Star Citizen Citizenship

[dsmart]

There goes another whale ($3.3K).

I don't think they care about backers leaving, more than they care about the money they're giving out. The bottom line is that they don't have a choice in doing refunds. Like at all. And it doesn't matter if it's a $5K or $50 backer if it comes to lawsuits, because that's what class actions are for.

A skeptic would think that them giving refunds is a "good" thing. However, the fact is that they don't have a choice any longer.

In 2015, I spent quite a bit of money in legal fees going back and forth with them asking for things like refunds, schedules, financial accountability promised. So far, I got 2 out of 3 because outside of a lawsuit by backers, State or Fed officials, there is no scenario under which they will make those financials (which they promised) available to anyone.

As long as people are getting their money back when requested, financial accountability is left to those who are going to end up losing their money when this shit-show finally collapses. At least they won't say they didn't know it was coming.

As much as I'd like to see the game they promised be released, almost two years later since I started making noise back in July 2015, I simply don't see it happening. Anyone who thinks that at the end of they day, the $5K they paid for a $60 game is worth it, that's up to them. It's their money.

[nightfire]

At least they won't say they didn't know it was coming.

Actually, I'm confident that we'll see a whole new level of denial and crazy reasoning when the time comes.

In particular, we'll see people convinced that CR merely disappeared from the surface of the earth and let CIG go out of business to get rid of all the haters and refund seekers. He then went into hiding together with Sandi and a small group of trusted elite devs. From an undisclosed location in the cave areas of the Afghan mountains, they would actually continue to work on release 3.0 to fulfill their promises to their loyal backers. Occasional annual video tape messages would assure the public that they were still making steady progress.

Remember, you read it here first  :dance:

[dsmart]

Why i'm handing in my citizenship

[dsmart]

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

[Narrenbart]

https://www.reddit.com/r/DerekSmart/comments/5zun71/something_i_got_from_dereks_discord/
Are the shills now faking refunds to prove that goons fake refunds all the time? I don't get it ... or is a goon playing triple agent  :psyduck:

[dsmart]

https://www.reddit.com/r/DerekSmart/comments/5zun71/something_i_got_from_dereks_discord/
Are the shills now faking refunds to prove that goons fake refunds all the time? I don't get it ... or is a goon playing triple agent  :psyduck:

It's hilarious. Come to my Discord channel to see the False Flag op that's in full swing. Shitizens are as dumb as a bag of flour.

[dsmart]

Yet people will wonder why when this game ultimately fails, CIG and all its companies collapse, and someone goes to jail, some of us will be laughing our asses off.

So back on Feb 23rd, this retard DisturbedJim (James Brand) decided he was going to run a campaign to get GamersGate to pull LoD from their store. Pretty much the same op they tried - and failed - with Steam; yet still tried to take credit for something I I did (when I moved the game to CBT almost a year ago and disabled the Steam store).

He was bragging and taking credit for something he had nothing to do with.

Unknown to him, since we're building our own games portal, while limiting our games to Steam (we even updated our Digital River storefront to use only Steam codes), we were already transitioning out of GamersGate store - the last one (we pulled out of Direct2Drive and others months back) that was left.

So last week, we made a series of tweets

https://twitter.com/3000ad_games/status/847508991718690817

https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/847901032499884032

I guess GamersGate were getting inquiries, so today they tweeted this

https://twitter.com/GamersGate/status/849237056429666305

This is just another example of how, besides review bombing that they do of my games, these guys continue to engage in attacks & harassment because someone is writing bad things about Star Citizen.

UPDATE:

Yeah, I'm just as puzzled as you are. These people are deranged.

Yeah, as if a partner site is going to pull a game from a partner whose games they've had for decades.

In fact, the only reason LoD was even on there recently, is because we were able to generate CBT Steam keys for it; and which Valve approved. Previously only LOD Tactics was Steam key supported. All previous titles were SecuROM.

Valve won't allow devs to sell a game on an outside site, that's not sold on Steam. LoD is currently in CBT and not for sale on Steam. So we used our CBT key allotment for not only our own DR* store, but also on GG. That's why key generation requires approval from Steam.

