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[German Shocks]

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[bitbydeath]

Thats a massive reach. Maybe they are eating babies as well.

There is literally zero evidence or even a rumour to suggest what you have made up in your head is true.

I know.
It is strange these "whales" exist though.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Given the lack of output, no.
No way near a billion dollars worth.

For having needed to make their graphic engine and new network tech because MMOs all worked on queue systems which makes no sense for high fidelity physic based bullet / missile in real-time, plus a single player with a huge cast of actors, the space MMO that is very ambitious with tens of thousands of peoples playing it daily that they had to support, pay amazon servers for (no monthly fees for MMO), add content, fix content, do marketing, etc. I would say it's in the ballpark? We're talking about a thousand developers at first nation budgets in USA, Canada, UK, Germany?

Or we can look at Bethesda's veteran team with known established leadership that went through multiple big AAA releases and they still took 8 years, $400M for Starfield, on a known inhouse engine they were using for multiple projects, and still was a fart in the wind, didn't bring any new tech in space games? Shall we talk about Concord's $400M and the CCU it had and much much smaller scope?

What you guys are not understanding is that it's actually the current output that is driving the huge money spikes.

A single year of funding like 2025 basically covers the 4-5 years of initial funding the game had from the backers. Peoples aren't buying into this from 2012's list of promises on a kickstarter or before feature creep, they know full well what they are getting into in the 2020's. How many videos bashing Star citizen per year you need for anyone to stumble on it and say "naw?"

Huge jump of users added in 2020's, well after all the drama, giggles and memes.

Concord devs would have sold their grandma to have those kind of users added yearly.

Was the game mismanaged? Fuck yes, especially early on.
Was there feature creep? YES.
Were they completely delusional with some of the release dates in the past? YES!

Is it money laundering or a scam? You would have to be the worst scammer or concaved head moron to go and set up a thousand dev first world high salary across multiple international studios, make an MMO that requires constant service with no monthly fees while you pay Amazon servers, as the effective way of doing it the laundering/scam

As clarky said, there's a ton of other options than setting up that huge monster studio. Those theories make no sense, on top of you know, peoples actually playing it daily.

edit :
Also Clarky, as you asked, that they might be paying themselves huge amounts of money

UK law requires everything to be public. A lot of "Colombo" bitter gamers have fine combed this shit throughout the years and had wet dreams at the idea they would find a yacht or Chris Robers paying himself $100M in the pocket. It doesn't work like that.

CLOUD IMPERIUM UK LTD. filing history - Find and update company information - GOV.UK

CLOUD IMPERIUM UK LTD. - Free company information from Companies House including registered office address, filing history, accounts, annual return, officers, charges, business activity

find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk

In case some peoples don't like searching, a 2021 report for fiscal year 2020, which for reference, had more funding in a single year than the 2012 + 2013 funding campaign

The "highest paid director" being most likely Chris Roberts
It's an "OK" and nothing more salary for a CEO of a ~1000 dev company. I know peoples making more than that just being engineers.

 

[clarky]

I know.
It is strange these "whales" exist though.

Whales exist in every GAAS its not uncommon and you know this.

Unless this dude is AI?

Meet a fan who has spent $30,000 on Star Citizen ships

Why one Star Citizen fan has spent $30K on the game, and plans to spend more.

www.pcgamer.com

Not even sure how i got dragged into this, I don't even play the game. I just find it highly implausible that this is a money laundering scam. If it is its the most stupid one I've ever heard of and sounds like a right ballache to keep up the front.

 

[clarky]

For having needed to make their graphic engine and new network tech because MMOs all worked on queue systems which makes no sense for high fidelity physic based bullet / missile in real-time, plus a single player with a huge cast of actors, the space MMO that is very ambitious with tens of thousands of peoples playing it daily that they had to support, pay amazon servers for (no monthly fees for MMO), add content, fix content, do marketing, etc. I would say it's in the ballpark? We're talking about a thousand developers at first nation budgets in USA, Canada, UK, Germany?

Or we can look at Bethesda's veteran team with known established leadership that went through multiple big AAA releases and they still took 8 years, $400M for Starfield, on a known inhouse engine they were using for multiple projects, and still was a fart in the wind, didn't bring any new tech in space games? Shall we talk about Concord's $400M and the CCU it had and much much smaller scope?

What you guys are not understanding is that it's actually the current output that is driving the huge money spikes.

