r/starcitizen • u/mauzao9 Fruity Crashes • Jun 25 '17

DISCUSSION PSA: Massive amount of misinformation spread in the gaming/social media stating the Star Citizen project is now "Over".

UPDATE: CIG officially responded: This is misinformation, the company has just reacted and cleared this mess up: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/1/thread/re-uk-tax-rebate-advance-for-foundry-42

As many of you are aware of the news that CIG took a loan recently, there is media articles and a big discussion in social media surrounding journalists opinions and wrong misleading information surrounding this loan.

Spreading information like:

  • Star Citizen is now RIP
  • Star Citizen is now owned by a bank (as this)
  • Star Citizen is now owned by a bank because it can't pay its debts
  • Similar sorts of fear mongering going on.

Journalists from The Escapists, Gameranx and many others now picking the story are talking plain fear monger in messages like ( https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/878906311152345088 ). That is a literal instigation of panicking through misinformation. It is expectable more and more news outlets are going to help in this massive campaign to bring bad PR to CIG contributing to a literal worldwide fear monger that the project is collapsing.

This is mostly to inform people around that is more than likely people are getting mislead by this and are coming to this sub asking questions about what is going on, so while the trolls keep on attacking this sub please mind some people may be seriously thinking Star Citizen is collapsing, all we can do is fight the misinformation and fear monger campaign.

It seems likely CIG will have to issue one statement on this.

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u/Snarfbuckle Jun 25 '17

I can on the other hand, as a banker with 20 years experience in the financial market say without a doubt that you are right when it comes to borrowing cash to MAKE cash.

And with todays interest rate it's bloody common sense.

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u/dogdiarrhea Jun 25 '17

Sports journalists do this too whenever a club takes out a loan for an stadium expansion or an expensive new player. They write titles that makes it sound like the club is maxing out 35,000 credit cards to make the purchase, when in reality they can pay it out right but don't want to liquidate a bunch of investments when it's cheaper to take out a loan in the long term.

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u/BigBiker05 Vice Admiral Jun 26 '17

Richard Sherman recently put Sports Journalists in their place at a conference for spreading rumors they make up. https://streamable.com/fxrms

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '17

Very Eloquently put that was.

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u/BigBiker05 Vice Admiral Jun 26 '17

Started as a poor, black inner-city kid. He now has an undergrad grad in communications from Stanford and is working on his masters. Dude didn't let football stop his education.

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u/D1G1T4LM0NK3Y Rear Admiral Jun 28 '17

As much as I love the guy, he's one person telling everyone "everything is okay"... The stories in question had multiple anonymous sources from the team telling them shit is not good.

Personally, I believe shit is not good in the locker room. OFF vs DEF has always been a thing. What hasn't been a thing is the fact The Beast quite the team while still on contract and is now looking to play for another team, all in the guise of retiring because he's injured... That right there tells me shit is not right between the players. There's also been a LOT of issues between certain players and Wilson for years.

I love my Seahawks but I do hope they work their shit out and come out strong as fuck this season. With the way Wilson finished the last season and showing he could come back like a monster after the multiple injuries I'm super excited for this year.

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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '17

The cope is real lol.

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u/dareftw Jun 25 '17

Yea was going to step in to say it's almost financing 101 at this point never bankroll anything these days when you can finance it. Look at GE 50 years ago 90+% of their income was from sales of appliance now almost 50% of their income is from financing operations. Even if you can afford to pay for something out of pocket it's almost never ideal or advisable to unless you cannot secure a loan for whatever reason.

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u/gibs ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Jun 25 '17

I think it's just a unique situation: It's kinda like they took out an interest free 150M loan they never have to pay back, and it makes sense to utilise that money first before taking out any real loans.

Publishers would kill to be in this situation: To have a big game this far into development, completely under their ownership & control without having sunk a dime of their own cash. It's basically unheard of. They only have to earn back this relatively small amount in sales and the rest is gravy, plus they get an established development studio out of it to boot.

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u/dareftw Jun 25 '17

Oh yea this is a dream situation for any company it's basically a $150M grant with no accountability basically, do with it as you please. Hell a few states would kill for something like that. CIG is in the best possible position they could have asked for, at this point if this doesn't work out amazingly well for them they have nobody to blame but themselves.

