I'm actually confident that Star Citizen will eventually come out. While $200m sounds like a lot of money, a popular online game can make much more than that. The pre-sales have proven that there is a fanatic audience. If the project is horribly managed now, expert developers and investors can be brought in to achieve the goal. The passion and awareness is golden.
‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game
241–250 of 335 posts
Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of the problem is that they're hacking MP into an engine that hasn't really been proven out for MP so until they get that sorted MP is gonna be rough.
Yeah but it seems like a huge problem that this issue hasn't been sorted out years into development. The whole premise of the game is based around playing in a shared persistent world: they should have gotten the multiplayer experience working perfectly in a proof-of-concept stage, with characters running around blank environments full of grey boxes before anything else. At the moment it seems like they are a content…
That certainly would've been my first step.
Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Many AAA titles take a decade or more from start to finish. AAA titles that take a decade or more to develop are usually stuck in some sort of development hell. >I want the best space sim and I like what RSI is doing. You like that instead of making the best space sim, they are adding focusing on adding an first person combat? It's clear as day that Roberts and Co. lack any sort of discipline. It's a perfect exampl…
Unfortunately, I do like it. To each his own.
To each his own indeed, but I think it would be a good idea for them to release a kick-ass space sim, and then refine and expand gameplay in Star Citizen 2.
Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game
#244Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game
#245He lost because of a forced arbitration clause. This massive privatization of justice where any boilerplate service or product now comes with forced arbitration is making my blood boil. The justice system should always be an option when arbitration fails, and arbitration should take no more than a reasonable time to fail (say, two weeks for this $5000 amount). The whole point of a small claims court is to handle such…
I'm more disturbed by the parts of the article which say that he never agreed to a forced arbitration clause in the first place because it wasn't in the ToS when he paid, but the judge decided to go with the later ToS anyway: > According to Lord, the terms of service when he made the initial pledge aren’t the same terms of service they are today. The original terms of service, according to RSI’s own records, make no…
Let me try to find the actual rulings for y'all and post them, so we aren't forced to rely on this kind of second hand info :)
Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm more disturbed by the parts of the article which say that he never agreed to a forced arbitration clause in the first place because it wasn't in the ToS when he paid, but the judge decided to go with the later ToS anyway: > According to Lord, the terms of service when he made the initial pledge aren’t the same terms of service they are today. The original terms of service, according to RSI’s own records, make no…
Let me try to find the actual rulings for y'all and post them, so we aren't forced to rely on this kind of second hand info :)
So being a small claims court case, there is no written opinion.
However, here's the other side to this particular claim. " the vast majority of Lord's 61 pledges came after the arbitration clause was added and that Lord accepted the new terms of service when he added additional funds to his initial pledge. "
My guess, if he was to appeal, the end result would be a ruling saying "The stuff done before the arbitration clause get adjudicated, the stuff after goes to arbitration"
This is what has happened in the past. But in general, you are allowed to give contracts retroactive effect if both parties agree and it's explicit.
This would probably leave Lord with a claim for basically nothing.
Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is especially important, and I don't see anyone else here (at the moment of posting this) calling this out. This is a disastrous precedent to set for consumers, because it means that even though you are agreeing to terms on the date of the sale, those same terms of the sale can be changed on a moments notice and still affect you, without your knowledge or consent. It's a shame that he has to keep fighting this,…
They claim that he’s played the game so wouldn’t it be possible that he was presented with the new TOS before playing and agreed to that?
I have to wonder how companies can offer any kind of reasonable proof that it was an adult user who clicked through clickwrap, and not a wandering cat or a curious child.
Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
In other words if ToS can be changed retroactively, it's a wildcard agreement. Is there even a point in reading it?
He made some purchases on the old ToS and some on the newer ToS. So he did agree to forced arbitration on the bulk of his transactions. That's not saying that the first transactions should be grouped in (or that forced arbitration should ever happen) but this isn't just a company changing the ToS later without him ever agreeing.
1.Sell some products where price is mentioned in ToS.
2.Change price.
3.Sell some more products.
4.Send lawyers to collect diff on product sold in [1].
The question is, was he made aware, that his previous agreement will be changed when he was giving some more money?
Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is especially important, and I don't see anyone else here (at the moment of posting this) calling this out. This is a disastrous precedent to set for consumers, because it means that even though you are agreeing to terms on the date of the sale, those same terms of the sale can be changed on a moments notice and still affect you, without your knowledge or consent. It's a shame that he has to keep fighting this,…
In other words if ToS can be changed retroactively, it's a wildcard agreement. Is there even a point in reading it?
You have to agree to the retroactivity and the new changes.
The argument here is that he did when he made a ton of new pledges under the new agreement.
Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
You profit? That's what every other company that sells software does.
That's not how crowdfunding works though. You aren't selling a product, you're asking for money to cover the production expenses for a product. That often includes a salary for the creators, but it's hard to justify a multi-million dollar profit (from the crowdfunding itself).
I think the point he was trying to make is that they had no obligation to make crowdfunding work like people expected it to. They were perfectly within their rights to just ship on time and bag the rest as profit.