A single year of funding like 2025 basically covers the 4-5 years of initial funding the game had from the backers. Peoples aren't buying into this from 2012's list of promises on a kickstarter or before feature creep, they know full well what they are getting into in the 2020's. How many videos bashing Star citizen per year you need for anyone to stumble on it and say "naw?"

Huge jump of users added in 2020's, well after all the drama, giggles and memes.

Concord devs would have sold their grandma to have those kind of users added yearly.

Was the game mismanaged? Fuck yes, especially early on.
Was there feature creep? YES.
Were they completely delusional with some of the release dates in the past? YES!

Is it money laundering or a scam? You would have to be the worst scammer or concaved head moron to go and set up a thousand dev first world high salary across multiple international studios, make an MMO that requires constant service with no monthly fees while you pay Amazon servers, as the effective way of doing it the laundering/scam

As clarky said, there's a ton of other options than setting up that huge monster studio. Those theories make no sense, on top of you know, peoples actually playing it daily.

edit :
Also Clarky, as you asked, that they might be paying themselves huge amounts of money

UK law requires everything to be public. A lot of "Colombo" bitter gamers have fine combed this shit throughout the years and had wet dreams at the idea they would find a yacht or Chris Robers paying himself $100M in the pocket. It doesn't work like that.

CLOUD IMPERIUM UK LTD. filing history - Find and update company information - GOV.UK

CLOUD IMPERIUM UK LTD. - Free company information from Companies House including registered office address, filing history, accounts, annual return, officers, charges, business activity

find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk

In case some peoples don't like searching, a 2021 report for fiscal year 2020, which for reference, had more funding in a single year than the 2012 + 2013 funding campaign

The "highest paid director" being most likely Chris Roberts
It's an "OK" and nothing more salary for a CEO of a ~1000 dev company. I know peoples making more than that just being engineers.

How many active players does this game have? Do they make that kind of data available?

 

[Germuso]

 

[bitbydeath]

Whales exist in every GAAS its not uncommon and you know this.

Unless this dude is AI?

Meet a fan who has spent $30,000 on Star Citizen ships

Why one Star Citizen fan has spent $30K on the game, and plans to spend more.

www.pcgamer.com

Not even sure how i got dragged into this, I don't even play the game. I just find it highly implausible that this is a money laundering scam. If it is its the most stupid one I've ever heard of and sounds like a right ballache to keep up the front.

30K is a small amount.
Someone spending 300M would be better to hear from.

I'm not saying it is a money laundering scheme, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was.

 

[Buggy Loop]

How many active players does this game have? Do they make that kind of data available?

It was said that in 2024, 1 million players played 32 million hours over the year. That year had ~500k new users. It must vary a lot year to year, 2025 for example having ~710k new players, 2022 ~872k new players. etc. New peoples in, some going dormant later, etc.

Can't go back to a peak CCU with that info but that's what's out officially. A lot of MMO estimators out there but I don't know what's that's worth, guesstimates at best.

They don't have CCU as a metric. Been a lot of attempts throughout the years to guesswork it and it falls in the ~30k-60k players CCU. Probably more concentrated in new events / patch with content, while when its calm probably I would guess in the ~20k.

Personally, I entered the funding in early 2013. Slept on it for 10 years (had real-life milestones to achieve rather than virtual ones), checked once in a while, including the famous hangar in early days, etc. I got more into it around late 2023. Played a LOT of it during that time. I had found the bounty hunting loop to be so much fun I was addicted.

Now I seldom visit for big new patches and everything, but mostly dormant. I am 100% looking forward to some content in the future and their roadmap to 1.0 is exciting. I got tired of wipes, starting over. I got my money out of it and likely for a lot more hours to come but I'm looking for certain milestones.

But it's also why I said earlier in a post that it's not something I would recommend for now. I'm being 100% honest here that it's not for everyone (very sandbox, wipes, still jank), and would recommend against paying anything before you try a free weekend. Still doesn't make me down on the project like at all, very excited for what's to come in fact. There's peoples way way more dedicated to the game that I'll likely ever will. There's orgs in the game that keep doing events or wars between orgs, there's e-sport racing, etc.

 

[Corian33]

SQ42 been in "final polishing" for almost 3 years now. It's 10 years behind schedule at this point, why get in a hurry now?

 

[Gubaldo]

780ti faster than GTX 980?
Scam citizen confirmed!!!

 

[Trogdor1123]

Well, I'm at the point where I really want to see this actually launch.

