No half-decent enterprise is going to sit on pile of cash unless it is required by nature of their business.
Oh really? So they don't have money reserves...
Oh well it seems the project will collapse this month then, as this month they won't make enough money to cover the minimum estimated operating cost of the company.
Who cares about SQ42? We're all waiting for SC to save pc gaming as Chris promised.
It already did a long time ago !
The legendary success of the crowdfunding campaign for SC did more to revitalise interest in developing PC-based games than any single dev project could.
Source please?
No other project has raised that much at all and crowdfunding interest is fading. People might actually say SC is causing crowdfunding and investing in PC games fatigue with its bloat in budget, bloat in features, bloat in cash shop items and bloat in deadlines not being met. Whatever floats your bloat I guess but I would be wary as an investor after seeing the SC story, the pressure on Roberts is unbearable and he can't humanly deliver everything expected or promised, not even if he was as talented as many people seem to think he is.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
No half-decent enterprise is going to sit on pile of cash unless it is required by nature of their business.
Oh really? So they don't have money reserves...
Oh well it seems the project will collapse this month then, as this month they won't make enough money to cover the minimum estimated operating cost of the company.
RIP us, everybody panic now!
A litany we hear for the last two years. Which was as untrue back then as it is now.
Oh noes .... money is running out !1!! DOOM! ((C) summer 2015)
No half-decent enterprise is going to sit on pile of cash unless it is required by nature of their business.
Ever wondered why all game studios(in fact any sw dev) build their core game first and itterate later on? With SC it is all other way round, they are building massive list of features without having core game play and mechanics first...
So indeed...."yeah"....
Correct @Gdemami no enterprise will "sit" on a pile of cash.
However @Sovrath is right that companies will also hold cash reserves to cover costs for "a period of time".
So the first question is:is the amount of unspent funds so high that they should be looking to "invest" it? And given the costs involved - 300+ staff, contractors, rents etc. I would be surprised if this was the case.
Even if there was however how would it be "invested"? Clearly it would have to be "very safe". Imagine the uproar! Now we know that "blocks of money" are given to the studios - always a good idea to give staff confidence there jobs are not going to vanish overnight - you are probably looking at money being held in a series of bank accounts. Current accounts - access right away; 1 month notice - higher interest; 3 month notice - higher interest again. Or it could be bonds or notes. It will be very, very safe however.
And another benefit of this is: one less thing for the management team to involve themselves in; someone in the Finance team can do that. They are not an investment company.
And the Finance team will have had an input into CR being able to say that finances will not stop SC. That this is not going the way of e.g. Hero's Song and so many others.
Chris Roberts: “First of all, we always have a decent amount of money in reserve, so if all support would collapse, we would not suddenly be incapacitated. We plan the scope of the development based on what arrives monthly by the people to support. I’m not worried, because even if no money came in, we would have sufficient funds to complete Squadron 42. The revenue from this could in-turn be used for the completion of Star Citizen.”
Does this quote mean that the completion of Star Citizen (the main game) now depends on continuous support from people and revenues generated from Squadron 42?
He says that if the people suddenly stopped contributing, he could still be able to finish Squadron 42 (not Star Citizen, Squadron 42). Completion of Star Citizen would then be dependent on the revenues generated from Squadron 42.
Consequently, if Squadron 42 does not generate budgeted revenues and financial contributions from people substantially decrease, Star Citizen will likely not be completed unless alternative sources of funding are secured?
Did he basically just admit that he does not have the money needed to complete Star Citizen?
So the first question is:is the amount of unspent funds so high that they should be looking to "invest" it? And given the costs involved - 300+ staff, contractors, rents etc. I would be surprised if this was the case.
The conclusion is so obvious, you see years like... 2013: 28M <<< 80 Employees + 2 Studios 2014: 32M <<< 230~ Employees + 3 Studios compare that to... 2016: 35M <<< 360 Employees + 4 Studios
The conclusion is easy... Obviously, they had more money than their operating cost on the early years; that is obviously the type of money that is saved to guarantee operations at a short/medium term.
So the first question is:is the amount of unspent funds so high that they should be looking to "invest" it? And given the costs involved - 300+ staff, contractors, rents etc. I would be surprised if this was the case.
The conclusion is so obvious, you see years like... 2013: 28M <<< 80 Employees 2014: 32M <<< 230~ Employees
And you just have to understand that back then the company was much smaller; obviously they had money over their operating cost, and that is what you can call the money reserve.
@MaxBacon I was talking about the current on-going costs. The same applies - of course - at any given stage in the project and funding cycle. They have to hold a cash reserve to cover "short term" costs. They could only look to invest funds that went beyond that time window. And in any event investments would be hyper-safe. And as a result not on the SC management radar - its part of the financial folks jobs (along with forex, hedging and other stuff they will do).
