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Made in us
Most Glorious Grey Seer





Everett, WA

I ran across this article today. I don't know if anyone on this forum has "invested" in this or not. Still, it does seem to support my long held belief that one should "never ever, under any circumstances, NEVER invest in software that is still in development".

http://mashable.com/2015/10/05/escapist-star-citizen/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedburner&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashablefrance+%28Mashable!+Francais%29#kYC19owP9mqy

Adam Rosenberg wrote:Why is a video game website feuding with a crowdfunding superstar?



A courtroom showdown is currently brewing between a $90 million crowdfunding superstar and a gaming website. Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games has threatened legal action against The Escapist over what it calls false allegations and unethical reporting.

At the heart of the conflict is a story published by The Escapist on Oct. 1 that used quotes from unnamed sources to paint a troubled picture of what's going on at Cloud Imperium (CIG). The studio immediately denied the claims, prompting a back-and-forth between the two parties. It all culminated Sunday with CIG's threat of legal action.

But that's a gross oversimplification of what's going on — especially when $90 million of CIG's crowdsourced money for Star Citizen development is hanging in the balance.

We're not here to assign blame or find fault with one party or another; what follows is merely a rundown of the facts as we know them. This drama is far from finished.

What is Star Citizen?

Cloud Imperium Games was founded in April 2012 by Chris Roberts, creator of the Wing Commander series, and his longtime legal counsel Ortwin Freyermuth. After building a development team for a few months, CIG launched a crowdfunding campaign for the game Star Citizen in Oct. 2012. The campaign launched initially on CIG's Roberts Space Industries website, but incoming traffic crashed the site and led Roberts to bring the campaign to Kickstarter.



Star Citizen was conceived as a sandbox space simulation in which players would travel the starways together in a persistent online universe. Think World of Warcraft, except swap out the orcs and elves for first-person cockpit views. You fly around and shoot stuff. Maybe you're a pirate. Maybe you're a trader. Maybe your behaviors defy designation. That's what a sandbox is all about.

The original $500,000 crowdfunding target was quickly shattered on Kickstarter; the campaign there closed with just north of $2 million pledged. After the Kickstarter closed, CIG returned to its original plan of hosting crowdfunding via Roberts Space Industries, allowing people to pre-buy in-game ships and other goods with their pledges. Currently, Star Citizen's crowdfunding total sits at just over $90 million.

What is The Escapist?

The Escapist launched in 2005 as an online magazine focused on the geekier end of the entertainment spectrum: video games, film/TV, comics, board games and more. It's also one of the earlier examples of online media offering premium subscription content to its readers (as of 2010).

Over the years, The Escapist has been home to some of the more recognizable names in the video games press: Jim Sterling, Russ Pitts, Susan Arendt, Tom Chick, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, Jerry Holkins (Penny Arcade's Tycho) and others. Though it seems to have undergone philosophical changes in recent months, The Escapist is still a respected source for news and commentary in many circles.

Who is Derek Smart, and how is he involved?

While the Oct. 1 story was the one to draw a response from CIG, this whole thing really started on Sept. 25. That's when The Escapist contributor Lizzy Finnegan wrote a separate piece with the headline "Eject! Eject! Is Star Citizen Going to Crash and Burn?"

Finnegan examined a series of blog posts by Derek Smart, a noted critic of CIG's efforts and an independent game developer himself. Smart is also a disgruntled Star Citizen backer who, since July 2015, has used his website as a public destination to discuss alleged internal issues at CIG.



Since the summer, he's raised questions on his blog about CIG's alleged misuse of crowd-sourced funds, delays in Star Citizen's release and seemingly unadvertised changes to the Terms of Service that all backers agreed to. He also followed up his most recent post with a Twitlonger alleging multiple CIG employee departures, both voluntary and involuntary, as well as a plan to shut down the company's Austin location before 2016.

So, what happened on Oct. 1?

Finnegan's Sept. 25 story prompted her Oct. 1 follow-up — "Star Citizen Employees Speak Out on Project Woes" — after multiple CIG sources allegedly came forward to comment on some of the details in the earlier report. The details and quotes fall in line with much of what Smart has said about Star Citizen, as well as Finnegan's earlier report.

