Star Citizen - The E.L.E.

[dsmart]

Since more and more Star Citizen devs are exiting, we're going to start seeing more and more Glassdoor posts like this.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Cloud-Imperium-Games-RVW17730194.htm

[Ghostmaker]

And there is no fucking way that they're dumb enough to use company money, especially not to that amount, to fund external activities that have no bearing on the company's goal of building two games for which they were funded.

Really? I mean, you make a good point -- let's not clutter up the signal with obvious bullshit -- but let's be honest here, there's a reason the most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.

I concede the point. 

But seriously, given the amount of money involved, and the massive about of aggravation they're going to get when this eventually collapses, doing anything blatantly obvious and stupid like that, is just like wearing a t-shirt with "I should be in jail" on the front and back. It's bad enough that you can't retroactively roll back malfeasance, but to make it easy and obvious is the height of stupidity. And that's precisely how some White collar criminals end up in court, then in most cases, jail.

It's arrogance, too. Which I admit surprises me. You would THINK, after the collapse of Digital Anvil, Roberts would've gotten some humility knocked into him. There's nothing wrong with getting back up after getting knocked down, and let's face it, we all love a comeback story.

But it's like he's so narcissistic it's pathological, and I can't help but wonder if it's enabled by some of his friends/family. The rabid SC fanbase is sure helping prop it up.

[Aya Reiko]

And there is no fucking way that they're dumb enough to use company money, especially not to that amount, to fund external activities that have no bearing on the company's goal of building two games for which they were funded.

Really? I mean, you make a good point -- let's not clutter up the signal with obvious bullshit -- but let's be honest here, there's a reason the most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.

I concede the point. 

But seriously, given the amount of money involved, and the massive about of aggravation they're going to get when this eventually collapses, doing anything blatantly obvious and stupid like that, is just like wearing a t-shirt with "I should be in jail" on the front and back. It's bad enough that you can't retroactively roll back malfeasance, but to make it easy and obvious is the height of stupidity. And that's precisely how some White collar criminals end up in court, then in most cases, jail.

It's arrogance, too. Which I admit surprises me. You would THINK, after the collapse of Digital Anvil, Roberts would've gotten some humility knocked into him. There's nothing wrong with getting back up after getting knocked down, and let's face it, we all love a comeback story.

But it's like he's so narcissistic it's pathological, and I can't help but wonder if it's enabled by some of his friends/family. The rabid SC fanbase is sure helping prop it up.

Oh, of course they're enabling him, all the while swindling him and the company for millions.

[Kyrt]

Since more and more Star Citizen devs are exiting, we're going to start seeing more and more Glassdoor posts like this.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Cloud-Imperium-Games-RVW17730194.htm

I've not worked in software for years....yet I could have written that simply from what I've read and seen about the project.

I'm sure that says something...not sure what.

[nightfire]

Wow. I think CIG just found the magic bullet needed to kill all those pesky EU refundians...

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen_refunds/comments/7bn9iz/update_of_small_claims_court_issue_cig_disputing/

[Motto]

[N0mad]

New ATV is out early. SPOILER ALERT - it's really dull. There aren't even any nice charts to post pictures of :(  Suffice it to say:

   :siren: :siren: :siren: :siren: DEREK WAS RIGHT :siren: :siren: :siren: :siren:
Don't be expecting a PTU release any time soon.

[dsmart]

New ATV is out early. SPOILER ALERT - it's really dull. There aren't even any nice charts to post pictures of :(  Suffice it to say:

   :siren: :siren: :siren: :siren: DEREK WAS RIGHT :siren: :siren: :siren: :siren:
Don't be expecting a PTU release any time soon.

It's because of all the new bugs, they didn't want to do a chart so backers won't freak out etc. That's for tomorrow when the new schedule report it out.  :supaburn:

[krylite]

Since more and more Star Citizen devs are exiting, we're going to start seeing more and more Glassdoor posts like this.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Cloud-Imperium-Games-RVW17730194.htm

Wow, reading that just confirms most all you've been saying about SC all this time. i.e. "Derek Smart was right!"
If a senior developer and everyone else is being paid below average wages, where the heck is the $160 million
going into? the outsourced slick trailer ads?