@MaxBacon I was talking about the current on-going costs.
Yeah, I was just seeing the whole picture as it's rather obvious that reserve must exist to ensure operations within that short / medium term; the crowdfund is ongoing but flippant so by no means they could have 100% dependency from it within sort-term.
Any business would plan ahead on this, if the future operating cost is not guaranteed, we'll just see things like layoffs as they scale the development to their income; what is the thing the fear mongering doomsday preachers always fail to understand.
Business don't just fly by the seat of their pants (good businesses that is) and they do try to have others fund projects.
So if I have 24 million in reserve but can get weekly funding by selling stuff or providing a service or billing a customer (more on that) then why would I touch the 24 million?
Companies that provide services will not touch their cash reserves but bill their customers in order to "pay the bills".
I know first hand that a company I worked for did that as well as a friend's company.
Now, this is dependent on that company actually having cash reserves.
No half-decent enterprise is going to sit on pile of cash unless it is required by nature of their business.
Ever wondered why all game studios(in fact any sw dev) build their core game first and itterate later on? With SC it is all other way round, they are building massive list of features without having core game play and mechanics first...
So indeed...."yeah"....
Well, these companies are holding cash so they don't pay taxes ...
I'm sure there's nothing to worry about in regards to the finances of the company when they can just sell more pictures of ships for thousands whenever they need cash.
First of all, we always have a decent amount of money in reserve, so if all support would collapse, we would not suddenly be incapacitated. We plan the scope of the development based on what arrives monthly by the people to support.
They plan the scope based on what arrives monthly, but they wouldn't suddenly be incapacitated if the money stopped coming in. Okay. How long would it take to be incapacitated? 3 months?
SC absolutely depends on people buying into the game every month. Without that, the development would have no doubt stalled long ago.
Business don't just fly by the seat of their pants (good businesses that is) and they do try to have others fund projects.
So if I have 24 million in reserve but can get weekly funding by selling stuff or providing a service or billing a customer (more on that) then why would I touch the 24 million?
Companies that provide services will not touch their cash reserves but bill their customers in order to "pay the bills".
I know first hand that a company I worked for did that as well as a friend's company.
Now, this is dependent on that company actually having cash reserves.
No half-decent enterprise is going to sit on pile of cash unless it is required by nature of their business.
Ever wondered why all game studios(in fact any sw dev) build their core game first and itterate later on? With SC it is all other way round, they are building massive list of features without having core game play and mechanics first...
So indeed...."yeah"....
[mod edit] Every half-decent business sits on a reserve if they can. It allows for flexibility and security. Nvidia recently used their cash reserves to buy back billions of their stock which brought their stock from 75 bucks to over 100... [mod edit]
I'm as critical of Star Citizen as any intelligent consumer should be, but to really think that they're out of money to make a single player space combat sim at this point is pretty ridiculous.
If it were true, then the very first thing that would signal an issue is layoffs, and layoffs would not go down quietly. Multiple developers would be dropping "inside story" bombs to gaming news outlets for extra cash.
Let's see, 38 studios had no layoffs until the massive one closing the company so your contention has no basis in fact.
Was it clearly disclosed in the kickstarter campaign that successful delivery of the product will actually be dependent on continuous funding from people and generation of specific amount of revenues from SQ42?
At least some high level business case is not a standard part of such campaign, is it. If not, then giving funds to a project through kickstarter really is a leap of faith.
The very fact that the delivery of the project objectives depends on certain streams of funding like SQ 42 sales and continuous support from people is not necessarily bad in itself if the planning is accurate and estimates are prudent, but any investor would like to have this information disclosed in advance of providing their investment.
If it was not disclosed, the backers could have believed that the amount of money pledged would be sufficient to deliver the project objectives without any further variables, such as commercial success of SQ 42, being involved.
No, most will seek secondary funding. Frontiers (Elite Dangerous) took out an IPO to raise $80 million to round out their funding for Elite Dangerous. So they would have found funding somewhere anyway, and still could, but for the time being it would appear they don't need to. So, if anything, there are still a ton of avenues they could explore if additional funding was required. So that's a positive, I suppose.
Chris Roberts: “First of all, we always have a decent amount of money in reserve, so if all support would collapse, we would not suddenly be incapacitated. We plan the scope of the development based on what arrives monthly by the people to support. I’m not worried, because even if no money came in, we would have sufficient funds to complete Squadron 42. The revenue from this could in-turn be used for the completion of Star Citizen.”
Does this quote mean that the completion of Star Citizen (the main game) now depends on continuous support from people and revenues generated from Squadron 42?