The Oct. 1 story also included a note that The Escapist had reached out to CIG for comment, but the studio didn't respond prior to the media outlet's deadline. Not long after the story went live, Roberts responded on his own, publicly sharing the email response he'd sent. The Escapist countered that Roberts' response had only been sent to the site's managing editor, John Keefer, and not the other staffers copied on the email chain.

In Roberts' email, shared on the Roberts Space Industries website, the game's creator lays out his troubled history with Smart, which extends all the way back to his Wing Commander days. He also addresses some of the allegations raised in The Escapist's Oct. 1 report.

Roberts denies some of the allegations completely, including claims about the studio's Austin location closing ("...we are actually increasing our worldwide headcount in order to complete the game as effectively as possible") and misuse of crowdsourced funds ("No crowdfunding monies are used for any private purposes –- these allegations are completely false and defamatory."). He also points out more than once that there are two sides to every story.

"I’ll put my 261 [staffers], their passion and energy against the complaints of a few disgruntled ex-employees any day," Roberts writes, after inviting The Escapist to visit CIG's four studios.

"We have backers visit the offices all the time," he continues. "They all come away with the same impression –- that the entire team is dedicated to making the best game possible. If you took the time to research this, you will find that it is a common comment and that the 'noise' that has been generated is really from a very small number of people and some quite bitter ex-employees."

How is Roberts' wife involved in all of this?

One other major point from the Oct. 1 story is Finnegan's focus, via her sources, on Roberts' wife, Sandi Gardener, CIG's vice president of marketing. Here's what was written:



While we're trying to present a neutral picture of things, this bears repeating: a secondhand quote from an unnamed source should never have been printed here the way it was. We're reproducing it simply to lay out all the facts, and not to perpetuate any questionable reporting. Here's what the Society of Professional Journalists has to say about the handling of anonymous sources.

What about all those sources that spoke out?

Finnegan's story drew additional criticism when it was discovered that some of the quotes from her anonymous sources had appeared on Glassdoor.com, a website where current and former employees from different companies can anonymously post reviews of their employer and management. Reddit user MisterBurkes made and shared the discovery, pointing out that the most quoted entries were posted to Glassdoor between Sept. 26 and Sept. 28.

The Reddit post surfaced on Friday, and The Escapist's Keefer responded shortly after with a rough rundown of the outlet's process for vetting the Oct. 1 article's multiple sources — which he claimed includes seven ex-employees and two current ones. Six provided their names and spoke with Finnegan both via email and by phone/Skype. A seventh source withheld "his" name, but offered proof in the form of pay stubs and a CIG ID card.

The last two reached out via Lockbin, a service that allows users to send private, secure messages. Keefer points out that those two weren't quoted because their identities couldn't be verified, but the things they had to say "reiterated claims by the other seven."

Of the seven sources Finnegan spoke to directly, three contacted her separately by phone on Sept. 26 after receiving her number from "a mutual contact." Four others reached out via email on Sept. 27. Communications continued in the days that followed, leading up to the Oct. 1 story.

Keefer also notes that Roberts' email response to the earlier story, the one he published on Star Citizen's website, showed up "almost three hours before publication time" on Oct. 1.

"Unfortunately, the response ended up in my spam folder, as it came in unformatted and the pictures did not load," Keefer wrote. "Since Roberts did not copy Lizzy or the Editor-in-Chief, who were on my original email to CIG PR head David Swofford, they did not get them and there was no back up to ensure someone saw it."

Why did CIG promise to take legal action?

All of that back-and-forth brings us to Oct. 2, the day after Finnegan's big story picked up. Through Freyermuth (that's the studio's co-founder and legal counsel, don't forget), CIG delivered a formal, five-page "demand letter" to Keefer laying out specific acts of alleged wrongdoing and the steps that must be taken in order to avoid legal repercussions.

Here is CIG's justification for sharing the letter publicly:
The attached demand letter is our formal response to specific, slanderous allegations made in the recent The Escapist article on Star Citizen. Normally, we would keep this behind closed doors, but we felt it was imperative to put our statement on record and indicate how disgusted we are with The Escapist’s irresponsible actions. Corporate at Defy Media asked us to delay publication of this letter while investigating, but we feel strongly that the record needs to be set straight without further delay.

