However, I'm fairly sure we all know if you start talking about any large group a small % of them will be asshats. So lets not act like it is an aberration specific to CIG backers even though we all agree it is wrong.
Makes you wonder the type of people will be playing SC if it ever releases! I wouldn't want to be in that community.
The Goons are playing in EVE Online and are planning to move in force to Star Citizen. For some that means a rough ride. Especially for those that believe they can fly capital ships solo.
As a reminder: the Goons originated out of the somethingaweful.com community.
Have fun
Goons aren't the only ones coming. PL, TEST, Razor, NCdot, Spectre Fleet.... and myself included. Lots of EVE players will definitely try SC out. Then we'll all go back to our high skill point EVE characters and thirteen years worth of history and your carriers will be safe again.
I've just read the cease and desist letter from SCs co-founder. He has single handedly just destroyed any case SC might have should this go to court. What a monumental idiot.
Red just curious you say "The number of employees alone means they’ve burned through the vast majority of the money they’ve raised." as a fellow journalist and Not a backer who supports neither side and is trying to submit my own story I am asking how you come to this conclusion.
Is there something else or information you have that isn't mentioned in that statement that leads you to believed they have burned through their money other than less than 1% of their employees going on record claiming financial misdeeds?
I totally agree with regards to getting Squadron 42 out the door. I think that CR took the right steps in creating something modular, but something substantial needs to be published, even if just Act 1. Otherwise, why not? Are there serious dependency issues that simply cancel out any positives given for modular design? Who knows. S42 would be a big boon for them, though, if they can push it out in the next 6 months. At least give a release date for the module.
Actually, I don't think the modular design was a Chris-idea. I've heard from multiple folks that it originated with Eric Peterson.
Red in your article you say the following "The number of employees alone means they’ve burned through the vast majority of the money they’ve raised.". I have no axe to grind I am a fellow journalist and not an investor and not on either side. The rest of the article I was able to parse out the facts with one other exception that was opinion based. That being "Roberts is a poor leader." As a former platoon leader who has seen excellent platoon leaders utterly fail as company commanders though I see your point.
This one though I am having trouble with. How did you reach the conclusion that the number of employees they have indicates their financial health. Is is that you have other sources or you are looking at something I am not seeing. Less than 2% of employees that have been "identified" have mentioned financial woes an none of those in the accounting department and no one has complained of layoffs or not receiving paychecks. I know it's there what am I missing?
Red just curious you say "The number of employees alone means they’ve burned through the vast majority of the money they’ve raised." as a fellow journalist and Not a backer who supports neither side and is trying to submit my own story I am asking how you come to this conclusion.
Is there something else or information you have that isn't mentioned in that statement that leads you to believed they have burned through their money other than less than 1% of their employees going on record claiming financial misdeeds?
To answer that they would have to expose their source.. lol
Red just curious you say "The number of employees alone means they’ve burned through the vast majority of the money they’ve raised." as a fellow journalist and Not a backer who supports neither side and is trying to submit my own story I am asking how you come to this conclusion.
Is there something else or information you have that isn't mentioned in that statement that leads you to believed they have burned through their money other than less than 1% of their employees going on record claiming financial misdeeds?
Sorry, abandoned the internet for a while to spend some time with the wife.
No, they say they have about 300 employees. In the tech/game industry you can roughly calculate the average salary at $100k/man-year. I'm certain Santa Monica is significantly more than that, but I since I do most my business in Texas, I used our rates around here for the rough calculation.
That takes the current budget to about $30 million/year for manning. Then you can assume about a 10-20% G&A, so that takes it to a conservative $33-36 million/year. A VERY conservative. Overhead in Santa Monica is going to be significantly more. Also, you'll have software licensing, which is very expensive, and property costs (also a lot more in CA). They additionally have some big names doing voice acting in S42. That's going to be anywhere from $50k to nearing $1 mil, depending on how many lines there are and whether they did motion-capture with the actors. I think a rough guess of $45-50 million this year alone is probably a reasonable approximation.
They didn't have the voice acting last year, so that would have kept costs down a bit. They did have over 200 employees from what I understand, though. That puts last year's budget around $25-30 million. Then, however much they spent the year before that, which probably wasn't a lot. Most folks working the first year were founding members and most of the time was spent ramping up. The costs in 2013 probably weren't a lot, but even at $5 million, that gets it to about $75 million on the lower end. Then, you have all the travel to conventions, multiple scouting trips to Canada, UK, Germany, and I've been told even Paris for some reason, and multiple folks have told me that CR doesn't fly coach or alone, then those numbers go up a little there, as well.
