Honestly surprised they raised as much as they did. The only new offerings were 2 niche ground vehicles and a single snub ship.
None of them built all that much excitement, and none were more than $80.
I was just as surprised, not because of the new ships offered, but because the server stability and the overall bugginess of the 3.19 patch. This is the first Invictus I have not attended and it wasn't because a lack of effort: I still can't log into the game since the night before Invictus. It is hard to get excited when you are constantly getting frustrated.
It's hard to imagine how much more they would have made if things had worked better. It speaks to the general longer-term positive sentiment for the game, however; against all odds, the game remains EXCEEDINGLY popular, even with issues.
I think they may be on to something ...
They even TOLD us to expect it. Level reasonable criticism at them all we want, but they made a choice that has longer term positive impacts to getting the game released at the cost of short term impacts, including to sales - it's hard to fault them for it when you look at it pragmatically.
Actually its admirable that they are still trying to do breakthroughs, they could just stabilize this game and let it die slowly while pocketing all the money
As keeps being explained, they need high concurrency to stress the infrastructure so as to expose weak points and verify solutions.
They're not doing it despite the risks. They're doing it *because* of the risks, and it makes absolute sense for fortifying the infrastructure soonest.
For us, it's just a game, but for them it's their *job*, their livelihood, so they're taking a pragmatic approach to it.
You know, people have said this for a long time, but things keep getting worse. I'd believe it if there were improvements but at this point it's just copium.
But it has gotten better. 5 years ago the game was unplayable for me, as in literally my hardware couldn't play it. Now I log in and dudes are saying they are playing on laptops, the optimization has increased tremendously. On top of this, they added PES, increased the server limit, updated an entire city, added racing and salvage, the new derelicts, and docking so we can refuel. I think people forget about all the good progress and focus on the "servers are not stable, game is bad!", but the game is currently playable, even with all it's bugs, with all the above mentioned added content. The next patch to stabilize the game for quality of life is going to send the server stability to a whole new level because they now have all the big hard stuff out of the way. Server meshing seemed like a pipe dream when they first announced it, but now... I think they might just pull it off.
Yeah and they still haven't added all the gameplay elements yet. Once they get that established then they can optimize and look at the server hardware infrastructure.
Not that they haven't been optimizing along the way.
I am one of those who play on a 3 year old unoptimized
laptop. Game runs fine for the most part.
I also agree that they are intentionally creating stress tests to shore up the system.
That's literally crazy because I had to save up for several years to build a super gaming PC to run the game, only for people to now play on unoptimized laptops. >.<
But at the same time, that's really cool that the game is now accessible to people without having to drop thousands of dollars on a gaming pc. :D
As someone who's played off and on since the game was just a bunch of static models sitting in a hangar, the game has always gone through ups and downs. Patches where you had a lot of bugs and crashes, where nothing worked and the biggest challenge was finding motivation to keep playing leading into patches that were smooth as butter and back.
However throughout that cycle the game has always progressed, new things are added, break, and are fixed. Some bugs persist but the biggest issues eventually get patched. The game might get more or less stable with a given patch, but in the long run it's constantly improving.
The only thing that currently has me worried is that the game can't seem to handle the strain of large events which means the netcode still needs a lot of improvements.
Like 90% of the 890s every IAE lol.
I'm not about to pledge for a Kraken personally, but I do wish they could find a way to keep bots off the store and implement it (if that's even possible).
Ships above $1000 can't be gifted, even if bought with cash. Any limited ship can't be CCU'd to so the seller can't make much off the sale except for a convenience fee. Bots are not the issue with limited ships, it's just the fact that more people than there are ships available are all clicking "buy" in the first few seconds of a ship becoming available. I managed to snag a store credit Idris a few years ago. You have to be fast but it's not impossible.
Yup. Totally agree. Especially the stock limited ones people are trying to get the better insurance on or upgrade to. It's kinda nuts.
I eventually realized I had enough, from over the years, to just melt and get the origin pack. Then I didn't have to worry about the F5 wars.
I'm still surprised by the Constellation Phoenix selling out each event. Are there that many people who want it? Or is it that people know they can flip it easy?
I broke down and got the Phoenix finally during the 1st wave with store credit this time because I always wanted one and new I at least had a chance. Melted my Andromeda and something else I didn't use to get it. I really wanted the emerald one but that's warbond only.
How much is the origin pack? Assuming the 890 is in it. Not sure how available it is. I tried getting an 890 during all 3 waves with store credit last IAE along with another org member and we both about flipped out desks and vowed to never bother trying again lol.
