What this ultimately means for CIG is explained in the report, which admits the company does not have the cash to pay off investors at the moment:
“Another reason for not recognizing is due to the nature of the put terms, as if exercised the put proceeds would be payable out of available cash in excess of that required to effectively operate the business and thus that liability would remain undischarged until such available cash became available.”
In other words, assuming pre-orders of Squadron 42are announced during this year’s CitizenCon, and assuming that the game is priced at $70 a copy, CIG would have to sell roughly four million copies in order to successfully pay off the investors.
I mean, 4 million copies is definitely doable; No Man’s Sky, for example, has sold over twice that much since its release (edit: although I’m sure only a minority of those sales were at full price). All they need is a game to sell.
Yeah, but that site is the only place Google News could find it. I guess the blog mentioned there has a copy of the actual report so my suspicion my have been misplaced.
CIG has made millions selling non-existent spacecraft. I think they could definitely clear millions of sight-unseen preorders from the suckers committed.
Interestingly, somebody in the comments section says a recent CIG filing admits that the backers are making purchases rather than “pledges.” That’s a pretty big deal in terms of liability.
(I know, a comment section in an article ain’t exactly a primary source.)
At this point, I feel like anyone who buys into Star Citizen has abrogated the right to later claim they’ve been taken advantage of. It’s become so famous that even a nongamer like me has heard of Chris Roberts and Cloud Imperium Games. Anyone who plops down their bux has to know that there’s a chance they’ll never see a completed game.
The only way this game is ever “finished” is if Chris Roberts finally reaches the end of his suckers’ gullibility (or at least, the end of their wallets), the income stream dries up, he sells the right to an actual game studio to get the last bit of cash he can from it, and they slap something together, put it in a box, and call it done.
Hey, almost 9 years after the OP, Star Citizen is free to play again this week! And apparently it is still the Future of PC Gaming, because it sure as hell isn’t the present.
I’m starting to think that this game is a curse upon mankind, and yes, I mean that literally. Ever since Roberts started working on it, everything in the world has been getting worse and worse, while the game just keeps getting bigger and further away from completion. For all our sakes, we need to either finish this game, or destroy it. Otherwise the Earth is doomed.
I also got it from those GPU codes when newegg accidentally sold them for $1 each without requiring a GPU purchase. I think I lost the key for the ship though.