So that's roughly how I did the math to figure they don't have much left. Just the employees from 2013 is going to be over $50 million of the budget, and since they've really cut back the number in Austin and grown the number in CA, probably more than that.
Red just curious you say "The number of employees alone means they’ve burned through the vast majority of the money they’ve raised." as a fellow journalist and Not a backer who supports neither side and is trying to submit my own story I am asking how you come to this conclusion.
Is there something else or information you have that isn't mentioned in that statement that leads you to believed they have burned through their money other than less than 1% of their employees going on record claiming financial misdeeds?
To answer that they would have to expose their source.. lol
Try Glassdoor.com and Salary.com to determine rough range of average salary, quoted numbers of employees, and then do the math. It helps if you have some experience in business and know about the other sorts of costs that go with it, but just the salaries can give you a rough idea of budget.
I totally agree with regards to getting Squadron 42 out the door. I think that CR took the right steps in creating something modular, but something substantial needs to be published, even if just Act 1. Otherwise, why not? Are there serious dependency issues that simply cancel out any positives given for modular design? Who knows. S42 would be a big boon for them, though, if they can push it out in the next 6 months. At least give a release date for the module.
Actually, I don't think the modular design was a Chris-idea. I've heard from multiple folks that it originated with Eric Peterson.
Red in your article you say the following "The number of employees alone means they’ve burned through the vast majority of the money they’ve raised.". I have no axe to grind I am a fellow journalist and not an investor and not on either side. The rest of the article I was able to parse out the facts with one other exception that was opinion based. That being "Roberts is a poor leader." As a former platoon leader who has seen excellent platoon leaders utterly fail as company commanders though I see your point.
This one though I am having trouble with. How did you reach the conclusion that the number of employees they have indicates their financial health. Is is that you have other sources or you are looking at something I am not seeing. Less than 2% of employees that have been "identified" have mentioned financial woes an none of those in the accounting department and no one has complained of layoffs or not receiving paychecks. I know it's there what am I missing?
No, I'd have to find it, but Roberts or someone was quoted as having over 300 employees on the project right now. I started there, and then just did the math.
But yeah, the leadership thing is mostly based on personal observations combined with comments from people around the project. You know how it is when you watch the behavior and hear the conversation coming from inside a platoon that's well led verses one that's poorly led. There's an air to Joes that have been empowered to execute their mission, and folks around CIG don't really have that.
But the biggest leadership failure has frankly been the response to criticism. Good leaders appreciate negative feedback and don't cast blame. He's blamed the negativity on disgruntled former employees, which granted may be the truth. Even if it is, a leader doesn't say that, though. You express appreciation for the feedback and demonstrate that you're looking internally to determine if these feelings are indicative of a larger issue. You say you'll address them immediately if it's found to be the case.
Leaders say "I made that mistake" and "they made that success." Chris has a tendency to get that backwards in my observation. Not always, but often enough to catch my eye.
That's the gist of my humint on the leadership subject. Obviously, I have my own various sources with more details, but since I'm not naming anyone, I don't feel it would be appropriate to quote anyone anomalously.
Red ... you may want to review your estimate. Have you taken into account the following information ?
Around 260 CIG employees total. 160 of them in UK, 30 ish in Germany (numbers quoted from recent videos, interviews and reports). That leaves 70 ish in the USA. You know Austin numbers well, so you should have a good idea about the remaining number in California.
Mocap and facial capture was done in UK. Actors did mocap + facial capture, including Gary Oldman and Gillian Anderson (it was shown in the video). I think Audio is also done mostly in UK.
Very detailed employee numbers were given in the Review video at the beginning of the presentation, showing that this 260 employee number is a quite recent level.
External contractor number seems to have gone down from 80ish to 50ish.
Average salaries for programmers are significantly lower in UK and Germany compared to the US. CIG devs have reported that salaries in Austin are comparatively high (SWTOR revival and its need for programmers was cited as one of the reasons, competition seems stiff, benefits like sports studio access was named). Thats Austin compared to California (outside Silicon Valley, of course).
CIG seems to enjoy a 10 % tax reduction in the UK. Saves money.
