- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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You beat me to it so I’ll just drop the usual list as a comment.
Mostly stuff we’ve already seen but provides the most up to date info about personal hangars.
Guest:
- Chad McKinney, Senior Lead Gameplay Engineer
TL;DW:
- item kiosk have limited capacity, can only spawn smaller items (weapons, armor, food, etc)
- unwelcome guests will get a trespassing timer when entering your personal hangar, will get teleported out after it runs out
- no more Armistice Zone in your hangar, you can kill trespassers without worrying about getting a Crime Stat
- the above counts for both personal hangars (the one on your home planet) and instanced hangars assigned when landing at other landing zones
- you can place items all over your personal hangar
- hangars were expanded to provide more space to decorate them or just store items when spawning your ship
- hangars applied to some ships were increased
- when buying commodities you can select whether you want them delivered to you inventory (instant) or pack them on your ship (takes time and money)
- you can create “sell orders” which will be wait for you to deliver the accepted amount of commodity to the freight elevator on the delivery location
- you can also sell normally (straight from your local inventory)
- (un)loading times are based on the box size (smaller box = longer loading)
- search is in for local inventory (only name based for now)
It’s a scam.
Please define scam.
The game is playable today, and it’s a lot of fun with friends. It’s not a scam by any definition that I can think of, but some people stretch that definition.
I’m curious how you came to that conclusion.
Playable today is irrelevant. There are many examples of companies with legitimate products (not “alpha” or a JPEG concept art of a product) where management were criminals.
Store citizen is a scam because:
- Advertising fraud - This is an easy one. They constantly lie about everything. Fake one time demos, fake vidoes, premeditated misrpresentation of their capabilities and goals. This list goes on and on and on.
- Crowdfunding fraud - Chris Roberts started a crowdfunding campaign to launched a Wing Commander style single player game and a multiplayer/MMO. Instead you get a multi-decade scheme to enrich himself, his family members and senior insiders.
There are many examples of companies with legitimate products […] where management were criminals.
Can you name a few examples? I’m curious what kind of companies you’re comparing CIG to.
Advertising fraud
Can you point to anything specific?
Crowdfunding fraud
There have been a lot of updates since the original crowdfunding campaign which original backers weighed in on and voted on. Is there a specific case you’re looking at, or is this just a generic “not what was promised” statement?
When I think of crowdfunding fraud, I think of cases where devs have cut corners, barely hired anyone, and provided a ridiculously cheap product compared to what they were promising (if they provided anything at all).
With CIG they have hired a large team and have been very open about their spending (you can read up on their latest financial statements here: https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cloud-imperium-financials-for-2022). They have set up multiple studios around the world. The game doesn’t feel “cheap” by any means, they’re very open about the entire game development process and we actually get to see upcoming updates and they release major updates multiple times in a year.
If this was just a scheme to enrich oneself, he’s either doing a terrible job at taking all the money for himself, or he’s taking some money while actually delivering a legitimate product.
And if he’s actually delivering a legitimate product, does it really matter if he’s paying himself back along with his investors? Isn’t that what we would expect?
Or do you have some evidence that he’s abusing corporate funds and running the company into the ground?
Edit: formatting
Edit2: Fixed first quote.
There are many examples of executives of companies with real (not concept art) products/services that have been subject to penalties including criminal penalties. If you deny this, then you are not acting in good faith.
The vast majority of their marketing content is misleading or outright false. One good example is the “no joke” sandworm; something they had no intention of implementing, but there are many other examples as well. Another more pertinent example is the claimed status of the engineering gameplay from 2020.
Another good examples is CIG being misleading about the nature of the investment from the Calder family.
Can you point out where in their finance themed blog posts (those are not financial statements) they shows total compensation for all members of the Roberts family and senior insiders like Ortwin Freyermuth. It is easy to find this informational for a company like Electronic Arts in their financial statements.
I never said Roberts is “taking all the money for himself”. I did say that rather than delivering, he launched a multi-decade scheme to enrich himself, his family members and key senior insiders. With a key element of the scheme being lying about their capabilities and intentions while selling cash shop items (often literally in the form of JPEGs) that they have no intention of ever bringing into the game.
Space exploration gameplay with one system?
Non-combat gameplay with no economy?
FPS gameplay with single digit ticks?
Come on…
First off, thank you for your reply and for the time you spent to dig up some examples. I am genuinely curious about why some people still consider this game to be a “scam”.
There are many examples of executives of companies with real (not concept art) products/services that have been subject to penalties including criminal penalties. If you deny this, then you are not acting in good faith.
It’s not that I’m denying this, it’s that I don’t understand the link you’re trying to make here. For instance, a CEO can be charged with any crime and that might not affect the product/service of the company itself as long as that product is legitimate. For example a CEO of some Hotel chain could be found guilty for falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments from American voters. But that doesn’t mean that the hotel services that the hotel provides are fraudulent.
I don’t understand what you’re getting at here which is why I was asking for some examples. Preferably in the form of either some company from a kickstarter or a software company, but I’ll take what I can get.
sandworm
I am one of those backers that joined the game because of the sandworm, but I never felt like they advertised this as something that was currently in-game, just something that was planned. It’s still planned for a future release in a different star system.
However, as far as creatures go, they have already added a flying creature and a wolf-like creature that hunts in packs. (I’m ignoring the turtle and alien pill bug since those don’t have any sort of AI behaviour).
Another more pertinent example is the claimed status of the engineering gameplay from 2020.
You do realize that engineering gameplay is already available in-game in the Arena Commander… Right? There’s still some work to be done on it, but it’s playable. It hasn’t been entirely brought over to the Persistent Universe (PU) yet, but as far as the PU goes, components are all removable/damageable. Removing/destroying the quantum drive makes it so that you actually can’t jump, removing/destroying the shield component will disable shields, removing/destroying the power component will shutdown the power to the ship… Etc. You can also grab these parts from soft-death’d ships and swap them out with the components on your own ship.
