Star Citizen Developer Addresses Rumors of Financial Struggles
Cloud Imperium Games took out a sizable loan and offered up the company as collateral, but that’s not indication of financial difficulties.
Cloud Imperium Games co-founder Ortwin Freyermuth assuaged concerns from the Star Citizen community when fans noticed that the studio had taken out a sizable loan from UK banking institution Coutts. The studio’s principals offered Cloud Imperium as collateral on the loan, leading many to believe that coffers had run dry developing Star Citizen. Financially savvy readers can view the filings here (courtesy of GameSpot).
According to Freyermuth, who addressed the rumors on Cloud Imperium’s forums, much ado was made over nothing. The studio’s relationship with Coutts enables it to receive advances on tax rebates, which in turns allows the developer to avoid converting currencies to British Pounds.
“Our UK companies are entitled to a Government Game tax credit rebate which we earn every month on [Star Citizen's single-player campaign] Squadron 42 development," Freyermuth wrote on Cloud Imperium’s forums. “These rebates are payable by the UK Government in the fall of the next following year when we file our tax returns. [We] have elected to partner with Coutts, a highly regarded, very selective, and specialised UK banking institution, to obtain a regular advance against this rebate, which will allow us to avoid converting unnecessarily other currencies into GBP.”
Freyermuth and his partners watch the financial market, and applied for the advance after considering which currencies make up the bulk of their income. Moreover, the Star Citizen IP is excluded from being offered as collateral in the studio’s agreement with Coutts, so there’s no concern that Cloud would lose control of its game. “We obviously incur a significant part of our expenditures in GBP while our collections are mostly in USD and EUR. Given today's low interest rates versus the ongoing and uncertain currency fluctuations, this is simply a smart money management move, which we implemented upon recommendation of our financial advisors.”
One could argue that fans had every right to be concerned over Star Citizen’s future. The game has raised tens of millions through crowdfunding since 2012, but seems gridlocked in perpetual development. Bits and pieces materialize, leaving many players to speculate when, or if the full product will surface.
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replyDavid Craddock posted a new article, Star Citizen Developer Addresses Rumors of Financial Struggles
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Yeah, basically anyone with a passing knowledge of finance could look at this and be like: "Not an issue."
Jesus. So much fucking idiocy out there.-
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That's pretty much my attitude. I threw $100 at it for a MISC Freelancer with lifetime insurance back closer to the start, and another $10 for a metal Citizen card (which I have received).
The money is spent, so there's no point in worrying about it. The game will either come out, or it won't. If it comes out, it will be somewhere on the spectrum between "terrible" and "awesome". Obviously I'd prefer it to come out and be awesome, but I don't know whether that will be the case.
I do know there's a ridiculous amount of venom and histrionics directed at the game, and it's fanned by bizarre conspiracy theories and (deliberate?) misinterpretation of mundane business activity.-
Sup Freelancer buddy. I bought that more to support the game than for the ship, but now I kind of regret it.
I don't expect much from SC any more since a large portion of the community paid their way to the top already. My hopes for the game are pretty much all centered around how functional the economy is with so much real money pumped into it.
No point in space truckin' in my freelancer for 10 cents worth of credits an hour.-
For me it was 50% supporting the game, and 50% ensuring a decent worst-case platform to support what I'm interested in.
Aside from RSI just overspending and running out of money, that's probably one of the bigger credible concerns. It's unclear how the economy will be affected when people already have all those ships.
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...why?
Have you even looked at what the outputs of their efforts are? -
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...I think the intention is to make the persistent universe a live service...
So yeah, it wont ever be complete, and I don't think that was ever the intention.
You've got some weird bones to pick with Star Citizen, man. -
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Nice try Derek Smart. We're on to you.
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Oh he's on FIRE over on twitter right now.
It's painfully obvious that he has no idea about corporate finance or intelligently managing large somes of cash... mostly because he's a 30-year failure, with delusions of grandeur.
I like to keep tabs on his general idiocy over on https://www.reddit.com/r/DerekSmart/
His level of self-ownage is really entertaining.
Bring popcorn.
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Greg. What are you doing, Greg.
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This sounds like a well formed and mature opinion, I would love to hear more about how you came to this position.
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Greg, I too default to hoping that things are shit, thus making the world a shittier place so I can sit upon a throne of shit, and say to all, "Look at all this shit, I told you it would be shit."
Fuck everyone and everything, so long I feel superior, it's the American* way.
