Star Citizen Had No Other Option, Staff Leak to Press

[@BellularNews]

Head to squarespace.com/bellularnews to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using bellularnews Sponsored by Squarespace.

[@checkanr138]

no

[@DimitrisKarapavlos]

@@checkanr138 🤣

[@zanmaru139]

I won't fault that ad itself but segueing into that from workplace abuse? Oof.

[@brianmcdonald1066]

so Squadron 42 release is 2026? ... aaaand youuuu believe that will reeeeally happen?

[@Justin_0241]

Looks like Chris Robber is now pissed meanwhile Andy Pants Gaming failed to wreck Bellular

[@jamesblonde6824]

Former CIG Austin employee here. I left voluntarily in January because I was informed of an upcoming policy change that removed work from home privileges, despite promises being made when I was hired that this would not be the case. I was not in a position to commute 3+ hours or move, and so exited. My understanding was that most of the people who left the ATX and LA offices did so because their roles were moved to Manchester or a different office, and they were given the choice to move with them or depart. The general sentiment was that Chris Roberts saw other game companies returning to office and wanted to be like the big boys, so he unilaterally decided that CIG was an in-person company and gave managers almost no ability to make exceptions. This was absolutely perceived by many at the time to be a "soft layoff" by making the conditions to continue working too strenuous for many, though I am not sure if any hard layoffs followed after I left.

[@plaidsnake2883]

In your opinion, how was development of the game while you were there? Are there real plans that we don't see, or is it all just mismanagement and feature creep and they think they have unlimited money?

[@jamesblonde6824]

@@plaidsnake2883 to be on the safe side I'm not going to comment on anything other than my exit and my personal speculation about why the policies changed, but I will say I loved my coworkers and I still play the game and look forward to its future.

[@kiri101]

From the outside looking in the Manchester relocation really did look like a soft layoff.

[@kinginyellow1490]

If you want a career, you make sacrifices. If you want to stay with the company you stay with it. This whole working from home argument is a non starter with my Generation. You get out, you work, you make scarifies, and work you way up to making a good living. If i worked at CIG, i would make the sacrifices needed to stay. Its a dream job for alot of people. And hey, they ask there people to stay a few day after. I just did a 10 day work week for my company. I did it, i got payed for it, and i earned respect from my coworkers and higher up for making the sacrifice. And this is not even my dream job. i just have a high work ethic and a high self stander. I don't know. I wish you the best, i hope you land another kick butt job working for another company. But your gona have to make some hard choices. Because there are people out there that will work in the office, and will work the extra days, and will move to a new location if there company needs it. where as you will not or can not.

[@timmygilbert4102]

​@kinginyellow1490 CEO and management don't have that work ethics

[@hogfry]

Meanwhile devs at blizzard haven't seen their families since 2009

[@DoesNotInhale]

If they spent less time SAing eachother, spending all day on Reddit and Twitter while clocked in, making vlogs about their dining hall while clocked in, or being slackers while clocked in they actually would be able to touch grass. Any good devs that have had to do two times the work to compensate for the above have long since left the industry so all you are left with are 500 lazy narcissists in any given studio that fail upwards with zero oversight from the 5-15 tiers of management who are equally unfit to work

[@UTubeJunky]

@@DoesNotInhale Sounds like Blizzard could use Elon Musk.

[@Sinaeb]

@@UTubeJunky imagine losing 40 billions (loaned) in a year

[@endlessstrata6988]

@@Sinaeb Pretty sure he can afford it.

[@Sinaeb]

@@endlessstrata6988 he in fact cannot, there's a reason why I specified loaned

[@obi0914]

One way or another, this game is going to make history..... we are all just trying to figure out if it's going to be good or bad.

[@MrXinshadow]

@@obi0914 If we're honest with ourselves, probably bad. Historically games that plod along for this long don't turn out well. I'm expecting a Duke Nukem Forever, at best.

[@obi0914]

@MrXinshadow I never played the SC demo, nor have I made any money pledges to it but I hope it succeeds for the sake of gaming and the idea that we can directly fund games without a publisher. It be a awful if we lost that

[@Aztaable]

@@MrXinshadow You have no idea how long some games take to develop. Go look up CP77, throne and liberty, gta 5, gta 6, rdr2, starfield, and many other examples. Enjoy

[@Chuck8541]

I don't really care how Sq. 42 turns out - it's not for me. I just hope the Persistent Universe stays the way it is. I love the iterative improvements, and the things always coming on the horizon. So, I just hope they're not SO irresponsible with money, they go bankrupt, and the PU shuts down.

[@hajkie]

@@MrXinshadow i am willing to agree, but we also have 2006 prey. Prey went through numerous iterations and i actually liked the final product.

[@booease4241]

Microsoft eventually booted Roberts from Freelancer for these very same issues, feature creep and scope creep. He kept missing deadlines and eventually Microsoft said, "You're are out and we'll take this to the finish line ourselves." No such accountability with Star Citizen.

[@vast634]

There are also other private Investors involved that will have more leverage to put pressure on Chris Roberts.

[@kyoai]

I tried out one of the recent free events for Star Citizen. Usually my sessions ended with my character being stuck holding a box in his hands, unable to let go. Because my character could not let go of the box holding in his hands, he was unable to take food in his hands to eat, eventually dying of starvation or dehydration. This happened several times. One other time my character died because the cockpit button hitboxes have bad hit detection for mouse clicks, so instead of selecting an option on my radar, my character pressed the "open canopy" button instead (even though it was nowhere near the mouse cursor), while in space... the canopy button got bugged out, I was unable to close it again, my character died due to lack of oxygen. In another case the ships controls bugged out mid-flight... unable to control the ship anymore, I crashed into a space station. In the rare cases where my character did NOT die due to bugs and my character actually being able to do something productive, the server forgot on a regular basis (every hour or so) what missions I have accepted as if I never accepted any missions in the first place, robbing me of rewards for completing them. Also, at times the server simply forgot what I have in my inventory. Fun! Don't get me wrong, it's impressive as a tech demo, but if for all these years they can't manage to fix simple bugs such as "character can't stop holding a box" but instead already have a cash shop in their alpha-stage game with some items costing hundreds of dollars then I have little faith that the game will be playable in an acceptable manner anytime in the next 10 years.

[@SnowTerebi]

Many bugs you mentioned sounds like server lag and free-fly is usually when the servers are the most laggy.

[@bartbroekhuizen5617]

@@kyoai lol, thats hilarious. I've been waiting 10 years already that i've booted the game. You would say impelementing these basic interactions would be a piece of cake. I still follow SC now and then for its progression, but each time it disappionts me more and more to actually boot the game again.

[@benjaminmeusburger4254]

10+ years of developement Manager: It is realy important to squeeze out those 2 additional days of the weekend!

[@Chris_KAy]

@benjaminmeusburger4254 first couple years were wasted on building the engine AND the company itself, they started out with like 12 people, are now over a 1000, also SQ42 was an afterthought and even younger, chill out, stop copy pasting what the no-clue-people say like a bot, its tiresome, Chris R tries to reach for the Stars and the backers went with it, thats it, nobody laughs at musk for blowing up billions of dollars just to create a rocket that can land.

[@lewisbenzie845]

How long is GTA VI taking? & Its just a shitty car game.

[@Izack]

Your meme is actually a lesson in Masters of Business programs.

[@scimbrelo]

@@lewisbenzie845 how much have customers spent on GTA VI so far?

[@durtyred86]

​@lewisbenzie845 ...Dude....please don't bring intelligence and clarity to this conversation... They wouldn't know what to do with the truth if it was mushroom stamping them between their eyes. They listen to what they're told by people who couldn't tell you 2 accurate things about CiG and run with it.

[@boxin4403]

Upon seeing the photo of the elevators my first thought was, "I wonder if they work"

[@Chuck8541]

Haha That was a common bug when I first started in 2022. Or the bug where you step into the elevator, and fall into the abyss. But come back! That bug hasn't been around for a while! lol

[@DAGATHire]

@@Chuck8541 oh thanks chuck for explaining this guys clever joke like you are the only one in the world who gets it. Good job chuck! Thanks for that Chuck!

[@Pecetos]

@@Chuck8541 Not around ? I was eaten by an elevator 2 days ago.

[@IssaSouriant]

a way cig has to lay off employees is by taking them to the elevator and there's a chance they end up in the void

[@Hemebean]

Never walk into the blackness...

[@hockey1973]

16:59 "Because they don't earn money from regular video game selling." Maybe it's because they've never actually released a video game?

[@SomeGuyNamedRoy]

I won't support any business that mandates work over family. As someone that worked at a jail for 7 years, this kind of thing can break marriages. When you quit or die, the company won't remember all the time you gave them, but your partner/kids will remember that you weren't there.

[@rremnar]

This is actually true. I remember when I was in high school, a friend hated his father because he worked 12+ hours a day, at Microshaft, and was hardly ever home.

[@flyingpiggie979]

Based take.

[@morestupidforms]

I have just quit my job of 15 years because of this, it took me a decade too long. Only after leaving do I realise how much of me I gave them. Sure, I got a salary, but the cost was nearly everything.

[@blindalienproductions5589]

I backed in 2013 expecting to get a modern take on Freelancer with support for private servers, and it's gone way off into MMO territory now. I've literally had the time to go to college, get my first tech industry job, and develop my own space game since.

[@camielpovel6290]

Awesome you are working on a game yourself. Which one if I may ask? Can I wishlist yet?