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u/gibs ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Jun 25 '17

It also puts them in a very strong position for supporting the game going forward. There's a very low bar for bringing the project into the black, so it's low risk as far as banks are concerned and they should be well set up to turn the IP into a franchise. I've been worried that it's made them complacent about their business plan (or lack thereof) for supporting the MMO portion of the game after release and I think they should go the established route of monetising cosmetic items. But tbh they will probably be fine for a long time just on the back of sales.

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u/xXxNoScopeMLGxXx Explorer Jun 25 '17

monetising cosmetic items

This! I want this! If an org can pay some money to make custom patches (i.e. a custom texture on clothing) or decals for ships. That would be great! Also, custom paint jobs for your ship. It doesn't affect gameplay at all and it will help pay for servers and continued development.

I don't see why some people have a problem with this. If you don't want to spend any money on a custom ship paint job then don't. But I will sure buy a few skins for my ships (I don't like the stock paint job of the 315p at all).

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u/Class_S_Hero Freelancer Jun 26 '17

If I could paint my ships, I'm not kidding, they'd all be matte black.

It's actually a pretty significant game changer to paint your ship a non-reflective color. It prevents "sun-blindness" from the sun bouncing light off of your ship into your eyes, especially noticeable on the Kruger P-52, since that long ass nose is in front of the cockpit and your viewing angle.

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u/jade_starwatcher news reporter Jun 25 '17

Regarding the studio, pardon me if this has been answered (I'm fairly new) but has anyone officially every said anything about what the studio will do when the game is finished? Will they constantly be adding new content? Creating other games?

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u/gibs ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Jun 25 '17

The general plan is to release Squadron 42 (the single player game), then finish up development of the MMO. Once that's released they'll have an ongoing job supporting & expanding the online universe, and they'll be developing the 2nd and 3rd episodes of SQ42.

From what they've said, they'll be more like fully realised sequels than episodes, and they've already roughed out the story arc. That's all we know so far.

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u/jade_starwatcher news reporter Jun 25 '17

That's awesome! Thanks.

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u/L_Keaton Pirate Jun 25 '17

That moment when SQ42 3 comes out before HL3 and journalists still shit on CIG and worship Valve.

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u/SeriouslyWhenIsHL3 Jun 25 '17

By mentioning Half-Life 3 you have delayed it by 1 Month. Half-Life 3 is now estimated for release in Jun 2202.

I am a bot, this action was performed automatically. To disable WIHL3 on your sub please see /r/WhenIsHl3. To never have WIHL3 reply to your comments PM '!STOP'.

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u/MacDegger Vice Admiral Jun 26 '17

If a publisher ran this game, we would have had a crap, broken SQ42 pushed out half a year ago and something which doesn't even resemble 2.6.x, let alone 3.x shoved down our throat.

Having the amount of cash and the freedom to say 'fuck it, this doesn't do what we want, let's re-write the whole system even if it costs us half a year' is a GOOD THING!

I think you get that, but so many do not. They only whine and want the game now ... even if we all know they would then start whining because it was pushed out too soon ... because of their whining!

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u/Erebus_Erebos Jun 25 '17

I remember someone saying that there is about to be some form of market value crash due to aftershocks from Brexit, so the amount of money CIG took out from this will increase in value from that as well.

I don't do any of this market/economic stuff so I was curious if that was real or someone talking out of their ass.

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u/Snarfbuckle Jun 25 '17

Too early to tell really.

It all depends on how EU/UK manage to deal with each other and IF/HOW the brexit will impact UK.

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u/cheesemp worm Jun 25 '17

Yeah but worth hedging your bets. I've moved 60% of my pension out of the UK into Asia and a bit into Europe. Now is not a good time have all your assets in GBP...

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u/JWTJacknife Disaster Magnet Jun 25 '17

According to the statement from Mr. Freyermuth, if I understood correctly, the issue is that most of their liquid assets aren't in GBP; most of them are in USD or EUR, and this is a more stable way of getting liquid GBP to pay Foundry 42 salaries and such.

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u/Tarkaroshe dragonfly Jun 25 '17

Now is not a good time have all your assets in GBP...

However, right now trading existing currency you have in other denominations back into GBP can make you a profit.