Have fun
PS: From yesterdays presentation and older sources:
Number of CIG employees
Mid 2012 5 Oct 2012 7 Nov 2012 8 Feb 2013 20 Jun 2013 32 Aug 2013 40 Oct 2013 52 Dec 2013 60 Feb 2014 93 Jun 2014 139 Aug 2014 156 Feb 2015 205 Aug 2015 260
Number of Star Citizens
Mid 2012 5 Oct 2012 60447 Nov 2012 101.711 Feb 2013 121.197 Jun 2013 134.000 Aug 2013 195.994 Oct 2013 248.109 Dec 2013 ? (typo here, CIG wrote 195.994 again, the AUG number) Feb 2014 358.248 Jun 2014 416.386 Aug 2014 595.335 Feb 2015 724.725 Aug 2015 929.976
Red ... you may want to review your estimate. Have you taken into account the following information ?
Around 260 CIG employees total. 160 of them in UK, 30 ish in Germany (numbers quoted from recent videos, interviews and reports). That leaves 70 ish in the USA. You know Austin numbers well, so you should have a good idea about the remaining number in California.
Mocap and facial capture was done in UK. Actors did mocap + facial capture, including Gary Oldman and Gillian Anderson (it was shown in the video). I think Audio is also done mostly in UK.
Very detailed employee numbers were given in the Review video at the beginning of the presentation, showing that this 260 employee number is a quite recent level.
External contractor number seems to have gone down from 80ish to 50ish.
Average salaries for programmers are significantly lower in UK and Germany compared to the US. CIG devs have reported that salaries in Austin are comparatively high (SWTOR revival and its need for programmers was cited as one of the reasons, competition seems stiff, benefits like sports studio access was named). Thats Austin compared to California (outside Silicon Valley, of course).
CIG seems to enjoy a 10 % tax reduction in the UK. Saves money.
Have fun
I think the tax break in the UK is actually 25%, from what I've been told. I don't do work over there, so no personal experience.
Austin rates may be higher for Austin, and that may be true because I know two other studios have had trouble filling slots, but it's for very specific developers. Though, I'm thinking it might have been the art-side, not the persistent world, which is what Austin's supposed to be in charge of.
Also, Austin high for Austin does not mean Austin high for California. CA is insane. That's why so many tech jobs have been leaving CA for TX. The taxes alone are less, but we also have cheaper people, cheaper property, and way cheaper power. Besides, there aren't many folks left working in Austin. Place was a ghost town last time I was over there.
But fair point. If you take 40 away, that's about $4-6 million less this year. Super roughly. That's not budgetary numbers, but if I were looking to do business with folks, that's the rough number I might use as a first cut to see if they're healthy. Doesn't mean anything other than a warning sign.
btw, @Erillion I'm not suggesting those numbers are proof of anything at all, just a super rough guestimate of baseline costs to date. It's just a really rough: "this is about how much they've spent," and for every employee I'm off in the rough calculation, there's a ton of other stuff that I'm not calculating. There's no telling what execs are being paid, which throws it off. We also don't know what their utilities costs or license costs are.
So The number is only there as a generic starting point for conversation. Sort of like when you say there are a million backers. We know there aren't a million backers because there are probably a lot of us who snagged two or more accounts, but it's a good number to use as a rough starting point if you wanted it in a conversation.
Well, according to the RSI website there are currently 765.773 paying accounts with one or more ships (=UEE Fleet Captains). I am sure that does not mean there are 765.773 genuine persons as some will have multiple accounts, but if I guess half a million persons that should not be too far off. 995.187 forum accounts have been created by ??? people.
When it comes to programmer salaries in California i can only listen to what two of my friends have to say. One is working for Google, the other for Intel. They tell my that the salaries around Silicon Valley are TOP, but you need it because prices are so high, especially for living. Salaries in Redmond, Washington (not California), near Seattle also seem to be high. Salaries in other parts of California are pretty average according to them, below average near universities. If we believe some of the older Glassdoor reviews of CIG (they seem to be legit to me, in contrast to an influx of more recent Glassdoor reviews full of rubbish like alien abduction etc.) the salaries paid by CIG for the normal, non manager employee is slightly below average.
I suspect that even for higher level execs the salary is not too high, which may have been the reason why some execs have left or have been "headhunted" by larger companies. I remember that CIG's first CFO was poached away by the creators of "World of Tanks" with an offer she could not refuse.