[@jamo128]

I just wanted Freelancer 2.0 tbh, man i loved that game. Given Microsoft had to get rid of Chris to ship something, and that something was awesome, Chris has so much scope creep that someone needs to take this project away from him or it will never ship.

[@KnightKai]

well if you backed in 2013 like me you will know we was given a choice for them to make SC or just deliver the original game. the backers overwhelmingly voted for sc, and it was the backers who also voted for all the features. people conveniently forget all this.

[@NihongoWakannai]

Wasn't freelancer the game that almost didn't get released because Chris Roberts kept pushing for revisions and feature additions instead of actually getting it finished? And now look at exactly what he does with star citizen.

[@KevinoftheCosmos]

I'm going to download your demo today.

[@JDLupus]

Witholding severance packages if NDAs aren't signed should be extremely illegal.

[@CosmicCleric]

But its not, because we complain about things, but never vote in politicians that'll make positive changes for the regular citizen.

[@Chuck8541]

Nah, I dunno. If you have a bunch of information about a game/game engine that's proprietary information, you have to be fine with not disclosing that stuff in order to be paid. Same goes with govt security clearances, and especially big tech development like Apple & Google. Otherwise, companies can just pay more to poach an employee AND get all the engineering info that employee knows.

[@RecklessFables]

@@Chuck8541 But imagine a company being competitive because it does smart things and that they keep their employees because they act in a manner that inspires loyalty. Instead they use NDAs and collude with their competitors to limit the job market.

[@scout360pyroz]

@@RecklessFables Now imagine the company DOES try that, but because this is reality and not your perfect fantasy world it doesnt work like that. The meta for individual devs is NOT to stay loyal, it's to jump ship and chase money every few years. Which is how you survive in a world of bad companies and bad products.

[@Chuck8541]

@@RecklessFables I guess...but that can be ...iffy. Many technologies take ages to perfect. If people are allowed to leave, AND are free to divulge any info they can, then every company working on "a thing" would go bankrupt immediately. Imagine if Google gives an Apple employee with proprietary knowledge a "signing bonus", which is basically just a bribe to tell everything that employee knows about the "next big thing's" inner workings, and how it's power efficient. Until a company can patent something, proprietary knowledge needs to be kept private, and NDA's are used for this world wide. Upon military folks leaving with top secret information, they sign something like a 77 year NDA. Even if the info is in the public world, they're not supposed to confirm anything - because even going backwards, that would have security ramifications.

[@friendlyspacedragon7250]

A reminder: Squadron 42 has been just two years away since 2012. Maybe it will launch in 2026 this time, but it is yet again just two years away.

[@Asghaad]

i vividly remember arguing with the fanatics back in 2014/2015 and trying explaining to them that theyr holy game wont be coming out in 2016 ... being called a lot of "names" and mocked to no end ... wonder how many of them realized how wrong they were and how long past that 2016 "deadline" it took for them to see the "light"

[@Aethid]

Not sure where this myth comes from. CIG have only ever given 2 release dates. 2016 and 2026. As hilarious as those two being a decade apart is, they have not been continuously promising it is 2 years away.

[@eddiemarohl5789]

​@@Asghaadconsidering the community voted to extend the scope in 2016 I think they were well aware.

[@eddiemarohl5789]

​@@Aethidit's illusory memory bias. Starts as fake news on reddit or wherever and gets repeated by gullible or angry people at first until it becomes so synonymous with the topic people just assume it's true. It's the reason why so many critics spout the same things said in r/starcitizenrefunds back in 2017 or from the yearly article that comes up about the legatus package. It's also why the comments for ign's video on squadron were much more positive since it didn't mention the word star citizen, which people associate with those illusory memories. It's really fascinating to see from a psychological/cognitive perspective.

[@joshuacr]

​@@Asghaadas likely as the people in the United States would see military tribunals and executions or a military force deposing the president in that era. Not bloody likely!

[@richbuilds_com]

It doesn't matter how much you dress it up with fancy offices and barista's serving coffee, or giving "free team meals", or snooker tables in the break room. If you aren't paying your devs enough they won't be worth the money you paid them. If you push your devs past breaking point they won't fix anything, they'll break more stuff. Because they are broken. Signed a dev who's been through the mill.

[@eddiemarohl5789]

Cig's benefits are pretty good last I checked aside from the yearly convention crunch.

[@raathh]

@@eddiemarohl5789 The salary is under the average of the industry

[@yulfine1688]

@@raathh Not really.. and most of them are in europe.. salary differences there compared to the US are very different... their main studio is in the Uk if i recall.. what does the austin team get paid? Actually if you're curious go view their financial data you can pull it from the UK because its public.

[@jasonfrost5025]

Same goes for any employee at any job. You can only shit on people so many times before they throw that shit right back in your face.

[@Psilonauto]

A few extra work days is past the breaking point? It all sounds really tame to me. In other industries this isnt that unusal either and no one complains. Ive had 6 workday weeks for months in a factory where you do physical labour with full concentration for 8 hours. Its just how things are sometimes. CIG devs seem spoiled as fuck.

[@louhodo5761]

You should be corrected. Chris Robert's didn't willingly leave Freelancer, he was removed.

[@OldSpaghettifactory89]

Because if Microsoft hadn't removed him freelancer would still be in development to this day Or they woulda run out of money without the cult following star citizen

[@Maestro47]

CIG has basically the business model that strippers have used for decades. They don't sell dances to clients, they sell dreams. Once the dance is over, reality sets in and the buyer goes into regret. This is exactly what is happening right now with development. CIG are constantly selling dreams to people. Watch when it gets released (if it ever does) and all the people come to complain. The solution? Sell more dreams with expanded universes, DLC, more A list actors joining the cast, etc.

[@Diogenes76]

Oh but that little ship shimmy they do!

[@weskandel]

Calling game polish an afterthought is inaccurate... It's like saying the icing on the cake is an afterthought... It just can't be done until the rest of the cake is in place.

[@SimuLord]

The difference is that a pile of icing with no cake is at least a tasty guilty pleasure, as any five-year-old can happily tell you.

[@lasselen9448]

If your cake is a biscuit, yes. When it's a friggin' 15-stories giant wedding cake, you can, and should, make sure every stage is mostly polished before moving on to the next. Otherwise (dropping the metaphor) you end up with bugs you can't fix because the root cause is buried under five years of "duct tape" code and tied to 12 other systems that somehow work but will collapse as soon as you try to fix your bug. Big studios waste a ton of money trying to fix problems that wouldn't have occurred in the first place if they had done some regular cleaning up on the game.

[@Bourinos02]

Well, they changed their engine mid-development so anything in this project seems like an afterthought.

[@MisterFoxton]

They started on CryEngine, transitioned to Lumberyard (which is CryEngine) for legal reasons, and they're now on StarEngine (which is CryEngine) because they've worked on it for 14 years and they can claim its legally distinct from CryEngine.

@@Bourinos02 And that "new" engine has been outdated for a while now.

[@christopherjohnson2171]

Squadron 42 also had a release date of 2016 for a very long time and that was 8 years ago. I will believe it when I see it.

[@thumpertron]

Go and look ant some video of Sq42 from back then. It was trash so they scrapped it and started again.

[@yulfine1688]

it had a release date until the community said they wanted to extend the date because the scope changed as did what the players want. You forget the original vision of the game was basically star field.. no one wants that

[@_escapegoat]

Every year Star Citizen is 2 years away.

[@the_babbleboom]

@@thumpertron if you looked at this years presentation and think that wasn't trash then no wonder shit games are still making so much money, there is too many like you who just latch on to a brand and have no fucking idea what quality is.

[@masonmax1000]

seem to me its either SD42 2026 or bust. if they fuck this up they are done.

[@bradenculver7457]

I remember being a teenager asked by my dad if I could use my birthday money to buy this game. His immediate reaction was “this seems kinda like a scam”. That was over a decade ago. While /r/StarCitizen may be drinking the kool-aid, there’s very little reason to have faith in this project at this point.

[@eddiemarohl5789]

It's a bit late for them to take their money and run.

[@artemisia4718]

Sunk cost is a helluva drug.

[@bradenculver7457]

@@eddiemarohl5789who said take the money and run? I’m saying I don’t have don’t have faith they will deliver a project and have no reason to have any. They can fail to deliver for numerous reasons. Also, I have a feeling Chris Roberts has taken a salary.

[@Eddy_Stylez]

I first played the game during a week long free fly event last year. For 40 bucks I think it's worth it. The game is mind blowing, and fun even in it's unfinished alpha state.

[@thorveim1174]

while I wouldnt call the game a scam (actual scam games never get anywhere near the point Star Citizen is at already as of today, and come on, what other game allows you to both use ships and walk around inside themout of Space Engineer?)... its mismanaged to hell and back, and is unlikely to EVER deliver on its promises in full.

[@jthompson6189]

CIG is making shit tons of money not releasing a game, there is literally no incentive to finish the project. I have no idea why people give them money though

[@solidsnake5051]

Because most of us expect it actually to release as they keep showing new things every citizencon and Inside star citizen and star citizen live shows.

[@AnotherSpaceCowBoy]

​@@jthompson6189 Because it's already fun and unique. Play the game seriously. Talk later. They did a lot of changes in 2024 and if pyro comes before 2025 as expected, it wil be the best dev year by far. It's moving much faster now than before.