In the letter, Freyermuth outright denies what he calls "unsubstantiated and highly damaging allegations about CIG." He specifically highlights the discussion of Gardiner and the suggestion of discriminatory hiring practices as slanderous and personally defamatory, taking issue with Finnegan's Oct. 2 report and an episode of The Escapist Podcast that repeated and supported many of the report's allegations.



It's also worth pointing out that Freyermuth doesn't accept Keefer's explanation of The Escapist's source vetting process, noting that CIG does not use employee ID cards (which one source used to prove his connection to the studio).

The letter goes on to make a number of demands of both The Escapist and its parent, Defy Media. They are as follows:
We hereby demand that you, as the responsible person in charge,

• Personally apologize to Ms. Gardiner and our HR Manager for the tremendous emotional distress and potential repetitional harm that you have caused to them by violating the most basic journalist duties of fair and balanced reporting.

• Publish said apology on your magazine’s website, together with a retraction of the Article until such time as the murky backgrounds of its creation have been investigated.

• Engage and empower an independent party to fully investigate the events and circumstances that led to the creation and publication of this Article, including any bias of your staff and their involvement with other interested parties and any conspiring arrangements between them.

Freyermuth gave Keefer 24 hours to comply before CIG begins the process of legal action in the U.S. and U.K., the latter of which has more stringent anti-defamation laws. The Escapist told Game Informer's Mike Futter on Oct. 4 that it has no comment at present.

Finnegan's "Star Citizen Employees Speak Out On Project Woes" story has since been updated with a formal statement from The Escapist on Freyermuth's legal demands letter. The statement reads as follows:
The Escapist, notwithstanding Cloud Imperium Games' notice and posting, stands by its coverage of Star Citizen and intends to continue to investigate the developing story. Since publishing our original stories, we have been contacted by, and are currently interviewing, additional sources corroborating a variety of the reported allegations. Additionally, if Mr. Roberts' offer for The Escapist to "meet the developers making the game and see how we're building one of the most ambitious PC games first hand" remains open, we take the opportunity to accept such invitation so as to hopefully provide the public with sufficient information and opportunity to vet such sources' allegations and claims for themselves. We have also communicated the foregoing directly to Cloud Imperium Games.

In simple terms, The Escapist has opted to stand by its reporting and ignore CIG's demands. Now the decision falls to CIG on whether or not to make good on its threat to litigate.

UPDATED Oct. 6 8:01 a.m. ET: The post has been updated to provide a more thorough account of Star Citizen's crowdfunding journey.

UPDATED Oct. 6 8:50 a.m. ET: The post has been updated to include The Escapist's formal public response to Freyermuth's legal demands letter.



 
   
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Yeah Jingles mentioned this wouldn't surprise me if Star citizen is a ponzi scheme

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Why does this feel like the Video Games have finally managed to evolve their own tabloid celebrities?

   
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Well, I wouldn't say 'don't ever put money in to unfinished software', as much as 'if you put money in to unfinished software, you have to be okay that there is a very good chance you will never see anything for that money'.


 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Yeah Jingles mentioned this wouldn't surprise me if Star citizen is a ponzi scheme


How is it a ponzi scheme?

“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”

Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something. 
   
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 LordofHats wrote:
Why does this feel like the Video Games have finally managed to evolve their own tabloid celebrities?


... because Anita Sarkeesian has made a half million dollars making videos from other people's youtube clips and crying about being called names on the Internet?

 Jon Garrett wrote:
Perhaps not technically a Marine Chapter anymore, but the Flame Falcons would be pretty creepy to fight.

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"We tried, but the gits was already on fire."

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 LordofHats wrote:
Why does this feel like the Video Games have finally managed to evolve their own tabloid celebrities?


I keep hearing how video games are "mainstream" now, I guess this is just a side effect of that. Personally I think video game "journalism" is a joke, has always been a joke, and will continue to be a joke. In fact, it's getting worse, with the likes of Kotaku and Polygon being the worst offenders of tabloid nonsense. Oh well, doesn't mean I have to pay much attention to it just because I play video games.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/10/07 04:25:10


Get Some.
 
