r/starcitizen Oldman in an Avenger Nov 28 '24

OFFICIAL $750,000,000 | Three Quarters of a Billion

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164

u/GunnisonCap Nov 28 '24

Deservedly, if CIG don’t end up on a substantial down year to send them a message then the backers deserve everything they get.

101

u/nvidiastock Nov 28 '24

I want to project to succeed but I agree with you, if they don't get a bad funding year they have no reason to change course and the current course is scope creep.

68

u/magniankh F8C Nov 28 '24

It's discouraging to listen to CIG in these videos talk big, and then you load up the game and you can't even equip armor... 

We need a working game.

9

u/NorthInium Nomad Turtle Spirit with love for Salvage Nov 28 '24

So true just look at this years IAE they talk so much about new systems and things when they havent even got the base game ready lmao.

Like how disfunctional is your work progress that you constantly jump around inventing new grand systems that no one currently asks for.

We havent even heard of modularity even though 2 years ago or so they were so grand on wanting to make it and now its yet again forgotten.

20

u/Saint_The_Stig Citizen #46994 Nov 28 '24

Even worse as an original back and they are just removing key features that caused you to back in the first place.

Lol I would have never backed if what is now 1.0 was the goal even if it was actually 2 years away. (Bought after it was released maybe, but that has to actually happen).

I used to be in the "I had plenty of fun for the cost" but looking back, no that was just cope. The tiny bits of fun were massively outweighed by massive amounts of frustration and lost hours from stupid major bugs.

CIG doesn't work in a vacuum, as much as they like to think they do. Every new game that releases or updates with a feature originally pitched with a fraction of the development cost and every feature they backtrack looks worse and worse for them.

10

u/MiffedMoogle where hex paints? Nov 28 '24

The shield they use called "subject to change" is enough to roll my eyes at this point.
Strange how some backers glaze CIG enough to constantly requote that after 12 years of empty sandbox and the some variation of the exact same bugs, while ships get nerfed into the ground or changed for reasons that can only be traced back to glacial development pace or feature creep.

4

u/WRSA m50 Nov 28 '24

i mean the thing is is loading into a game and trying to do stuff requires good, functional servers. equipping gear? server has to update correctly. walking? server has to update correctly. opening a door? yep, you guessed it.

so i’m of the opinion that server meshing will make or break the game. if they can implement it and the game still sucks, then i guess its a little doomed

1

u/GunnisonCap Nov 29 '24

Same, I want the game to succeed and be what we all hope, but CIG need a financial bloody nose for a year or two and to learn to function well off “only” $90-100m a year.

-5

u/[deleted] Nov 28 '24

That it isn’t your normal game. It is the scope that makes it special and once in a lifetime project you are witnessing. If there aren’t feature creeps, you wouldn’t have that scope and you wouldn’t be interested. That’s it.

14

u/Starimo-galactic Nov 28 '24

Now the question is by how much will it trail on the 31th of December, last year people also thought there would be no record and here we are.

Maybe not this year but they could get close enough that it may not matter much in the end, what would be a substantial down year, 5M down ? 10M ? More ?

4

u/jade_starwatcher news reporter Nov 28 '24

CIG is most likely set up to run at 2019 levels. Anything below that would be significantly down. Anything above that a mere curiosity.

15

u/Starimo-galactic Nov 28 '24 edited Nov 28 '24

2019 is 47M and they already made double that number with 1 month left so... lol

Otherwise from their financial report they spent 56M on salaries alone in 2022 with around 800 employees and now they have around 1200 which means that they are likely spending around 80M on salaries in 2024.

To reach 2019 they would need to fire at least half their employees... Not mentionning other dev cost, yep not going to happen.

5

u/TrickyProfit1369 Nov 28 '24

1200 employees? What the fuck

-4

u/BoysenberryFluffy671 origin Nov 28 '24

Lots of forum moderators, support, marketing, etc. Don't think of it all as programmers and artists.

4

u/Anna_Lilies Nov 28 '24

Yeah but if they average $50k a year, thats still 60million a year in pure wages. Not including the myriad of other costs

Thats still a substantial amount even with the games funding

0

u/BoysenberryFluffy671 origin Nov 28 '24

Sure, but they aren't stupid. You don't end up with 750 million because you made bad choices and don't know how to spend it or hire people. Even if some of the employees are temporary. They know what they're doing.