[@genericbattledroid6544]

Well, people have fun playing the game, so they spend money. Not sure about the whales, they are their own thing

[@OldSpaghettifactory89]

​@@AnotherSpaceCowBoyfun and unique and its so buggy and unoptomized that it makes some of the asset flips I've played on steam look competent by comparison

[@dustinherk8124]

there is a reason why Gaben is petitioning congress to update the consumer protection act regarding games, perpetually in "early access" or "in-development", "season passes" etc alongside with the recent developer condition changes; regarding Steam's own platform.

[@kickingbird5987]

Is CIG still paying Robert's wife a high salary ... for doing nothing .... essentially double-paying Roberts himself

[@rwentfordable]

Yep, that was conviently forgotton about after denying they were a couple for so long.

[@flamebreaker7318]

Like you wouldn’t put family on a payroll at your multimillion dollar company if you had one.

[@aweirdwombat]

@@flamebreaker7318 what kind of argument is that? you'd do it too so it's okay? it doesn't matter if they'd do it too. it's still wrong and still shouldn't have happened. why defend it?

[@delluminatis]

@@aweirdwombat "everyone does it so it's ok"

[@iamjames8200]

@@flamebreaker7318if they’re not doing an actual job, fuck no I wouldn’t.

[@SenisterDenister]

I've waited twelve goddamn years. Kickstarter backer, once a year I log in to their website and ask if the game is done and people call me a troll. I have absolutely no sympathy for the devs or the fans. They deserve each other.

[@ChucksSEADnDEAD]

One guy got a 10 year ban on their forums for criticizing the pace of development. It expired this year.

[@voidgivenfocus]

@@ChucksSEADnDEAD LMAO

[@ahettinger525]

@@ChucksSEADnDEAD it was only 10 years, because that was their "lifetime" ban. You heard that right, noone there was competent enough to make a ban system that could last longer then 10 years.

[@Doomguy-777]

People: "Star Citizen will be revolutionary" Aside from server meshing, said technology in 2024: "Today we have rediscovered Global Illumination, sound doppler effect but not supersonic crack of supersonic bullets on a plushie that we shoot for a demo, decent LOD generation for forests despite having only a weak fern, grass and bush density that would make a slightly modded Kingdom Come: Deliverance (CryEngine based nonetheless, not the reengineered Star Engine) put SC's CitizenCon 1.0 presentation to shame, subsurface scattering, a weather and season system. And oh look at the waves on the water as you go though two physicalized and weighed wooden logs, hooray!" Meanwhile the very old Havoc engine could handle the wood logs the same on the water surface and my half assed modded Skyrim also has waves on the surface when I walk through or swim, meanwhile Ray Tracing and Lumen, Nanite and so on so my ship is 8K texture res at least and no loss in performance. The devs are presenting us technologies which were there already since UE4 trying to reinvent the wheel. No wonder why the game takes so long to be made. They basically just took a fucking decade to bring the CryEngine to today's standards (and again, a modded CryEngine game can do better in various ways) and it still makes their RTX 4090 top grade system screech badly in barely 30 fps during the presentations. And by today's standards, I really mean 2024 "standard", below that your AAAAAA game can fck right off if it's advertized as modern visually speaking. It's not top tier graphics solutions they showed us here. No matter if your game is open world on planets and space in terms of scale, the rest will remain off screen and not rendered because we don't live in a black hole. And for Star Citizen, it still makes their showcased demo run at barely 30 fps even for SQ42 solo game, I repeat. Global illumination is a cheaper, less "visual fidelity" type of performance friendly alternative to Ray-tracing and path tracing or Lumen. Our damn ships are only 4K res, not 8K Nanite with parallax and many physicalized props around that would make a cartwheel full of cabbages in Skyrim explode. The only real thing Star Citizen could revolutionize is the modernization of the server meshing tech so far. Prove me wrong. But so far, what I saw is disappointing on a technical level. SQ42 released in 2026 will be an old gen game at this point. Star Citizen won't even be finished, it will be like a two generations old game by 2030. It's embarassing. They should just finish the game and squash the bugs, make TL;DR grade weekly patch notes to ensure this game has some sort of a future from my POV.

[@SnowTerebi]

Yea man whatever you say but SC still has the best looking space vistas.

[@wrongthinker843]

@@SnowTerebi The NASA website has much better photos.

[@SnowTerebi]

@@wrongthinker843 Right but you can't fly your own spaceship and take more of those pics... yet

[@OniFeez]

Pretty sure they aren't using CryEngine base but Amazon's Lumberyard, which is sort of CryEngine with extensions, but your point still stands. Server Meshing was a concept that I think Eternal Crusade used or planned to use back in the day? Maybe they ended up not using it?

[@siodhe]

Having played SC, there definitely isn't anything revolutionary in it. Some tools have interesting UIs that deserve some credit. The multicrew experiences in ships have been quite positive. The setting of the escape from the prison is great artistically. But the game hates you, bugs ruin most experiences, and tedium injection is a feature and a roadmap. It's also obvious that even the city sizes and terminals and elevator counts are garbage when considering the huge number of simultaneous players they claim to be targeting - there would be lines to do almost anything in a city. So poorly planned that they're 12 years in and only now attempting to figure out how to support more than a gross of players or so in a shared world, and so far failing miserably. Which is about what you'd expect given that most of their dev staff doesn't exactly stick around long, or have a lot of experience with CIG's code hairball to leverage. Star Citizen will be probably be remembered at the most expensive vaporware (if not released), or game flop (if released), of the 2030s. Few players would put up with this game's attitude for long given the other options that will likely coexist.

[@TacticalBeard]

Not a single thing matters until they can get the server tick rate to go over 5

[@infantryleadtheway8174]

@@TacticalBeard legendary true comment.

[@eddiemarohl5789]

They can in the server mesh tests when they aren't bugged out so there's some hope there.

[@yulfine1688]

considering its been running over 5 the last year or so.. most average around 10-15fps.. the ones that don't are the ones that crash reality is backend work is complex when you're doing something no other game or game engine can even attempt to do..

[@thumpertron]

I've played on servers with 30 server fps, so i guess you're wrong.

[@halycon404]

FPS =/= Tick Rate.

[@inis99999]

The only way we know if Squadron 42 will release in 2026 is when the whole marketing machine starts pumping tons of ads for it. Probably a year before it's actual release.

[@eltreum1]

Exactly, 6-12 months prior is a typical ramp up time for marketing big games.

[@Pile_of_carbon]

When SC finally hits full release it won't be a sci-fi game anymore. It will be a vintage spaceship management simulator.

[@planescaped]

Are they even still making that game?

[@Shicksalblume]

CIG have so over-promised SC that they'd have to be fools to actually hit 1.0. If they actually get to 1.0, they'll have to pay off all those promises, and they'll never get it right. Whereas if they keep on as they've been going for years now, all those features and ships the bag holders have already paid so dearly for never have to come to fruition. It's the video game equivalent of the scheme from Mel Brooks' The Producers. Hit 1.0 and you have no choice but to pay off your promises and satisfy the punters, but fail forever to hit that final release and people may call you a scam (and they'd be right in the case of CIG and SC) but there's little they can do in recourse. Games get funded but fail to actually come out all the time.

[@unloyal4847]

Not really a problem still though, game still looks amazing compared to what most comes out of the market even with new graphics engines that releases, look at what most AAA studios churn out, Vielguard, SWOutlaws looks like utter shit for a current AAA title, even Wukong isn't as good looking as what this game and thats current top of the shelf engine being used. They just need to iron out their gameplay loop and definitely fix server ticks.

[@chucknorrisffs]

And it would get beaten even in that genre, eve is alive and kicking after 20 years without a hitch lol

[@MrCabbage-qz2vd]

@@planescaped yeah but they also making that engine along side making that game.

[@LordBathtub]

When it was first announced and for a couple years afterwards I thought it was a scam. Now, over a decade later, I no longer think it's a scam. Rather it's a victim of an imbecile with no concept of scope or management being given over $700m and never being told "no"

[@lethn2929]

I'm constantly veering between the two being somebody who followed Star Citizen in the early days as well I completely get where you're coming from, if Chris Roberts had told me he'd make the same game in singleplayer and do a multiplayer as a separate module ( He's not doing this guys he's focusing way too much on multiplayer ) I would have been very happy especially if the singleplayer module offered sandbox style fleet combat among other things. Instead him and his team are trying to do both at once and it's clear either the engine can't handle it in the slightest, or they can't and they are completely in over their heads. Every time we see little tidbits of crap released like this it feels like they're stalling and trying to buy time. A reminder, I don't know if it's changed but this game barely reaches 30fps and people even on high end systems were complaining about the total lack of performance. What they're doing when it comes to the individual mechanics believe it or not isn't that hard, it's the scope of everything and Chris Roberts should have absolutely had somebody sit him down and tell him to stfu from a technical standpoint.

[@joshuacr]

So we are in agreement. It's not a scam, but "run" by an incompetent person doing stuff from a previous era?

[@slider799]

The community is also responsible for enabling this as well. Standard investors will do a process of here is some cash to make it to the next milestone. Then invest more when the milestone is reached to an acceptable level then keep repeating. Nope we have community members who just throw £1000's at broken concepts which are "subject to change" and they change radically.

[@Cavthena]

@@slider799 I wouldn't blame the community to much. Yeah, there is the group of "yes men" and "open wallet warriors" but there is , just as big, a group of people that have always wanted to keep CIG accountable. Unfortunately CIG chased those people away by bullying and belittling them.

