Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
The story of the game Star Citizen and Cloud Imperium, the company developing it, is almost too ludicrous to believe: a crowdfunding effort to create a space sim of unparalleled size and realism, raising hundreds of millions, with backers paying thousands for ships and gear in a game that's years from release. Yet it's real enough that it just pulled in $42 million in private funding to help bring it closer to release.
[...] A huge amount of work has been done on the game, so this isn't just a colossal con, though there are plenty who think the game, and its first-person shooter counterpart Squadron 42, can't possibly ever fulfill its ambitions and justify the money people have put into it.
That doesn't seem to be the opinion of Clive Calder, founder of Zomba and producer in a variety of entertainment formats, whom Roberts met during a clandestine campaign to solicit funding.
[...] Calder's family office agreed to invest $46 million for a 10 percent stake in Cloud Imperium, which all told puts it near a half-billion valuation. One may very well question the sanity of such a valuation for a company that has not yet shipped an actual product — working prototypes, sure, but not a completed game — but hell, at least they're making something people are excited about. That's got to be worth a couple bucks.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Tuesday December 25 2018, @05:14AM
This is RandomFactor's ideal Long Term Project for humanity.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]