Author Topic: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.  (Read 1134699 times)

Motto

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #1725 on: December 07, 2017, 05:06:40 AM »
Since it is clear that Star Citizen has entered the last phase of its ELE, there will come a time that the backers will start to play other games. Games they may have to purchase yet. So, I have a bold suggestion...

When SC has gone to the eternal gamesfields and LoD is ready enough (ported) to be released as an early access/beta/full game, it then can be purchased with a discount. When buying LoD, the discountcode to be used is "StarCitizen".

I'd further like to suggest that LoD should be sold as an Early Access title. Normal Steam refund policies do apply, but in this way buyers can help the developer build the second to best damn space sim ever. That would be a nice title too. Line of Defense - The STBDSSE Edition

Just a thought...

CatEars

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #1726 on: December 14, 2017, 08:31:42 AM »
OMG Crytek?! No one is mentioning the monster in the closet. Crytek just signed on to the E.L.E! Their lawsuit spills the beans. They are now culpable from the beginning through 2016 for far more than that lawsuit. They gave so much detail in the lawsuit. The contract goes beyond normal developer / Crytek relationship. The human relationships are well documented on the internet. They should fire that law firm immediately.

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #1727 on: December 14, 2017, 11:43:37 AM »
Since it is clear that Star Citizen has entered the last phase of its ELE, there will come a time that the backers will start to play other games. Games they may have to purchase yet. So, I have a bold suggestion...

When SC has gone to the eternal gamesfields and LoD is ready enough (ported) to be released as an early access/beta/full game, it then can be purchased with a discount. When buying LoD, the discountcode to be used is "StarCitizen".

I'd further like to suggest that LoD should be sold as an Early Access title. Normal Steam refund policies do apply, but in this way buyers can help the developer build the second to best damn space sim ever. That would be a nice title too. Line of Defense - The STBDSSE Edition

Just a thought...

 :allears:
Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

helimoth

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #1728 on: December 15, 2017, 03:14:39 AM »
Shitizens losing their shit over CIG charging $35 shipping for a book - $10 more than the book itself costs. Gotta fund that warchest for the upcoming lawsuit. CIG clams those are the costs with no additional mark-up.

As one poster pointed out;

Quote
Think about this. There are appx 1700 books left. I don't know how many total they started with, but let's just use that number.

At $35 shipping per book, you're telling me their manufacturer is charging $59,500 to ship a couple of pallets of books?

Uh... no.

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/7jur44/jump_point_year_three_shipping_cost_is_35_thats/

justme

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #1729 on: December 15, 2017, 03:57:33 AM »
2x 2,000 = 4,000

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #1730 on: December 16, 2017, 02:14:55 PM »
Loxbourne wrote this effort post over on SA

This is the single most hilarious piece of Star Citizen drama you are likely to read...at least until we see the CIG/RSI response to the CryTek lawsuit. That's going to be a lolapocalypse of Biblical proportions



In his hour of triumph, I'd like to devote an effortpost to Derek Smart himself. A dangerous past-time, perhaps, but an important question to ask. I'm here for the laughs like most of the thread but I also want to see CIG pulled apart and picked over. I want to read Coutts' debtor reports, see the forensic accountants go over the books, get as many backers out as are willing to be saved. Taking CIG apart properly means doing ballistic analysis of the huge great burning trail blasted through it by one man.

So who IS that masked warlord? More to the point, why did one guy with a twitter account end up a furious lightning-rod for the hatred of hundreds of backers, single-handedly attracting the ire of a massive community that should (and once did) have had more than enough to amuse itself with throughout Star Citizen's development.

It's been pointed out, more than once, that there wouldn't be a cult without Derek. That the existence of an active hate figure to strive against was what was needed to push a mildly toxic fandom into a full-blown horror where people compete to throw all their worldly goods as fast as possible into the gaping maw of CIG. I don't actually agree with this sentiment. For one thing the fandom was toxic from the start, but I think even without Derek we'd still see a cult of some form. The cult is a side-effect of CIG's marketing techniques. They needed to milk their whales, to find people who will spend large sums of money and keep spending those sums without complaint as the game gets delayed again and again. That's not to say Derek hasn't left a massive mark on Star Citizen, of course. But he stepped into a role that was ready and waiting. If Derek did not exist it would have been necessary for the Citizens to create him.