*Excluding Canadians, Mexicans, residents Central America, residents of South America, and those living on islands either geologically or politically classified as "American" because of course, they're not Real Americans.-
I definitely want Star Citizen to be a success, but I find myself routinely hoping that all these big box office prequels, reboots, sequels, remakes and phoned in predictable super hero movies bomb so completely that they start financing original stories again.
Also I want the Trump Administration to fail in everything it tries to do, pretty much.
So you can sometimes root for failure for the right reasons.-
What net negative effect is there if there is an increasing amount of good and well made media in the world?
Even if any given specific example is not to your taste, can you not be happy for the enrichment of the world? It seems to me that more good media, especially in a non-zero-sum system, is simply better.
Also the Trump administration is a clear and obvious net negative on humanity as a whole, granted that's what many of his supporters like about it, but I believe hoping something monstrous like that fails is only logical.-
Well now this is just a tangent-- but If there was truly an increasing amount of good (subjective here, I know) movies, I'd completely agree there is no net negative effect. But there doesn't seem to be. It seems like studios are taking less risks than ever before in my lifetime, and everything is soccer-mom focused-grouped to a bland paste. As far as 2017 releases go I've only seen Get Out, compared to 2007 where I probably saw 40 movies. Basically, I want a change in the direction cinema is going, and that change will require failure on behalf of the studios.
The quality of tv, however, has been increasing in quality tremendously. I'm not at all bothered by the more formulaic stuff that comes out in that medium since there's plenty of other options for me there.-
Don't have much to add on the TV side, but to expand on films and my general mindset above...
I highly doubt Justice League (2017) will be, but I honestly hope that against all odds will turn out to be an excellent movie. However, if it is bad, I hope that it does poorly and teaches the creators and investors the correct lessons, though admittedly I think that to be unlikely.
I don't think the odds are quite as long but I have similar doubts about Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets but again I would very much be pleased if the movie is at least great-bad like The Fifth Element was.
However, I'm going to see Baby Driver and probably the same for Detroit and Lucky Logan. I'm excited for all three. Atomic Blonde could be fun, and while I expect it to not be fun given the subject matter, I suspect Dunkirk will probably be worth seeing.
A bit to my surprise The Big Sick is looking like it's probably good, it isn't something I'm excited for but I'm glad it's probably good.
Uhh.. I've heard really good things about Raw? I've not seen that yet though. It's on my list.
And on the already released and "safer" side of things, while the tone and style weren't really risky after the success of The Lego Movie, the related but not directly so The Lego Batman Movie was quite good. Also albeit not without its flaws and failings, Wonder Woman was a surprise success, enough so I could recommend it in general. I don't think everyone will like it, but it, like Lego Batman is worth a view unless you absolutely cannot stand the concept of superhero films.-
Since you took the time to write all that, I went ahead an watched trailers for most of those.
Justice League- I'm automatically out. I've never really enjoyed any superhero movies apart from Batman, and I actually prefer the Burton version-- though Nolan was solid as well. Ultron was the last one I saw, and I would have walked out on it if I could have.
Valerian and Baby Driver both look like they have real protagonist issues. I might be able to get past the millennial factor in Baby Driver if his character was far more interesting than he seemed in the trailer... but it would be insurmountable for me in Valerian.
Detroit has some potential... really depends on how ham fisted it is with it's message. Gotta wait for reviews on this one.
Lucky Logan- ensemble caper :( I feel like I know how it's gonna go beat for beat already. Didn't really like Oceans 11 and skipped the rest of those.
Atomic Blonde- I got about 10 seconds into this trailer, looked like the worst of the bunch. Looked like hollow action drivel.
Big Slick- could be funny, probably a bit heavy on the sentiment though
Raw- well, it's a horror with a 90% RT score, so I'll *definitely* check this one out. I'm already sold on the genre (horror movies have actually been getting better recently) when it's by a real writer, so I did not watch the trailer in order to go in fresh.
I'll contrast this with my 2007 top 10:
1. Zodiac
2. The Lives of Others
3. No Country For Old Men
4. There Will Be Blood
5. Death Proof
6. The Orphanage
7. Reservation Road
8. 3:10 to Yuma
9 . [rec]
10. The Lookout-
Okay, okay but 2007 is a really tough year to compare against. For my personal list off the top of my head I'd add/swap-in Michael Clayton and Ratatouille.
And again, many of these are hopes, against expectation, because I would rather desire for a better world than not.
As for my excited three Baby Driver, is Edgar Wright which by itself is a default "in" for me.
Detroit is directed by Kathryn Bigelow who is a strong director in general, and with Lucky Logan well, Soderbergh is all over the map, he experiments and I like that he takes risk. I don't like everything he's made, the Oceans' movies were mostly alright, but when he hits strong, he hits strong.
