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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?

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19 2018, @02:41PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19 2018, @02:41PM (#709423)
    For kickstarter you're not buying stuff. You're taking a gamble/investment.

    For something like this there's always a chance it'll become a Duke Nukem Forever.

    And parts of it are playable, so it's not really one of those kickstarter scams or "idiots who don't know it's impossible with current technology trying to get money from likeminded idiots".

    Thing is I don't know why anyone would throw so much money at the project - does he get shares/stocks?

    Throw too much money at a team and they might spend more time on hookers and blow than working on the game...
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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Thursday July 19 2018, @02:50PM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Thursday July 19 2018, @02:50PM (#709430) Journal

    Throw too much money at a team and they might spend more time on hookers and blow than working on the game...

    Aka the Mozilla Paradox.

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    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @09:36AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @09:36AM (#709848)

      If only the people at Mozilla had spent that money on hookers and blow, instead on spending it on destroying what once was a great browser …