I'm going to adopt some terminology here because it's crucial we (as obviously disinterested goons of Science :v:) keep two concepts separate. One of them is Derek Smart, human being with a twitter account. The other is THE SMART. Great Beast Who Is Called Warlord. Avatar of Big Publishing. The terrible being with eyes of fire and tongues of flame who rose from Internet Hell to destroy Dreams, who travels in a shrieking cloud of circling bats accompanied by the wails of the goons and dramatic choirs chanting in Latin.

That entity doesn't exist anywhere outside the Citizens' collective nightmares (and this thread's half-serious injokes), but it was already there long before Derek typed his first blog. He just put a name and a face to it. THE SMART is, of course, the personification of backer nervousness. Their fear the game genuinely is impossible to make, that Chris is overpromising, that the funding won't hold up. The entirely rational fears it is quite normal to hold even if one has plenty of faith in the project. It might not work out, and if it doesn't...well, there goes their dream and their money too. A lot of their money. Life-changing, farm-mortgaging, marriage-ending amounts.

I'd bet that same money that the first thing many citizens said to themselves when Derek first crossed their radar was "Of course...". Of course there would be an Anti-Crobbler. Of course someone would rise to fight the glorious promise of Star Citizen. Of course there would be someone that evil, that diabolical, that beholden to dark powers, to try and take away their Dreams. He fits the worldview of a frustrated, aging nerd all too well. The reason I don't have nice things is because The Man keeps me down, and here he is right now tryin' to stop this Glorious Thing.

The real dark whisper of THE SMART (choirs) is that Star Citizen is never coming out. Your money has bought you nothing except a terrible tech demo and Chris's instagram gallery. You're not Han Solo, Captain Kirk, OR Mal Reynolds, you're still whoever you were before you bought your first ship.

That's bad. For some citizens - the saddest ones, the ones most in need of help - that's terrible. Hateful. Evil. It's also tremendously painful.

But it's also an entirely natural thing to think, just with basic human critical faculties. The ones CIG and one's fellow cultists spend so much time and energy suppressing. Cultists aren't (all) dumb, they're just caught in a system designed to switch their critical thinking off.

So THE SMART (choirs)'s real purpose, his real utility in the minds of Citizens, is as something to sublimate their misgivings onto. When CIG rides high, the Citizens are dismissive. When CIG hits trouble, they go fight Derek. When the crazier backers disappear from the fandom during a marketing fuckup, some of them go off and spout hate at Derek for a bit thinking that this would drive back THE SMART and make Star Citizen good again. I've talked about how Elite and Line of Defence are where the citizens project problems with the game; Derek is where they put their problems with themselves. A classic scapegoat. When a Citizen triumphs against Derek, he triumphs against the part of his brain that is saying "hold on, why are we spending so much cash here?"

Now, the man behind the mask didn't have to be Derek Smart. It was well on the way to being Beer4thebeergod for a while. The role would have fit any charismatic backer who pulled out early or any outsider who spoke out too loudly. David Braben would have fit (he's basically the current understudy). If nobody stepped forward to take the role, sooner or later it would have been Big Publishing or someone like Bobby Kotick. The cult would be much the same externally, spite pledges and all.

Derek proved an excellent candidate for the mantle. It requires a certain level of independence and thick skin just to sustain the requirements of the post. Someone with a day job would be at risk from being harassed so hard they actually stopped warlording (witness the Escapist and their poor journalist who was just too early). Derek has time and an independent income and a very thick skin indeed; he's pretty much immune to any weapon in the backer arsenal and that makes him a perfect Dark Lord.

Derek also knows his lines. He can sneer, he can mock, he fits the role of playground bully and he can be baited. He spouts heresies (leaks! ex-CIG employees saying nasty things!), he attracts followers (goons!), he plays the role of a cartoon villain excellently. Citizens naturally want to fight him to exorcise the cognitive dissonance, and as it happens Derek's up for the fight. The key is to remember that the Citizens already wanted someone to fight. They wanted to go find someone to dump their fears onto and vent their anger at. Derek was in the right place at the wrong time.

