space-no-one-can-hear-you-threaten-lawsuits/

Ooo this is getting spicy. I'm sure some of this stuff is not true, but where there is smoke, there's fire.

The discontentment started long before which just opens them up to attacks later down the line by opportunistic sh!t stirrers like Derek Smart. Then Escapist article decided to jump in as well.

Maybe Chris Roberts ought to have managed public perceptions better instead of engaging so much on all his advertisement fluff.

Don't tell me that ya'll asking for a refund was a direct consequence of that "hit-piece" from the Escapist. You were already asking for the refund on your own accord without being prompted by any journalists....which in itself is somewhat of an indictment on the initial high confidence placed on Roberts, et al.

I asked before the s*it hit the fan. I bet CS are swamped now, and I certainly didn't get asked the questions in the post above as to why I wanted a refund.

Well, I have asked for my money back anyway.... Lets see what happens.

@ harry

No, this is not in relation to the article. I have had star citizen deleted from my machine must be close to or over a year. I really don't have any hopes for this game at present. I am seeing too much money grabbing and the LTI scandal, plus no actual interesting gameplay aside from hyped presentations.

I want to be wrong, and if I am I will pay full price for whatever it is to get back into the game. But as it stood a long time ago, it still stands the same today. And that isn't for me.

You can hack on D(ick) Head Smart all you want, and I personally think he is a waste of space from my interactions with him back in the days of the crappy something cruiser game. But Chris Roberts has not produced anything contrary to stick a big FU in the gob of Mr Smart and that worries me.

You can tell people weren't really convinced to start with, when they ask for refunds and completely lose any trust in a company over a smear campaign run by the most incompetent monkey, Derek Smart. He has it out for Star Citizen and these bait articles by The Escapist, which is a rubbish site to begin with I might add, are clearly just an elaborate attempt at stirring the pond by Derek.

This is the latest garbage Mr. Smart has released;

Anything to do with Derek smart will not work properly. Plain and simple. Delusions of grandeur and no talent to pull even a remote bit of it off.

I got Battlecruiser 3000AD free with a DVD drive, The DVD drive still works... but I was overcharged for the BC 3000 AD



On a similar note it was published in a German magazine today that Foundry 42 (Germany) just took out a 5year lease on their office space.

Original Article:
http://hessenschau.de/kultur/teile-des-videospiels-star-citizen-entstehen-in-frankfurt,neues-entwicklerstudio-in-frankfurt-100.html

Google Translate version:
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fhessenschau.de%2Fkultur%2Fteile-des-videospiels-star-citizen-entstehen-in-frankfurt%2Cneues-entwicklerstudio-in-frankfurt-100.html

Hmmm 5 year lease on a new building, they must be just about to release another concept ship with LTI ;-)

They are actually lol. They have the current one on sale till next monday and at citizen con they plan to sell a brand new never before shown military ship.

All the fanboi's are going *squeeeeeeeeeeee* on the official forums trying to figure out what ship it is. I just hope its a smaller cheaper ship...

Derek Smart is a douche, I remember him from the days he trolled USENET and I wouldn't put much weight on what he says, but he seems to have gotten the attention he seeks with his trolling of SC.

I've been unhappy with how long SC is taking and have wanted a refund for a while because it's giving me a bad attitude about SC... but I didn't know it was possible until Raw posted his refund success story here, and then I requested it same day, the Escapist stuff broke the following few days.

BTW I've gotten a similar bad attitude about ED recently when I found out the first expansion will cost me another $60 on top of the $75 I already paid them to be an early beta tester of their shallow at launch game.

At this point I think I'm going to give up on space games, that makes 3 recent space games I stupidly bought into early only to regret later (XRebirth, SC, ED), 3 strikes and I'm out, I'll wait for these things to show up on Steam sales from now on.

Interestingly since the escapist article funding has risen 10x the normal amount. Guess what they say is true. There is no such thing as bad publicity.

Any luck yet?
Got the $45 today in my paypal acct. Took about a week.
Probably just sending it on to Warships. LOL

Yeah good progress, they replied today to confirm that I wanted my $45 refunded and my account closed, and I confirmed and told them I'll revisit after it releases, so here's hoping

Looking forward to just being someone who follows SC progress with hope and interest instead of being sour and worried.

Any of those refunded accounts early backer accounts with all that free junk?

Just one ship with LTI. No big deal.

Yep I think we got LTI, a towel and a fishtank in the hangar if I recall correctly, no big deal to me too.

Everybody gets LTI.... The LIMITED one time only LTI deal was a <insert word>

I was a VB, had a few LTI ships and 'free' tat. Happy to have the $300 back now.
If it all works out I'll buy the game on release and start from the bottom.
The people who are in for tens of thousands of dollars HAVE to believe the game will turn in to the dream they want it to be.

I was watching some of the Citizen Con videos and saw that they hired Gary Oldman, Mark Hammil and Gillian Anderson to do the voice acting using some fancy face scanning animation software:



Looks pretty good but I can't help wonder/worry how much it cost to get such established actors and to animate them?