[@Scylon1]

@@joshuacr I don't think it started as a scam, I feel that is what is has become due to scope creep and they are starting to realize they have too much crap in it now. Hence the mass downgrade for 1.0.

[@demacherius1]

If you think someone is working efficiently and effectively when forced to a 7 day work week you have to be on fungi or something.

[@wokencs330]

Lol

[@theMedicatedCitizen]

people today are soft AF if they think working overtime a few weeks out of the year is something to be writing to the media about... on a crowdfunded project YEARS behind schedule

[@Gyyghhhhjjjkk]

blizarrd apparently is lol also its pretty normal when this game is years behind schedule.

[@jasonfrost5025]

@@theMedicatedCitizen The whole point is that "crunching" is not necessary when you have competent management. It's not something to brag about either. Literally no one enjoys making not enough money to work for a company too hard, especially not while a clown CEO is shoveling millions into his own pockets and doing none of the work.

[@cerealmama3879]

​@@theMedicatedCitizen how many is few weeks, 42?

[@Dark_Jaguar]

In Super Mario 64, they built the scaffolding of a level and spent months developing and fine tuning and polishing how Mario feels to move. Only when all that fine tuning was complete did they even START designing levels around Mario's moves and exact speed and handling. Sometimes, the polish should be done in the core phases of development. Now I know the game has taken roughly 300 years to produce at this point, but if they need to crunch so bad that their employees are basically living at the office for a month, then it needs to be delayed, delayed enough to do whatever work they feel needs to be done in a way that doesn't destroy the employees doing all the work.

[@ectothermic]

A good baseline and framework makes eeeeeverything else that much more smooth.

[@Dremth]

Nintendo has a very unique methodology for designing games. Nobody can deny it usually makes great games, but it's also a very unsustainable way to run most businesses. It works for Nintendo because they have a built-in audience that will buy their games no matter what, they are self-published and self-funded, their games are always $60, and they never go on sale.

[@jesseborders443]

Basically they're making the same mistake CD Projekt Red did with Cyberpunk. I personally wouldn't mind more delays if it meant getting the game right on final release.

[@borland8513]

Roberts didn't leave Freelancer. He was fired by Microsoft. What was the last game he brought in, Wing Commander IV? That was what 30 years ago?

[@yulfine1688]

yeah, he was over budget and delaying things because he kept pushing for more and more, microsoft let him go for that the same way they cut ties with bungie who also was a massive spender..and then activison blizzard said the same about bungie.. and then so did sony... except bungie is much worse here..

[@solidsnake5051]

Freelancer was his last game in 2003 before star citizen, after that he mostly moved to hollywood and produced some movies like lord of war and the punisher.

[@borland8513]

@@solidsnake5051 Roberts was fired from Freelancer once Microsoft acquired it. While he worked on that game, he never finished it.

[@solidsnake5051]

@@borland8513 Yeah, it was a project that star citizen currently is. Just reading what chris wanted the project to be is exactly things that star citizen either already has or is getting. Though I think server meshing tech back then probably would not have worked out like ti does on some games today if only because internet speeds at that time way too slow. Also he was not actually fired, he just changed his role to a consultant in the project after microsoft told him that they are going to cut down on most of its features. But it was still a good game even when it came short of the vision.

[@lethn2929]

I didn't know that detail about him, that's the first time I've felt sorry for games publishers in that situation lol

[@mikeyoukami]

The luxury office really reminded me of the opinion I quickly formed on the subject of Star Citizen (which I also backed and am looking forward to) which is that it is obvious that Chris' dream is "to build the worlds greatest space game". Not "to have built the worlds greatest space game".

[@LittleBlue42]

Last time i played star citizen, i fell out of the station into space. Restarted. Made it to my ship. Fell through my ship into space.

[@smiths121]

Last time I payed last year, I tried to get on the train, somehow managed to find the gap between plarform and train, time to restart ... again. Its too buggy for (I admit my rig is old and underpowered now) to even learn by my mistakes, the bug gets me 1st. Hopefully they manage to launch something playable without detroying to many member of staff;s lives.

[@eddiemarohl5789]

Sounds like free fly hell ngl

[@eddiemarohl5789]

​@@smiths121I have 1200 hours in the game it's bad sometimes but other times it can't be beat

[@NarasimhaDiyasena]

Last time I played was 3 years ago. Was running a cargo purchased with the 5,000 UEC offered via the base or whatever I forget. Went all in. Then the server crashed and when I relogged I lost my ship, my cargo, and my UEC and was effectively broke in game.

[@Traumglanz]

Good times. :D I still do that in NMS, but those times are even better. :D

[@JohnMichaelson]

The game I backed barely exists any more. I've gone through two PCs and nearing a third since backing now and it STILL won't be out.

[@Skulker42]

Real. I just wanted a narrative, campaign-based space sim and that's what I backed. Now it's a first person shooter, kart racer, and God knows what else too. JRPG for all I know, why not.

[@denysk.1178]

I think we all expected Skyrim like experience (in star citizen) with rich story (in squadron). But eventually we got Minecraft with grind… I don’t care about server meshing and online part of the game. I would be fine if it was like elite dangerous in terms of online. I just wanted a big realistic immersive universe to fly and explore …

[@XBluDiamondX]

@@denysk.1178 No, I wasn't expecting Skyrim in space. I played the original Wing Commander games, and I was expecting a fancier version of that with some new ideas thrown in.

[@Sercil00]

Oh god, I remember holding off on buying a new PC. "What if it turns out it's not enough for Star Citizen? Let's wait until they give us final requirements"

[@fail4lot]

I remember buying gtx 980 to play it when it releases next year in 2016 :D

[@fmodin1]

It is hard to believe that everyone at CIG worked 18 days straight.

[@MrRoblcopter]

Oh boy, wait till you learn about the rest of the industry. Look up how often Blizz or BGS does this. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but I am saying that it's incredibly common in most dev roles, network engineers I believe have it the worst.

[@jamesroy791]

They should honestly do this more or it will never come out

[@theobrominator]

I've crunched for 2 months straight before at a company. Trust me when I say that after 4-5 days output drops off a cliff. It's a myth that managers believe in.

[@TrackMediaOnly]

Given what is common in the industry that is nothing. I feel sorry for them, but it is nothing new or extreme in comparison.

[@The_Fallen_1]

That's because they didn't. I can't remember exactly what happened in the end, but not all teams had to work the overtime, just the ones preparing for the event and related patch, and I heard there were different agreements where many people worked six days or just the normal days with longer hours.

[@cola98765]

In the time since SC was announced. I played 900h in Elite: Dangerous, 600h in Space Engineers, and for latest addition X4 160h and still having a blast building an empire. Seriously... Go play X4, it's worth it.

[@joshuacr]

I will second X4. It is amazing!

[@Scylon1]

Ditto. X4 is really good.

[@Traumglanz]

iirc 300 in Elite, 500 in Ark, and about 300 in Squadrons for me. But, to be fair, I also have 400 hours in Star Citizen. :D

[@ikapustiv]

X4 with stupid space highways, hexagon sectors and not simulated star systems and meaningless FPS sections with empty akward and unliving interiors? Ugh. No thx.

[@joelg9526]

Three very good replacements for that star citizen itch.

[@CP3oh322]

8:06 When I was in college, I would have looked at pictures of studio interiors like this and thought "Wow! I hope I get to work at a studio like that some day!" Now, as a jaded game dev veteran, I look at it and think "Holy hell, how much did that cost? What kinda overhead does a place like that have? The moment this company hits the slightest financial speedbump they're gonna jettison like 15% of their work force to save money." Now, I'm not saying they can't try and put some money and work into making the studio a pleasing space to spend time in. Of course they can; nobody wants to go to work at an office that looks like Initech. But man, there are limits.

[@Skulker42]

Man, it's funny that I backed Sq42 back in 2012 after hearing about the original golden ticket through my Freelancer modding community. A decade later, I've still not got Sq42, but I am still playing Freelancer's Discovery mod. I guess I can say I've got value for money from one of the two.

[@s7r49]

im in my 40's two of my friends who originally backed it have passed away during the dev time. kind of wild to think you might die before the game is ever released.

[@stark1987]

@@s7r49 may i suggest reading "oliver twist", you might identify with it because of how hard you have it

[@grimneeldrakia7173]

Honestly it seems like a way better investment to buy a game that has had years of modding community like Skyrim or Freelancer than to buy anything new.

[@Skulker42]

@grimneeldrakia7173 Hearing Skyrim and Freelancer used in the same sentence like that is kinda funny given how obscure Freelancer is by comparison. But yeah, Freelancer modding is rad, there's tons of cool stuff that can be done now that modders thought was categorically impossible a few years back.

[@XenoCrimson-uv8uz]

@@s7r49 that reminded me of cyberpunk teaser.

[@BookmansBlues]

I think the point missed here, is that unless something has changed CIG has courted outside investment, and has investors. They would likely be the ones ponying up the money for the upgraded offices etc. Aside from that, I think you are spot on. CR is not someone I can look at and Trust, I have worked for too many people like him in the VFX industry. I did kinda chuckle at your reaction to the crunch component, not because I think you are wrong by any means, but because I have gone on for months working 12-18hr days for a TV show, with no paid time off, no free food (I was the one buying pizza out of my own pocket to get some of the junior artists to come in). When I push back on overtime, I get the line: "You know how the industry is!" people just accept the situation instead of taking steps to mitigate crunch because they do not care to plan long enough ahead, and get problems solved early, which is why I still attest to the idea that overtime is a product of poor planning. I get push back on that from people, often the ones who should be doing the planning, but it is still true in my eyes.