   
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 EmpNortonII wrote:
 LordofHats wrote:
Why does this feel like the Video Games have finally managed to evolve their own tabloid celebrities?


... because Anita Sarkeesian has made a half million dollars making videos from other people's youtube clips and crying about being called names on the Internet?


That's not really the same thing. Whether we like her or not, her fame comes from something she actually did.

I'm talking about people who Famous for being Famous. People who obtain celebrity seemingly for no reason at all except to perpetuate their own celebrity by being continually featured in tabloid articles. Their fame is what they're known for, not anything in particular that they've done.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2015/10/07 04:35:32


   
Made in us
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Chris Roberts is well known for various accomplishments. Some of them are pretty noteworthy. For instance, he's the guy behind the highly successful Wing Commander video game series (specifically, 1-4, and not Prophecy). And he's had some other games of varying degrees of success since then. Other accomplishments are not so noteworthy. For instance, he's the guy behind the Wing Commander movie. But when it comes to video games, he's generally done a decent job. His name on a game is guaranteed to generate at least some positive publicity.

Derek Smart, so far as I know, has exactly one claim to fame. He's the one responsible for the infamous Battlecruiser 3000 game/disaster (I think that was the name) roughly twenty years ago.


So I have to ask - why is ANYONE listening to Derek Smart talk about the video game industry? Seriously? That's kind of like looking for criticism of James Cameron, and turning to Uwe Boll for quotes. Maybe you liked Cameron's latest film, and maybe you didn't. But why are you asking Uwe Boll?


Of course, just because one of the biggest failures in the video game industry, with (from what I've heard) an ego inversely proportional to his degree of success, pontificates on something, doesn't mean that he's actually wrong. There's always a chance that he's right. And Escapist apparently reached out to some people that they thought were actual employees (though based on what CIG is saying, that might not be the case for at least one of the supposed former employees).

I'll note that I'm not exactly a disinterested party in this. I've purchased one of the starters for the product, and also purchased one of the other ships that they've made available (the one that will eventually be in the third starter package). So I'll be somewhat annoyed if this thing fails (but not *too* annoyed; unlike some people, I haven't invested hundreds of dollars in the game). But I'm not inclined to believe cries that the company is falling apart.


1.) The company has been releasing parts of the game for public view as the work on the parts has reached the appropriate state. You can jump in right now and try out the dogfight module if you want.
2.) The company regularly makes appearances at shows. So they have something to show off.
3.) Over the last few months, CIG has suddenly (in response to grumbling from people on the official forum) gotten more open with the state of things in development. They're not acting like a company attempting to hide their state of affairs. Of course, they could be lying. But if they are, there's been nothing to indicate it yet.
4.) A few months ago, there was an inadvertent leak. Fans being fans figured out a company ftp site address, visited it, and gained access to a very large content packet that they weren't supposed to see. Apparently CIG had made the mistake of trusting that because no one knew about the site, the contents were secure. And that only worked right up until the site was inadvertently revealed (iirc, fans magnified either a photo or a video, and noticed the address). The result was that a considerable amount of content that no one had ever seen was suddenly out in the public view. CIG has been very public and forthcoming with a wide variety of civilian craft. That's the stuff that they're selling for the crowd funding. But they haven't been showing off anything that isn't for sale - stuff used by the military (both human and alien), for instance. And very little of it had been seen. And then the leak occurred, the content got out into the open, and people realized that CIG has been working on a lot more content than what they've been showing off.


All in all, that doesn't sound like a studio that's in trouble.
   
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USA

Eumerin wrote:


Derek Smart, so far as I know, has exactly one claim to fame. He's the one responsible for the infamous Battlecruiser 3000 game/disaster (I think that was the name) roughly twenty years ago.


Yeah exactly. Why does anyone care what unfabricated claims he makes? I mean I'm not a fan of Star Citizen's business model. I refuse to play the game because it seems purpose built to take advantage of the nagging voice in many a fan's heads that will push them to spend outrageous sums of money for binary products. There are ships they're selling that costs hundreds and even thousands of dollars. It's absurd.

