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Star Citizen Tops $700M, Still No Release Date

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Re: Star Citizen Tops $700M, Still No Release Date

#51

Post by wongarsu »

GenerWork wrote: post #25

I'd love to know their finances in greater depth. They can't have burned through $700 million, can they? If they haven't, how are they storing this money? Is it just in a savings account? Bonds? Stocks?

By the latest count they have ~1300 employees. That's a lot of salaries.

They recently released financials up to 2022. Back then they had 860 employees, spent $130 million in a year and earned about the same from pledges, subscriptions, etc. It looks like they have some cash on hand but mostly always just spent what they received rather than building large reserves. Which implies they have indeed now burned though just shy of $700 million in 12 years.

https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cloud-imperium...

Re: Star Citizen Tops $700M, Still No Release Date

#52

Post by the_snooze »

bhouston wrote: post #13

Star Citizen is a financial success as is, everyone making it is getting paid. Would they really make more money by releasing it? There is a phenomenon in the start-up world where wildly pre-revenue fast growing startups are overvalued until they decide they want to make money and then they are judged on their profitability, which often kills their valuation.

It's the same dynamic as crypto games. It's the hype that people are buying into, not the actual lame/incomplete/broken gameplay underneath it. The video game is just a MacGuffin in a findom ARG.

Re: Star Citizen Tops $700M, Still No Release Date

#53

Post by Aunche »

eterm wrote: post #19
aeturnum wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most estimates place the budget of GTA 6 at well north of $1000M. That said, based on public data, it's #2 on wikipedia[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_g...

That entry for "Monopoly Go!" is unintentionally hilarious because of the incomplete information: "Marketing: $500m; Total: $500m" Yeah, that sounds about right.

> By March 2024, the game generated $2 billion in revenue just 10 months after launch and three months after hitting $1 billion.

This is absolutely wild.

Re: Star Citizen Tops $700M, Still No Release Date

#54

Post by AlexandrB »

causi wrote: post #40
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #9

12 years and $700M later, they're on Alpha 3.23. When this game started accepting donations, it was 2012. Mass Effect 3 was released in March of that year. Mass Effect 2 was released just two years previous, in 2010, and the first game in the series was released in late 2007. Less than four and a half years from start to finish. I know that development cycles have been growing quite a lot longer, but this is ridiculo…

I wrote it off when a bunch of Freelancer fans were like "hey, is this going to have third-person ship combat and manual flying through asteroids?" and Roberts said "Yeah!" and then after he got their money he was like "Never mind, that will cost me money from the sim addicts, so we're not doing that."

Yeah, I was basically hoping for Freelancer 2. Galaxy on Fire and then Everspace 2 mostly scratched that itch, but I still think Freelancer did some things better.

Re: Star Citizen Tops $700M, Still No Release Date

#55

Post by optimalsolver »

AlexandrB wrote: post #27
wongarsu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely believe Chris Roberts does it to make the game he always dreamed of. That game happens to have an incredible amount of feature creep. He is not the person you want to hand an infinite amount of money to make a project without supervision or externally imposed deadlines. For everyone else it's a passion or an unusually steady job. Many studios have layoffs as they finish games, but with Star Citizen never…

I'm really curious what the single player narrative will be like. Some of the actors (e.g. Gary Oldman) from the original mocap sessions (from ~2014 I think) have passed away so if they want to use their performances they're pretty much locked in to the script they had back then. Or maybe AI can bail them out now? Edit: Oops, how embarrassing. Gary Oldman is not, in fact, dead. Not sure who I was thinking of.

Were you thinking of Alan Rickman?

Re: Star Citizen Tops $700M, Still No Release Date

#56

Post by ethbr1 »

wongarsu wrote: post #51
GenerWork wrote: post #25

I'd love to know their finances in greater depth. They can't have burned through $700 million, can they? If they haven't, how are they storing this money? Is it just in a savings account? Bonds? Stocks?

By the latest count they have ~1300 employees. That's a lot of salaries. They recently released financials up to 2022. Back then they had 860 employees, spent $130 million in a year and earned about the same from pledges, subscriptions, etc. It looks like they have some cash on hand but mostly always just spent what they received rather than building large reserves. Which implies they have indeed now burned though ju…

Before they realized Chris Roberts shouldn't be allowed anywhere near project management authority, there was a lot of rework.

Which means a lot of torched developer-hours.

Re: Star Citizen Tops $700M, Still No Release Date

#57

Post by optimalsolver »

robin_reala wrote: post #35
AlexandrB wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really curious what the single player narrative will be like. Some of the actors (e.g. Gary Oldman) from the original mocap sessions (from ~2014 I think) have passed away so if they want to use their performances they're pretty much locked in to the script they had back then. Or maybe AI can bail them out now? Edit: Oops, how embarrassing. Gary Oldman is not, in fact, dead. Not sure who I was thinking of.

Gary Oldman’s still alive though…

And thank God for that. Now I've got to go watch Fifth Element after that scare.

Re: Star Citizen Tops $700M, Still No Release Date

#58

Post by AlexandrB »

optimalsolver wrote: post #55
AlexandrB wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really curious what the single player narrative will be like. Some of the actors (e.g. Gary Oldman) from the original mocap sessions (from ~2014 I think) have passed away so if they want to use their performances they're pretty much locked in to the script they had back then. Or maybe AI can bail them out now? Edit: Oops, how embarrassing. Gary Oldman is not, in fact, dead. Not sure who I was thinking of.

Were you thinking of Alan Rickman?

Probably, but he's not in StarCitizen. So I have my wires crossed regardless.

Re: Star Citizen Tops $700M, Still No Release Date

#60

Post by barryrandall »

jakubmazanec wrote: post #31
RGamma wrote: post #6

It's a heated race with HL3. Duke Nukem Forever took 14 years, so I wouldn't call this dead quite yet.

But is Half-life 3 even being developed?

Why would they waste time making their own games when they can make more distributing other people's games?
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