* Collectively we ended up grinding harder and harder, losing increasingly more of our lives, over smaller and smaller irrelevant things that the CEO dreamed up.

All the feature creep that has been dragging out this ponzi. Even shamelessly adopting ED aspects, such as the Q800 ~ icutter. Sounds like CIG is run like a family dictatorship small business. The recent 'ATV' shows the devs and staff at the meeting table looking worn and miserable.

[FredBloggs]

Wow, I'm getting impatient, this E.L.E. is dragging on forever, I would have expected the end by now. Instead it will be a slow and tortorous death.  :ohdear:

[Star Chip]

Wow, I'm getting impatient, this E.L.E. is dragging on forever, I would have expected the end by now. Instead it will be a slow and tortorous death.  :ohdear:

CR need extra time to squeeze backer's last penny, you cant do that with things go down, boiling frog that is.

[Flashwit]

Since more and more Star Citizen devs are exiting, we're going to start seeing more and more Glassdoor posts like this.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Cloud-Imperium-Games-RVW17730194.htm

Wow, reading that just confirms most all you've been saying about SC all this time. i.e. "Derek Smart was right!"
If a senior developer and everyone else is being paid below average wages, where the heck is the $160 million
going into? the outsourced slick trailer ads?

* Collectively we ended up grinding harder and harder, losing increasingly more of our lives, over smaller and smaller irrelevant things that the CEO dreamed up.

All the feature creep that has been dragging out this ponzi. Even shamelessly adopting ED aspects, such as the Q800 ~ icutter. Sounds like CIG is run like a family dictatorship small business. The recent 'ATV' shows the devs and staff at the meeting table looking worn and miserable.

To be fair, even an underpaid senior developer is still very expensive. I don't know by how much they're underpaying but say a role is getting 100k instead of market rate of 120k. Once you factor in taxes, benefits, space and equipment costs that person is probably at more like a 150k+ cost to the business. And also, this is Star Citizen. It doesn't help much to save 20k per year on a couple hundred employees when your project is running 3+ years behind schedule.

[nightfire]

Once you factor in taxes, benefits, space and equipment costs that person is probably at more like a 150k+ cost to the business.

But then again, that person is also an asset to the business. Let's not forget: these are the people who make spaceship toilets work! Life as a backer would be quite miserable without them for that reason alone. It's important to throw more money at the game so that they can hire more spaceship toilet people, janitor implementation devs and game engineers who can get airlocks and doors to close without jamming or leaking :D

[dsmart]

Wow, I'm getting impatient, this E.L.E. is dragging on forever, I would have expected the end by now. Instead it will be a slow and tortorous death.  :ohdear:

It would have been over by now if a whales weren't giving them money. But don't worry though, it's here already.

[dsmart]

This was a very good SA post about my "maintenance mode" comment which I covered in my new article yesterday.

I'm not defending Derek, I'm the first one to make fun of him, but I've talked about this in the past and I think what he said was accurate at the time.

:siren::siren:Now I will channel Derek:siren::siren:

This is all rambling speculation though about what went on behind the scenes. I've formed my opinion by passively watching this shitshow for a few years now and am taking into account things like CIGs own marketing, their tweets, their ATVs and interviews. Also things like the leaks and this threads analysis at every decision and action they take.

My theory is this:

Due to CIG constantly promising things and being unable to deliver I think Chris Roberts around December 2015 was certain of a early to mid  two year late 2016 release for Squadron 42 which is where the real money is at. Since he has talked in interviews about expecting ridiculously impossible numbers of sales for it to the tune of a quarter billion dollars it's reasonable to make that the focus of your company if you are a big enough lunatic to think it's going to be that profitable.