When it comes to license cost i can not say anything definite. But I can share with you a rumour that i heard from the German GameStar magazine. In 2014 they did an extended piece on CryTek and its big financial troubles. An unnamed group of White Knight investors seem to have helped CryTek in the middle of 2014 and Chris Roberts was said to have had a hand in that. A good deal on the CryEngine license and several CryTek key engineers were named as the reward for Chris Roberts. In 2015 the CIG Frankfurt Studio was founded, with some of the best CryEngine programmers from CryTek. And no hurt feelings whatsoever from CryTek. But as i said ... that is only a rumour. My point: I think they are not paying a lot of license fees.
Judging by what i have seen on pictures of their various studios they are not exactly renting high price office space at No.#1 locations. So i assume their overhead cost w.r.t. infrastructure is manageable.
When it comes to gaming events like GamesCon they clearly have not rented a lot of expensive booth space on the fairground itself. The CIG booth was comparatively small. They had their main events outside in nearby (presumably cheaper) location.
Or everyone's does. I just find it amusing that while all these people are busy running around this issue like mental patients watching their asylum burn, the people who are actually interested in this game are still giving CIG huge bunches of money. And again I doubt that people with thousands of dollars in disposable income to burn on a gamble to support their hobby are the kind of people who are uneducated buffoons.
There's just such a disparity between what the internet lynch mob is saying vs what the people with actual monetary support for SC are doing.
Most of these "wealthy" people are betting to sell limited ships on the grey market to make a profit. That is the main reason you see all these sales. Without the grey market the total amount raised would be a lot lower.
Do some research and see ho many packages and ships are up for sale. It's staggering.
People are greedy and if they think they can make easy money they will try.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling." - Michael Bitton Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about." - SEANMCAD
Or everyone's does. I just find it amusing that while all these people are busy running around this issue like mental patients watching their asylum burn, the people who are actually interested in this game are still giving CIG huge bunches of money. And again I doubt that people with thousands of dollars in disposable income to burn on a gamble to support their hobby are the kind of people who are uneducated buffoons.
There's just such a disparity between what the internet lynch mob is saying vs what the people with actual monetary support for SC are doing.
Most of these "wealthy" people are betting to sell limited ships on the grey market to make a profit. That is the main reason you see all these sales. Without the grey market the total amount raised would be a lot lower.
Do some research and see ho many packages and ships are up for sale. It's staggering.
People are greedy and if they think they can make easy money they will try.
Yes.... good old fashioned speculation. It causes grief in pretty much every facet of our lives.
When it comes to license cost i can not say anything definite. But I can share with you a rumour that i heard from the German GameStar magazine. In 2014 they did an extended piece on CryTek and its big financial troubles. An unnamed group of White Knight investors seem to have helped CryTek in the middle of 2014 and Chris Roberts was said to have had a hand in that. A good deal on the CryEngine license and several CryTek key engineers were named as the reward for Chris Roberts. In 2015 the CIG Frankfurt Studio was founded, with some of the best CryEngine programmers from CryTek. And no hurt feelings whatsoever from CryTek. But as i said ... that is only a rumour. My point: I think they are not paying a lot of license fees.
They might have gained some good CryTek engineers back in 2014 when CryTek was in trouble, but that wouldn't have affected the buyout price of the engine at all.
I personally think that people that pledge funds through crowdfunding should enjoy similar levels of accountability and protection that regular investors would.
Can you access companies tax returns in the USA? you can for a modest fee in the UK.
I personally think that people that pledge funds through crowdfunding should enjoy similar levels of accountability and protection that regular investors would.
Can you access companies tax returns in the USA? you can for a modest fee in the UK.
Yeah absolutely. I suspect that's not the case stateside. There's quite a lot of info available on the Companies House website. Of course if companies haven't filed you can't get the information but late filings are usually indicative of 'issues'.
Comments
Star Citizen – The Extinction Level Event
4/13/15 > ELE has been updated look for 16-04-13.
http://www.dereksmart.org/2016/04/star-citizen-the-ele/
Enjoy and know the truth always comes to light!
But still what ever he has said doesn't give people the right to be racist.
However, I'm fairly sure we all know if you start talking about any large group a small % of them will be asshats.
So lets not act like it is an aberration specific to CIG backers even though we all agree it is wrong.
