Star Citizen Analytics Project

[Motto]

So, people are talking about the latest financials and now The Agent said this:

things are falling apart and have been since the middle of last year. I've had six people ask me to go on record or reveal sources lately (I've declined). I'm sure they've talked to Bootcha and Beer and outside contractors and current/former employees and god knows who else.

I know you'd like to imagine that somehow, Chris and Sandi and Ben and Jared and Tony and Erin are really, really nice people, who care about the backers that gave them millions.

Here's the thing, and I'm trying not to be mean, just as real as possible: they don't give a gently caress about anything but money. The product that you'll get delivered in 3 weeks is an absolute travesty and that's going to be it. They'll continue the Live support for the game, promising additional content and increased player counts, but this is it; 3.0, in the state at which is arrives, is going to be Star Citizen. That's it.

When that happens, when the dreams are no longer just accessible in the mind but available to be played on the keyboard, that's when things are going to go into an absolute loving frenzy. Chris Roberts and everyone else in his little tower understand this. They 100% understand.

I'm sorry your dream space game is going to be an absolutely janky piece of poo poo with almost no content but what the players create for themselves. I really am. As a backer, I'd liked to have played a fun PC space game, too.

But this is it. This is what you're going to get. And it's just, it's just awful. It's really, really loving bad.

[Aya Reiko]

So, people are talking about the latest financials and now The Agent said this:

things are falling apart and have been since the middle of last year. I've had six people ask me to go on record or reveal sources lately (I've declined). I'm sure they've talked to Bootcha and Beer and outside contractors and current/former employees and god knows who else.

I know you'd like to imagine that somehow, Chris and Sandi and Ben and Jared and Tony and Erin are really, really nice people, who care about the backers that gave them millions.

Here's the thing, and I'm trying not to be mean, just as real as possible: they don't give a gently caress about anything but money. The product that you'll get delivered in 3 weeks is an absolute travesty and that's going to be it. They'll continue the Live support for the game, promising additional content and increased player counts, but this is it; 3.0, in the state at which is arrives, is going to be Star Citizen. That's it.

When that happens, when the dreams are no longer just accessible in the mind but available to be played on the keyboard, that's when things are going to go into an absolute loving frenzy. Chris Roberts and everyone else in his little tower understand this. They 100% understand.

I'm sorry your dream space game is going to be an absolutely janky piece of poo poo with almost no content but what the players create for themselves. I really am. As a backer, I'd liked to have played a fun PC space game, too.

But this is it. This is what you're going to get. And it's just, it's just awful. It's really, really loving bad.

If 3.0 is going to be 1.0 Final, it would explain the move to no more refunds.  (Aside from CiG is broke.)  And possibly the removal of certain packages (because they know they can't deliver).

At least there's ED.

[Motto]

I'm wondering where the 3 weeks is coming from in "The product that you'll get delivered in 3 weeks is an absolute travesty and that's going to be it.". What's up in 3 weeks? What does he know  :supaburn:

[Aya Reiko]

I'm wondering where the 3 weeks is coming from in "The product that you'll get delivered in 3 weeks is an absolute travesty and that's going to be it.". What's up in 3 weeks? What does he know  :supaburn:

Either A) Loans are coming due and they don't have the money. or B) CiG failed to meet certain milestones (The Agent mentioned these in June in ELE) which means investor funding goes away.

Or the investor cash is already gone (backer cash is long gone) and loans and bills are coming due.

[dsmart]

The 2016 filings are in, and explained in this post

Yeah. I am writing a blog about it. I have been busy with some stuff this week.

Twitter storm with my quick thoughts: https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/923510084046598145

[dsmart]

Citcon 2017 (pre-sale) starts out at a record-setting pace, then there's some weird $139,115 dip in the tracker -- which is not a temporary glitch because there is no compensating positive spike later. Things are now settling back to Citcon 2016 pre-sale levels.

[Meowz]

Citcon 2017 (pre-sale) starts out at a record-setting pace, then there's some weird $139,115 dip in the tracker -- which is not a temporary glitch because there is no compensating positive spike later. Things are now settling back to Citcon 2016 pre-sale levels.

Is this finally proof we need to show that the funding tracker is fake, or at least heavily padded?

[dsmart]

Is this finally proof we need to show that the funding tracker is fake, or at least heavily padded?

Inconclusive. But it's already known that it's inaccurate. Whether they are intentionally faking it or not, is not yet proven and is only information based on sources, with no way yet to verify it. We DO know that it doesn't take into account refunds; and that it does take into account monthly subs (which is why the daily is never $0).

[dsmart]

Citcon 2016 got two big surges from the RSI Polaris pre-sale followed by the general sale. Citcon 2017 has already seen the opening of the general sale but is not performing as well. It looks more likely to track around Citcon 2015's performance, so maybe $2.5M or so. That would leave CIG down about $1.5M-$2M year on year versus 2016.

[dsmart]

[dsmart]

Adding to our metrics analytics, a UK accounting Goon (shrach) is also in the mix. This from the latest accounting filing which I wrote about here.