He doesn't fight fair though. He doesn't meet them on the field at dawn wearing black armour and carrying a sword of crying souls, then battle them for a day and night under a burning sky. Or at least he doesn't stop tweeting when a Citizen sends him what all his fellow Citizens assure him are SICK OWNS. The Citizenry resent that (then tell themselves that it's just proof of his treachery). The SMART role (choirs) includes striving to defeat CIG and all their works - but it doesn't include actually undermining CIG and their works or making the citizens ask themselves awkward existential questions. That's when they really, really loathe him.

And so Derek Smart the person is given an absurd level of power by citizens, elevated into a dark figure whose very existence harms Star Citizen...while at the same time, that harm is used to explain why Star Citizen isn't living up to their dreams yet. The Man, keeping them down. Remember, the key to the spite pledge is that proving THE SMART (choirs) wrong makes Star Citizen itself better. Because it makes the voices in the individual backers' heads shut up.

Of course THE SMART cannot be truly defeated until the Great Day of Release when Chris descends from Heaven etc etc - which is to say, it would come on the day Chris finally disproves the backers' misgivings by releasing the game - but surely He should have been forced into retreat by the same arguments the citizens use to reassure each other. That apocalyptic rhetoric was telling.

Now the game is facing an actual apocalypse we're not seeing any of this cartoon stuff anymore . We're seeing resentment and rage and threats of Internet Violence. Attempts to claim power over the situation with weird legal terminology and "affidavits". In other words, the standard reactions of obsessed, angry nerds when their worldview starts to falter. This is no longer a situation THE SMART (choirs) can help backers mentally come to terms with. It'll be interesting to see if they try to build a new one to encompass Skadden and Crytek.

If Derek really wanted the Citizens to love him forever, all he needs to do is don spiky black armour, wear a skull mask, then ride into CIG HQ by shattering the Space Door and carry off Sandi on a dark steed with glowing eyes. Citizens would pledge their entire worldly goods on the spot to form a Space Posse to go after him. If he then finished the storyline in their heads and shook his fist in defiance from the bridge of an exploding skull-faced Vanduul supercarrier (no doubt begging his dark EA masters for mercy as the ship burned around him), then he'd claim a world record for the most human beings simultaneously brought to orgasm in a 24-hour period and could single-handedly fund Star Citizen's development until 2025. Choirs.

Annoyingly however the Derek Smart who actually exists doesn't live in that world. He is a flawed Internet Satan. He lives over in reality, where the average citizen is that 43-year-old wages clerk in Idaho. He may be a single-minded old cuss who sustains himself on the rage of others (and he appears to be just fine with that), but his greatest sin is not playing along. Not actually being a proper scapegoat. Derek might actually win, and that's not in the Great Book of Crobblers at all.

« Last Edit: December 17, 2017, 04:02:51 AM by dsmart »
Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #1731 on: December 16, 2017, 02:39:25 PM »
Hey, one sec. Remember that time in 2015 when Chris Roberts claimed he spent 8 hrs writing a nasty diatribe (later removed) about myself and The Escapist? Well, sources tell me he is at it again.

Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

nightfire

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #1732 on: December 17, 2017, 07:37:46 AM »
The SA forum seems to be running on nitro rocket fuel lately. Reading EnchantedHat's version of Boney M's "Rasputin" not only had me rolling on the floor laughing, it also brought back memories of one of my favorite songs of the 70s. Now I can't get it out of my head anymore  :lesnick:

Lyrics:

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3800238&pagenumber=3126&perpage=40#post479403182

Sing-along song on YouTube:


StanTheMan

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #1733 on: December 17, 2017, 01:12:10 PM »
It is all about Chris's stool..


Star Citizen is certainly a stool of Chris Roberts making.  Probably closer to types 1 and 7...it aint happy..and it is not a coherent mass...

« Last Edit: December 17, 2017, 06:54:55 PM by StanTheMan »

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #1734 on: December 17, 2017, 03:58:21 PM »
Latin Phoenix has an effort post up on SA



Ok, so things have calmed down a little since the initial hilarity of Crytek's lawsuit against CIG/RSI and I thought I'd do a minor effortpost on my thoughts so far on the case given what we've seen so far on the complaint.