No one who is invested really quits EVE. lol
Have fun
Hint
https://archive.is/NLgJm#selection-117.30-117.37
http://www.dereksmart.org/
No, they say they have about 300 employees. In the tech/game industry you can roughly calculate the average salary at $100k/man-year. I'm certain Santa Monica is significantly more than that, but I since I do most my business in Texas, I used our rates around here for the rough calculation.
That takes the current budget to about $30 million/year for manning. Then you can assume about a 10-20% G&A, so that takes it to a conservative $33-36 million/year. A VERY conservative. Overhead in Santa Monica is going to be significantly more. Also, you'll have software licensing, which is very expensive, and property costs (also a lot more in CA). They additionally have some big names doing voice acting in S42. That's going to be anywhere from $50k to nearing $1 mil, depending on how many lines there are and whether they did motion-capture with the actors. I think a rough guess of $45-50 million this year alone is probably a reasonable approximation.
They didn't have the voice acting last year, so that would have kept costs down a bit. They did have over 200 employees from what I understand, though. That puts last year's budget around $25-30 million. Then, however much they spent the year before that, which probably wasn't a lot. Most folks working the first year were founding members and most of the time was spent ramping up. The costs in 2013 probably weren't a lot, but even at $5 million, that gets it to about $75 million on the lower end. Then, you have all the travel to conventions, multiple scouting trips to Canada, UK, Germany, and I've been told even Paris for some reason, and multiple folks have told me that CR doesn't fly coach or alone, then those numbers go up a little there, as well.
So that's roughly how I did the math to figure they don't have much left. Just the employees from 2013 is going to be over $50 million of the budget, and since they've really cut back the number in Austin and grown the number in CA, probably more than that.
bzzzz wrong.
Try Glassdoor.com and Salary.com to determine rough range of average salary, quoted numbers of employees, and then do the math. It helps if you have some experience in business and know about the other sorts of costs that go with it, but just the salaries can give you a rough idea of budget.
But yeah, the leadership thing is mostly based on personal observations combined with comments from people around the project. You know how it is when you watch the behavior and hear the conversation coming from inside a platoon that's well led verses one that's poorly led. There's an air to Joes that have been empowered to execute their mission, and folks around CIG don't really have that.
But the biggest leadership failure has frankly been the response to criticism. Good leaders appreciate negative feedback and don't cast blame. He's blamed the negativity on disgruntled former employees, which granted may be the truth. Even if it is, a leader doesn't say that, though. You express appreciation for the feedback and demonstrate that you're looking internally to determine if these feelings are indicative of a larger issue. You say you'll address them immediately if it's found to be the case.
Leaders say "I made that mistake" and "they made that success." Chris has a tendency to get that backwards in my observation. Not always, but often enough to catch my eye.
That's the gist of my humint on the leadership subject. Obviously, I have my own various sources with more details, but since I'm not naming anyone, I don't feel it would be appropriate to quote anyone anomalously.
Around 260 CIG employees total. 160 of them in UK, 30 ish in Germany (numbers quoted from recent videos, interviews and reports). That leaves 70 ish in the USA. You know Austin numbers well, so you should have a good idea about the remaining number in California.
Mocap and facial capture was done in UK. Actors did mocap + facial capture, including Gary Oldman and Gillian Anderson (it was shown in the video). I think Audio is also done mostly in UK.
Very detailed employee numbers were given in the Review video at the beginning of the presentation, showing that this 260 employee number is a quite recent level.
External contractor number seems to have gone down from 80ish to 50ish.
Average salaries for programmers are significantly lower in UK and Germany compared to the US. CIG devs have reported that salaries in Austin are comparatively high (SWTOR revival and its need for programmers was cited as one of the reasons, competition seems stiff, benefits like sports studio access was named). Thats Austin compared to California (outside Silicon Valley, of course).
CIG seems to enjoy a 10 % tax reduction in the UK. Saves money.