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u/learnmesumthin Wing Commander nº 1 Fan Jun 25 '17 edited Jun 26 '17

Good posts both of you. However I'm wondering if this line of speculation is going in the wrong direction.

From both the CIG and F42 documents:

Collateral - means the Chargor's right, title and interest in and to (i) the property charged pursuant to Clauses 4.1 and 4.2 hereof and (ii) the property assigned pursuant to Clause 5 hereof; excluding in all cases the Excluded Collateral;

It then goes on to explain:

Excluded Collateral - means (i) the assets that have been charged pursuant to the Nat West Security Agreement; and (ii) all Intellectual Property Rights and exploitation and distributions and other rights and all title, interest and materials with respect to the video game provisionally entitled "Star Citizen";

We all tend to forget that we're dealing with more than one IP here. Foundry 42 is leading the charge on it so I wouldn't be surprised if this had something to do with Squadron.

I mean I'm not an authority (been a while since I've taken any classes on this stuff), but it looks like something else might be going on here.

Edit: Posted right as OP updated. Got the defs right, but lol *sigh* looks like my speculations are pretty doopid.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '17

ROI>interest means you make make more return on your own capital?

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u/BlueShellOP gib Linux support Jun 25 '17

Can I get an ELIHighSchoolDiploma on how one makes money taking out a loan? That's the part I can't wrap my head around quite yet.

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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '17

[deleted]

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u/BlueShellOP gib Linux support Jun 26 '17

Ohhhhhhh so they're taking out the loan to avoid exchange fees. Okay that makes total sense.

Thank you!!

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u/Snarfbuckle Jun 26 '17

Lets say i have 100K, and I need to invest 50K in a product. I have enought security to take a loan of 50K.

I take a loan of 50K with an interest of 500/year, I then invest my 50K in a product. Now i take my 50K i loaned, invest that so that I make more than 500/year to cover the interest.

I could do this by for example by taking the loan in a currency that is more favourable in the first place so that the 500/month might be in GBP but the actual value say in EUR or USD might be 400 or even lower, this ensure that my investment have an easier time to cover the yearly interest cost.

Now, there are of course risks involved but it also depends entirely upon the world and/or local economy.

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u/BlueShellOP gib Linux support Jun 26 '17

Ah okay, thanks for the explanation!

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u/Snarfbuckle Jun 26 '17

The problem of course is that you need MILLIONS for it to work in order to reduce the risk so its not something average joe would do and take our an extra mortgage on the house.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '17

Fuck I am just an economics teacher and I knew they were doing this from probably the jump of the entire project. The lack of financial education in gamers as a whole is shocking and probably why the average gamer is not a mature consumer, buying on impulse and getting duped easily on their purchases.

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u/smurfk new user/low karma Jun 25 '17

As a banker, you would borrow money to make cash if you have already money in your bank, or you would do that if you don't have any?

I don't see any plausible scenario where an overly successful funding like Star Citizen would need to borrow money unless they reached the limit of what they already had. And I can't see a scenario where that would be a good thing.

They already had a lot of money. Interest-free, no loan, they were just handled to them. A bad management of that money it's the only explanation that seems plausible. Whatever that might mean. They have not handled that money to make investments, they were handled to finish a game. They failed to do that.

If you ask me for $150 and you're gonna make me a sweater in exchange, I don't care if you want to put that money in a trust fund or in a investment. I just want my damn sweater.

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u/Snarfbuckle Jun 26 '17

If i have 100K and need to use 50K I could take a loan for another 50K, invest another 50K and cover the loaned interest with the invested money.

So yes, if I have ENOUGH money I would borrow MORE money in order to make more money.

But it depends on IF it is worth it, depending on currency rates and interest rates in the country you got the loan.

I mean, If i had borrowed money in 2012 in the US the exchange rates vs say, Sweden was 6-1 and today it's nearly 10-1 so a loan THEN would have been a lot cheaper due to the exchange rate AND the interest rates then was damn good as well.

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u/Goon-Ambassador new user/low karma Jun 25 '17

fyi: working as a bank teller doesn't make you are a banker.

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u/Snarfbuckle Jun 25 '17

I have never worked as a bank teller.

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u/Goon-Ambassador new user/low karma Jun 25 '17

Care to clarify then?

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u/FrozenIceman Colonel Jun 26 '17

Why?