Now, we don't have the GLA, nor do we know what communication took place between CIG and Crytek. What we can assume, however, is that:
1. Skadden are reasonably competent, given that they're considered a top international law firm; and
2. Skadden have pored through the GLA, any amendments and any communications between CIG/Crytek and felt that, on the facts discovered, they could make the five claims I'll talk about.

Because of these assumptions, I'm going to make some further assumptions of fact:
1. CIG/RSI had an agreement (GLA), and all the clauses mentioned in the complaint were in that agreement;
2. The agreement was never ended, either by a break clause exercised by CIG/RSI/Crytek, nor by mutual agreement; and
3. There were no automatic triggers in the GLA that ended the agreement (time limits, events, etc.).

With that in mind, let's get to the meat of the subject; Crytek's claims against CIG/RSI.

-----

Claim 1: CIG/RSI are developing a second game without a license from Crytek.
This one is one of the simpler ones to confirm; we know for a fact that Squadron 42 was never a separate game from Star Citizen, this can be seen in the Kickstarter, where Squadron 42 is listed as the 'singleplayer component' of Star Citizen (i.e. it was just a game mode in a single game). Following the initial pitch of a single game, it was only later that CIG decided to split Star Citizen into two independent, separately playable, packages (note how Squadron 42 does not require Star Citizen to play). This split is where Star Citizen became two games, and the point where CIG appears to have breached its contract with Crytek.

Claim 2: CIG agreed to market Cryengine, including keeping its logo on splash screens, showing the trademark on the website, etc.
Honestly, this is a no-brainer, there's very little to dispute here; we know that CIG very likely breached this because there's tons of very public changes to the CIG website, launcher, splash screen, etc. where Cryengine/Crytek's logos were removed and Lumberyard replaced them. In fact, it was so noticable that the commandos shat a brick when it first appeared around this time last year with no announcement.

Claim 3: CIG agreed to develop Star Citizen exclusively on Cryengine.
Again, this is something so well documented and lauded that there is little more to add here. The backers have tried pointing out that it Lumberyard is based on Cryengine which they say muddies the legal waters, but the fact is that CIG had no permission to use another engine to develop Star Citizen. What the basis of these engines are is irrelevant, the clause would have been breached the moment they announced the change, started plastering Lumberyard logos everywhere and using Lumberyard's tools.

Claim 4: CIG agreed to send bug updates/improvements to Crytek.
There are two factors to consider here; the first being that Crytek claims that CIG did send some updates/improvements in 2015 but that they were insufficient and not in good faith, while the second factor is that Crytek claims that CIG did not send any updates/improvements for 2016-2017. On the first factor, there will likely be some contention by CIG regarding whether what was sent in 2015 was in good faith or not. This likely means that there will be some expert opinion on what CIG sent to Crytek in 2015 and whether it is enough to satisfy CIG's obligations to Crytek in this clause.

The second factor, however, would be much more clear-cut if true; if CIG did not send any updates/improvements over the last two years, then it's almost certain that this would be seen as a breach of their contractual obligations.

Claim 5: CIG breached Crytek's copyright by chowing Cryengine's code on Bugsmashers and third parties.
Ok, this one is outside my comfort zone, but I suspect it will be down to legal and expert opinion in this case. The main issue at hand is 'how much exposure of code in Bugsmashers is enough to constitute a breach?'. This is something that would require some degree of expertise in US copyright law (which I don't have since I trained in the UK) so I can't really answer this and would also likely require expert testimony in the form of a game developer. In addition, whether or not CIG was sharing code with Faceware is something that could only be determined by seeing what evidence Crytek has to show this. Do note, though, that Skadden wouldn't flippantly make such claims without some damn good evidence/legal knowledge to back them up.

-----

Essentially, contract-wise, CIG would only come out of this unscathed if there was a break clause in the GLA that they exercised before claims 1-4 took place or if they otherwise mutually agreed with Crytek to do the same. Such a clause or agreement would be so obvious and such a basic thing to miss by Skadden that I cannot accept that this is the case here. CIG's response to the lawsuit (where they essentially agreed they breached claim 3) also displays an alarming(ly hilarious) degree of ignorance about the claims levelled against them.