Have fun
PS:
From yesterdays presentation and older sources:
Number of CIG employees
Mid 2012 5
Oct 2012 7
Nov 2012 8
Feb 2013 20
Jun 2013 32
Aug 2013 40
Oct 2013 52
Dec 2013 60
Feb 2014 93
Jun 2014 139
Aug 2014 156
Feb 2015 205
Aug 2015 260
Number of Star Citizens
Mid 2012 5
Oct 2012 60447
Nov 2012 101.711
Feb 2013 121.197
Jun 2013 134.000
Aug 2013 195.994
Oct 2013 248.109
Dec 2013 ? (typo here, CIG wrote 195.994 again, the AUG number)
Feb 2014 358.248
Jun 2014 416.386
Aug 2014 595.335
Feb 2015 724.725
Aug 2015 929.976
Austin rates may be higher for Austin, and that may be true because I know two other studios have had trouble filling slots, but it's for very specific developers. Though, I'm thinking it might have been the art-side, not the persistent world, which is what Austin's supposed to be in charge of.
Also, Austin high for Austin does not mean Austin high for California. CA is insane. That's why so many tech jobs have been leaving CA for TX. The taxes alone are less, but we also have cheaper people, cheaper property, and way cheaper power. Besides, there aren't many folks left working in Austin. Place was a ghost town last time I was over there.
But fair point. If you take 40 away, that's about $4-6 million less this year. Super roughly. That's not budgetary numbers, but if I were looking to do business with folks, that's the rough number I might use as a first cut to see if they're healthy. Doesn't mean anything other than a warning sign.
So The number is only there as a generic starting point for conversation. Sort of like when you say there are a million backers. We know there aren't a million backers because there are probably a lot of us who snagged two or more accounts, but it's a good number to use as a rough starting point if you wanted it in a conversation.
Food for thought:
Well, according to the RSI website there are currently 765.773 paying accounts with one or more ships (=UEE Fleet Captains). I am sure that does not mean there are 765.773 genuine persons as some will have multiple accounts, but if I guess half a million persons that should not be too far off. 995.187 forum accounts have been created by ??? people.
When it comes to programmer salaries in California i can only listen to what two of my friends have to say. One is working for Google, the other for Intel. They tell my that the salaries around Silicon Valley are TOP, but you need it because prices are so high, especially for living. Salaries in Redmond, Washington (not California), near Seattle also seem to be high. Salaries in other parts of California are pretty average according to them, below average near universities. If we believe some of the older Glassdoor reviews of CIG (they seem to be legit to me, in contrast to an influx of more recent Glassdoor reviews full of rubbish like alien abduction etc.) the salaries paid by CIG for the normal, non manager employee is slightly below average.
I suspect that even for higher level execs the salary is not too high, which may have been the reason why some execs have left or have been "headhunted" by larger companies. I remember that CIG's first CFO was poached away by the creators of "World of Tanks" with an offer she could not refuse.
When it comes to license cost i can not say anything definite. But I can share with you a rumour that i heard from the German GameStar magazine. In 2014 they did an extended piece on CryTek and its big financial troubles. An unnamed group of White Knight investors seem to have helped CryTek in the middle of 2014 and Chris Roberts was said to have had a hand in that. A good deal on the CryEngine license and several CryTek key engineers were named as the reward for Chris Roberts. In 2015 the CIG Frankfurt Studio was founded, with some of the best CryEngine programmers from CryTek. And no hurt feelings whatsoever from CryTek.
But as i said ... that is only a rumour. My point: I think they are not paying a lot of license fees.
Judging by what i have seen on pictures of their various studios they are not exactly renting high price office space at No.#1 locations. So i assume their overhead cost w.r.t. infrastructure is manageable.
When it comes to gaming events like GamesCon they clearly have not rented a lot of expensive booth space on the fairground itself. The CIG booth was comparatively small. They had their main events outside in nearby (presumably cheaper) location.
Have fun
Do some research and see ho many packages and ships are up for sale. It's staggering.
People are greedy and if they think they can make easy money they will try.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling."
- Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about."
- SEANMCAD
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Yes.... good old fashioned speculation. It causes grief in pretty much every facet of our lives.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
According to Erin Roberts they did "an outright buyout of the engine" already in 2013.
Source: https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/2895381/#Comment_2895381
They might have gained some good CryTek engineers back in 2014 when CryTek was in trouble, but that wouldn't have affected the buyout price of the engine at all.
Thank you for that link. So they outright bought it, completely re-worked it and pay no license fees.
Have fun
Not that it matters a whole lot. It takes cash to build a game, and I wouldn't blast them for saying they've spent money on that stuff.
Can you access companies tax returns in the USA? you can for a modest fee in the UK.
Honest question:
Even private, limited, companies?
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee