It's Fri, so that means new Star Citizen related shenanigans are afoot. Word is that people across ALL studios are either leaving or being laid off in Q3/Q4. In the past week alone, from devs and lead designers to concept artists have left for other studios (Splash Damage etc)
Alert backers noticed that in the latest update to the roadmap for the roadmap, CIG indicated that 450 (!) people were working on the projects. Down from 600 cited back in June. That's a very steep drop - and it's unclear what is going on atm.
What's consistent is that scope creep continues to be used to raise money. The latest example is they announced a new ship - nowhere in the previous roadmap - and raised about $1M before funding flatlined again.
robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals
That ship, the Esperia Talon, then appeared in the SC roadmap - two days later on 08/14. Out of nowhere - and reportedly 46% complete.
i.imgur.com/joY52WC.jpg
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the faithful are making charts celebrating 2020 as the best year in funding. Not even kidding.
reddit.com/r/starcitizen/…
On the opposing side of the farce, those Goons have been running the highly suspicious numbers through Benford Law (that's totally a thing!) and have come up with hypothesis that the funding numbers are totally fake - or something.
i.imgur.com/XatsACC.jpg
They basically extracted the funding numbers from the public numbers and fed it to an online calculator which you can find over at.
dcode.fr/benford-law
This is the data used:
file.io/XodqMABAT2Gb
Which came from here:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
We've long suspected that something wasn't quite right with these funding numbers; especially when you look at their own public financial disclosures in the US and the UK. But unless a forensic accounting is done, which falls on the @keithcalder et al, it's hard to determine.
You have to wonder how a crowd-funded project that's now in year 9, after raising over $310M + over $60M from investors between 2018-2019, hasn't been able to release a SINGLE game of ANY kind.
Back in May 2017 when some people there told me that SQ42 wasn't anywhere near completion and that Chris was lying , I wrote that the roadmap (at the time) showed it going beyond 2021. Some people thought it was nonsense - or hyperbole.
dereksmart.com/forums/reply/5…
Next thing we know, in Dec 2018 they confirmed other rumors I had written and made it public that not only were they running in the Red, but had also taken a $46M cash bailout from the Calders to "market SQ42 for 2020 release". We all just loled.
dereksmart.com/2018/12/star-c…
This is precisely why not a SINGLE publisher or investor gave Chris money back in 2011 when he started shopping this pipe dream around. They knew. In the end, he got a bunch of gullible (present company included) gamers to give him money with ZERO accountability.
It's mind-boggling when you think of ALL the games which went into dev back in 2012 and have thus far been released. And NONE of them cost the likes of $370M (the current Star Citizen investment) to make. Not one.
At some point, somebody as to wonder wtf is going on?
And the primaries, Chris, his wife, his brother, his close friends and project leads etc, have all but disappeared or gone completely silent in the past months - even as more and more talent exit the projects for one reason or the other.
Fun fact. See how Microsoft funded + released an amazing Flight Simulator installment while SC/SQ42 aren't anywhere close to release? Well, Jörg Neumann, the current head of the Microsoft Flight Sim group worked to finish Freelancer after Chris was fired from Digital Anvil.
Considering what we've seen and played of Star Citizen (while SQ42 remains MIA), whatever "games" they're working on are never - ever - going to live up to the hype, let alone the expense. So they have zero incentive to finish anything. Once they do, the money spigot stops.
Meantime, this is the latest patch showing a brave soul trying to get into his chariot - with hilarious results.
This fan made video showing all the crazy is one of the best.
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