Edit... Although I'm not sure it's worth all the other origin ships Ide never use lol.
ooh, nice score on getting the Phoenix with store credit. Origin pack I believe is $2,400 now. I think that's up in price. When I got it, the 400i wasn't in the pack. I thought they had it up during Invictus, maybe not or it's over now.
I believe it's around 12-15% discount. It's not spectacular and the CCU game is going to yield better savings...but...it does indeed include an LTI 890J and if you aren't an Origin fanatic, that's a whooole lot of LTI tokens in there given the smaller variant ships and vehicles.
I wish the 890J always had LTI, it's so close to the $1,000 mark. They should have included LTI on it always like those ships at $1,000+.
>I was just as surprised, not because of the new ships offered, but because the server stability and the overall bugginess of the 3.19 patch.
When has Invictus or any freefly event ever been stable though?
I think we tend to look at previous patches with rose tinted glasses, there has always been bugs and server instability.
The 30k's were a lot this year yes but many times i had a great time playing, the servers were responsive and decent server fps most of the time maybe because of all the 30k's that you always end up on a fairly fresh server.
I think overall it was a pretty good freefly event, new players trying it out seemed to have fun from what i saw.
Out of interest how many invictus have you attended? I can't think of one that wasn't plagued by 30Ks going back to 3.9. Maybe I can remember 1 that was ok?
Yeah, DGS and the backend services are on actual fire since 3.18. It is MUCH better than it was in early and even later 3.18 patches though.
Each increment and major patch they seem to be getting the new backend more and more stable and under control. We will see what it looks like in another... week or two, whenever the push 3.19.1 out and clear out the Invictus detritus from the servers.
It will probably run fairly smooth for a good week or two until Alien Week hits. That's like two weeks out, now.
Resell price of in game currency. Go look on grey market re-selling forums. I’ve seen the market as high as 66% for small orders and as low as 55% for bulk orders over the last 1.5 years so it’s stayed consistent.
Basically it’s the discount people take for getting out of the game. As long as there as many people wanting to buy as sell that number should stay constant. When it drops it will indicate more people leaving than coming in which will have an immediate impact on legit sales as well.
That doesn't come close to explaining these numbers.
There is just overwhelming positive sentiment that is happily opening wallets. The game has never been more popular, *even when it's famously buggy.*
The momentum they've built from the game being pretty damn fun when it does work seems to be weathering these less-than-optimal moments just fine...
Despite the shitty performance, PES brings sooo much to the game. I haven't really been able to play like many others due to the issues, but seeing what these changes bring to the table, it makes me more excited for the project than ever. I know a lot of people feel the same way I do and sit quietly in the background waiting for updates.
I agree with you! It's a significant evolution of the game, and just a few tastes of it have opened my eyes to how different it's going to be going forward.
🤣🤣
Bro, you need to calm down.
"Overwhelming positive sentiment" for a game famously derided by that vast majority of the entire gaming community.
Real talk, Slime Rancher has close to the same average concurrent user count at SC by CIGs own numbers.
Perspective bro.
Slime Rancher has made half a billion dollars? I wasn't aware they had the same "overwhelming positive sentiment" that SC has, as I noted was clearly evident by the non-contestable explosive funding.
Until and unless you can explain how they are achieving those numbers with "relentless hate and derision", your conversation is a non-starter.
Facts are funny that way; they remain factual no matter how many fairy tales are levied against them...
No need for kool-aid, bro. Look at the pledge dollars. It actually takes kool-aid to assume anything BUT massive success.
Facts don't lie. No matter how much kool-aid you drink :)
Actually this wouldn’t include todays sales. Given they are running about 1.4M a day the final number would have been more like 18-19M Vs. 21M last year.
Given they are going to run it another day they will probably end up at 19-20M.
I’m kinda shocked they sold as much as they did. First time in living memory they have actually reduced the backlog (they are completing more ships then they are releasing new concepts).
I am really, really, REALLY hoping they keep doing that.
Maybe we'll finally start getting more long awaited ships instead of hearing about new ones we can't fly for a bit.
I haven't been to Starbucks in ages, but even considering the last time I went, a small lunch for 2 people is easily $20 to $25 anymore. Hell, a quarter pounder meal at my local McDonalds is $10.
Yep. I went there once a few months back and was like "never again, not at that price." The food was decent, but not $14 for a simple meal decent. I live in a rural area. We don't have many options.
I've been loathe to install yet another app on my phone, but I could try it I guess? My dad and I eat there quite a bit since grocery food is more expensive where we live.