Well I definitely agree that hiring these people is a farcical waste of time and money. The effort just to secure them would have been enormous, let alone the cost associated with that.

There are thousands of excellent budding actors that would do this for a fraction of the cost with no detriment to the game, and far less time wasted procuring this talent.

To be fair, Chris Roberts has a history with Mark Hamill (Wing Commander series), so this isn't much of a stretch to secure his efforts. Mark Hamill and Gillian Anderson have both done video game voice-overs as well (MH as Joker in the Batman games, and GA did the ship's voice in Microsoft's version of Terminal Velocity).

Not to forget it was the $5M Kickstarter stretch goal to have celebrity voice actors

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals

To criticise CIG for employing top actors is a bit odd really.

Though I do understand your concerns as to the cost of them, as this is a crowd funded game, etc. So the cost of everything concerned in it should be weighed up very carefully, bang for the buck and all that...

However would you criticise the next Mad Max film for using Ernie Sanders in the lead role? You know Ernie, he works at the local supermarket but has done some really stirling work at his local theatre company and recently excelled in their version of Hamlet, he's also appeared in a couple of TV commercials, you know the insect repellent ones, where he plays that large fly, you really would believe a man could...fly!

Hmmmm, I think you might!

It comes down to this, could a relatively unknown actor do any of the A list films or TV shows you see? Answer... Probably. But top actors are usually top actors for a reason, that reason is... Here's a shocker... they are bloody good actors, they bring real and credible performances to the role. Sounds a bit simplistic doesn't it? But it's the truth. I think we can all remember cringing during some voice over in a game that was just plain awful or watching a B movie that was over acted,etc.

Using A list stars also gives your product a certain kudos, it's like an endorsement for a product, if I told you that the piece of jewellery I'm wearing was fab and the best thing since sliced bread you would say "so what", but if a "star" / "celebrity" endorses it people will be impressed and much more likely to aspire to wanting to own it, this then makes more sales and off sets the cost of paying the "star" to endorse it in the first place, that may be illogical but it is how it is.

You shouldn't criticise a game for doing what every other media format does and has been doing since the dawn of the media.

Agree with this entirely!
SC has such a huge following and has generated a huge sum of money already, without needing to get well known actors to hype the game further.
Just because a few famous faces will add their voices to some cut scenes will not be a deciding factor for future sales... total waste of money

Also remember that they didnt spend full movie budgets on these actors. They spent a little over voice actor money on them. MH does very cheap voice acting work, he is just particular as to what role he takes. So I doubt they spent a million on all of these guys considering they only hired them for about a months worth of work.

Also having high named actors brings in more money. There has been a ton of good press over the named actors which has brought in a ton more pre orders that they might not have gotten with b list actors. Its also free publicity they dont have to pay for in magazines and tv spots. (in fact their advertisement sofar has been 0)

People are going to criticize them no matter what at this point. But it does seem strange to criticize them on this particular point lol.

Not so strange to be surprised by it or to question it.

I've been waiting a long time to be able to play this game in single player mode and this was the first time we finally got a look at the S42 career gameplay, and seeing Gary Oldman digitized and animated was not something I had expected.

I just hope the S42 gameplay is well along in development and that we don't have another 2 years to wait.

I agree that the star billing will definitely get SC some additional media coverage, so that's a good silver lining.

With a currently standard rate of just under $800 per day for voice acting, talent is not as expensive as you would think. While we don't know what rates they got, and that some of them did full performance capture as well as voice the rates will surely be a bit higher.

I have seen that now that the cast list is out, they the star, have started posting about it on social media sites, Gillian Anderson was messaging that she was really excited to work with Gary Oldman in Star Citizen, and that Mark Hamill was tweeting that he was really happy to be working with his old friend Chris Roberts.

This should bring the awareness of the game to lots of other people that would not necessarily see it.

So, are we going to get a Space Gollem in the game

SC hit a million backers today, I saw the other day that Star Wars battlefront has had 9 million people playing the beta.

A million players is a lot but as can be seen, there's an awful lot of future growth still possible with SC, so maybe the A list cast, delivery of SC 2.0 this year and continued development will actually pay off after all and will achieve a much much larger fan base than there is at present!

Star Wars is a global entity that has had many years of growth behind it with an absolutely massive following.
Anything with star wars attached to it will sell like hot cakes.

SC on the other hand has yet to prove itself, plus it's a completely (or will be) a different type of game.
I'm hoping all will come to fruition mind you... I have bought into it in a modest fashion, and am looking forward to it's squadron 42 campaign.

The Star Wars game (and all the movies after the first three) have coasted completely on brand recognition; they really aren't good at all as standalone products.

That being said, as a backer I find that Star Citizen in general is a massive train wreck that's hard to look away from

Yes, that I appreciate. My point was that some people have been saying that it is a waste of backers money to pay for those A listers for S42 when they have already got such a large fan base, By quoting the SW figure I was trying to highlight that, yes, 1 million is a lot of backers, but potentially you could have maybe 10 times that number.

Probably not realistic or even likely, but if only a tenth of that figure is achieved as a direct result of having those stars signed then it will have been worth the outlay. Time will tell, as they say.