[@Kessra]

Do you really mean backers are investors? Sorry, the legal speak here is rather clear. Even the EU, which is usually rather protective of its people, differentiates between investments and backing/donating money to some idea. Should there be more restrictive and clear laws? Fully, but pledging for a game where you get a ship as "thank you" is not buying the ship or investing into the project. You don't buy any ownership or the like with a pledge and as such it isn't an investment. Also, many of the employees got their crunch time already compensated afterwards with 3-4 free days off. Some people always need to sensationalize everything. If this happens for a couple of month then we should talk again, but working on 2 weekends? Hell, I was responsible for the deployment of our software (including prior testing and QA) as well as release notifications and what not for almost 6 years where every 2nd or 3rd month I had to roll out new versions onto servers and fix any build-time errors as I stumbled across those. I never got that time really compensated until some external controller checked time sheets and came to the conclusion that I have way over 400 hours on my plus side accumulated over just a year and therefore they sent me on holliday for a whole month before they had to fear any legal consequences.

[@TheGallantDrake]

​@Kessra you're lucky then, the games industry is notorious for treating workers poorly AND avoidable crunch. You're taking this super personally, are you OK?

[@Kessra]

@@TheGallantDrake I'm not taking it personally, TBH. It is just that there is A LOT of either false or inaccurate information circling arround and everything is hearsay to some degree. Crunch is as common in game industry as in almost any other project-related work where towards the end extra work needs to be put in to make the deadline. I've never witnessed any project at all were all things worked according to plan, even though lots and lots of additional time was calculated in. And yet there are certain deadlines agreed way before that until certain milestones or the final product need to be presented. The norm is unfortunately that when you're not able to make the deadline, you won't be in business for long. The actual contractor usually also does not care how much effort and stress it caused to get the contracted good ready for delivery. That's business. Sure, noone wants to work 7 days a week over a longer period and if that happens on a regular basis people should sit together and question their project management and time scheduling next to promises given by their sales department. If the additional work is compensated otherwise, there is no real problem with it and as such selling it as some kind of breaking news or the like is just misleading at best and a money/attention grab by externals.

[@BookmansBlues]

@@Kessra If you are talking to me, you will have to be more specific, not sure if you replied to me by mistake. I have been in the TV/Film VFX industry for about 24 years. There is a massive difference between crunch, and just how poorly an industry treats it's employees. Some shows I have worked on were mandatory 12hr days for the entire show. One project lasted just over 6 months. One gig I was working on they kept having to send me home when I hit 80rs that week, I was clearing nearly $9k every two week pay period in overtime. The only reason I made overtime was that company had an employee union, which required overtime pay. Most of the time you do not get overtime pay, but some companies have been forced to implement it because of the grueling hours, and they were able to afford it.

[@randomuserame]

OT is almost always a manager competency issue. Problem is, that's the problem. Companies have managers, not leaders (even if they call them "leaders" ( *cough _Chipotle_ ). Well, managers aren't given the autonomy to think dynamically 90% of the time. And specifically for people who rise into that role, they are explicitly trained out of a business leadership mentality on the way up. And because of that, after they do their job hops and get into even higher postions, they _still_ don't know how to *generate value* as opposed to ”managing assets and resources," including human resources (see: cut costs). What you get is MOST companies across the entire (US) economy that are comprised of 80% orders-followers, 10% free thinkers who have no authority, and 10% free thinkers who have no incentive to do so, and so they don't. Most businesses/organzations can move at the pace of Elon's companies (see: the DMV at 4:00pm). But they are weighted down by an incompetence and laziness that nobody has the guts or incentive to purge out. This is because doing so would _temporarily_ mean ”the line didn't go up" (usually it actually does; just "less faster than before"). And they're afraid they'll get fired after one ”less insanely good, but still pretty decent" quarter. No company fires that fast because it takes way longer than that to replace you. They'd only sack you that quickly if they were already planning to and they were "far enough along" with their contingency. If I had 10k for every time a CEO went on an investor call and talked about "less than anticipated" this and "unplanned" that, "unforseen" other thing, or "falling short of projections/expectations" but *_didn't_* get fired; even within the following 18-24 months.... I could probably buy out the company that hired them, cash in full.

[@valkasolidor6727]

I'm glad that there are gamers who somehow enjoy contributing and being a part of SC, but my experience makes me feel like I subscribed to a car dealership where the main product is sales hype and more sales hype ad infinitum.

[@Tokyodb]

The worst thing about this kind of crunch isn’t the crunch. It’s knowing that the crunch is 1. An unnecessary act of desperation to meet an artificially-imposed deadline, and 2. The psychology that could lead managers to impose crunch will also prevent them from shifting the (again, artificially imposed) deadline. When the deadline won’t move (no matter what), the odds of success rapidly slip towards zero. Especially when they know they’re going to have more weeks or months of bug fixes after the launch, the crunch becomes “completely unnecessary abuse from morons who think they own you”. It’s a desperate, no-win scenario, and there’s a better chance of them releasing another Concord than a Marvel’s Spider-Man or Baldur’s Gate 3

[@Traumglanz]

I think the concurrent users of SC might be actually above Spiderman. They certainly seem already a few magnitudes above Concord. ;-)

[@willthornsbury2913]

If you didn't know this was a game, people would think it was the Fyre Festival all over again.

[@theobrominator]

I bought a base ship in 2016 and every year I login it's a different game. This year's conference, they revealed a ship warranty game mechanic so detailed you could roleplay as an claims adjuster 😂 They've been moving the goalpost every year in ways I just don't understand.

[@RorikH]

In three years they're going to announce that it will come with an immersive and detailed story written by George R. R. Martin right after he finishes Game of Thrones.

[@themaxbacon]

Almost nothing of what they been doing is not new stuff, it's just that SC has talked so many features and game loops over the years, that when they revive an old design pitch it's like hey surprisepikatchu didnt' see that coming, but it was already there. The main things that are the biggest shifts on the game design is pretty much crafting and base building.

[@Paisa231]

That's how it goes, when you don't read the monthly reports or check the roadmap xD but still totally legit, to check it once a year.

[@timon20061995]

At the end of day it’s still a demo. A game needs gameplay mechanics without it, it’s just eye candy. And sadly star citizen still don’t have any that connects, it’s just pieces everywhere

[@theobrominator]

@@themaxbacon Ahh ok. I was tuned in more 2016-2018 but fell off and forgot a bunch.

[@ricky_pigeon]

Imagine trying to have a normal life and a family with 6 or 7 work days a week. That's how you destroy people. A game where staff hate their job isn't going to be an optimized one or even a game they themselves want to play.

[@BufurdR]

The NDA is probably for the Squadron 42 story, for a game as open development of star citizen, its very hard to come by information about the story in the campaign. A ex employee spoiling the whole thing is something that Chris wants to avoid. Did they add on some other stuff to the NDA? Who knows, its an NDA. Also they are trying to avoid more lawsuits for exposing engine code / secrets.

[@minze202]

Well, workers not being able to announce their departure from the company does rather seem deliberate. It's not like they couldn't make a distinction what is part of the nda and what's not. Seeing as how normal it is for people to announce their departure from a company on twitter/X, it does rather make the impression that they're trying to avoid negative publicity with the nda, as opposed to only trying to protect their intellectual property.

[@TheLuceon]

The problem I am seeing with multiple comments regarding the NDA is that this NDA (as reported in the video) is only a part of the severance. Meaning it can't be forced (but is using severance as a hostage) and anyone that doesn't accept the severance and NDA could then leak whatever that NDA would cover. Severance should never be used as a tool to force someone to sign anything like this, if CIG wanted NDA's you negotiate it with the employment contract.

[@djhakase]

NDAs have been used to silence bullying, discrimination and harassment but typically those are used in individual settlements instead of office-spanning retrenchments like this. I suspect these NDAs are more about protecting commercial-sensitive information and trade secrets.

[@ericgoodman3510]

@@djhakase A NDA protecting commercial-sensitive information or trade secrets would and should have been signed at the start of employment not when you are letting someone go. So either they hired everyone and didn't make anyone sign a NDA at the beginning or the NDA has something very different in it and the only thing I can think of would be maliscious.

[@agonyaunt6325]

The SQ42 story was already leaked in 2014 or 2015. Its a fun read. Almost impossible to find now though, it was taken down. Not sure if anyone got an archive. Possible the Something Awful goons have a copy somewhere.

[@anthonystrickland7049]

The thing to always remember in relation to CIG is that nothing exists until it is live. Demos and cutscenes can't be trusted. We've seen demos in the past that haven't come to fruition. The reality of the situation is that they crunched because they have been claiming S42 is almost done and needed something to support it. They've been blaming it as a resource drain and part of why Star Citizen development plods so hard. The name of the game has been delaying tactics for years. Right now, the community is counting on two milestones to finally get what they've been fanboying on since day one. First, S42 will release so resources can get back to SC. Second, their "server meshing" system will hit live and actually bring stability. Even though meshing is in public test now, stability has been pretty much a wash. So, it's a lot of ifs, maybes, and whens in every conversation. This leads to absurdities like talk about SC 1.0 release when it's at least 4-8 years away, still isn't clearly defined, and assumes S42 makes its projected 2026 release.

[@eddiemarohl5789]

They crunch every year this year isn't special. This guy is just pumping drama into the mundane for clicks.