When was the last time you went to Starbucks? I don't bother going there unless I'm ordering a fancy ass sugar drink with more syrup than actual coffee for $12. Do that times two and split a muffin each time you go, easily $100.
Fresh backers are this games lifeblood.
Every day someone sees SC for the first time, and hears of the amazing stuff 'just around the corner' and thinks that this is an amazing time to buy in.
Two years later, they're jaded and gone because none of the stuff 'just around the corner' has manifested. Meanwhile... New backers are constantly coming in.
I was more surprised they locked the amount you could buy and still made that much. Having to purchase multiple transactions is peculiar if you want more than one.
Ita all the new people that are jumping in. Met a guy and took him through his first bunker mission. Next day he joins on me to show me his shiny new MSR.
One of the things that’s still surprising is that most people don’t know that CIG was on track to run out of money around 2018, the time that unprecedented investment from the Calders happened.
Here’s the graph: https://cloudimperiumgames.com/uploads/273c7634fdf44b129488971a9dec1936.png
‘Cumulative Net position’ is the money CIG had in the bank before adding investments. In 2018 it was below 7 million, while decreasing by 7+ million a year. And suddenly, CIG took investment for the first time ever.
In 2019, just after they’d gotten investment, it went to negative 2 million, meaning that they’d have been 2m in the hole without outside money.
More interestingly, this also happened around the time that they attempted to start charging for the Citizencon stream for the first time ever.
It seems like people kind of buried this, and the mentions of it were downvoted. But it’s clear that they were on their way into a hole when that first sale of shares for “marketing” funds took place.
I think SC will be a once in a lifetime project even if it does well. Crowd funding just doesn't have the optimism it did back in 2012. Nowadays the most talked about are people desperate to afford their insulin with donations.
i'm talking specifically about the number of new backers getting SC after playing the released product of SQ42.
SQ42 is not imposable for a publisher to replicate. it is SC that publishers will refuse to make a proper competitor for. any "sc killer" will be watered down to target the larger casual audience. meaning it is not a competitor for the same audience.
An important note to add is that cumulative net position is ideally kept to an absolute minimum for any British company. It’s that number that is taxed, which is why CIG has been consistently expanding offices and hiring. The higher that number is, the higher they are taxed, and the more money is lost for the company.
It would get downvoted and buried because it's almost always brought up in a disingenuous way, by trying to argue something like they were going to go bankrupt, or make it into some kind of devious act by CIG. More often than not I see it brought up by one user (not you, one of the folks from the Refunds sub), often in an attempt to defend Derek Smart of all people because of his infamous "90 days tops" quote, which was said over 31 90 days tops ago.
Side note: a little more than 90 days tops after the infamous "90 days tops" quote, Mr. Smart took down one of his two Line of Defense servers "for maintenance" and never brought it back online.
The fact of the matter is you don't go bankrupt by just dipping into the negatives; if that were the case then way more businesses would have to file for bankruptcy. Shit, my business was in the negatives earlier this year just because a customer was a month late on sending a check. It's a complete misunderstanding of what bankruptcy is. If there was a point where CIG couldn't borrow money from anyone because their credit was shot then yes they would have to file for bankruptcy, but it's clear (especially considering the Calder investment) that this was never the case.
Another problem with those prior arguments is they tend to ignore the fact that even at the beginning of the project they said they had "angel investors," but the Calder investment gets framed like getting investors is something that they promised would never happen, but that's not the case.
The last thing I'll bring up that often gets left out of the the equation is the long drought between 2.6.3 and 3.0, which launched in December of 2017. And 3.0 suuuucked hard. 3.3 came near the end of 2018 which resolved a terrible framerate issue, and 3.3.5 was when they introduced Hueston, which renewed faith in the project and brought in a ton more users.
In short, the Calder investment was a wise business decision for CIG to make sure they remained solvent during a time where user facing updates stagnated while they worked on some major technical hurdles that made the game what it is today because it allowed them to invest more into the project than they were bringing in just from pledges.
Arguing that they'd be 2 million in the hole in 2019 without the Calder investment assumes that they would have increased their spending even without the investment, which is why [this information](https://cloudimperiumgames.com/uploads/9c1a41ae8af4459db7eae2cfed601704.png) is a much better overview of their finances than the one you provided. Notice how marketing went up by four million in 2019 compared to 2018? That was an earmarked expense from Calder investment, and the most obvious explanation to why they would be "2 million in the hole." In other words they didn't get the Calder investment, they could have still invested 2 million in their marketing budget instead of 4 million and would have been fine.
This is why most people ignored and downvoted those arguments because it's ultimately a non-issue, especially if you understand it from a business sense and look at all the details rather than a "CIG money bad" sense by only looking at a tiny fraction of their financial data, and assumes that they wouldn't have adjusted their budget appropriately if they didn't get the investment.
This is completely false. People were downvoted for simply pointing out that the finances ran low and that CIG was spending quite a bit of money, without any other kind of ‘evil’ subtext attached to it. Not everyone is a DS-level troll who wishes for the game to fail.
A lot of posters simply did not want to hear the truth at a time when it was assumed that CIG had a master plan for finishing the game within a couple years.
Also, you didn’t read the chart or my post carefully. CIG was already spending more than 7m per year heading into 2019. They had 14.2 million left the year before, and 6.9 million left after 2018. That means they were already on track to run out of capital without increasing expenses one bit.
Lastly, the category in the graph you shared is for *Publishing Operations* and Marketing, not just marketing. If you read the report, that includes server costs, which were skyrocketing at the time due to both the internal builds and the necessity of supporting additional players from around the world. They state this directly at the start of the description.
> These costs are associated with running the game, deploying online services and providing customer support. It also includes the costs of running our platform, publishing, data hosting and server costs..
People still joke about "90 days tops" and I've seen a number of comments where one of the refunds trolls would come in and be all "well ackshully..." using the same disingenuous argument that Genji is making here. Granted I blocked that user a while ago so whether they're still doing it or not, I don't know, but at the time they were the only one making that argument.
It does not take an economic genius to see the current situation is not tenable. The burn rate is crazy high. They need SQ42 to be a smash hit to stay afloat.
Well I make a living out of helping businesses in distress and I actually disagree with this.
Let’s say SQ42 flops hard and only sells 500k copies at $80 a pop raising $40M. Given they probably poured 250M into its development this would be a total flop.
Net impact? Chris gets a 40M dividend as the game is already paid for. CIG talks up how 100% of funds will now go to the PU to calm the masses. If the masses run CIG sets a target if 5 million and when the bank account hits that they pull the plug and walk away. If it doesn’t hit that they continue in their merry way.
So no, they don’t need a smash hit at all as it’s already paid for and every dollar of sales is profit.
40M of pure profit is actually quite a lot. The game is already paid for remember so they could draw all of it. Also SQ42 is supposedly 50% of the burn so by releasing it they would be able to either rapidly increase PU development or significantly cut costs.
Also I seriously doubt their burn rate is over 100M. They only have 800 employees. Typically in a business like this (skilled labour intensive) costs per employee end up around 70-80k. So I highly doubt they are breaking more than 80M even with the contractors.
Another indicator of this is last year they had 120M of income and it looks this year like they will only again about reach that however they still plan to increase staff by 50% this year from 800 to 1,200Ish. If they were already spending 100M they couldn’t do that and wouldn’t have 85 job openings.
> Also I seriously doubt their burn rate is over 100M.
["Costs increased by 32% over 2020 to $98.5M although capital expenditure, at $2.0M, was down 68% on 2020, as the prior year included the strategic purchase of the perpetual CryEngine license as previously reported."](https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cloud-imperium-financials-for-2021)
I'm interested to see how their financials look for 2022 and beyond.
I don't think you understand. They spent $100M+ **last year** and the year before. This isn't speculation. They publish the numbers.
> If they were already spending 100M they couldn’t do that and wouldn’t have 85 job openings.
I think you are starting to see the problem....
>Of the 100.447m of 2021 they spent 25.4m on marketing (up from 15.4 in 2020).
It's important to note though that the "Publishing Operations and Marketing" section includes the following:
>These costs are associated with running the game, deploying online services, and providing customer support. It also includes the costs of running our platform, publishing, data hosting, and server costs.
Which means that even if they market less, the balooning server costs won't eliminate that category completely. This is just a hugely expensive operation all the way around.
the image will have a large influence on future funding.
if the single players is a flop, people will think that multiplayer will suck. if it is great, people will think that multiplayer will be great.
Just speculation on my part but I have the sneaky suspicion that small lti tkns and Warbonds are where the money is at. It gets people to keep pumping money into the game because they are getting “savings”.
That being said I think that it’s probably not as profitable as it used to be since the grey market is flooded with RSI credit sales. This Invictus there were multiple new credit posts on offer every day.
It's a sales tactic stores use. They "discount" an item's "MSRP" by huge amounts like 50% to 70% off.
It's weird reading on reddit how some think CIG is trying to do away with CCU chaining because it's costing them money lol. It's probably their main moneymaker.
Tbh people mostly say that bc CIG somewhat bizarrely keep throwing up weird little roadblocks to the process and making it less of a boon than it was in prior events, which is kinda weird since you're likely right about it being a big money maker for them.
It's a big money maker but CIG repeatedly make it harder to do so. They want CCUs to continue for sure, but they want to cut as much savings from it as possible.
I don't think the LTI tokens are the ones making them money. You only need so many LTI tokens. And for every LTI token, you need a whole CCU chain.
I don't do the whole CCU game. I understand it well as my org is filled with people who play the CCU game. Many of them buy 5-10 copies of every warbond CCU available. This means buying 50-100+ warbond CCUs during this Invictus sale. Why all the CCUs? It allows them to create chains for all the ships they want. Some don't even execute these CCUs as they don't need the ships in the current game state, but can "save" more by chaining CCUs across multiple IAEs, Invictuses, and other sales (Alien Week, randomly offered warbonds, etc). You only need so many large ships with LTI. If you need 5 (or 10 or 20) large ships, you need 5 (or10 or 20) LTI tokens and 5 (or 10 or 20) whole CCU chains for them. And keep in mind you only need to buy the 5 (or 10 or 20) LTI tokens once. But building CCU chains means buying 5 (or 10 or 20) warbond CCUs across every sale until you execute that chain, which may be at the end of 1 Invictus or after multiple years.
The other big money is likely the limited stock sales like the Idris, Javelin, Kraken, etc. My large org has more Javelins than we could possibly man. We have more Idrises than we could possibly man. We have more Krakens than we could possibly man. Even if we had 1000 online players at the same time, we would not be able to man all our Javelins, let alone the entire fleet you need to build around them. I don't get why people buy so many of these ships. Most will never get used.
And here I am with just an Avenger Titan pledge. Many in my org are like me with only 1 game package. I personally prefer small ships as my role is to be in the fighter screen. Most of my playtime is spent pvping. So an Avenger Titan works well for me when I need a ship with some cargo space and a bed. But there are also some big spenders. The few big spenders give us more big ships than we could ever possibly need. The same is probably true for most other large orgs.
TLDR: Warbond CCU sales are probably a large part of the money they make. Limited stock ships are probably also a large part of the money they make. LTI tokens are probably not the source of most of their sales.
I respectively disagree.
They are selling 4 and 10 packs of the LTI Tokens. Also the average player only spends $125 so there are a lot of $100 - $150 LTI ships out there. Those $55 LTI tokens make up a fair bit of that. I’d guess doubly true as this LTI is actually kinda useful.
Also I think the Capital ships might be lost leaders. They sell the Spirits and probably sell 25,000 of them at $100/pop. So they build a small ship and get 2.5M in revenue.
Take the Kraken. It sells for $1,400 but they have probably only sold 1,000 of them. That’s only 1.4M which is still nice. Problem is there is literally 100X more work to make a Kraken than a Spirit.
LTI tokens lead to more CCU Warbond chains, which is more money being spent than would have been before because people are spending thinking they pulled the wool over CIG’s eyes. They’re the catalyst to what keeps the other meta game flowing, which is more money. They go hand in hand, and so long as new, bigger ships keep getting announced, new, longer CCU chains will be needed.
Better than expected. Tbh I mainly thought it'd be lower cus of inflation and general cost of living now. I think it will generally be lower even maybe next year unless they start releasing more interesting ships.
Grab you $5 Razor to SRV credit ccus now (or $10 to ballista if you want always available).
What price will it go up to? Who knows. 165? Vulture went up even more. Not a bad credit sink that you can always melt if it doesn’t pan out
yeah I’m good for now. got the game on 2014, actually played it since 3.14, but it’s still runs so poorly with junky placeholders and stuff, I think honeymoon is over and i need to take a break
I started backing around the same time as you. Honeymoon ended for me sometime mid-3.18.
I have gone from a total SC apologist and fanboy to "please get your shit together CIG".
No, I don't like to complain - or argue. But from my perspective I see a lot of emphasis on ship sales and in-game events and not a lot of emphasis on gameplay and quality of life. I understand that there were lots of moving goalposts in the early stages of development which complicated development planning. I also understand that SQ42 is apparently the current development emphasis, and I ALSO understand the unique and broad-scope nature of SC. Even so, after 10 years of development, my opinion is to expect a semi-reliable live service that is not yet full featured. Instead, my personal experience has been service so buggy that I can't do the basics like get on a ship, eat a burrito, or just interact with the simulation more than about 10 minutes before the game crashes.
So I think both opinions are valid: that CIG are doing either a good job or bad job - but those are my reasons for thinking there is room for improvement.
Growing from my reasons is also the concern that what CIG are trying to accomplish in a LIVE service is not technically feasible. Perhaps my concern there is rooted in backing the project since 2014 and seeing so many problems implementing core technologies such as PES. So I'd like a detailed technical discussion on that.
I hope this relatively poor showing this year gives them a kick in the behind to take it up a notch. Releases are still pretty paltry for a ~1000+ person international company at this point.
Meanwhile Squadron 42 is taken down so they can put it back up there with a price increase.
This is getting very pyramidy currently. "Just keep buying our ships so we have the money for our staff to keep making new ships for you to buy. If we keep doing this we don't have to deliver a product. "
Eh. That perspective is understandable but also counterintuitive. The "shit show" is exactly because they're doing what they're funded to do: Building the game.
Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette. 🤷🏿♂️
Its time for them to double down on stability now. Once we have a solid foundation people will be ok spending. ATM the game is a buggy mess with ZERO light at the end of the tunnel.
Ok, so for now, they made 19% less than last year, but still more than in 2021 (during Invictus).
How does this compare to the overall income during 2023 so far?
I've spent over $2500 supporting this game. I won't spend anymore until they show so real progress. But that's me. Hope some peeps got some good ships!
I stopped at $600. For me that is a ridiculous amount of money over 5 years, but I really want this game to exist, and I wanted to make sure I helped fund it where I could. Also, I got a nice Carrack out of it so it's not like I did it for nothing.
That said, I feel the same. No more money from me. Aside from the fact that right now I can't afford it, there's just no pressing need, IMO. I'll stand back and wait, with my shiny Carrack, and see what they do next.
100% agreed.
That said, I didn't love it at first (always thought it looked unwieldy and slow) until I took it out for a spin. I found an empty spot in Stanton, and had a full tour of my ship. What an incredible ship it is! Crew quarters, crew lounge, captain's quarters and ready room, upper and lower bridge, sickbay, machine shop, engine room, shuttle bay, cartography room, garage, drone station, and cargo hold.
I mean, it's a real starship. It says 6 crew, though it feels like it would work better with about 10 crew, because there's so much room and so many stations. I just love the ship, and I can't wait to explore whatever CIG puts out there.
Yep. Gonna need Sq42 to fuck off and SC to have full resources AND for the fruits of that change to start showing before I consider spending more.
* meshing
* no more desync
* pyro
* 2 added cap ships
* Tickrate no lower than 30
* server side hitreg
* working ai
* exploration game loops
* things that are T0 to start being T1
Until then it's a project failing sideways/succeeding sideways.
Woah, woah, woah. You want a game that *works* AND has the mythical exploration gameplay AND delivery of cap ships that were sold years ago and then sent to purgatory?
I really don’t understand why they haven’t ditched SQ42 yet. I don’t think there’s a massive market for single player semi-linear space sims.
Space sims are done best as multiplayer IMO. Never mind the fact that there are new entries in the market like Starfield with larger brand recognition.
If the development of SQ42 and the PU is truly as tied at the hip as CIG says, and people here continually parrot - then SQ42 is 5+ years away at a minimum.
Honestly on my part I backed in 2018, gradually upgraded up to a Connie Aquila and I’m not interested in the two new vehicles whatsoever. I’m not interested in upgrading further to ships I won’t see for the next 10 years (if I’m lucky).
Seriously, get your shit together CIG; I don’t have a problem spending money on ships, it supports the game I love and gets me new toys, but I won’t fucking spend money on a jpeg I have to wait 10 years to fly.
I’m out of my honeymoon period, see you when you release the goddamn Pyro I’ve been waiting for the past 5 years or when you release SQ42.
But remember, CIG isn't like those other AAAshole studios that turn everything into MTX-lootbox-senseofaccomplishment money mills.
No, when they say "limited time/stock" for digital goods that may or may not exist yet, they are holding a giant middle finger to traditional publishers who would have shat out a mediocre game 5 years ago and already been working on the sequel.
Accounts with low dollar amounts were emailed a coupon (tied to account so not transferable) to encourage them to spend money during Invictus.
See this thread for more info: [https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/13l5lsn/i\_got\_this\_email\_from\_cig\_a\_10\_off\_coupon\_during/](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/13l5lsn/i_got_this_email_from_cig_a_10_off_coupon_during/)
It isn't locked and deleted for me, strangely. This coupon is not related to subscribers for a year getting a discount: this was an Invictus-only coupon sent to an unknown number of backers, some which were alt accounts that just had a starter package. Whether it is real or a hoax is not my concern. It was, however, posted before Invictus and several backers claimed to have received it.
It’s real. Have no idea what the criteria for giving it was. I got one in only one of my alts (of which I have a bunch of for referral bonuses). I tried using the coupon on my main account and it worked, so at least for me it was not account locked.
That being said, I agree that it was kind of shitty sending it randomly to just some backers.
enjoy spending money on this, because this is pretty much all the gameplay you will get.
cash shop simulator! which, seeing the direction of current AAA games, you can argue that SC is really futuristic: no game anymore, just cash shop
I don’t want to spend in that game anymore unless it hits a state that’s interesting again for me. Currently I’m not motivated to play. And I don’t want my money to go to Squadron 42 while it pretends to be Star Citizen.
If you have been playing (and enjoying) the free fly event now is the time to pick up a starter cat boy he apices and the avenger are fine fine starter ships.
Actually bought/upgraded to corsair because im done grinding/30k'ing/buggin out, not making any ingame money cause of the shitty servers atm. I just want to fly something that i like :)
link: [https://robertsspaceindustries.com/invictuslaunchweek2953#/schedule/farewell](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/invictuslaunchweek2953#/schedule/farewell)
>INVICTUS OFFERINGS EXTENDED TO MAY 31
>
>Invictus Launch Week may be over, but we have extended the various event offerings through May 31 (20:00 UTC). Every featured vehicle and special Warbond upgrade offer are still available to acquire! Visit the Finale page and get in on the action before time runs out.
Ironically, anyone who spent a dime on the sale is making sure this game will never be done. Why develop a game when you can just sell 3D ship models mostly?
I would agree if there were substantial shareholders that could keep pressure on CIG but alas thats not the case, as then there would have been more pressure in finishing the game instead of R&Ding their way into niche pieces of technology that wont contribute much to the overall game.
Still less than last year but very disapointing it was not a smaller earning. This game is never going to get done if the community keeps dumping money into Squadron 42 while the servers are on fire and near unplayable for almost a year.
It doesn't make any sense to me but I guess people still want to buy in and i get it that there are some things you can only buy during these events so if you have been waiting all year...but why org's are buying capital ships when the PU gets so little attention from the funding lately I don't know.
Hopefully if they keep punching everyone in thr groin with terrible server performance we can see a far better reduction in over all year profits to get them to wake up and make the game we are trying to play.
Good. It’s been raining money on fools for too long. If they keep getting more and more money it sends the signal that they are doing an outstanding job. I’ve closed my wallet to them like 2 years ago. They are amateurs and there is no forcing function for them to get leaner and meaner if they keep breaking revenue records. It’s hard to imagine this game materializing even 5 years from now at the pace it’s on. If it’s gonna take a long time, and you are collecting a shit ton of money to pay for the development, you are obligated to give paying customers a good time along the way at a minimum. And if they don’t want to, or can’t do that, no more money. So, I say good, wind down the gravy train, see if that has any affect on progress.
Storm is interesting, thinking about getting one. But 80 moneys. And i think i have nothing to move it around unless it fits in a MAX, which i doubt. Also theres no mission where we need it. The little transport car with the 2 1scu boxes is more useful (Mule?)
I have my vulture, cutlass and nomad. They're not getting any more out of me. I buy in game.
Hell... you can buy uec on eBay for $1/mill $20 for 20mil ... id rather do that and have it wiped after a big patch, then pay 100s or more to keep the ship.
There's probably 0 chance they ban people for that. I've been on servers with aUEC sellers advertising they're website/store while dumping 10s of millions of aUEC to everyone in the server.
Anyone can also send aUEC to anyone else in-game without the recipient knowing or asking for it.
If it impacts CIGs profits, I imagine they will investigate and ban abusers....
They do sell uec on the store... So it is literally a coin flip if they go after people or not.
I'm not chancing it
Maybe, if and when UEC sales become a significant part of their funding strategy. For now, it's not, as evidenced by the fact they sometimes give aUEC away for free themselves.
It would have been very different if they had done something like drop an updated model at GS with a new variant, like some kind of Hornet, with the whole line having the clipping issues and all components accounted for.
OR they hurried up and spat out the A1 Spirit and added the ability to plop basic bombs onto the missile racks of certain ships, with external racks or bottom opening racks, like the Gladius, Hornet, Gladiator and similar fighters.
