The Star Citizen scandal: how is the $90 million being spent

Business

October 6, 2015

There always has to be a scandal every year, and Star Citizen, the massive $90 million Kickstarted space simulation game, is now the target of a major one.

Cloud Imperium Games (CIG), the developers behind Star Citizen, are refuting allegations leveled at the studio and certain persons within the studio as stated in a feature on The Escapist.

Following the publication of the feature, the developer published their own letter in response to to The Escapist’s managing editor John Keefer.

The letter was drafted by Ortwin Freyermuth, General Counsel to Cloud Imperium Games, demanding that The Escapist personally apologise to Chris Roberts’ wife, Sandi Gardiner, the company’s HR manager.

Further demands include that The Escapist must publish a proper apology and then hire a third party to investigate The Escapist’s feature to check for any bias, conspiracies and involvement of other interested parties.

If The Escapist doesn’t comply with the demands of CIG’s letter then there is a possibility for legal action, and further litigation.

The scandal, in itself, is very divisive as there is no way to verify that The Escapist’s claims are true, and whether CIG is merely using their demands and propensity to take further legal action as a bullying tactic.

But how did this all come to pass?

The Escapist’s original article sourced 9 different current and former CIG employees. Allegations ranged from racial discrimination, misappropriated funds of which there was $90 million following Kickstarter and all of this is happening within a toxic workplace.

But most importantly, the biggest allegation is that CIG has utilised nearly 90% of its resources. After these allegations were made public, CIG responded in kind denying each claim.

Furthermore, a Reddit post has suggested that a few quotes used in The Escapist’s feature were taken directly from Glassdoor Australia, which brings into doubt the identity vetting process at The Escapist.

The original author of the article, Lizzy Finnegan, claims that The Escapist used ID cards to verify identities. However, Cloud Imperium Games says that they don’t use any company ID cards.

According to some tweets, the cards Finnegan could be referring to could be nothing more than nothing more than normal RFID cards.

After this, The Escapist’s John Keefer published a subsequent article explaining how each source was vetted using their legal department for verification processes.

It appears that CIG means serious business with legal action on the table. But with the deadline for compliance with demands of CIG’s already over, that being the 5th of October, The Escapist responded as such below:

The Escapist, notwithstanding Cloud Imperium Games’ notice and posting, stands by its coverage of Star Citizen and intends to continue to investigate the developing story. Since publishing our original stories, we have been contacted by, and are currently interviewing, additional sources corroborating a variety of the reported allegations. Additionally, if Mr. Roberts’ offer for The Escapist to “meet the developers making the game and see how we’re building one of the most ambitious PC games first hand” remains open, we take the opportunity to accept such invitation so as to hopefully provide the public with sufficient information and opportunity to vet such sources’ allegations and claims for themselves. We have also communicated the foregoing directly to Cloud Imperium Games.

As this scandal and story is continually developing, what this may lead to is anyone’s guess. But The Escapist are not stepping down it seems, and are sticking to their guns, something we admire.

With the huge crowdfunded success that is Star Citizen now under huge scrutiny by both the media and public, it’s intriguing to see what will surface as a result.

We really can’t see any reason why Cloud Imperium Games would refuse a tour of their offices and a demonstration of the project in general as a way of demonstrating that no foul play is taking place; should they, we’d be highly sceptical of their defence against recent claims.

We can’t wait to see the developments as they happen especially regarding. Just take a look at CIG’s pricing schemes, especially for new ships in Star Citizen, such as the new MISC Endeavor Ship which costs a steep $900 if you tick all of the option boxes.

There is definitely some controversy here begging to be uncovered. A lot of money has been spent on a game that has taken a lot longer to develop than we all expected, especially given that there should be ample resources to hire more staff, and then some.