[@anthonystrickland7049]

@eddiemarohl5789 that isn't as good a defense of their practices you think it is.

[@raathh]

@@eddiemarohl5789 as if cruch is the only thing stated in the video lol

[@solidsnake5051]

At least the worm demo long ago finally came into the game so nice to see they didnt forsake it. Also squadron 42 has the mining spider ship so that seems to still be in the game.

[@TheAlison1456]

star citizen is the corporate equivalent of when an indie project is announced without a demo, without a deadline, and it's not a kickstarter funding, but continuous patreon-style funding. Then the game doesn't get finished, developers burn out, players burn out, it becomes vaporware... like "Jack & Casie", or many other such cases. 16:50 it looks outstanding because it's mostly cinematics.

[@SnowTerebi]

They did have a little demo during the Kickstarter campaign tho... And what's wrong with outstanding cinematics? If it looks dope it looks dope.

[@TheGallantDrake]

​@@SnowTerebicinematics are not gameplay. They're a terrible reason to back a game.

[@SnowTerebi]

@@TheGallantDrake I don't think most people backed because of the cinematics.

[@McCool117]

If they want to force people to work, free food isn't enough. I don't care if the pay isn't hourly, they need to provide overtime for that extended period of time.

[@artesslior1806]

I work in health care and we've been short handed and I've been working 6 days a week and sometimes 12 to 13 days straight. I've also in the past worked at a computer chip manufacturer that had us pull mandatory overtime. It's not limited to game development.

[@hajkie]

Healthcare is always understandable tho, overtime for healthcare happens all across the world.

[@yulfine1688]

@@hajkie yeah because they're purposely understaffed and controlled.. you should probably read into it you'll learn something.. but its not new to most industries a lot of them work overtime..

[@BoxFloat]

I once worked 15 days back to back as a casino Valet too. My options were: 1. "Get them covered" Which I couldn't do, everyone was kinda stretched. 2. Call out sick and risk write ups/termination 3. Quit I worked all 15 days. I will remember those 15 days forever because by the end of it I thought my body was going to fail from the exertion of all the running I had to do

[@Chr1s-fm6bi]

Your examples are not relevant to the deliberate overtime to create something to convince people the product they funded is further along than it really is.

[@JimTheFly]

I had to work 13 days straight for an aviation company because they apparently preferred to pay their staff overtime than hire new staff (but they also would suspend staff for an full day if they punched in late by 2 minutes, and had to get all overtime beyond 30 minutes signed off on by a supervisor. Spoiler: We almost always had to work overtime because jobs would take hours so we'd finish our job off while the incoming shift would be ready to start any incoming jobs). The idea of having to work ludicrous numbers of days and forced overtime for a job is most certainly an issue in many jobs all across the working world.

[@ShadowGJ]

Colonel-grade backer, 2012. At this point, Roberts is a different flavor of the Molyneux ice cream. Their business model doesn't consider it essential to launch a proper product, but simply raise money capitalizing on good will. If there's a game at the end of the tunnel, great, but the business is swindling money out of backers through the skeleton of a gameplay loop and fancy art and videos. A demo isn't even a demo in the videogame sense of the word if the playerbase can't interact with it. But they're crunching for that kind of thing because they have nothing else to keep people going with. Until relatively recently, an optimistic backer could just convince themselves this was a matter of patience. That ultimately we were talking about an inevitability, however many years it took. Now, I think there are enough signs hinting that Star Citizen may not come out, or that we'll get a fake "1.0" the moment RSI has to desperately hit the brakes (or swerve and crash into a tree) due to critical funds shortage. They're realizing good will and playerbase interest are finite resources, that they can't lead backers on until the end of time.

[@reeven1721]

I think the added paid holiday after the press was told by employees, literally within the same day as the first memo, is a good example of necessary checks and balances between management, employees and the press. Goes to show if you run into something appalling from your boss in *any* company, whistle blow earlier rather than later. And I say that even as a backer myself, who holds a mostly positive view, and absolutely zero ill will, towards CIG's management. Also, guys, the demo was AMAZING. You absolutely killed it. :)

[@richardscott6896]

Read the old Roberts interview about Strike Commander - he had teams working crunchy, long hours, long weeks for EIGHTEEN MONTHS.

[@Traumglanz]

Well, guess the team still has like 8 years before that kind of crunch starts ;-) But it certainly explains how Strike Commander managed to be like 2 years late with "just a 4 year" development time,

[@taylemgames2652]

Wing Commander is one of the first PC games I bought when I was a teen, along with Star Control 2, Ultima VII and Savage Empires. WC2 and 3, 4 and Privateer 1 and 2 all were my teenage years. I still own the boxes and floppies.

[@ShakingMyHead2024]

You and me both!

[@SebaztienHawke-ci5hm]

I think Star Citizen’s whales are all upper middle class and whatever is above. Some are working class, like interstate truck drivers, but they have low outgoings or are already established so a lot of their money is just “money for jam”. Others are day-traders, crypto types, military, commercial pilots. I know of an Org in SC where MANY of the members are in the highest tiers of “pledging”. I think the total money donated by the Org was something mindblowing…. Like multiple millions of dollars. To the extent that senior members are on first name terms with upper level CIG, they’ve all met before, and they get their opinions listened to. -But they are all really pissed off with where CIG is taking SC. I know that in general, you waive a lot of rights when pledging, but I think there is still a decent chance that “class action lawsuit” type stuff actually starts happening in the next year or two. Any triple A game would be expected to be delivered by now. There REALLY ARE original backers becoming too old to play who may never live to see a finished SC. Even Squadron 42 might be too far off. I’ve been told of early backers who have passed away. CIG need to rein in Features, condense and focus the game, and concentrate on getting something out. The big scope is a serious problem. Squadron 42 should have been out a few years ago.

[@RobidyBobidy1]

Last time I tried playing SC, it ran like sh*t and I couldn't complete the starting tutorial because the pick-up mechanic wasn't working.

[@scout360pyroz]

@@RobidyBobidy1 depending on when you came in its not surprising. servers melting under player loads tends to do that. and the biggest time for new players is what melts the servers.

[@dark_winter8238]

It's kinda ironic that the free flight events are the absolute worst times to play as the servers are overloaded. Not that they are amazingly otherwise, just much better.

[@michaelcorcoran8768]

​@@scout360pyrozwhich is kind of a joke given how long this game has been in development. can't we just all admit this is a big giant s*** show at this point. The fact that this game still has fans is laughable to me

[@BeSk9991]

I tried it in June after 3 years and it was amazing, ran fine, no gamebreaking bugs.

[@weisthor0815]

@@michaelcorcoran8768 i bet you will be one of the guys that will still buy sq42 when it is out

[@reidsb78]

My personal belief is that the day the game actually releases is when it starts dying. Because it will finally have to live up to their own hype and their own development time. I am not sure any game can, after that long.

[@wisnoskij]

0:10 is that Henry Caville?

[@ironhorse492]

Yes

[@ChromaticJester]

That it is

[@flogozgeik1898]

No, its Henry Cavill

[@damien4902]

@@wisnoskij himself

[@SpaceDad42]

@@wisnoskij Duh. You new?

[@darkowl9]

Larian Studios spent years honing their craft, releasing games that led to Baldur's Gate 3. CIG are going the opposite, spending decades to try and build their Baldur's Gate 3 but without any of the real lessons learned in shipping along the way.

[@PerikleZ87]

SQ42 was supposed to be that proof of concept, though.

[@MillenniumEarl014]

Led to the same latest 2 games they made DOS3.

[@pocketsizedweeb]

@@PerikleZ87 10 years for a proof of concept? God you guys got scammed.

[@SnowTerebi]

They did learn tho, if you care to look up the development progress. They had to re-design a bunch of backend systems because what they made initially didn't work out. They also learned a lot with those space ships they've made over the years and the newer ones they released now are miles better.

[@stoneprevious4294]

The last word in the sponsor read was cutoff by an Ad. Found it very funny 😂

[@DAGATHire]

Ublock Origin

[@rickyspanish4792]

ahhhh this cursed timeline lol

[@GhostOfSnuffles]

Squadron 42 was meant to be launched fully back in 2016, it has been "any day now" since. It's a scam.

[@IHeart16Bit]

The fact people continue to defend and give money to this... thing blows my mind. I wonder why. Sunken cost fallacy? Fanaticism? Lack of critical thinking?

[@Lem0nsquid]

@@IHeart16Bit it can be pretty entertaining for what it is currently. Definitely not worth 60$ but it can be cool

[@jasonfrost5025]

Humans tend to force identities onto themselves when they have nothing else. They latch onto people and things to fill voids. Religion, politics, a sports team, video games, w/e. All logic goes out the window.

[@NicolasSilvaVasault]

pretty much no alternative

[@Unsyncable223]

yeah some is in the comment, acting like cults. fucking scares me

[@blob22201]

I can understand giving them £50 for your dream game but they've got people dropping tens of thousands

[@InfernusdomniAZ]

12 years. 500+ million dollars and I dont personally know a single person who has backed or played it.

[@oddursigurdsson9637]

@@InfernusdomniAZ you must be young bro. I know a lot of people who did that but they are 30-50 years old now

[@radscorpion8]

i backed it but only with the basic package. No way in hell I'm adding any more money into that black hole :P

[@alkazarjkdghjd]

@@oddursigurdsson9637 Most of the player are old dude without kids or wife (or those that dont do their paternal duty), so yeah that's the age range.