Note the date (from 2016) of my response below? That's because LoD wasn't sold on Steam after 04/29/16; and we couldn't get approval for CBT keys to be sold on an outside site, when the game itself wasn't being sold on Steam. We generated CBT keys for them to do their limited time sales (which is what the email they sent 6 months later, was about). Of course we pulled the games as planned, after the sales was over.



None of this is relevant. What's relevant is, aside from the other times when we've busted them, this is more proof that they do in fact do this shit, review bomb etc, even as they deny it. And his original post on Reddit got over 45 upvotes last I checked.

[dsmart]

From the SA archives

Fat Shat Sings posted:
(2:57:30 is around the time Streetroller called James a pussy because he wasn't coming on teamspeak despite trolling the chat, he shows up just after that)

This stream was great. They invite James Brand on and he just mewls about Derek Smart nonstop. I'd love a transcript of Him Vs Streetroller.

Everytime anyone asked long time SC backer questions about the game he would go

"weeeellllll.....uhhh......ehhhh...........mmmm.......Line of Defense.......had bad steam ratings.....before....before........he commented on Star Citizen"
"Where is this going? Jim?"
"......uuhhh.......welllllllllllll.....Derek shouldn't be slinging mud..........."
"Nobody is talking about Derek Smart"

For anyone who wasn't around back then, this is the same concierge level whale that came on a podcast and got eviscerated after lying about his pledge amount.

He is probably Lazrin since nobody else shows this much obsession with Derek Smart. Dude has been raging for almost two years straight about Derek at this point.

[dsmart]

LOL!! Those guys over on /r/DS are seriously pissed that they can't control the narrative on SA and on FDev forums, like they can on Reddit.

[dsmart]

I started this over on Reddit.

In the past, the Grey Market (e.g. /r/Starcitizen_trades) was a flourishing enterprise. It has all but collapsed now.

Like most games with in-game items, the selling of game items was never something that CIG officially supported.

Why do I say "officially"? Because even though they turn a blind eye, they still profit from it because there are known people who buy items from CIG; only to sell them on the Grey market. It's the oldest gaming racket, that's always profitable for laundering money as I wrote in my recent blog.

The problem comes when you try to refund an item that's either a legit gift (e.g. from a friend) or something you bought off the Grey market.

CIG will not refund those items, as they are not obligated to do so.

The end result? CIG gets to keep the money either way.

The latest clear proof and evidence of this, just surfaced (1, 2, 3) today. Just like back when the infamous backer, Streetroller, decided to test my "CIG refund policy is bullshit!" theory with the State of CA, and which I wrote about here, this too is sure to cause some serious problems for CIG if someone took it all the way to the authorities.

So unless you intend on selling your Grey market items outside of CIG, don't for one minute think they are going to refund you.

EDIT: To be clear: (1) I have no problem with CIG not refunding items sold on the Grey market. However, they have an obligation to refund any items bought directly from them. Including gifted items transacted within their ecosystem (2) Refusing to refund an item bought as a gift by the gifter, is wrong - and illegal (3) Refusing to refund an item given to a giftee, is a legal Grey area (4) They are under no obligation to refund items bought on the Grey market - and they shouldn't refund them.

When they close a refunded account that has gifted items in it, they're literally confiscating the items. They should refund the items purchased through them, while leaving the gifted or Grey market items in the account. This is what's going to cause them problems (e.g. in US, Australia, UK) if someone went to the authorities.

[Ghostmaker]

When they close a refunded account that has gifted items in it, they're literally confiscating the items. They should refund the items purchased through them, while leaving the gifted or Grey market items in the account. This is what's going to cause them problems (e.g. in US, Australia, UK) if someone went to the authorities.

Is there any current legal precedent on digital sales transactions? I remember hearing somewhere that Steam added refund functionality to avoid issues in Australia.

[dsmart]

When they close a refunded account that has gifted items in it, they're literally confiscating the items. They should refund the items purchased through them, while leaving the gifted or Grey market items in the account. This is what's going to cause them problems (e.g. in US, Australia, UK) if someone went to the authorities.

