Thread by @dsmart

{thread}
I don't even know where to begin with this one. But it's Sat, so here goes.

Remember how funding had flatlined this year's CitizenCon and they unveiled a JPEG concept ship to sell in waves?

https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1053427673588998149

We now have even better metrics which show how CIG milks their whales with promises and not much else.

This time they had 7 waves in order to artificially inflate demand (supply is digital and infinite)

imgur.com/rTmyobu.jpg

i.imgur.com/Nn5P3N5.png

i.imgur.com/naVAs6P.png

Someone on Reddit put it best..

i.imgur.com/vm6zR3N.png

The end result based on live metrics..

i.imgur.com/N55Autf.jpg

Basically, CIG allocates these waves based on how much you have spent to date.

Ignore any Green bars which are not in wave 7 - they're liars (shocking).

imgur.com/F9dSwqQ.jpg

The end result is that wave 1 which sold to around 175 super whales to the tune of about $200K "sold out" in a matter of MINUTES.

i.imgur.com/rhtwubx.png

As of this minute, the chart looks like this.

Allocating for previous numeric trends, we can deduce that they pulled about $300K from this.

imgur.com/f06ze6I.jpg

Now comes the fun part.

This is what the spike pattern looks like in a timelines.

i.imgur.com/3HSqq3H.png

Wait! It gets better...

That's what we refer to as a "whale call".

i.imgur.com/ojt91gD.png

To visualize it as different way...

i.imgur.com/dMU0Vts.png

With funding at an all-time low, they basically, through scope creep, invented a whole new ship asset to sell as a JPEG (not designed, not built, not in the game - probably never). Complete with a snazzy commercial (not even kidding).

In case you weren't aware, there are literally dozens of ships sold as JPEGs from YEARS ago which are neither designed, built - nor in the game. So they're create new ones to sell, in order to cover the engineering costs of ones they previously sold.

It's a FACT.

Those whales are a special kind of stupid.

By latest metrics, about 175 whales bought the Kraken with warbonds (new cash money) @ $1,400.

And they *claim* (it's bs) to have 2M backers.

Basically, Star Citizen is where it has been since 2016 whereby a few whales are paying for those who don't pay anything anymore or who just have a base package.

This is the standard model for F2P games; except those are COMPLETED products.

When the final end comes, it's going to be all kinds of hilarious because it hasn't occurred to whales yet that it's NOT a sustainable model.

Especially when you have about 450 people working worldwide and you have a rumored monthly burn rate of approx $4m.

Something's gotta give.

Which explains the quiet exits by key personnel, the inability to hire top talent, the unrelenting and repetitive cash grabs like this etc.

You can't fix stupid, but you can certainly laugh at it.

As gamers, we rave and rant about DLC, micro-transactions etc. This despite the fact that according to financial metrics, the publishers and devs engaged in those are making MILLIONS of Dollars from it. Which means most gamers don't mine at all.

But they have FINISHED products.

As I wrote in my latest article (updated), Star Citizen is not only NOWHERE near completion, but it stands 0% chance of EVER getting completed. Precisely as I stated back in July 2015 - which was almost 3.5 yrs ago & 8 months after it was due in Nov 2014

dereksmart.com/forums/reply/6…

It's not about wanting it to fail (it has, and that's a foregone conclusion if you've been paying attention) or raising doom & gloom. The FACTS are all there. They don't have money to sustain anything to completion, so this is how they keep doing it to stick around a bit longer.

If this game were still on Kickstarter, and we didn't have an insight to all of this, like ALL the failed games on KS, we would be reading update after update about "stuff", while not knowing precisely what is going on behind the scenes.

But as time has dragged on, amid all the lies and bs, we know that they have to keep milking whales in order to keep going. Which precisely explains why we keep seeing stuff like this.

Imagine if they didn't have about 200 whales who have been giving them money these past years.

Because most of these whales already have most - if not all of the ships already sold - that's why they have to keep creating new ships like the Kraken, while adding to scope creep and engineering debt that is highly unlikely to ever be paid back in terms of releasing.

As these things go, even though less and less are paying attention to the game, let alone playing it, the dedicate mob of "dreamers" are the ones cheering the whales on because they KNOW what the alternative is if those guys stop buying into the bs.

There is no other way to say it, and I don't (that would imply that I ever did) care what anyone thinks, this is an absolute SCAM. It's no different from predatory lenders, or those cashing govt. aid checks so the recipients can go buy drugs & booze.

You think that's harsh? OK, we have literally DOZENS where this came from.

i.imgur.com/zutQYPj.png

There are more like this than you could imagine. And no, these aren't jokes or anything of the sort. We've read about divorces, some guy selling his farm to "pledge" and "invest" in the game etc.

i.imgur.com/qWbquE8.png

No, this wasn't a joke either...

pcgamesn.com/star-citizen/s…

And we all laughed at this back in 2016

pcgamer.com/inside-the-har…

Remember when they did this? Yeah, that was THIS past Summer.

A $27K ship bundle.

polygon.com/2018/5/30/1741…

And just LAST week, Chris went on stage and - again - basically INCESSANTLY LIED about the state of the game. The same thing he has done year after year.

That much-touted 3.3 which I wrote about and said would NEVER live up to the hype they pitched the 18 months ago? As of TODAY, they didn't even come close.

Aside from the fact that the build they were showing at CitizenCon didn't even have the much touted OCS enabled, the current test build has it enabled, and it is nigh UNPLAYABLE.

And it has a new ship which was NEVER in the game's design. They sold that during the show.

Currently, it's in WORSE shape than the much touted 3.0 before it, and which they dumped 12/23/17 because they had sold NEW vehicles for barren planets (which debut in that build).

As of yesterday, the dev schedule looks like this.

And there are backers who TOTALLY believe that 3.3, 3.3.5 (split from the former) and 3.4, are ALL totally coming out in Q4/2018 (which ends in 9.5 weeks)

i.imgur.com/mu45XIC.jpg

And none of what I've written is hating, trolling, or hyperbole. It's all 100% FACTS.

And that's Star Citizen as it exists today whereby about 200 whales are keeping the lights on, despite the fact that over in the UK, as per 2017 financials, the companies are INSOLVENT.

My Oct article has a detailed section on latest UK financials.

Filings for the parent co, CIG are still past due - for which they are incurring fees. I already guess they wouldn't file until Q4 whale call ends because we know what it's going to show

dereksmart.com/forums/reply/6…

The whole thing is patently absurd.

When you consider how many credible teams could have made a good number of actual GAMES for $200m, it's enough to make any reasonable person wonder wtf is going on.

It's an absolute SCAM, and there's no other way to put it.

And just like the past THREE CitizenCons before this, SQ42 is totally coming though. Honest.

That they're now trying to shove out an EPISODE of SQ42 using the crappy engine they have, is going to be the height of hilarity if it ever happens.

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@threadreaderapp unroll

If you are into data analytics, pattern recognition, and heuristics, dive in. And if you think those numbers are just too "clean"; then yes, we know the funding chart is bs, but we don't know to what extent.

pledgetrack.rabbitsraiders.net

Also, the citizen count is rubbish, and doesn't account for multiple accounts. We estimate there are around 500K unique accounts.

If you want a deeper dive into the fundraising numbers, use this link. It's hell to load though, so be warned.

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…