He says that if the people suddenly stopped contributing, he could still be able to finish Squadron 42 (not Star Citizen, Squadron 42). Completion of Star Citizen would then be dependent on the revenues generated from Squadron 42.
Consequently, if Squadron 42 does not generate budgeted revenues and financial contributions from people substantially decrease, Star Citizen will likely not be completed unless alternative sources of funding are secured?
Did he basically just admit that he does not have the money needed to complete Star Citizen?
Yes, Star Citizen with the current and hugely expanded scope.
He's saying that if the money stopped - he would need SQ42 profits to complete "the full" vision of Star Citizen.
However, he's said countless times before - that they're going to adjust both the scope and the manpower continously - so even IF the money stopped coming AND SQ42 profit didn't come along - Star Citizen would still be released, only with an adjusted scope.
Remember, they're developing the tech first - and most of the core technology is supposed to be in place by 3.0.
From that point on, the additional time for development will largely be about content - which will continue indefinitely.
So, in the WORST case scenario - you'll be seeing Star Citizen with fewer star systems and fewer ships.
They will THEN depend on the success of the full game - including microtransactions - to reach the promised content level.
The only possible scenario where Star Citizen isn't released in a playable form - is if the entire thing is a scam and CR/CIG are masterful and dedicated scam artists.
Now, that's not completely impossible - I just don't think there's any real evidence of that whatsoever.
Roberts is the perfect example of why these kickstarters always fail. This guy has a long history of going way over budget and way past deadlines. His career was built on over promising and not delivering. He is an "idea" guy, but sucks at things like meeting deadlines and managing. When you put someone like him in charge, you end up with lots of hopes and dreams, but no substance or results. All of this is just his vision and his grand ego. Now it's 2017 and he's now 3 years behind schedule and has already spent more money than most AAA games with no release date in sight. This will just drag on for as long as he can string people along until the money runs short. Then they release SQ42, call the project complete, and make a bunch of excuses for why the rest of the game never happened. Roberts will quietly fade away and let his brother or someone go down with the ship just like he did with his movie making career. The biggest impact SC will have on gaming is that people will be more careful about throwing money at people like this.
DKLond said: However, he's said countless times before - that they're going to adjust both the scope and the manpower continously - so even IF the money stopped coming AND SQ42 profit didn't come along - Star Citizen would still be released, only with an adjusted scope.
Yup it's all a matter of plan ahead, if there's too much pressure there's the need to cut both in staff and the game's scope to get a commercial release and worry about continuing development afterwards.
The point is the game is currently doing just fine, also shown by the company continuous growing on employee counts that they do have the money to spend, so shows the health of the crowdfunding that once again beaten the record of funding previously beaten on 2015.
This is why the doomsday preachers get so frustrated, they've been announcing the imminent collapse of the project for almost 2 years now "this time is for realz!".
Roberts is the perfect example of why these kickstarters always fail. This guy has a long history of going way over budget and way past deadlines. His career was built on over promising and not delivering. He is an "idea" guy, but sucks at things like meeting deadlines and managing. When you put someone like him in charge, you end up with lots of hopes and dreams, but no substance or results. All of this is just his vision and his grand ego. Now it's 2017 and he's now 3 years behind schedule and has already spent more money than most AAA games with no release date in sight. This will just drag on for as long as he can string people along until the money runs short. Then they release SQ42, call the project complete, and make a bunch of excuses for why the rest of the game never happened. Roberts will quietly fade away and let his brother or someone go down with the ship just like he did with his movie making career. The biggest impact SC will have on gaming is that people will be more careful about throwing money at people like this.
Always fail? Lol. That's funny. Oculus rift. What a fucking failure. SCAM
MaxBacon said: Oh really? So they don't have money reserves...
Oh well it seems the project will collapse this month then, as this month they won't make enough money to cover the minimum estimated operating cost of the company.
Roberts is the perfect example of why these kickstarters always fail. This guy has a long history of going way over budget and way past deadlines. His career was built on over promising and not delivering. He is an "idea" guy, but sucks at things like meeting deadlines and managing. When you put someone like him in charge, you end up with lots of hopes and dreams, but no substance or results. All of this is just his vision and his grand ego. Now it's 2017 and he's now 3 years behind schedule and has already spent more money than most AAA games with no release date in sight. This will just drag on for as long as he can string people along until the money runs short. Then they release SQ42, call the project complete, and make a bunch of excuses for why the rest of the game never happened. Roberts will quietly fade away and let his brother or someone go down with the ship just like he did with his movie making career. The biggest impact SC will have on gaming is that people will be more careful about throwing money at people like this.
Always fail? Lol. That's funny. Oculus rift. What a fucking failure. SCAM
And there are some highly successful crowdfunding video games out there - highly acclaimed and commercially successful. The companies that made these games are usually already working on their second and third project.