Space Exploration gameplay with one system
They have already released a tech-preview to some players where we could jump between the current system and a neighboring system. I am personally one of the players who tested this out and I can guarantee you that this is real and it’s not just them “lying about their capabilities”. The release of this to all players is scheduled for the next quarter.
Non-combat gameplay with no economy
Are you talking about mining, salvaging, repairing, trading, and medical gameplay? That’s all in-game already.
Or else are you referring to the Quantum Economy (also known as “Star Sim”)? Parts of that have already been implemented but the full thing isn’t in game yet. Considering their progress on everything else, I don’t see any reason to worry about this.
FPS Gameplay with single digit ticks
Still happens, but then you just server hop until you find a good server. NPC AI has gotten a lot better compared to where it was at some years ago.
I did say that rather than delivering, he launched a multi-decade scheme to enrich himself, his family members and key senior insiders.
Ok, but this isn’t some non-profit organization, so why does it matter if Chris Roberts is paying himself, his family members, and key insiders (investors?) for their work/investment?
With a key element of the scheme being lying about their capabilities and intentions while selling cash shop items (often literally in the form of JPEGs) that they have no intention of ever bringing into the game.
What capabilities are they lying about?:
- Object Container Streaming (OCS)? Already in game
- Server replication? Already in-game.
- Engineering Gameplay? Already in-game.
- NPC creatures? Already in-game.
- Server meshing? Already shown off in a tech-preview where players got to test it out.
- Multiple systems? Already shown off in a tech-preview where players got to test it out.
- Dynamic Server Meshing? Not out yet, relies on OCS, Server Replication, and Server Meshing to be completely in. Since they are finishing up Server Meshing, we can expect to see some work on Dynamic Server Meshing sometime soon.
often literally in the form of JPEGs) that they have no intention of ever bringing into the game.
I would be worried if they weren’t churning through the backlog to release these ships… But they’ve almost always released a few ships with every major update (and sometimes with minor updates). Relative to the ones released, there’s only a few left to be completed. See this slide from last year’s CitizenCon:
Can you point out where in their finance themed blog posts (those are not financial statements) they shows total compensation for all members of the Roberts family and senior insiders like Ortwin Freyermuth. It is easy to find this informational for a company like Electronic Arts in their financial statements.
You’re right, financial statement was probably the wrong term here, I should have just stuck with “financials”. Either way, you can’t really compare a publicly traded company with a privately owned one, so of course that information may be easy to find for Electronic Arts. When I said that CIG has “been very open about their spending”, I’m comparing them to other privately owned companies. CIG is much more open about their spending than what’s required by any other privately owned businesses. If you’re trying to dig up additional information you can try looking here: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/08815227/filing-history?page=1
And again, what’s wrong if Chris Roberts is paying himself back along with his investors? Isn’t that what we would expect?
Or do you have some evidence that he’s abusing corporate funds and running the company into the ground?
Another good examples is CIG being misleading about the nature of the investment from the Calder family
I don’t understand, what was so misleading about the nature of the Calder Families investments? Was there something malicious about this? If anything this just reveals the reason why most backers think that Squadron 42 is pushing for a release date sometime in 2025.
Are you trying to imply that CIG would go bankrupt if the Calder family decided to pull out in 2025? The 2025 date for them to cash out is optional, they could just wait until 2028.
Even if (worst case scenario) the Calder’s decided to cash out everything in 2025 and SQ 42 hasn’t released yet, couldn’t CIG just get a loan to payoff any leftover that they owe?
Everything being said, what still stands out that makes Star Citizen/Squadron 42 a “scam” to you?
I think we are going in circles here.
You’re repeating CIG’s marketing copytext and it contains lots of misleading statements and outright lies. Which goes back to my first point; false advertising. If anything the PR copyext confirms my this.
But the second point is more important. They were given crowdfunding money to deliver two games; 1 single player game and multiplayer game.
Instead they’ve been paying themeslves what is very likely (as per “unofficial” leaks 10% of all revenues goes to the Roberts’ family and there are other senior insiders) opulent compensation for multiple decades.
The single player game is always “2 years away” for over a decade. The multiplayer game has lots of flashy assets, but vast majority of the gameplay is missing and it’s fundamentally not fit for purpose (single server digit ticks in a multiplayer game is not viable). That’s where crowdfunding fraud comes in.
I think we are going in circles here.
I have tried my best to answer your questions, yet you seem to avoid almost all of mine.
So at least answer me this, which statements that I made are misleading and which statements are lies?
I think your information is vastly outdated because a lot of the things you mentioned before are already in-game or have been tested out by players (including me) in some way.
If anything the PR copyext confirms my this.
My responses were all my own words, I didn’t copy this from anywhere.
As for your second point (crowdfunding fraud) I’m not seeing any of the same red flags that I see with other actual scams where the devs keep most of the money to themselves, barely hire any talent, and eventually release something that’s obviously had little to no effort put into it.
single server digit ticks in a multiplayer game is not viable
I agree, and that’s where Static Server Meshing comes in (which some players have already gotten to test out recently), followed by Dynamic Server Meshing.
Even then it is absolutely possible to find servers with double digit ticks (first server I logged into tonight was one).
CIG has continued to push update after update with major features. I can already play the game as it is now, it’s already enjoyable.
The multiplayer game has lots of flashy assets, but vast majority of the gameplay is missing
I have a feeling you haven’t played the game in a long time, if you’ve even ever played it.
Are you the type of person that will continue to call this a scam even after Squadron 42 releases?
Edit: formatting