But who the feth is Derek Smart and why does anyone care what he says? The whole OP article literally feels like it's sitting on the front page of the National Enquirer with a subtitle "what else are they hiding." It's more the tone and style of the piece that has caught my attention that it's content.

   
Made in ie
Norn Queen






Dublin, Ireland

Disgruntled guy with a past history moans about a company he probably has some petty issue with.
Online magazine feels a juicy story brewing and does some questionable digging.
Company responds correctly with potential lawsuit.

Storm in a very small tea cup imo.

Dman137 wrote:
goobs is all you guys will ever be

By 1-irt: Still as long as Hissy keeps showing up this is one of the most entertaining threads ever.

"Feelin' goods, good enough". 
   
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I bought the most basic package when it was on sale for $20 or $30. I am not really a fan of all of the virtual selling on a game that is still in early alpha at best that continues to have the "final product" goal posts moved time and time again.

I would feel a whole lot better about the whole situation if they actually produced a working and playable version of the game and then added all of the stretch goals as expansions like normal game companies do.

I really cannot understand the people who have purchased hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of virtual space ships already, I have talked with them and I still do not understand it.

 
   
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 Ratius wrote:

Company responds correctly with potential lawsuit.


Or perhaps not.

No one has come out of this looking well. Derek Smart is infamous for being a massive troll and this seems to be business as usual for him, The Escapist and their 'anonymous sources' (which are rumoured to derive from forum posts) and Cloud Imperium with its ludicrous legal 'threats'.

I'm not comfortable accepting the Escapist article as accurate but there has been rumblings of odd goings on at Cloud Imperium for a while now and Star Citizen will almost certainly fall short of its (extremely ambitious) stated aims so the article's basic premise may well be at least reasonably accurate.

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Absent a lawsuit (which would likely be a questionable move on CIG's part), Escapist comes out ahead. It put up some clickbait, and got more views as a result. And given the already awful reputation of much of the online video game media these days, it's not as if they have much of a reputation left to damage.

Derek Smart probably comes out ahead, as well. Battlecruiser 3000 was a generation ago, so there are a lot of video game players who have never heard of it. Instead, he can pretend that there are entirely different reasons why the industry has nothing to do with him.

CIG can't come out ahead. Either nothing in particular happens to them, or their reputation is hurt. And now that they've threatened a lawsuit, it's hard to say which is worse - following through with the lawsuit (which frequently doesn't end well, and requires a lot of time and resources), or don't sue (which makes them look bad because everyone will wonder why they didn't follow through on their threat). The best response probably would have been to issue a short statement presenting their side to the public, and otherwise ignore the article.
   
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Outpost 31 - Antarctica

I heard about this game a few months back, but never really looked into it. Before the story about the financial mis-management came out I looked at the website for the game, and it looks like one of those where you would have to put in £100's on the latest ships if not more to stay competitive throughout playing.

When it comes to early builds of games I do tend to be more cautious. 'Spacebase DF-9' as an example, had very bad financial mis-management and released a very minimalistic game without the features stated it would have.

 
   
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 Valres wrote:
I heard about this game a few months back, but never really looked into it. Before the story about the financial mis-management came out I looked at the website for the game, and it looks like one of those where you would have to put in £100's on the latest ships if not more to stay competitive throughout.


Nah. You can buy a lot of ships right now. But when the game goes live, the only new ships that people will be able to buy with real world money will be the ones in the starter packs (which are fairly basic). Everything else will require in-game money. The stated goal is to have something open-ended like Ultima Online or Eve Online, but as a space combat sim (with varying degrees of combat depending on the player).

   
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 sebster wrote:
Well, I wouldn't say 'don't ever put money in to unfinished software', as much as 'if you put money in to unfinished software, you have to be okay that there is a very good chance you will never see anything for that money'.


 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Yeah Jingles mentioned this wouldn't surprise me if Star citizen is a ponzi scheme


How is it a ponzi scheme?


Keeping up promises, never fully finishing game and fishing for money (well not really a ponzi scheme), but scammy set up.