 

[Ðuelist]

Sad people yapping about this have never played. Can literally do freefly right now. Nothing quite like it. Would not recommend for everyone. I bought a cheap package for $60 way back when that included SQ42.

 

[Avid Reading Horse]

Blame my man Zacfoldor for teaching me how to do this.

 

[LyricalShrike]

For those who didn't know:

• CIG offered a new mega capital ship for sale
• The ship costs $5,000 and will likely not be playable within the next 5 years.
• Potential buyers were asked to submit an essay to justify why they deserve to buy the ship ("Odin Founder's Club")
• The privilege to submit an essay is limited to customers with $1,000 minimum spend
• Players wrote impassioned essays describing their SC dreams and how the project has impacted their lives.
• CIG ignored the essays and randomly selected "Founder's Club" members. Successful essays included one liners such as "I will not buy this ship" and "I have a small penis"
• The lucky members of the Odin founder's club couldn't just buy the ship after jumping through these hoops. The ship has been put on sale in waves of limited quantity that sell out nearly immediately just like every other cap ship purchase.
• The whale community is in utter meltdown as players who spent $25k-$100k finally arrive at the realization that Chris Roberts sees them as little more than Yacht fuel
• Insult to injury is that the latest patch is utterly broken. It was rushed to launch with the latest sales event as usual (Defensecon).

I highly recommend visiting the SC forums (Spectrum) for further details if you are a connoisseur of drama.

 

[b0uncyfr0]

How are these guys not in jail?

 

[Tobimacoss]

For those who didn't know:

• CIG offered a new mega capital ship for sale
• The ship costs $5,000 and will likely not be playable within the next 5 years.
• Potential buyers were asked to submit an essay to justify why they deserve to buy the ship ("Odin Founder's Club")
• The privilege to submit an essay is limited to customers with $1,000 minimum spend
• Players wrote impassioned essays describing their SC dreams and how the project has impacted their lives.
• CIG ignored the essays and randomly selected "Founder's Club" members. Successful essays included one liners such as "I will not buy this ship" and "I have a small penis"
• The lucky members of the Odin founder's club couldn't just buy the ship after jumping through these hoops. The ship has been put on sale in waves of limited quantity that sell out nearly immediately just like every other cap ship purchase.
• The whale community is in utter meltdown as players who spent $25k-$100k finally arrive at the realization that Chris Roberts sees them as little more than Yacht fuel
• Insult to injury is that the latest patch is utterly broken. It was rushed to launch with the latest sales event as usual (Defensecon).

I highly recommend visiting the SC forums (Spectrum) for further details if you are a connoisseur of drama.

This might just be the most hilarious thing I've read in gaming.

 

[German Shocks]

• "I have a small penis"

I think we're starting to get to the root of the issue.

 

[LyricalShrike]

This might just be the most hilarious thing I've read in gaming.

Bro you only need to bring tissues. You can use the tiers for lube. Here's a preview:

I just want to tell CIG that, as a long-time supporter with pledges totaling nearly $23,000, I feel deeply disadvantaged, ignored—even ghosted. I have sent multiple inquiries to Concierge Support, but received no replies—only silence. It is, quite frankly, an absolute outrage.

I really wanted to buy an Odin myself—even with real money.

But no, you just had to implement a /roll system and leave it all up to chance.
I never get lucky...

These are just my thoughts on the matter; I am endlessly disappointed and am seriously considering quitting the game altogether.

This unequal treatment of people who have already poured thousands upon thousands of dollars into this project is absolutely abysmal.

My pledges contributed to the stretch goals, yet I am being denied the opportunity to partake in the rewards—thanks for nothing.

Alright, rant over.

 

[calico]

Idk about stretch goals, but it was released to the public to buy and download as a fully playable experience (Fly in an open world, Land on stations, Do missions, Interact with other players) in 2017 via alpha 3.0.

First public playable release you could buy into	Aug 29, 2013	Hangar Module opens to all backers
First playable version of the actual universe	Dec 11, 2015	Alpha 2.0 (PU) released
First official Early Access release	Dec 23, 2017	Game becomes public Early Access

Nah, GTAVI, easily.

SC could potentially beat it in ~15 years.



Then you'll be happy to know this change in the studio already happened "recently" (I think it was within the last two years?). That's the reason both SQ42 and SC has picked up a healthy development pace without the violent bumps of the past. And that's also the reason for why you don't see much of Chris Roberts anymore.

We're approaching 12 years overdue for Squadron 42.