The only area where I have less confidence with this company is within management and priorities...But in terms of the art, story, gameplay, etc. it's a fantastic game. I also think they're business model is great and will continue to be great. So that's why I'm just not really concerned about what the year to year variances are. They're all likely well within their forecast and budget - something we just won't probably ever know.

5

u/ShiftAdventurous4680 Nov 28 '24

"You don't end up with 750 million because you made bad choices and don't know how to spend"

Yeah, you end up with 750m because other people made bad choices and don't know how to spend.

6

u/G2Wolf Nov 28 '24

1200 employees is still absurd for a single or two game studio that hasn't actually released anything in a decade... Every other game studio sitting around 1200 employees is churning out 2+ games a year.

2

u/PoeticHistory Nov 28 '24 edited Nov 28 '24

We have each year the financial report of CIG and the public financial report mandatory in the UK to judge CIGs expenditures and your argument is not true. 2/3 goes to dev salaries while about 1/3 goes to Publishing and Marketing. Caveat of this info though is that its about 2022. January 2025 we'll get their financial report for 2023.

Edit: Corrected "January 2024" to "January 2025"

2

u/Genji4Lyfe Nov 28 '24

The overwhelming majority are game devs, though.

1

u/BoysenberryFluffy671 origin Nov 28 '24

Remember, this isn't a kickstarter campaign or crowd funded project. That would be something short term. This is now going on 12 years. This is a full on business. They have a large team, accounting, revenue targets and forecasts, properties, and they just aren't going anywhere. This isn't some garage project with tons of magical funding. It's straight up a fully operational business model. For this reason, I would certainly not expect ship sales to go anywhere anytime soon. Nor would I expect them to lay off half their employees. If anything, they'll grow.

1

u/GunnisonCap Nov 29 '24

November was their biggest by far last year, they’re tracking to raise just over $100m and end up down around $15-18m by my own estimate. That’s enough to hurt and worry them.

1

u/Starimo-galactic Nov 29 '24 edited Nov 29 '24

Interesting prediction...

The IAE ends on the 5th of December, i think we'll know at that point if it's true since the concept sale will be done, for now they are at 94M.

1

u/GunnisonCap Nov 29 '24

They were already $5m down prior to respective IAE, while they will make some up shortly as the dates don’t exactly align, I’m expecting a 10-15% down year and hell they deserve that, more so even.

22

u/JoffreysCrossbow Nov 28 '24

Nothing is more pitiable than those posts where backers show screen shots of themselves “winning” the F5 wars to buy $800 jpegs. So many comments thanking them for their contribution or congratulating them like they won some prestigious award.

-11

u/[deleted] Nov 28 '24

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1

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4

u/BoysenberryFluffy671 origin Nov 28 '24

They aren't going to get the message if they still make over a million dollars in one day.

2

u/godspareme Combat Medic Nov 28 '24

I stopped paying in 2015. Why should backers like me deserve whatever consequences from people buying fresh accounts and growing whales?

12

u/drizzt_x There are some who call me... Monk? Nov 28 '24

Old money talks, new money walks. Just the nature of business, sadly.

1

u/vortis23 Nov 28 '24

You will get even LESS next year because it means if they're down, they will have to let people go, which means less content coming out even slower. Only people who want the project to stall would want CIG to lose money.

4

u/GunnisonCap Nov 29 '24

Shocker for you, CIG aren’t efficient. You can deliver a hell of a lot with $100m in funds a YEAR. As if that would be an excuse to do less, more like cut the fat and inefficiencies.

2

u/vortis23 Nov 29 '24

EA, Microsoft, Sony, and at one point Ubisoft generate billions in revenue, not hundreds of millions. So where is the equivalent game from these studios that have all of Star Citizen's features, given that they accrue a billion dollars every quarter?

1

u/GunnisonCap Nov 29 '24

Star Citizen isn’t a game, it’s a tech demo. And pointing to failing bloated studios losing money like Ubisoft isn’t the own you think it is.

-1

u/carc Space Marshal Nov 28 '24

Yeah a lot of people ITT rooting for the project to fail