Is there any current legal precedent on digital sales transactions? I remember hearing somewhere that Steam added refund functionality to avoid issues in Australia.

Yeah, that's what I was saying in my post above. They will run into issues here in the US, but most especially in UK and AUS where they don't mess around with stuff like this; as Valve and others have learned in the past.

[dsmart]

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen_refunds/comments/64lied/account_refund_cig_fucked_me/dg50gma/

Thx a lot to thedereksmart. I'm going to read your blog an check for the FTC and State DCBA links. I will now compile all the valuable information that has been given to me. From what I see today :
The entire gifting system was developed and is supported by CIG.
CIG has allowed trades on their own forum during a time. CIG changed the old TOS for a new one (circa June 2016) to specifically state that gifted items were not refundable. (I did my payments and received the gifts in 2015)
If CIG did not want /r/StarCitizen_Trades to exist CIG could, with one simple change to their website, they can stop the transfer of assets between accounts. So as much as you would like to call it a gray market and claim it is unofficial--the transfer of assets between accounts is 100% a function of CIG's development.
CIG still promotes trades an gift (link of their Valentine's Day sale of two ships as an example).
CIG sold the ship and know the account it's in and the account it came from. Unless there is a clear sign of criminal activity there is not legitimate reason for them to fully close an account with hundreds of dollars in assets on it. They need to either let a backer keep the account and all non-refundable assests or refund the full value of the account. The player should not be punished for the mess CIG has allowed via the grey market.
When they close a refunded account that has gifted items in it, they're literally confiscating the items. They should refund the items purchased through them, while leaving the gifted or Grey market items in the account.
Despite having a legal flaw / law to prevent them from reimbursing trade, we should not be naïf, it is obvious that we are faced with a very elaborate system of marketing to defraud money from backers.
All this already says a lot about what kind of people we are dealing with.
I will dig a little more before putting myself into action.

[dsmart]

Star Citizen refunds have been steadily ramping up; and some people continue to post their experiences/reasons

[dsmart]

So the latest Star Citizen thread on FDev has just been closed (UPDATE: It's back) because, well, guess why.

Like in the comments for this recent Ars article, Shitizens are everywhere. Like genetically altered harassment locusts.

Guys like GeraltMasterWitcher (his DisturbedJim83 Twitter account banner image is of Geralt of Rivia fer crissakes) aka  DisturbedJim* (James Brand* as per his Star Citizen game), all they do is create alts to go around harassing people.

Think I'm kidding? Take a look at his Reddit profile. 99% of what he posts, is about me.

Facebook? This was about me; just mere days ago.

Twitter? Go look and see.

Then when they find themselves on the ropes, they cry foul (my favorite is how they scream doxing when you link to social media they themselves share online), throw up deflection tactics etc.

This particular lunatic, has at least three alts - that we know of. And he tends to talk to himself back and forth between them.

That's precisely why it's best not to engage him and his ilk. At all.

And we know ALL of them. So it's very easy to spot them when they leave their /r/DS Reddit hate-sub corral.

e.g. Joe Blobber (who we think is Fandred1 - though he denies it, to much hilarity) is another one. His handiwork required lots of mod clean-up in this recent MassivelyOp article comments.

Latest PC Gamer article? Yup, they're there.

Latest GameSpot article? Like you have to ask.

These are the Usual Suspects in the Shitizen Army Against Dissent (SAAD) who are waging an Internet-wide war of attrition against any dissenting opinions on this project.

*
His RSI profile has his email publicly listed and it's literally [email protected] or whatever. Also his Disqus (which he uses to comment on all these different SC articles around the web) has his full name on it and is linked to his facebook.

Dec 20, 2015

http://www.informationredux.com/index.php/2015/12/19/the-star-citizen-community-is-souring-the-game/


Dec 21, 2015

http://www.informationredux.com/index.php/2015/12/19/the-star-citizen-community-is-souring-the-game/#comment-2419316118