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thedereksmart🕹️ Profile picture
@dsmart
Aug 21, 2020 • 18 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
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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More from @dsmart

thedereksmart🕹️ Profile picture
Oct 13, 2023
I am back to writing aggregated blogs again because I have found a new worthy cause that's filled with intrigue, corruption, abuse, racism, and plundering of a Web3 DAO that went from a $1b cap to $300M in less than 1yr amid a cratered token.

Once again, I have the receipts.
As with the Star Citizen (that's still not a finished game btw - 11 yrs + $600M later) blog series that hit all the headlines and which sparked a media frenzy, including from Forbes and others, my series on @apecoin DAO will take the same periodic format.

dereksmart.com/2015/07/star-c…
@apecoin This time around, instead of starting from the beginning and rolling down to the last blog where I was proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the project was FUBAR, I am going to start from present, roll through the history, identify all the players involved, and connect all dots.
Read 47 tweets
thedereksmart🕹️ Profile picture
Oct 12, 2023
And so it begins.

Days ago, the Special Council decided to - against procedures and in a blatant conflict of interest, decided to create an interdependent set of AIPS involving the creation of ApeChain via Polygon.

1/
The Special Council is never allowed to do this. Ever. Instead, not only did they author a bidzdev AIP to fund the Polygon AIP, but they're literally pretending that they aren't connected - despite irrefutable evidence.
Here is the first AIP, the Polygon one authored by @sandeepnailwal

forum.apecoin.com/t/aip-idea-ape…
Read 19 tweets
thedereksmart🕹️ Profile picture
Jun 15, 2023
Always amuses me that, almost 30 yrs since my first game, Battlecruiser 3000AD (aka BC3K), was released by Take Two, that it's still the go-to comparison for any team making an all-encompassing massive scope space game. Graphics aside, they ALL hit the same wall that I did.
When you build a massive space game, your #2 problem (with #1 being the tech to power it) is going to be how to populate it; and not just because you can, but because of what the game requires. And content repetition is the primary problem.
Every single massive scope space game that has attempted anything of the sort, has run into the same problem with content creation. No Man's Sky, Elite Dangerous, X series etc. all ran into the same thing because procgen can only go so far.
Read 16 tweets
thedereksmart🕹️ Profile picture
Oct 10, 2020
Well don't look now, but SQ42 no longer has a release date. Wait till you see Chris's response in an AMA on the game's 8th (it's actually 9, but whose counting?) anniversary.

robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/commu…
As Star Citizen turns eight years old, the single-player campaign still sounds a long way off

eurogamer.net/articles/2020-…
But wait! Are you old enough to remember this 2014 interview?

gamespot.com/articles/star-…
Read 7 tweets
thedereksmart🕹️ Profile picture
Oct 8, 2020
So there's a new Star Citizen controversy brewing and which various parties are diving into. I haven't done much digging, so I will just provide some of my own thoughts.

First of all, I want to make this clear - again...
Star Citizen devolved into an absolute scam years ago. The basis for the scam is that the creators and primaries were busy focused on unjust enrichment by taking money out of the project, rather than putting money into it. This has gone on for years now.
To the extent that not only have they done shady financial things like building a corp with backer money, then selling back that corp to themselves, but also taking out large sums from the venture, even as they run out of money year after year.
Read 28 tweets
thedereksmart🕹️ Profile picture
Sep 29, 2020
For context, you'd have to do some catching up on my tweets since this fiasco started. To be clear, as a veteran game dev for 30+ yrs, as I see it, this battle was a long-time in the making, and needed to be waged.
Though some of my peers & colleagues in the biz are hesitant to publicly opine given the parties involved, my view is that with all the confusion as to the merits of the matter and what it means to gamers and game devs, this discussion is worth having cuz feelz aren't relevant.
To get started, this is what I said on 08/13 when news of the lawsuit went public, and which goes back to what I just stated in the first tweet of this thread.

Read 46 tweets

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