Chris Roberts Back in your wallet - STAR CITIZEN

[Khaldun]

Sort of sympathetic in that he thinks Serek is an idiot who should be ignored, but he pretty much rips Cloud Imperium apart in the second half.

"If you know what you're doing, you bring in the litigators before you start running your mouth. The litigator is there to tell you, in the most supportive and affirming way possible, to shut the fuck up. That way your CEO and key fact witness isn't writing long, angry emails about the facts of the situation, probably getting some of them wrong and probably saying things the legal significance of which he doesn't know. It's not easy to tell the CEO to shut up and stop writing things if you're his underling. Some people get to be CEO by having a Trumpian level of self-regard that makes Serek Dmart look like Dobby the House Elf. If you're a sensible GC, you use your outside litigator as the bad cop to control your difficult executive. That way your executive doesn't do don't-take-me-seriously things like post angry messages referring to written statements as 'slanderous'".

[jakonovski]

[Khaldun]

Sorry, I fell into the sarchasm.

Though honestly anybody who starts off an analysis of Star Citizen savaging Serek first is about as sympathetic as they're going to find at this point outside their rabid horde of ponzi victims.

[Sparky]

I think goons have the best take on this drama

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGRsEF953n0

[WayAbvPar]

I think goons have the best take on this drama

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGRsEF953n0

 

[Shannow]

We're going to need more popcorn

[Ginaz]

Martin Galway shared this on his FB page - The Excess Of 'Star Citizen'

Not exactly an attack, but definitely some sort of riposte.

Time for Roberts to threaten another lawsuit it seems.  Every day, he becomes a little more like Serek Dmart.  All he has to do to complete the circle is for SC to turn out to be an absolute pile of broken, buggy shit, just like everything DS has ever released.

[Ironwood]

I think goons have the best take on this drama

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGRsEF953n0

 

[schild]

Whoa, it's like watching Albino Black Sheep come back to life

[Rendakor]

That was great. My newgrounds memories of yore came flooding back to me.

[Falconeer]

So, is the ultimatum to the Escapist over?

[tmp]

Well, they are not backing down. RELEASE THE LAWYERS.

[Rendakor]

Never has the extension been more amusing than Butt Imperium Games.

[Sir T]

Well, they are not backing down. RELEASE THE LAWYERS.

The Comments are pure gold. Apperently anonymous sources means that you are really only using the Dmart as a source and they repeat that again and again.

[schild]

No one really questioned my McQuaid shit because it happened after the implosion. Right now, DMart, Escapist, etc is trying to do it before the implosion.

Basically, they need to get juicy actual interesting insider information or it's all just gonna be shit I literally could've made up just by guesstimation (and therefore uninteresting).

Absolutely nothing has been revealed thus far that is even the tiniest bit surprising. Meh.

(edit: the money is going somewhere, fucking find out where, damn)

[MahrinSkel]

I am not going to comment on any of the facts or persons involved here, I don't want to get that close to this clusterfuck (maybe I'm getting old, maybe it's a comment on how HOLY FUCK DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER this is). But I've seen a fair number of shops with toxic cultures and rampant distrust, and I will say that if those anonymous sources are for real, and not Escapist getting trolled, then there will be no shortage of insiders contacting them right now.

--Dave

[schild]

I'm sure they have no shortage of insiders.

The problem is, very few have anything interesting to say.

You just wait until a certain company falls apart. You just wait.

[Khaldun]

I'm sure they have no shortage of insiders.

The problem is, very few have anything interesting to say.

You just wait until a certain company falls apart. You just wait.

The money is not *going* somewhere, it's *gone* somewhere.

I would guess we are about T-minus a month away from a mainstream press article rather like this classic: http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/stormy-weather-6427649

And T-minus 2 or 3 years away from the expose book on Kickstarter/crowdfunding that focuses on Star Citizen.

And there will be always, through it all, people who blame it all on the folks who didn't truly believe.

[ajax34i]

Well of course, we're lost potential sales.

[Sir T]

Only because we believed Dmart.

I REALLY wanna know where the money has gone...

[Furiously]

Only because we believed Dmart.

I REALLY wanna know where the money has gone...

Do you think he wasn't trying to make a game?

[Cyrrex]

Yeah, it doesn't have to be hookers and blow.  A mis-managed project can easily end up wasting tons and tons of cash, this is not new.

But I do still hope it is hookers and blow.

[Jeff Kelly]

(edit: the money is going somewhere, fucking find out where, damn)

The are at it since 2011 and have to support a massive dev team spread out over four studios all over the world. This isn't some massive conspiracy involving secret mansions full of hookers and blow. The money simply went to cover expenses, fixed costs  and cost of labour for their massive AAA-like operation. With a 150+ employee company it's easy to spend a seven digit figure just on wages alone.

Since there is no way in which they can get more money to come in than they are spending each month to cover the costs of employee wages, office space and overhead costs to keep the lights on in their 150+ people company, they'll eventually run out of money. Or already have.

[IainC]

(edit: the money is going somewhere, fucking find out where, damn)

The are at it since 2011 and have to support a massive dev team spread out over four studios all over the world. This isn't some massive conspiracy involving secret mansions full of hookers and blow. The money simply went to cover expenses, fixed costs  and cost of labour for their massive AAA-like operation. With a 150+ employee company it's easy to spend a seven digit figure just on wages alone.