Overall, this complaint makes a lot of things in CIG's past add up; the sudden change to Lumberyard makes sense if you consider that CIG was chained to an agreement with Crytek but saw an opportunity when Crytek suffered financial woes. My guess is that CIG couldn't get Cryengine to work for SC, saw Lumberyard and figured it would be easier to work with and then jumped ship, assuming that Crytek would simply disappear and no-one would pick up the contract and pursue them afterwards (or, alternatively, Chris didn't know that might happen or didn't care). The split of Squadron 42 may have been particularly scummy as it may have been CIG trying to stiff Crytek out of royalties for sales when it knew that Crytek would be unable to dispute their action (this is all just speculation, though).

tl;dr: CIG tried to fuck over Crytek, thinking Crytek would go bust, and it came screaming back to bite them in the ass.



Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

StanTheMan

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #1735 on: December 17, 2017, 06:44:00 PM »
Quote

tl;dr: CIG tried to fuck over Crytek, thinking Crytek would go bust

Otherwise Ortwin and Croberts would have to be spectacularly dumb to have thought Crytek would allow all this to go on.

Reckless...

What sort of cash would they be due to pay Crytek if SC launched and how come they are not due for any of the JPEG cash (ie why wouldnt Crytek have asked for a % opf that in the contract ?)

« Last Edit: December 17, 2017, 06:53:17 PM by StanTheMan »

Bubba

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #1736 on: December 18, 2017, 01:37:29 AM »
Both here and in the breaking news thread there's a lot of armchair lawyering. Hell, I do it myself. It's fun. Just be careful and don't give your speculation the color of fact.

Some things to consider:
1. The quality of the law firm doesn't mean that they will necessarily win in court.
2. Without the GLA to pore over, we're missing a major piece of the puzzle.
3. It is possible that Crytek grossly breached the contract.

So, just because they've got $1000/hour lawyers who write a lot of purty arguments,
But, here's the fun:

4. "Winning" and "Losing" are not necessarily defined by the outcome of a jury decision.
Here's the big deal: RSI/CIG/Whatever is a cluster of 17 different legal entities, controlled by the same group of people. If I were trying to do one basic task and using 17 different corporations across a couple countries to do it, I'd not only make damn sure my paperwork was in order, I'd try to avoid putting it to the test. If these guys build corporations like they build their software, then they've got limited content crushed by sprawling complexity in a system that simply cannot work.

If this suit gets to discovery, then we'll likely find out quite a bit about how things work. I'm betting they don't want that. So Crytek doesn't need an "airtight case" to "win"; they just need one good enough that the cost of discovery for CIG/RSI/*17 is higher than the cost of settling.

5. The charge that Ortwin didn't recuse himself doesn't hinge on whether Crytek insisted or not. As I understand it, recusal is the obligation of an attorney when her or his actions may go against the interests of a current or previous client. So, the fact that Crytek didn't bring it up — or didn't even think about it — doesn't invalidate the accusation. On the other hand, whether this obligation to recusal applies in the perceived instance (negotiating a contract) is certainly open to discussion. The next question will be: does Ortwin have to recuse himself from this litigation?


Latin Phoenix is probably right in estimating the likely scenario behind it: Like with everyone else, CR made a bunch of promises, and when his feature bloat made CryEngine (in their minds) unworkable, they walked away.

dsmart

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #1737 on: December 19, 2017, 10:40:24 AM »
So it looks like all it took was a lawsuit to put CIG/RSI on notice that EVERYONE knows that they'd been diddling the funding chart this whole time.

God, I can't wait for discovery. And my amicus brief filing is going to be a thing of beauty.

Star Citizen isn't a game. It's a TV show about a bunch of characters making a game. It's basically "This is Spinal Tap" - except people think the band is real.

Motto

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #1738 on: December 19, 2017, 02:38:36 PM »
Still 34 to 40k every day. Still fake I'd say.

nightfire

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Re: Star Citizen - The E.L.E.
« Reply #1739 on: December 19, 2017, 03:35:32 PM »
Still 34 to 40k every day. Still fake I'd say.
I'm thinking of putting up a fake personal account balance tracker just for myself. That way, I'd never have to worry about money again.

 

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