Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

‘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

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
‘Star Citizen’ Court Documents Reveal the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200 Million Game | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 34 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (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?"
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   2  

  • (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!