Since there is no way in which they can get more money to come in than they are spending each month to cover the costs of employee wages, office space and overhead costs to keep the lights on in their 150+ people company, they'll eventually run out of money. Or already have.

This. ~300 employees means that by a very rough rule of thumb, their burn rate is about 3-4M per month (you can estimate by guessing what the average salary is - I've assumed 85k - and then doubling that to account for other overheads like licences, equipment, offices, benefits and so on). Even $900 digital spaceships don't keep the lights on for very long at that rate.

That rate also assumes that they aren't doing anything crazy with their money like fitting out $2M custom buses, paying expensive lawyers to yell at DMart or setting up Hollywood-quality soundstages in the CEO's mansion.

[Falconeer]

With a 150+ employee company it's easy to spend a seven digit figure just on wages alone.

262 employees they say.

[Teleku]

This. ~300 employees means that by a very rough rule of thumb, their burn rate is about 3-4M per month (you can estimate by guessing what the average salary is - I've assumed 85k - and then doubling that to account for other overheads like licences, equipment, offices, benefits and so on). Even $900 digital spaceships don't keep the lights on for very long at that rate.

85K average salary seems very generous.  I'm sure they are blowing through millions of dollars a month though.

[patience]

With a 150+ employee company it's easy to spend a seven digit figure just on wages alone.

262 employees they say.

And they're hiring more, which concerns me because depending on how many new people they're looking for can delay the game even further. But let's not forget they're receiving funding from angel or institutional investors. How much more funding they have on top of that 90 million from the public is unknown.

[Jeff Kelly]

Roughly estimating their burn rate is easy. There's a rule of thumb even experienced business owners like to use. Take the average wage, double it. That is roughly what the employee costs you including all taxes and social security, healthcare and 401(k) expenses. Triple it, that's roughly what you need to make to keep afloat if you consider all of your operational costs including marketing, manufacturing and R&D/product management.

So given the 85k figure from IanC and the number of employees from Falconeer they burn through roughly 44.5 million dollars per year or 3.7 million per month and would need a revenue stream of roughly 66.8 million dollars or 5.6 million per month to have something approaching a sustainable business. Given what I have heard about the business 85k average wage seems rather high. It's probably closer to 50k given what we've learned from other imploded dev projects over the last years. This would still mean that CIG spends roughly 2.1 million dollars per month on its massive operation.

With that churn rate they will run out of money sooner rather than later. Even the hard core star citizen brigade is not large or stupid (or wealthy) enough to spend 3.1 million dollars per month on virtual spaceships to give CIG a sustainable revenue stream. If they'd want that they should have done Candy Crush instead.

[jakonovski]

With those numbers, every instance of largesse is significant. So it could literally be one month or a year until trouble starts.

[Falconeer]

According to their own day by day pledge tracker, in the last five days since releasing the 900$ new ships they earned $1M . Just yestrday the money seemed to have gone back to the usual background noise of about 15k per day, but the spike netted them 1M in five days. Still not enough to pay for the estimated 2M a month you folks mentioned up there.

[Jeff Kelly]

The way Bungie does it is sustainable, the way Frontier developments does it is sustainable. Hell the way Blizzard does it is sustainable.

Define a managable featureset that you'd like to see in Version 1.0 of your game given your time and budget constraints (We'd like to do another Privateer)
Split that feature set into must have features (Privateer Single Player Campaign or the reason people gave you money in the first place) and "nice to have" features (online mode, hookers and blow), so that you can cut content from even the "must have" featureset if your estimates turn out to be wrong or you run into unforseen issues along the way (chance of something like this happening 100%)
Manage expectations of your fan base accordingly.

Push everything else to future content updates or Version 1.5/2.0. Those future content updates will then be finaced from sales of your first release.

[Jeff Kelly]

Yeah but I'm with Schild on that one.

CIG is a privately held company. They don't need to disclose shit. What they disclose doesn't even need to be accurate or true. As long as what they report to the IRS and their investors (if they have any) is accurate they could basically claim that Scrooge McDuck himself bought a flotilla of capital ships for $10k a pop without technicaly doing anything illegal. If they use those numbers to mislead investors then that's fraud. If they use those numbers to claim they have the largest dick among all of the indie developers though they only make a fool of themselves.

By this time I'd trust their own donation tracker about as much as a condom from a gas station restroom vending machine.

Even if the numbers are accurate then -as you said - it won't be enough to offset their operational costs to get a $1m cash infusion every few months though.

[Teleku]

By this time I'd trust their own donation tracker about as much as a condom from a gas station restroom vending machine.

Had some rough life experiences?

[Jeff Kelly]

By this time I'd trust their own donation tracker about as much as a condom from a gas station restroom vending machine.

Had some rough life experiences?

Since I don't trust condoms from a gas station restroom vending machine, in that particular case I haven't. 

[tmp]

As long as what they report to the IRS and their investors (if they have any) is accurate they could basically claim that Scrooge McDuck himself bought a flotilla of capital ships for $10k a pop without technicaly doing anything illegal. If they use those numbers to mislead investors then that's fraud. If they use those numbers to claim they have the largest dick among all of the indie developers though they only make a fool of themselves.

You could argue that making up such numbers to create impression they have lot of people heavily investing in them and keeping them afloat is actually misleading real people who wouldn't know any better into giving them money for virtual spaceships because hey, everyone else appears to do so and it looks the company is doing fine. So no, claiming such shit is shady snake oil peddling territory at best ("millions satisfied customers!") and has little to do with dick sizes.