{"id":81998,"date":"2015-10-06T15:00:41","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T13:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=81998"},"modified":"2015-10-06T15:18:26","modified_gmt":"2015-10-06T13:18:26","slug":"the-star-citizen-scandal-how-is-the-90-million-being-spent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/81998-the-star-citizen-scandal-how-is-the-90-million-being-spent","title":{"rendered":"The Star Citizen scandal: how is the $90 million being spent"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Cloud Imperium Games (CIG), the developers behind Star Citizen<\/em>, are refuting allegations leveled at the studio and certain persons within the studio as stated\u00a0in a\u00a0feature on The Escapist<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Following the publication of the feature, the developer published their own\u00a0letter<\/a> in response to\u00a0to The Escapist\u2019s managing editor John Keefer.<\/p>\n

The letter was drafted\u00a0by Ortwin Freyermuth, General Counsel to Cloud Imperium Games, demanding that The Escapist personally apologise to Chris Roberts\u2019 wife, Sandi Gardiner, the company\u2019s HR manager.<\/p>\n

Further demands include that The Escapist must publish a proper apology and then hire a third party to investigate\u00a0The Escapist\u2019s feature to check for any bias, conspiracies and involvement of other interested parties.<\/p>\n

If The Escapist doesn’t comply\u00a0with the demands of CIG’s letter then there is a possibility for legal action, and further litigation.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But how did this all come to pass?<\/p>\n

The Escapist’s original\u00a0article sourced 9 different current and former CIG employees. Allegations ranged from\u00a0racial discrimination, misappropriated funds of which there was $90 million following Kickstarter and\u00a0all of this is happening within a toxic workplace.<\/p>\n

But most importantly, the biggest allegation is that CIG\u00a0has utilised nearly\u00a090% of its resources. After these allegations were made public, CIG responded in kind<\/a> denying each claim.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, a\u00a0Reddit<\/a> post\u00a0has suggested that a few quotes\u00a0used in The Escapist’s feature were taken directly from\u00a0Glassdoor Australia<\/a>,\u00a0which brings into doubt the identity vetting process at The Escapist.<\/p>\n

The original\u00a0author of the article, Lizzy Finnegan, claims that The Escapist used ID cards to verify identities.\u00a0However,\u00a0Cloud Imperium Games says that they\u00a0don’t use\u00a0any company ID cards.<\/p>\n

According to some tweets<\/a>, the cards Finnegan could be referring to could be nothing more than\u00a0nothing more than\u00a0normal\u00a0RFID cards<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After this, The Escapist\u2019s John Keefer published a subsequent\u00a0article<\/a> explaining how each source was vetted using their legal department for verification processes.<\/p>\n

It appears that CIG means serious business with legal action on the table. But with the deadline for compliance with demands of \u00a0CIG’s already over, that being the 5th of October, The Escapist responded as such below<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Escapist, notwithstanding Cloud Imperium Games’ notice and posting, stands by its coverage of Star Citizen<\/em> 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<\/em>” 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

With the huge crowdfunded success that is Star Citizen\u00a0<\/em>now under huge scrutiny by both the media and public, it’s intriguing to see what will surface as a result.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

We can’t wait to see the developments as they happen especially regarding. Just take a look at CIG’s pricing schemes, especially for\u00a0new ships in\u00a0Star Citizen<\/em>, such as the new\u00a0MISC Endeavor Ship<\/a> which costs a steep $900 if you tick all of the option boxes.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\n

Source: Forbes<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n

More On Star Citizen<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Star Citizen will destroy your puny South African broadband connection<\/a><\/p>\n

Star Citizen crowdfunding reaches $42 million<\/a><\/p>\n

Star Citizen PC won\u2019t be \u201cdumbed down\u201d to console standards<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s all rather curious. And there’s a lot more to it than initial reports are suggesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":82012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7382,1769,3180,16044,16042,7355,16040],"class_list":["post-81998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-cloud-imperium-games","tag-controversy","tag-feature","tag-roberts-space-industries","tag-scandal","tag-star-citizen","tag-the-escapist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81998"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82016,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81998\/revisions\/82016"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}