[@chapman3713]

Zoom call from Chris Roberts Yacht: "Hello Team. What's happening? Umm..... I'm gonna need you to go ahead and come in tomorrow, so if you could be here around 9 that would be great. Mkay?........"

[@stevezpj]

The only reason Freelancer ever got finished was because Microsoft kicked Chris Roberts off the project.

[@Wulfereene]

While this game was in development a friend of mine married and got divorced. The money and time this project consumes is massive. The expectation has to be so high, I'm not sure if people will actually be happy with the result. But then i don't understand people buying 100s of dollars of virtual stuff years in advance.

[@balzarinemythus50]

I bought a single starter package for 45$ 10 years ago. That's all they get from me until they produce real results.

[@roetheboat1]

If ONLY it were just hundreds of dollars that people were spending. The Star Citizen store actually has a "Concierge" status/rank for players who have spent large amounts of money. From what I've heard/read, the higher your Concierge rank is the more access you have to a special store with in-game items that aren't available to non-Concierge players. -The first rank is the "High Admiral", which comes from spending at least $1,000 on purchases for the game. Meeting this basic Concierge level grants you prioritized customer service status, early access to buy tickets for stuff like Citizencon or any items that go on sale on the store, special in-game item appearances, etc. -After spending $2,500 you get upgraded to "Grand Admiral" and will get a special gold sniper rifle in-game. -At $5,000 you become a "Space Marshall" and get an in-game gold spacesuit. -At $10,000 you are a "Wing Commander". You also get the ability to buy the special Anvil F8C Lightning ship (AFTER Squadron 42 is released) and a unique paintjob for it. At $15,000 you are a "Praetorian". You can also buy the F8C Lightning Executive Edition ship (basically an upgraded version of the F8C from the previous rank), a gold paintjob for the ship, and some ship guns. The final rank is the "Legatus Navium". In order to get here, you need to have spent $25,000 on the game. Hitting that rank grants you the 600i Explorer ship.

[@crashmaster26]

People have paid for this game and literally died waiting for the game to come out.

[@eddiemarohl5789]

Yes same with gta6 and elderscrolls 6 games take time.

[@kellywilson137]

RIP TotalBiscuit.

[@Dumb-Comment]

At least your FIFA experience is available yearly 🤡

[@cerealmama3879]

​@@eddiemarohl5789 i can't count an infinite time, do you?

[@user-u1j6i]

ya, people get old, that's how it is. we plan like we will live forever.

[@rentosnyggt]

The yearly bamboozle returns, the "Days before" brothers were amateurs... To quote Carl Sagan, “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

[@Aeternum_Gaming]

never let chris roberts live down that he used to be a used car salesman. he took the same mentality, and became a ship salesman instead.

[@ChucksSEADnDEAD]

The best part? He just wanted to rent cars to movie stars and execs. His business was next to an airport alternate to LAX which celebrities often used to not draw attention.

[@chiprmonk8930]

@@ChucksSEADnDEAD Burbank?

[@TheRogueWolf]

Maybe if the time they'd spent on "bedsheet deformation physics" had been more wisely allocated, employees wouldn't have to be crunching to get something playable out.

[@eddiemarohl5789]

They always crunch before the convention. It's not abnormal at all and other studios do the same for theirs albeit for different things.

[@joshuacr]

But when there's normally crunch before a convention, they're potentially if not then in the immediate future, releasing a product. Not a attachment to some other persistent thing which keeps changing iteration all the time.

[@scribblescrabble3185]

lol, that bull again?

[@Thorned_Rose]

You know people are deluded when they start talking about Crunch like it's a normal, OK or good thing 🤦🏻‍♀

[@Billy-bc8pk]

@@Thorned_Rose Everyone crunches in every industry, it's only this young entitled generation who don't like working.

[@rockerrowler4258]

The management probably wants to impose an 8-day work week; they just haven’t found a way yet.

[@Henbot]

It's wild that you can literally refuse to pay severance unless people sign a NDA without that being illegal

[@flindude2681]

Its easy to believe rumors on something being wrong when you know something is wrong by the lack of a delivered product.

[@almostpilot378]

To be honest SQ42 feels a lot like COD Infinite Warfare from 8 years ago in terms of gameplay.

[@digidevil4]

This game will never release, it will never go beyond a tech demo because chris roberts will never stop adding features. Please stop giving them free advertising. Its a cult at this point.

[@cerealmama3879]

Two words: stockholm syndrome

[@The1rust]

You have to wonder how things would be different if they stuck to one thing and released it then worked on extras after the fact rather than spread out the development due to being buried by feature creep as well as reigning in Chris Roberts. It would at least give them credibility that they're able to deliver a product which can then create more confidence in the extra features they have planned.

[@agonyaunt6325]

Considering how they still haven't released the single player game 10 years after they said it was almost finished, just required some polish, speaks volumes.

[@RickOShay]

The thing about watching paint dry is that the excitement eventually wears off.

[@AstroTrain100]

I don't see how Star Citizen will survive long enough to see the finish line, they are burning through too much money and are still far away from completion. I truly believe they are in big trouble.

[@Doomguy-777]

They will blame the unfinished final release on the djooz.

[@zombiehampster1397]

I would like them to succeed, but as far as i can tell they are trying to breach the glass ceiling on top of a house of cards. They could do it, but I'm inclined to think not.

[@OniFeez]

Chris Roberts I think is ultimately a bit of an odd one. I remember back when they had roadmaps for development they had a whole section on 'realistic hair physics simulation.' In terms of shipping a product, that would surely be pretty low on the totem poll for a release build (for reference, I think this was for SQ42, but I think it was marked as cross domain, so it would be implemented into Star Citizen as well). I think I'm a bit like you Bellular, in that I want to be silenced as a critic by this game, but I think just how much sooner they could have been to market if they had actually concentrated on the actual essentials. Considering these games have now cost just shy of a billion dollars to develop, then I can't see how CIG will remain in business, even if they do ultimately develop a successful game. That's a helluvalot of money to recoup (if they are planning on generating a ROI at least). Most businesses might have a 2 year or even 5 year ROI plan that states 'in 5 years we expect to make money) but I have no idea if CIG honestly expects that. I'm sure the mom and dad investors who spent their money on space ships don't expect to have some sort of return to their investment, but I can't imagine that being true for their larger investors or those you invested via corporations.

[@solidsnake5051]

I bought ships, and no, you don't get your money back unless you sell your ships on the gray market. There are no investors, only backers who buy ingame items, some people only bought a 40$ ship and thats it, but some have bought the damn legatus package that has every single ship in the game for 48,000$. The game has had only as far as I know one private investor who put in 46,000,000$ into the game for 10% of profits of SQ42 I think. And that money supposedly is being saved to be used when they start marketing squadron 42 when its finished.

[@sebbosebbo9794]

That are questions most CIG^ys never ask or want even answers ... Its to late.... Bad bath & beyond...

[@bravepart]

Worth considering - in another 2 years of people playing modern and upcoming games, on engines like Unreal 5 - and this 10+ year old game engine is going to show its age in some absolutely staggering ways. If this does even launch, its optimizing and bug fixing is going to be literally colossal..

[@UmmerFarooq-wx4yo]

What unreal engine 5 game even 2 years from now even comes close to what Star Citizen has even now?

[@edenyan7237]

the moment I found out that their new 'suppose to be' cash call, a ship called starlancer, has pool table in middle of dinning room of the ship where eating all your space that you were hoping to put in your own decos, I know they are still the CIG we know about: CIG's developers don't play their games, or at least they don't understand from a player point of view how a player view their game. someone spend 250 bucks on a 80 meter long and 50 meter wild huge ship to have his/her own personal space in the universe, and what they got is a f@cking useless pool table in middle of the room. WHAT A STUPID DESIGN that is. and they wishing to sell this at price of 250 bucks to players that they have already milked dry for over 12 years. CIG has no hope at this point.

[@RN1441]

@9:30 When you're attributing your love of Freelancer to Roberts, you should know he was kicked out from Digital Anvil when microsoft took over. The game you played is what came out year(s) after Roberts was removed from the project for failure to focus/deliver.

[@rwentfordable]

You're right, people are still making this mistake.

[@yulfine1688]

@@rwentfordable he was kicked out beccuase he was goign over budget and pushing the limits of things... actually its the same reason bungie left.. massive overspending that microsoft expalined, activisino blizzard even said it was horrible and then sony said they were terrible with it..

[@DarthRevan2.0117]

don patrick says hi.

[@Toutvids]

yes and even though they stripped half of his vision away the game is largely regarded as the last great space game. It is the sole reason he is doing what he does today. He left gaming and went on to produce movies for a decade or so and now has come back to gaming. He is one of the OG game developers. Look at his resume and find another developer with anywhere near his accomplishments (it would actually be his brother, Erin Roberts). It is easy to dismiss him but in doing so you are reinforcing why today's gaming industry sucks as much as it does. No one makes anything new. Just a bunch of remakes and rehashes year after year.

[@Podokodo23]

WTF ? He was never "kicked" out. Roberts gave his letter of resignation the same day that MS bought them. MS later hired him to finish freelancer. You have the internet...use it instead of spreading BS like a lemming.

[@Dracounguis]

I have long said this game will never get done until Chris Roberts dies or is removed.

[@machonugget]

the greatest gaming scam ever created in history

[@user-u1j6i]

no

[@rickyspanish4792]

yes

[@dlscorp]

yes

[@sebbosebbo9794]

absolute....Bad bath & beyond scame is on the same level... But the Robertys are blinded through schaders...

