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‘Star Citizen’ Court Documents Reveal the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200 Million Game

posted by mrpg on Thursday July 19 2018, @01:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the 200-million???? dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Motherboard:

Back in 2012, developer Roberts Space Industries (RSI) launched a Kickstarter asking for money to fund Star Citizen—an ambitious space game in the mold of Wing Commander. It's 2018, and while parts of the game are playable in various forms, it's far from achieving what it set out to accomplish. So far, it's collected more than $200 million in funding from fans eager to play it.

Ken Lord was one of those fans, and an early backer of Star Citizen. He's got a Golden Ticket, a mark on his account that singles him out as an early member of the community. In April of 2013, Lord pledged $4,496 to the project. Five years later, the game still isn't out, and Lord wants his money back. RSI wouldn't refund it, so Lord took the developer to small-claims court in California.

It's a simple case of an investor who's upset he didn't get his money back, isn't it?

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by zocalo on Thursday July 19 2018, @02:37PM (3 children)

    by zocalo (302) on Thursday July 19 2018, @02:37PM (#709419)
    Not sure why he didn't just get his refund and ended up going to court, tbh, especially given the potential for spinning the MS angle into some seriously bad PR, unless there's something missing from the story. Maybe RSI took exception to something he said, or the way he phrased it, maybe someone was just having a bad day, or maybe they just don't have the cash on hand to burn on refunds any more (income from funding seems to have levelled off at around $35m/yr which is likely less than current annual outgoings, which would mean their cash surplus is shrinking). Also to correct the original article (and several others who have obviously cut and pasted the same source), according to CIG's own website, they've not topped $200m yet, although they're close - $190m and still climbing.

    All the legal arguments CIG applied to Ken Lord apply to me, another Concierge level, Golden Ticket holding, Original Backer, but other than a cursory push-back from support I had no issues getting a full refund of my pledges including those made after the introduction of the arbitration clause, but not of my few years of subscriptions which I think is fair enough since they delivered everything they promised on those. IIRC, a total of six emails were sent back and forth (two of which were to confirm the refund payment details) and done. I don't have MS, but I did make all the other arguments he did; all the change of scope, that the game was no longer what I backed for, etc. The only real difference seems to be that I cited an EU consumer protection law (CIG has two EU offices, so they're bound by this) that, in my IANAL reading, seems to have CIG bang to rites on all refund requests made by EU residents provided that they are made within six years of the original pledge and CIG have not yet delivered what was advertised - and given all the changes in scope, I don't see how they can possibly *ever* meet the latter requirement. No actual threats of court action; just evidence I'd looked into my rights and they caved in immediately. Just stronger EU consumer legislation FTW, perhaps?
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  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 19 2018, @02:58PM (1 child)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday July 19 2018, @02:58PM (#709433)

    Not sure why he didn't just get his refund and ended up going to court, tbh, especially given the potential for spinning the MS angle into some seriously bad PR, unless there's something missing from the story. Maybe RSI took exception to something he said, or the way he phrased it, maybe someone was just having a bad day, or maybe they just don't have the cash on hand to burn on refunds any more

    Or maybe he posted a negative review of the game (so far) somewhere? #hahaonlyserious

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by zocalo on Thursday July 19 2018, @04:18PM

      by zocalo (302) on Thursday July 19 2018, @04:18PM (#709463)
      Quite possibly. CIG got *very* protective over negative viewpoints on their own forums about a year before I got my refund, frequently locking threads that were perfectly civil but critical on the flimsiest of pretexts, then continued to double down to the point I decided enough was enough. I might have been losing interesting in actually playing the game due to the changes of scope, but it was the transition of the forums to a pro-CIG echo chamber and quite frankly disgusting attitude of certain members of their community team (two in particular) towards what were, ultimately, people who had paid a good deal of money to fund the project that was the final straw. I've never been back to the forums since they enforced the migration to the visual and functional train wreck of Spectrum, but I can't imagine they're anything but even more draconian now.
      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19 2018, @10:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19 2018, @10:43PM (#709639)

    They recently didn't offer refund anymore, though I'm not sure about the order of event on this one.