Thread by @dsmart

If you were wondering why the Star Citizen Reddit and official Spectrum forums were on fire after the 3.1 release.

7 yrs + $180m (other people's money) + 5 studios + 500+ devs

Brought you this (one of the latest ships implemented in 3.1)

It's so embarrassing and disturbing to me that NONE of the core mechanics for a game 7 yrs in dev, actually work to any meaningful capacity.

But yeah, they're totally going to build *that* game.

Has anyone wondered why we only see citizens making solo movies, and hardly ever making movies of, you know, actual game play (e.g. dogfights)?

It's almost as if there's NO "game" there, and they only still have a visualization tech demo.

They are now basically doing EXACTLY what I predicted (and wrote about) they would start doing.

That being, running through the chceklist of promises & doing half-assed implementations to avoid liability and lawsuits that are sure to start sprouting up soon enough.

Last year when Chris gave an interview in which he loudly proclaimed that Star Citizen was, in effect, Early Access, I wrote a blog about the implications of what that meant.

He went from promising a game for Nov 2014, to making it early access in 2017.

THIS is the result.

This is what I wrote back in Sept 2017 when he made that comment.

dereksmart.com/forums/reply/5…

And in the past 24hrs, more lies have come to light. This one is yet another in a long list of what happens when you forget which lie you've told, when, and to whom.

In 2016 Chris said ship-to-ship docking was ALREADY WORKING.

Turns out, they haven't even started on it yet.

Turns out, the dev actually working on it, just went on a live broadcast saying his boss LIED about it.

The missive is too long for Twitter, read this write-up instead. It's not long.

dereksmart.com/forum/index.ph…

Chris and his cohorts routinely LIE about EVERYTHING.

And yet, there are those who still don't believe that they are capable of lying about what they did with backer money, and how they've squandered most of it on their friends & family program of unjust enrichment.

Here is another good one. This time, Jared Huckaby (aka Jared Huckaby) is - again - in the hot seat.

He was claiming to DevilCloudGaming on Twitch that they never use the word "sale" in their pitches.

This despite the fact that most of us backers have LOTS of emails with that.

28:48 Disco_Lando: We also never use the word sale. YOU guys use the word sale. =)

31:13 PrimeDevilCloudGaming: Disco_Lando :: goes to email and copies directly from an RSI email :: Hurricane SaleThe Anvil Hurricane Sale ends this Monday, March 6th...

31:48 Disco_Lando: That was from a year ago DevilCloudGaming. We've made the terminology change since then.

Wait for it...

robertsspaceindustries.com/...ad-Concept-…
robertsspaceindustries.com/...wk-Concept-…
robertsspaceindustries.com/...itary-Ship-…
robertsspaceindustries.com/...-Star-Ship-…
robertsspaceindustries.com/...ay-Hot-Rod-…
robertsspaceindustries.com/...iber-Flash-…
robertsspaceindustries.com/...iber-Flash-… SEPTEMBER 1ST 2017
robertsspaceindustries.com/...iber-Flash-… SEPTEMBER 29TH 2017
robertsspaceindustries.com/...liday-Sale-…
robertsspaceindustries.com/...y-Sale-Mili…

THIS is the sort of thing that has been going on since I started on their case; and it's been non-stop.

You know why this is even happening?

They have ZERO accountability.

And they get away with it because they know they still have a core group of fools still giving them money

got a measly $2.5m from crowd-funding. They released, Elite Dangerous, which is now the de facto standard for space combat sims.

Guess what they did next?

As it was a success, they went back and added all the things they couldn't before, via DLC. We bought them.

Neither David, nor his team had to lie about ANYTHING.

Even when they culled off-line play for all the obvious reasons, they refunded those who protested.

But you don't see dozens of media articles about ED. Instead, you see the financial success in their PUBLIC UK filings

For as much aggro as SOTA gets, my opinion is that it's largely because of @RichardGarriott close relationship with Chris, and his proclamations of following his "advice" on Star Citizen crowd-funding. See this share below for that context.

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by @dsmart view original on Twitter

The story of SoTa (disclaimer: I am a backer - and have yet to play it) is odd because when you peel back all the layers of dissent, it all boils down to a single thing:

The public simply isn't ready to deal with the challenges & aggro that come from game dev decisions.

Despite the fact that those guys tapped into the psyche of gamers who have more money than common sense, I can't find a SINGLE instance of where anyone at SoTa used any sort of questionable tactics to get money from backers.

This segue, is just one example of how Chris Roberts is a living, breathing, disaster of epic proportions; who ultimately brings down EVERYTHING he touches, with people who trusted him, being collateral damage.

It all happened before. Most of us who were around, didn't forget.

Yet he wonders why his development is leaking like a sieve, and there isn't a SINGLE thing he's said or written, that hasn't leaked to either myself or others in the industry.

Everyone is talking. Because we ALL know what's going on. And it's horrific in its affront.

And what happened in the past 48 hrs, is no different. Nor what happened the week leading up to the fateful & foolish decision to push 3.1 out on 03/31 regardless of its state and condition.

Yes, it's pre-Alpha, we get it. We're devs, shit happens. All the time.

But the state of this project 7 years + $180m later, and which 500+ people have worked on, is completely inexcusable. Especially given that it's money that could have been spent on SHIPPED games.

And it's a huge stain for guys like myself, Frontier, Egosoft etc who have spent years (in my case DECADES) cultivating the space sim combat genre.

When the final collapse (it's no longer and IF, but a WHEN), we're the ones having to explain how we get to do things differently.

This despite the fact that, good, bad, or ugly, all we've been doing is making games that a small core group of people love and keep buying.

I know enough to ensure that Chris Roberts goes to jail. And ANYONE who questions my resolve in this issue, doesn't know ANYTHING about me

Anyone who sits around and thinks that all the problems with Star Citizen are down to technological issues, incompetence, over scope, and wasteful spending, hasn't been paying ANY attention.

It's about fraudulent inducement, unjust enrichment, and everything in between.

When my attorneys file (assuming the judge allows it) my amicus brief in the Crytek v CIG case, if what's in there doesn't get me sued (hopefully they actually do it this time) by CIG, then they are really - truly - screwed.

{end}

ps: It's not that they lie routinely. It's that it's so blatant, it's obvious they don't care anymore. Why would they? They already have the money. For every 1 whale that gives them money, there are many others still waiting MONTHS to get their money back

reddit.com/r/starcitizen_…

Nobody begrudges them for raising money from fools, society is rife with those. And we don't care about them.

What we DO care about is that those who have seen through the lies and WANT their money back which they are LEGALLY entitled to, SHOULD get it back. No questions asked.

The govt, by way of the FTC and several State attorney generals, have made it CRYSTAL CLEAR that crowd-funding is NOT about getting free money.

And if you run it on YOUR platform, you have ZERO protections like you would otherwise have on Kickstarter or Indiegogo.

For those wondering what the big deal about CIG using the word "sale" is, the simple explanation is that it has SERIOUS legal consequences & ramifications for when the collapse comes.

In crowd-funding, you don't "sell" stuff. So it has a completely different set of liabilities

For record keeping purposes, here's an image of what I was talking about earlier in the thread regarding saying "sale" v "promotion"

i.imgur.com/1QuMpFS.png

Feb 2018 broadcast. Right after Jared's propaganda, Chris comes in with the word: sale

It's @ 27:32