[@plaidsnake2883]

Just a reminder that Cyberpunk 2077 was in the polishing phase for 4 years and it still came out held together with bubblegum and duct tape. This stage of development really matters and you can't fake it. This truly is the test of a company's developers. There is a real possibility that a team doesn't have the skill or the know-how to do something like this, let's just hope CIG does.

[@DAGATHire]

oh dear! whataboutism at its finest! How about this. 700 + million invested so far and its clear they are in financial trouble... How does that happen. Go and find a what about... to answer that question genius

[@peterjohnson9438]

Star Citizen has vastly overshot every single milestone they set for themselves and wasted a colossal amount of backer money on basically just faffing about. Much like CDPR with Cyberpunk they're now at a point where they will need to make good on all their promises and deliver nothing short of a revolutionary game. It looks good in trailers, I'll give them that, but if the jank starts showing once it releases, CIG is looking at a much worse backlash than CDPR got. After all, the money CDPR had was their own and that of their corporate backers. These things are usually settled in civil court if necessary, and most company-type backers will not care about anything except the financial return on investment. The only resource of their audience they wasted was their patience owing to a long hype train; the worst the audience could demand was a refund on their individual purchases. CIG is dealing directly with a horde of fans, some of whom have sunk enough money to buy a home with into Star Citizen. The fallout of a failed launch will be legendary, and may well hurt the concept of crowdfunding itself as a consequence.

[@plaidsnake2883]

@@DAGATHire huh? I don't understand what you're talking about

[@thumpertron]

@@DAGATHire That isn't whataboutism, it's an example of another game that took a long time to make and what can go wrong if corners are cut and development is rushed. The 700 million has built up a massive development studio from nothing with only 12 people, now they have offices in 4 countries and over 1000 devs working on 2 games and their sales increase year after year. You need to stop parroting what you read online and figure out things for yourself.

[@O-.-O]

Please don't compare successful games with the SC crap.

[@del132]

I lived with a CIG employee through the pandemic quarantine so I would overhear a bit of the day-to-day meetings. I was also a long-time backer (from 2016?), someone who saw the promise of a massive game unlike any other and sunk a considerable amount of money into a project I believed in and wanted to help. So, after seeing the absolutely astounding mismanagement, the bizarre placement of people like Tony Z in elevated leadership roles despite their crystal clear hinderance on the actual production of a retail product, the gross misappropriation of backer funds and the employee dissatisfaction, I sold off my account and haven't looked back. I hope one day all the backers get some semblance of the finished game they want and paid for, but that seems implausible at best. I wish nothing but the best to those current and former CIG employees that just want to make a stellar game but have to work under such seeming incompetence.

[@disky01]

The thing that bugs me about the Squadron 42 demo is that we've seen more than one similar demo before, polished for the technology of the time, with expectations that the company was near to releasing the game. There is always something new to do, there is always some new bit of tech to implement, there is always something to polish or tweak. I am of the opinion that CIG has not been interested in actually releasing either of their games. Their entire business model is based on hype and potential, both of which largely disappear upon delivering a product. They may now be shifting to a push for release, but by the time it comes out, they might find themselves in dire straits.

[@alaskan_bigfoot9090]

Im not one to say star citizen is a scam because i do believe the people making it have intentions of making the best space game we have seen. However I think its undeniable that Chris Roberts is a terrible person to run a project like this, and when you realize that a vast majority of their funds are crowdfunded and that no deadline has ever been met for this game yet they have a full spaceship interior themed office it really shows me where his priorities are for this. He wants to be the nerd king and live a life where he is the head guy for developing star citizen, he does not care how the money is spent or promises hes made, and because of that its not likely for us to see consistent progress on the game. 2 more years, again... pyro and meshing in 2016, taking base building away form ships that were sold with the mention of being able to build bases, charging for access to the ATLS and then saying it isnt a cash grab and needing to add it to the game to curb backer anger. Im glad I only spent 40 bucks on a starter pack to get into the PU but man id pull back that 40 dollars and use it elsewhere if I could, horribly managed company.

[@Will_Salcedo]

I'll say it for you, Star Citizen is a SCAM!

[@genericbattledroid6544]

@@Will_Salcedo How? At least, how could it be a scam for people who enjoy playing the game and consider it money well spent?

[@Will_Salcedo]

@@genericbattledroid6544 "Enjoy playing the game" What game? It doesn't exist, is not out yet. It's just a macrotransaction shop with a space sandbox to move around in. The only consistent thing CIG does is release ships regularly because it makes them millions. I'm a day one backer, and I'm ashamed to say it, but I got scammed is a hard pill to swallow, but there it is.

[@irishlostboy]

I backed about a decade ago also. Every time I pop in to the PTU I average about 1 day out of 5 where I can play for the evening without being forced to quit due to the endless bugs. Star citizen isn't a scam. It isn't a game. It is an ever evolving list of bugs.

[@cadmanfox]

I mean.. if you're playing the PTU what would you expect? Yeah live is buggy as well, but honestly it wasn't that bad last time I played

[@vast634]

It runs much more stable when the servers are not buisy, and there are only a few players on the same server.

[@WhosPawq]

@@vast634 Absolutely not. I rocked the asian server 4 week days in a row at 4-5-6 AM Asian time and I still had plenty of bugs / server error, yet have 30 ms lmao. Let's stop finding excuses to Star Citizen because we wish really hard this game would exist and be good. It's just bat shit. Having a game in this state after 12 years of dev and 700M$ of budget is close to being called a scam. They focus on super sharp detail while you still have 10 year old bugs when you get stuck in bed and can't play at all. It's a fucking joke.

[@TheGallantDrake]

Overscoped project syndrome

[@cadmanfox]

@@WhosPawq It's not about ping, the servers can sometimes literally run at a few ticks per second. There is a big difference

[@tspencer227]

You're doing a little bit of rewriting history here. Squadron 42 was the original pitch, and was what got the kickstarter 2012 funding going (myself included), with Star Citizen being the follow-on open world that was supposed to come later. Just as a point of clarification.

[@GeorgeNoiseless]

Are we about to reach the pyramid scheme threshold with Star Citizen, where they can't wrangle in any more marks?

[@dereekee]

Requiring leaving employees to sign NDAs is not even an uncommon occurrence at companies in the US. That is especially true for industries like software companies worried about leaked source code, and food companies worried about secret recipes. Not excusing all their other shit, but NDAs are common-use here.

[@JimTheFly]

All those descriptions of Chris Roberts, as a visionary who would rework things multiple times then just trash them later, and the kind of uncomfortable environment that he fostered with so little being done, then people being cut... just the whole set of descriptions of him just made me think of Vince McMahon from WWE. He couldn't leave well enough alone and just always had to be overly involved in everything.

[@timjohnson2533]

The grotesque, predatory monetization alone makes this a 'stay the hell away at all costs' company. It's literally the worst kind of gouging that I remember people being furious about, and now they sink thousands into this thing and pat them on the back for mismanagement. No thanks. Ever.

[@genericbattledroid6544]

I'm curious why you call it that.. You can pay $45 on the game and never pay again, the majority of ships you can buy in-game without that much work

[@flamebreaker7318]

How is it predatory they tell you you don’t own pledges upfront and that they are purely to help fund development and the ones that aren’t finished say concept ship and you get a loaner usually if the same purpose/size to use until it releases

[@eddiemarohl5789]

If you think this is predatory then you better not look at any mainstream games that pull more than this game made ever in a single year from microtransactions. Don't look at the average spent between sc and those games either you might see that those games scammed you blind.

[@user-u1j6i]

ya call of duty is worse and they claim to have the game fished.🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@siodhe]

You've left out details like people buying newly announced ships, that, if actually released, don't match the description anymore, often having the cool systems nerfed or pushed out to some different future ship announcement, so the player is just left holding a shadow of what was promised. Plus, most of the ships have bugs, many have systems that have never been implemented, and other such braindamage. The ship sales channel is corrupt.

[@BeardRubEnjoyer]

Lists big names. Skips Gary Oldman. Which was very kind to Gary.

[@dantealighieri8031]

You are a good narrator. You speak clearly and steadily... unlike most youtubers who over accentuate every single sentence... Bravo, good stuff.

[@T51B1]

CR's problem is he constantly spends developer hours on the wrong things and redoing work. I don't think he knows what 'good enough' means.

[@pikaskew]

Just needs to be noted, all those cool office amenities are not paid for with pledge dollars. Subscriptions pay for it. Subscription money is used exclusively for PR, video content, and just things that make the company cool. Don't fret over it, the pledge dollars 100% go into development. Subscription money goes towards fluff..think of it as a tip for awesome employees that work there (and the funds that pay for the great weekly videos)

[@TheRealBozz]

One of the greatest long cons in history continues...

[@DAGATHire]

i backed it back when squadron 42 and the other... scammy persistent crap was all a bundle... Im waiting for roberts to screw me out of squadron 42 also. Ive basically never played the PU. like maybe 3 hours total in 10 years! I have been waiting for S42 for a decade and im literally also waiting for roberts to update the ToS and screw me out of getting it. Unless that's already happened and i missed it

[@NickWebb-lc6ry]

Ever since I saw Game Preview pictures of Starcraft Ghost in magazines, the dream of a World of Starcraft has been in my head. In alot of ways Star Citizen nails what I was imagining. And after 20 years of WOW I am baffled Blizzard has not produced a World of Starcraft.