That said, that does not mean those of you who are interested in this game as something other than a train wreck should give the company a free pass every time a deadline is missed.
Lol.. you should look into who you're responding to. He's been preaching the SC gospel on numerous forums for years now
There's not a single time he's criticized CIG for anything.. other than some cliche "sure they could have done it better but look at all the lovely things they're doing!!"
Comments
Oh well it seems the project will collapse this month then, as this month they won't make enough money to cover the minimum estimated operating cost of the company.
RIP us, everybody panic now!
No other project has raised that much at all and crowdfunding interest is fading. People might actually say SC is causing crowdfunding and investing in PC games fatigue with its bloat in budget, bloat in features, bloat in cash shop items and bloat in deadlines not being met. Whatever floats your bloat I guess but I would be wary as an investor after seeing the SC story, the pressure on Roberts is unbearable and he can't humanly deliver everything expected or promised, not even if he was as talented as many people seem to think he is.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Oh noes .... money is running out !1!! DOOM!
((C) summer 2015)
Have fun
However @Sovrath is right that companies will also hold cash reserves to cover costs for "a period of time".
So the first question is:is the amount of unspent funds so high that they should be looking to "invest" it? And given the costs involved - 300+ staff, contractors, rents etc. I would be surprised if this was the case.
Even if there was however how would it be "invested"? Clearly it would have to be "very safe". Imagine the uproar! Now we know that "blocks of money" are given to the studios - always a good idea to give staff confidence there jobs are not going to vanish overnight - you are probably looking at money being held in a series of bank accounts. Current accounts - access right away; 1 month notice - higher interest; 3 month notice - higher interest again. Or it could be bonds or notes. It will be very, very safe however.
And another benefit of this is: one less thing for the management team to involve themselves in; someone in the Finance team can do that. They are not an investment company.
And the Finance team will have had an input into CR being able to say that finances will not stop SC. That this is not going the way of e.g. Hero's Song and so many others.
2013: 28M <<< 80 Employees + 2 Studios
2014: 32M <<< 230~ Employees + 3 Studios
compare that to...
2016: 35M <<< 360 Employees + 4 Studios
The conclusion is easy... Obviously, they had more money than their operating cost on the early years; that is obviously the type of money that is saved to guarantee operations at a short/medium term.
Any business would plan ahead on this, if the future operating cost is not guaranteed, we'll just see things like layoffs as they scale the development to their income; what is the thing the fear mongering doomsday preachers always fail to understand.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/14/news/tax-us-companies-offshore-cash/
But they are still "sitting on it" to be used if needed.
Also this has some detail of other companies with cash reserves
http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/21282/business/cash-reserves/
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
CIG seems to have their priorities right.
SC absolutely depends on people buying into the game every month. Without that, the development would have no doubt stalled long ago.
Go go Gadget concept art! Apparently it's the best whale bait ever lmaoooooo
No, most will seek secondary funding. Frontiers (Elite Dangerous) took out an IPO to raise $80 million to round out their funding for Elite Dangerous. So they would have found funding somewhere anyway, and still could, but for the time being it would appear they don't need to. So, if anything, there are still a ton of avenues they could explore if additional funding was required. So that's a positive, I suppose.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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He's saying that if the money stopped - he would need SQ42 profits to complete "the full" vision of Star Citizen.
However, he's said countless times before - that they're going to adjust both the scope and the manpower continously - so even IF the money stopped coming AND SQ42 profit didn't come along - Star Citizen would still be released, only with an adjusted scope.
Remember, they're developing the tech first - and most of the core technology is supposed to be in place by 3.0.
From that point on, the additional time for development will largely be about content - which will continue indefinitely.
So, in the WORST case scenario - you'll be seeing Star Citizen with fewer star systems and fewer ships.
They will THEN depend on the success of the full game - including microtransactions - to reach the promised content level.
The only possible scenario where Star Citizen isn't released in a playable form - is if the entire thing is a scam and CR/CIG are masterful and dedicated scam artists.
Now, that's not completely impossible - I just don't think there's any real evidence of that whatsoever.
No way it'll have less ships, they are the bread and butter of this showroom simulator.
The point is the game is currently doing just fine, also shown by the company continuous growing on employee counts that they do have the money to spend, so shows the health of the crowdfunding that once again beaten the record of funding previously beaten on 2015.
This is why the doomsday preachers get so frustrated, they've been announcing the imminent collapse of the project for almost 2 years now "this time is for realz!".
So much for "always fail".
Have fun
There's not a single time he's criticized CIG for anything.. other than some cliche "sure they could have done it better but look at all the lovely things they're doing!!"
..Cake..