They seem like pretty safe bets, not that I'll bet anything other than my expectations. Though perhaps they won't be to your taste?
I'd nearly forgotten about The Lookout, that a was solid film. I think I did an in-home double feature with Brick when I finally saw them.-
I really do admire you're optimism. I didn't used to be this cynical about movies, but every year it seems there is less stuff I wanna see. I didn't enjoy crapping on all those trailers, I know how it looks. I kept my reactions honest, though.
I'd say predictability is the biggest killer in anything for me, and we're just getting a lot of by the numbers stuff right now.
My two favorite movies of the last few years were probably Interstellar and Nightcrawler. I had *no idea* what was going to happen in those movies (it helps that I almost always skip trailers as a rule), and they both blew me away. I also really liked Spotlight, since I'm a huge Micheal Keaton and Mark Ruffalo fan. Birdman was cool too.
I liked Soderbergh's Solaris a whole lot (even though it got a pretty mixed reaction from most, from what I remember), and I loved The Informant(!). Che was unwatchable, even with Benecio Del Toro who might be my favorite actor. Oceans was just pretty flat, and I don't think I've seen any others. Maybe Contagion-- I vaguely remember Matt Damon in that, so I guess I saw it-- but it left no impression.
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Why would you root for this game to fail? It would be incredible if they pull it off.
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No one is rooting because they believe the opposite of you. It's their opinion. Why should you always believe it's gonna be awesome?
My prediction has always been- this is the Titanic in sloow motion. I'm not rooting against it, that's my opinion.
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Dude, just.... no
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Just like Hillary Clinton am I right?
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Fair and balanced.
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Don't mince words. Tell us what you really think.
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I'm going to white knight for GBurke59 here and say that I get the spirit of his post in that he doesn't want to see a company with this business model succeed since it would validate the approach.
The virtual ships and the moving target of a timeline does feel pretty gross to me but people are free to do what they want with their money. I just hope those same people don't complain and whine across the internet IF the project crashes and burns. I suspect that's too much to hope for though.
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has anyone played the latest builds of SC? I play a good bit of Star Marine and its really good fun, I have no problems getting access to any of my ships and flying therm around in the PU and doing some quests and some dog fighting, SURE its still a bit buggy with some frame rate issues but Ill hold my final judgment till after 3.0 or after the first part of SQ42 , if both turn out shit ill bit the bullet and admit i backed a bad game
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I liked Star Marine the little bit I played, but damn I was bad lol
I keep checking out new features and then purposely waiting for later. I like seeing what they're working on, but want to maintain some level of ignorance about the systems for when the game comes out and I can just dive in. -
How can you say that with a straight face? The movement is floaty and awkward as fuck. The guns sound great and the graphics are top notch but everything else about the experience is pretty awful for a FPS experience. Do you really feel like you could run and gun?
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If none of you can see the problem with how Chris Roberts gets funding from Pre ordering "ships" a lot of which aren't even in the game still. And continues to Take "Backers" money and show little progress, and more delays, after delays. It's a Carrot on a stick. I'm used to Star Citizen "fans" attacking me for less. But the "fans" will never see it this way and continue to pour money into the game that i highly doubt will ever be finished.
People bitch about 40$ DLC yet star citizen has ships at 400$-2,500$ where’s the outrage here?
PS: I love how Chris Roberts gave himself a raise in salary this year. Maybe finish the stuff you promised to finish before doing something like that. Makes you look bad.
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You should have a look at their progress videos and try out the very playable Arena Commander and Star Marine modules.
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Yeah, they are. And the pace of their progress has accelerated a lot because they got a lot of backend stuff completed to support the persistent universe.
I think strategically, it was the right thing to do for the game, but the seemingly relative lack of progress for the first couple of years while they tried to figure out a rational way to produce the content they wanted to totally burned them in the eyes of casual observers.-
Yup. It didn't help they sort of spun their tires for a bit on asset creation because as they built the pipelines they got a lot better with the tools and there was a clear quality difference between earlier generation stuff and the stuff they are putting out now. So earlier stuff had to go back for another pass.
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Mmhmm, a huge portion of their effort was exploratory. But now, I think they have figured out a lot of the issues and are hitting the ground running.
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In a sense. Right now you have a mini persistent universe with a handful of stations. There isn't really a whole lot to do and is really combat oriented. Alpha 3.0 has been delayed about year but current indication is release in 1-2 months. This is where the larger game starts coming together. Subsequent versions should focus on what you actually do in the universe like mining/exploration/shipping/blackjack/hookers/etc.
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There's a difference between thinking selling digital content for a game that doesn't exist is unethical, and hoping a game people have supported comes out and is bad.
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You know, she was one of the ones who spearheaded their insanely successful marketing campaign, right?
As the most crowd-funded project ever, I'd say she has earned her stripes.-
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Oh, yes. My apologies. I should have known!
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His brother??!? He hired his brother?!?? His completely unqualified brother whose participation in a Wing Commander / Privateer game is completely unprecedented and whose participation is presumably not a large part of what players should WANT from a WC/Privateer game??!?
Production
Starlancer (2000) (Producer)
Privateer 2: The Darkening (1996) (Producer)
ShadowCaster (1993) (Associate Producer)
Strike Commander (1993) (Associate Producer)
Wing Commander: Privateer (1993) (Associate Producer)
Design
Starlancer (2000) (Original Concept)
Dangerous Streets / Wing Commander (1994) (Dogfight Choreography)
Wing Commander / Wing Commander II (Special CD-ROM... (1994) (Design)
Wing Commander (1990) (Design)
Programming/Engineering
Super Wing Commander (1994) (Dogfight Choreography)
Quality Assurance
Super Wing Commander (1994) (Quality Assurance)
Wing Commander / Wing Commander II (Special CD-ROM... (1994) (Quality Assurance)
Wing Commander (1990) (Quality Assurance)
Scandalous!-
Plus all the other things he has worked on in the years since. Call it what you want but he is not unqualified.
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,23689/ -
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I guess I can't speak to his wife or brothers credentials since I'm unfamiliar with them. If they really are the best people for the job then good bless, I hope it's a great game. As a casual observer it looks as gross to me as Trump bring in his kids to every presidential appointment.
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Foot + mouth.
You're right to be skeptical, but the information on his wife and brother aren't hard to find.
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In general it's very common and not exclusive to the games industry. Whether it be private enterprise or in government or public safety.
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The step below that is friends helping each other out and we have plenty of examples of that happening here on this site.
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It's nepotism even if they are qualified. Bobby Kennedy was legitimately qualified to be Attorney General yet it still prompted the passage of an anti-nepotism law to prevent such a thing from happening again.
The problem with nepotism is that it's impossible to not be biased toward the person, qualified or not. -
That's not correct at all.
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Giving the person you are married to a cushy job is the very definition of nepotism, wtf.
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It's absolutely a problem, but it would still be awesome if the game turned out to be good and no one wasted their money on a scam. We should hope for that, but be prepared for the worst as well.
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I'm a fan. I backed about 3.5 years ago and last put in money around 2.5 years ago. I've also had 100-ish hours of fun gaming from it so far too... Thus, I'm confused where this carrot-stick metaphor comes in to reason?
Are you asking me to bitch because I don't have a full released game yet? Or should I bitch about feature creep? Certainly things have scaled up, but then I've already got my moneys worth. Whatever anyone else chooses to spend or deems worthy value is surely up to them, no?
Or maybe you should just STFU
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Bullshit. You care about being proven right. If you actually cared about people being taken advantage of, you'd be hoping you're wrong and that the game comes out and is awesome, because that would mean people weren't taken advantage of.
Instead you're just one of those sad, spiteful people who hope things are terrible just so you can feel justified in preemptively shitting on them and telling people how dumb they are for supporting them. -
To be fair, the people being taken advantage of have nobody to blame but themselves.
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Why don't you let the backers decide if we are getting value for our money rather than use your privileged media position to put forth non-factual accounts and unsolicited opinions about things that you lack certainty about?
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As a backer ($80 for some dumbass "racing" ship that I saw a couple of times in some hanger), I'm not getting value for my money.
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Try playing Arena Commander and Star Marine?
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Seems like a good time to re-post this- http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/09/23/inside-the-troubled-development-of-star-citizen
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It sounds more like you hate the people who you feel have been taken advantage of.
You wish ill upon backers based on the hypothesis that the project is a scam, and the hypothesis that this ill will teach said harmed backers not to be harmed again in the future. And also because you would then be correct. -
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Such utter bullshit. How about you establish that someone IS being taken advantage of first. If they had nothing to show, I might agree. But what they have achieved and what they have shown has obviously taken a good amount of work. It's impressive for what it is.
Like Arcanum said, if "people getting taken advantage of" was your worry, you'd hope for the game to deliver what people are expecting. Instead you _literally said you personally hope it fails_, which implies two things:
1) You don't really know if it will fail
2) Despite that, you hope that it will, in essence hoping that the people you are "protecting" or "feeling sorry for" end up being disappointed.