I'm going to point out one error/mistake in the CIG accounts per day.

1.) Geography

In a consolidated set of accounts for a group of companies you eliminate intra-group transactions. This makes sense, because if you sell goods and services between two companies in a group you would just have matching revenue in one company and cost in the other. So in the CIG UK group, you can ignore the revenue in F42, this has an equal expense in CIG UK that you also ignore. You can then ignore the revenue in CIG UK, since this has an equal expense in RSI UK that you also ignore. Essentially you will just be left with the development costs in F42 and the revenue in RSI UK.

RSI UK has one customer. This is Roberts Space Industries, Corp based in the USA. We know that RSI UK invoices in dollars, because they have exchange losses/gains. We know they don't charge VAT, because they are issuing invoices in dollars to an American company and there is no VAT timing liability on the balance sheet. So we know that the CIG UK group has 100% of its turnover generated in the United States. The accounts however claim that 100% of turnover is attributable to the UK.



These disclosures are typically generated like this by default in an accounting package and it would be up to the accountant to make a manual adjustment to ensure it is correct. It only really affects the overall image of the company rather than any financial implications. If a UK group has 100% turnover in the UK it doesn't really merit any further thought. If a UK group has 100% turnover in the USA it would make it more obvious that delving deeper showed the entire corporation had one customer and that it was a related party with an almost identical name to one of the UK companies.

If you're curious why the 2015 comparative figures don't match, that will be a future error/mistake.

[dsmart]

[krylite]

I'm sorry your dream space game is going to be an absolutely janky piece of poo poo with almost no content but what the players create for themselves. I really am. As a backer, I'd liked to have played a fun PC space game, too.

But this is it. This is what you're going to get. And it's just, it's just awful. It's really, really loving bad. [/i]

If 3.0 is going to be 1.0 Final, it would explain the move to no more refunds.  (Aside from CiG is broke.)  And possibly the removal of certain packages (because they know they can't deliver).

At least there's ED.

I do hope it's over soon and that most will be done with SC 3.0 after 1 to 4 hours or whatever mvp it turns out to be into final obscurity. (but I would still welcome an "American Greed" episode reporting on the > 100 million wasted or siphoned RSI scandal) So those trolls on the ED forums who keep saying the release of 3.0 will snag "80%" of the playerbase away from ED killing it, can finally be proven wrong and go back to their holes.

[dsmart]

Update

Today's accounting error/mistake.

2.) Balance(s) brought forward.

Here I present extracts from three sets of accounts. Roberts Space Industries International 2015 and 2016 and also the Cloud Imperium Games UK Ltd 2016 (consolidated).

All three sets of accounts break down the balance due to Roberts Space Industries Corporation as at 31 December 2015. They all agree that the balance was £4,120,206 due and that costs charged in the period were £15,310,157. All three differ however in the amounts that were settled and that were brought forward from 2014.

At first glance, this would seem to be of little importance. The CIG 2016 group accounts are actually the same as the RSI 2016. While RSI show a bfwd balance of zero, the CIG set are a consolidated amount of zero and of negative £239,987. Ordinarily when preparing the 2016 accounts the 2015 comparatives would be generated automatically from the previous year. This would suggest that the RSI 2015 is the correct breakdown and both sets of 2016 accounts are wrong.



These related party transaction disclosures are usually edited manually, which to me suggests the accountant here is...perhaps not as attention to detail oriented as they could be. My personal opinion is that if you are charging a client some ~£48,000 for two years of accounts, you don't make basic errors like this. All the client gets to show for your work is 20 sheets of paper, stapled together. So you should always make sure all the sheets are stacked perfectly before and after stapling. You should take a similar level of scrutiny to what is actually printed on the paper.

There is actually a more serious reason this discrepancy and ones like it are annoying and there is a huge "mistake" that is "hidden" here, but I'll revisit this later.

[dsmart]

Today's accounting error/mistake

3.) Debits and Credits.

Knowing your debits from your credits may be hard for your first week but this should become pretty ingrained as part of the core of double-entry bookkeeping.

It's pretty simple. A credit in the profit and loss account is a "good" thing, it increases profit. The corresponding debit in your balance sheet is a "good" thing, it will represent an asset. So a debit value in your profit and loss account will be a "bad" thing that reduces your profit and the corresponding credit in your balance sheet is a "bad" thing that will represent a liability.

So if you make a foreign currency exchange gain, it should be apparent that it will be a "good" thing in your profit and loss account that increases your profit. Thus a credit balance.

So here, you can see the wording is correct in the 2015 RSI accounts. In 2016 someone just had to add "(gains)/." to the line where it says, "Exchange losses". Instead they added brackets around the word losses and then added in the gains/ without brackets. This is painful to see because of both how basic the error is and how they had to go out of their way to make the error. I included the line from the CIG UK Ltd 2016 (group) accounts just to show it is possible to get this correct.



This has no real numerical impact but this is building on the narrative about the quality of the preparation of the 2016 RSI accounts, which is some foreshadowing.