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I see Derek Smart and I laugh, the guy is well-known for being a hot-head who stirs gak up. There was a point when he'd actively visit various forums where his name was dropped in a bad light and he'd barge it to set things straight, leading to quite a few flame wars. They even had a site dedicated to this and his other exploits, such as falsifying a PhD (IIRC) and other things, including his horrible attempts at game design.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, the Escapist has truly become a click-bait "hot news" / list site that isn't worth visiting for anything but Zero Punctuation and Extra Punctuation.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/10/08 07:04:15




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UK

A large amount of nonsense,

Star Citizen is clearly trying to put together the game and things are clearly moving forward

(but what eventually comes out will no doubt not live up to they hype as I;ve yet to see a game that goes the hype train route live up to it, and the earlier in the process we start to hear about them, the more lacking the final product will seem, especially anything MMO-y where users will swiftly gobble up the prepared content and either have to settle for 'grinding' old content or moaning about there not being enough)

As a crowd funded effort Star Citizen is much more vunerabke to bad press than a traditional studio so I would not be surprised to see some sort of legal action go ahead especially if some of the exemployee verification stuff like the ID card can be so easily disproved

 
   
Made in us
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This game raised $90 MILLION via 'crowdfunding'?

Or am I reading that wrong?
   
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UK

I think it's 90 million in total

Most of which is from small investors so you could use a broad definition of crowd funding and call it that

but it does include direct pre-ordering of stuff (DLC in the form of ships as well as 'the game') which is where most of the cash has come from

I think the KS take was about 2 million or so

 
   
Made in nl
[MOD]
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Cozy cockpit of an Archer ARC-5S

Aye, a lot of it was pulled in post-campaign via other venues and ways.



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Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




For some reason I'm having Diakatana flashbacks... Only the end result is gonna be a lot more dissapointed nerds.

I'm honestly surprised so many folks have poured this much money into this project. Video games have a long history of imploding, see anything by Peter Molyneaux, or vanishing into vaporware, or worse yet being trapped so deep in development hell that you dont want the final product, Duke Nukem Forever anyone?

I mean yeah the idea of getting a Wing Commander style sandbox sounds awesome, but not awesome enough to hand over hundreds of bucks for a game I might play one day.

As for the for the legal issue, it feels like posturing and a bluff. Legalese is costly to navigate, better to simply threaten and hope thats enough to make the escapist backdown than get involved in a guagmire.

Man, videogames are weird now...
   
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lonestarr777 wrote:
For some reason I'm having Diakatana flashbacks...


A common reaction.

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lonestarr777 wrote: worse yet being trapped so deep in development hell that you dont want the final product, Duke Nukem Forever anyone?


Or worse still, Aliens: Colonial Marines.


Its interesting to see alot of this coming down, but people writing click bait articles on a game that raised millions of dollars is hardly surprising. At the very least they reminded me that I spent $70 on the game, I'd been so disappointed in what they released for a while there I had all but forgotten about Star Citizen.

   
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 Breotan wrote:
Still, it does seem to support my long held belief that one should "never ever, under any circumstances, NEVER invest in software that is still in development".


I've backed Harebrained Schemes Shadowrun Returns, Shadowrun: Hong King and will be backing Battletech. I backed Double Fine's Broken-Age as well as Wasteland 2 and a plethora of others. I have 0 regrets for backing any of those projects and in all but a few cases have received everything I thought I would (and sometimes more). Sure, some are still in development, but I trust the guy who made Castlevania to make another great Castlevania game.
   
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Everett, WA

I've seen far too many software projects fail when funded by actual software development companies to put my faith in software funded by (what amounts to) begging for donations.


 
   
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Executing Exarch




 Breotan wrote:
I've seen far too many software projects fail when funded by actual software development companies to put my faith in software funded by (what amounts to) begging for donations.



Maybe it'll fail. Maybe it won't. But known factors associated with the project can provide clues about whether the project is more likely to fail or succeed.

If it weren't for the fact that Chris Roberts is heading it, the project wouldn't have received anywhere near the level of funding that it has. The fact that he's attached to it doesn't guarantee that it'll succeed. But it does make it more likely than if certain other individuals (who shall remain nameless in the interests of basic courtesy and lawsuit avoidance) in the field were working on it.
   
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Hiding behind terrain

I find it funny that they threatened expensive legal action against allegations that include misuse of crowdfunders/investors money.
   
 
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