If you want to be an ass towards someone or something, at least have the balls to be straight faced about it. -
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Could be a huge meridian 59 fan. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_59
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lol that last paragraph. Even official news posts are like this now. "Gridlocked in prepetual development" despite the fact that they're constantly detailing and publishing the progress they make.
Whatever, I'm not interested in arguing about it again. But for the record I hope the game comes out and is awesome, because hoping anything else is pretty shitty.-
That's not what I wrote. Let me know when you have some free time and I'll teach you how to copy and paste.
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Well I didn't copy paste it, I wrote it out. I made a spelling mistake and capitalised a letter, but that is what you said.
No need to get so arsey about it, wasn't trying to shit on you. Just laughing about how even official shackposts can't resist the negative spin. You are of course entitled to be as negative as you want about it. Doesn't mean I have to like it though.
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I don't care about anything related to Star Citizen until it's officially version 1.0. If that never happens, so be it.
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No, that isn't not how any of it doesn't work.
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Which is the same as a whole lot of people. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, at all.
I backed the first day. I've loved everything Roberts had ever released and I wanted them to cross that $2million threshold in order to actually develop the game.
I would have been completely satisfied if it was nothing but an update of Privateer (which I adored).
But, oh, did they raise so much more. And it shows in the tech and the assets, and even what they've released so far.
I'll continue to be a supporter.-
It's really a project for dreamers. I'm backing it mainly for the sheer ambition of it, and so far they are delivering- albeit slowly.
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Bookmarking thread for extensive user note collation tomorrow.
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Oh hey look! An article with a lot of comments. I should check out the threa... OH MY GOD!
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d... omg these comments are awesome!
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i'm just glad this one isn't my fault
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lol
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The Constellation clocks in at about $250ish
Roberts has previously stated, that you can purchase one ingame from zero funds within about 2 weeks of what they call "normal play"
I don't think that's unreasonable.
Nor do I think the funders/backers will feel like they're getting ripped off either. -
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So take this with a grain of salt because I have read little on it, but I based on their plans for ship modules, I will assume the bulk of in-game expenses will come from upgrading a ship. Of course buying bigger base hulls will cost more, but buying upgrades will be what most players spend their money on when it comes to ships. Ships will have module upgrades of varying stats (think armor pieces in WoW) and each module will have additional performance slots for fine tweaking (think WoW gemslots) is how I read it. Again, I could have misread it but that's my take on it.
For current funding, they have always said 45 dollars is all anyone needs to spend to get into the game. Buying a bigger, more expensive ship doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be better, it just means a player wanted to support the game at that price point and start out doing that ships specific role.
I wouldn't worry so much about pricing and balance, CIG, the community is very vocal and will call out CIG if they notice expensive ships performing better than their description should allow.
Just wait and see.-
Oops, I think I got lost in my original explanation. I think they said they don't want ships hard to obtain (although direct upgrades, like Hull-C -> Hull-D would probably take awhile). I think that would be the best path. If you want a ship, it will take you a week or so of casual playing to buy the base model. The real cost should be in upgrading it.
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I went to the Reddit Q&A thread to ask about some of the points I made above and to your concerns, here are the answers they gave: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/6jhkd5/weekly_question_and_answer_thread_june_25_2017/djgn2zy/
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I think, and I'm saying this as a SC backer, that the financial model HAS to include various forms of micro transactions to keep the servers running. I don't think they'll be able or willing to just finance SC "out of pocket" from single player releases. Perhaps the limited sale of in game currency will be enough, perhaps not. I'd guess they'll eventually land on something like the model of Guild Wars
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That would be cool if done right
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The plan is that big ships that can't land are like guild halls that require a constant minimum crew and large amounts of in-game supplies to maintain operation.
The larger the ship the more in-game effort it will take to maintain and the inverse.
This would seed the player base with a variety of platforms so it's not just NPCs with more than single-seaters at launch, plus player groups and factions can and have formed ahead of time, I'm sure with some drama already having occurred.
As to why folks are happy to pay the really big amounts? Either it's a team effort, as it will need to be in-game to maintain the big ships, or they're flush with cash and were/are hungry for the semi-unrealistic dream the game represents.
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What pisses me off the most is the fact that I don't have a gaming pc anymore, and even though I have a good laptop now it is not a gaming laptop and this game looks like a resource hog. So even if it's released one day I may still not be able to play it. Money well invested!
In other words, this game takes so long to develop that in the meantime my gaming habits changed and I'm not as interested as I was when I backed it. -
Why did You have to end your article on such a negative note Craddoc? "Gridlocked in perpetual development" is a way to spin it of course, but for us who follow dev updates each week such a statement seems a little ignorant to be honest.
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