Leading up to that was a nonstop barrage of videos about motion capture for Squadron 42 and the actors. Slides about the amazing script. Leaks about all the work going into it and how much work there was actually to do on Squadron 42. All Chris ever wanted to talk about was Squadron 42. Answer the call.

So in early 2016 we did get a few new patches to the PU. These patches started getting less and less substantial from 2.1. Eventually they were slight modifications anyone that has ever modded a game would instantly recognize. Adjusting values of things.

Then the maintenance mode thing comes up here in March. Not necessarily whatever the official terminology for a "maintenance mode" on a piece of software would be but that the PU was only being worked on to keep up appearances. All focus and resources were going to Squadron 42 but the PU is what cultists have paid for.

As 2016 started progressing you started having longer and longer time for even more and more insignificant patches. After about 6-7 months the maintenance mode and reduced consideration for the PU was proven to be exactly correct since it started taking multiple months to get slight tweaks to flight speed or camera movement. 2.5 in August was virtually identical to 2.0 from December of the previous year. I'm sure cultists would point at the hilarious patch notes or compile huge lists of how adjusting the ammunition in a gun or the top speed of something totally disproves my point but if you aren't a crazy idiot arguing for a belief you can see the actual changes from 2.0 -> 2.5 which were the definition of treading water or "maintenance mode."

Meanwhile you still saw Mark Hamill and Squadron 42 actors tweeting about their still ongoing motion capture up until July of that year.

Gamescom comes around and you have an obvious and proven fake scripted demo in cryeditor.exe to make even more money. Money flows in. Citcon rolls around and in addition to another obvious and proven fake scripted demo in cryeditor.exe you have Squadron 42's appearance cancelled for unexplained reasons. The Leaks had been progressively mentioning a reduced scope in Squadron 42 which was to try and get out "The Prelude." A smaller and cut up version of Squadron 42s content to try and sell it.

After that the holiday sale rolls around and CIG manages to shit out Star Marine.

Once 2017 hit Squadron 42 isn't being talked about much anymore. Work probably progressed on it or The Prelude until early this year and at some point the idea had to have been abandoned. I tend to think that all the leaks about how ridiculous the animation data was were correct. Especially when you consider the slides putting this at 10x the speaking roles of actual studio releases of animated films. Chris Roberts had wanted to make a movie and had generated 90% footage and 10% gameplay with most of his budget and the footage was largely worthless due to the work required to turn tens of millions of dollars of motion capture data into anything resembling a game with a narrative that he could sell for $60.

Leaks turned to Squadron 42 being combined with the persistent universe. All outward focus from CIG switches to 3.0 and delivering something that resembles the fake demos they sold last year.

I think they have shifted along this path

- Planning to develop both games simultaneously with 4 studios
(time passes)
- Already past their release date with tens of millions in Squadron 42, complete focus on finish it (Maintenance Mode PU)
(time passes)
- Unable to deal with the hilarious clusterfuck Chris Roberts filmed, scope is reduced and a smaller step will be taken toward Squadron 42, further forgetting the PU (Prelude, A year without patches)
(time passes)
- Development of anything to do with petabytes of mocap footage becomes so expensive that the forgotten PU is now front and center to make money (Fake Demos late 2016)
(a lot of time passes)
- Once the main 2017 sales start getting closer CIG starts producing more fake demos but is now apparently struggling to develop something that actually resembles them. (3.0) Work has obviously just started on it sometime recently but they are running with it 100% and are no longer talking about Squadron 42. Due to almost bankrupting the company on Squadron 42 for years their last resort is a broken tech demo they had largely been ignoring. It's all they have and that leads us to now where they are frantically trying to cram more features into an ancient engine they should have never used in the first place.

It's a shame that we have to speculate so much about what is actually happening at THE WORLD'S MOST OPEN GAME DEVELOPMENT STUDIO. I'm pretty confident about that chain of events and if I was as crazy as Derek i would probably look up all the supporting tweets and information for each step but I don't care enough to spend an eternity digging through endless amounts of bullshit to highlight my points.