For the gaming industry, cosmosim Star Citizen is a unique phenomenon. The game is being developed with the money of players who have invested as much as $242 million in Star Citizen. This made it the most expensive gaming project in the history of crowdfunding. However, in seven years she has not gone beyond the alpha stage.
The situation with Star Citizen is described in his Forbes material, and App2Top.ru prepared a brief squeeze.
The Cloud Imperium studio responsible for Star Citizen is headed by game designer Chris Roberts. During these seven years, he not only managed to promise players a monumental cosmos with a breakthrough of content, but also to sell them some of this content — in particular, ships — for individual microtransactions (up to $ 3,000). According to Forbes, 135 different models of ships have already been sold. Most of them can be controlled in early and overloaded Star Citizen builds, and some still exist only on concept art.
Over time, players became concerned that the game might not be released at all. Roberts and his company demonstrate only the basic alpha version of the game, which does not have the promised “hundreds of star systems”. Moreover, no Star Citizen star system is ready yet. All that the game has is two completed planets, nine natural satellites and an asteroid.
Star Citizen is crazy. Given the seven-year development cycle, this is a rare case, it shouldn't be like this. It's just not normal.
Carnegie Mellon University Professor and game developer
Collecting money for Star Citizen is hardly fraudulent. After all, Cloud Imperium is really working on the game. But its creation is progressing with tiny steps – and, according to the studio employees interviewed by Forbes, Roberts himself is to blame for this. Or rather, his inability to lead and inability to dispose of funds.
Two dozen anonymous studio employees described Roberts as a bad manager, and the working environment at Cloud Imperium was dubbed chaos. Even they are amazed at how Roberts scatters promises, and then instead of making them come true, forces an employee to spend time and money collected on frankly minor aspects of the game. Moreover, his decisions are constantly changing.
So, on his instructions, one of the senior graphic designers spent months doing only visual effects for ship shields. Other employees at the same time devote weeks to creating video demonstrations that will convince fans of an unprepared game to spend even more money on crowdfunding and ships.
The last time Roberts published financial reports on the development was in December 2018. However, fully transparent reporting is hampered by the fact that the earnings of Roberts himself, as well as his wife and brother, who hold senior positions in Cloud Imperium, are unknown.
All the big cash injections, it seems to me, illustrated one of the old bad habits of Roberts — the inability to focus (on something). In my opinion, the situation is out of control. Solid promises (...): now we can do this, now we can do that... I was just shocked.
Producer of Wing Commander IV, also involved in the development of Star Citizen in 2013-2014.
In game development, Roberts became famous back in the early 90s: he was made famous by the hit Wing Commander. Then he became the co-founder of Digital Anvil, in which Microsoft itself invested, and created the game Strike Commander (not so successful anymore). He soon convinced 20th Century Fox to start shooting a movie based on Wing Commander, which turned out to be a commercial failure — and in which, according to some reports, Microsoft invested money intended for game development.
Then Roberts went into the film industry and began producing films. The collection of money for some of them took place in Germany through the now banned tax scheme. The financing went through an investment fund, the founder of which was imprisoned because of tax fraud. However, Roberts and his business partner Ortwin Freyermuth, who is now vice president of Cloud Imperium, were not involved in this case. In 2010, Roberts returned to the gaming industry, selling his production company. And two years later, he started raising funds for Star Citizen.
At the end of last year, it became known that the family of record magnate Clive Calder had invested heavily in Star Citizen. He spent $46 million on marketing—not development. Moreover, most of the investment should go to the promotion of a single—player campaign to Star Citizen – Squadron 42. Its release will take place in 2020. When the Star Citizen itself will see the light, it is still unknown.
And it seems that the players are starting to get bored with Roberts’ promises. The US Federal Trade Commission has already received 129 complaints about Cloud Imperium with demands to return up to $24 thousand.
The game we were promised can't even be started. The performance is terrible. I want to quit the project. They lied to us.
Roberts, however, urges not to rush. He claims that Star Citizen is quite playable and that there is already more content in it than in many released games. He also claims that he does not appropriate the money of backers: even before Cloud Imperium, he was not a poor man. And, according to Roberts, the developers have no goal to deceive the players.
I know one thing: people come to me and I say they don't need to spend more than $45 on Star Citizen.
Founder of Cloud Imperium
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