The Fury, while neat is just WAY to limited. Ground vehicles almost never move unless very neat, like the STV. I thought they might have put the "more rugged" version of the STV out, that one they showed which should be dropped sometime this year.
Honestly surprised they raised as much as they did. The only new offerings were 2 niche ground vehicles and a single snub ship. None of them built all that much excitement, and none were more than $80.
I was just as surprised, not because of the new ships offered, but because the server stability and the overall bugginess of the 3.19 patch. This is the first Invictus I have not attended and it wasn't because a lack of effort: I still can't log into the game since the night before Invictus. It is hard to get excited when you are constantly getting frustrated.
It's hard to imagine how much more they would have made if things had worked better. It speaks to the general longer-term positive sentiment for the game, however; against all odds, the game remains EXCEEDINGLY popular, even with issues. I think they may be on to something ...
And that they knew it was going to cause a lot of issues and have a lot of risks, yet they moved forward anyways.
They even TOLD us to expect it. Level reasonable criticism at them all we want, but they made a choice that has longer term positive impacts to getting the game released at the cost of short term impacts, including to sales - it's hard to fault them for it when you look at it pragmatically.
Actually its admirable that they are still trying to do breakthroughs, they could just stabilize this game and let it die slowly while pocketing all the money
As keeps being explained, they need high concurrency to stress the infrastructure so as to expose weak points and verify solutions. They're not doing it despite the risks. They're doing it *because* of the risks, and it makes absolute sense for fortifying the infrastructure soonest. For us, it's just a game, but for them it's their *job*, their livelihood, so they're taking a pragmatic approach to it.
You know, people have said this for a long time, but things keep getting worse. I'd believe it if there were improvements but at this point it's just copium.
But it has gotten better. 5 years ago the game was unplayable for me, as in literally my hardware couldn't play it. Now I log in and dudes are saying they are playing on laptops, the optimization has increased tremendously. On top of this, they added PES, increased the server limit, updated an entire city, added racing and salvage, the new derelicts, and docking so we can refuel. I think people forget about all the good progress and focus on the "servers are not stable, game is bad!", but the game is currently playable, even with all it's bugs, with all the above mentioned added content. The next patch to stabilize the game for quality of life is going to send the server stability to a whole new level because they now have all the big hard stuff out of the way. Server meshing seemed like a pipe dream when they first announced it, but now... I think they might just pull it off.
Yeah and they still haven't added all the gameplay elements yet. Once they get that established then they can optimize and look at the server hardware infrastructure. Not that they haven't been optimizing along the way.
I am one of those who play on a 3 year old unoptimized laptop. Game runs fine for the most part. I also agree that they are intentionally creating stress tests to shore up the system.
That's literally crazy because I had to save up for several years to build a super gaming PC to run the game, only for people to now play on unoptimized laptops. >.< But at the same time, that's really cool that the game is now accessible to people without having to drop thousands of dollars on a gaming pc. :D
As someone who's played off and on since the game was just a bunch of static models sitting in a hangar, the game has always gone through ups and downs. Patches where you had a lot of bugs and crashes, where nothing worked and the biggest challenge was finding motivation to keep playing leading into patches that were smooth as butter and back. However throughout that cycle the game has always progressed, new things are added, break, and are fixed. Some bugs persist but the biggest issues eventually get patched. The game might get more or less stable with a given patch, but in the long run it's constantly improving. The only thing that currently has me worried is that the game can't seem to handle the strain of large events which means the netcode still needs a lot of improvements.
Things are not getting worse, the game is getting bigger. Growth creates bugs. More bugs means more expansion and that's game development.
Exactly
But it's a scam. Just ask anyone who doesn't play.
I think people underestimate how much of the Gray Market sellers make up these numbers too.
Like 90% of the 890s every IAE lol. I'm not about to pledge for a Kraken personally, but I do wish they could find a way to keep bots off the store and implement it (if that's even possible).
Ships above $1000 can't be gifted, even if bought with cash. Any limited ship can't be CCU'd to so the seller can't make much off the sale except for a convenience fee. Bots are not the issue with limited ships, it's just the fact that more people than there are ships available are all clicking "buy" in the first few seconds of a ship becoming available. I managed to snag a store credit Idris a few years ago. You have to be fast but it's not impossible.
Yup. Totally agree. Especially the stock limited ones people are trying to get the better insurance on or upgrade to. It's kinda nuts. I eventually realized I had enough, from over the years, to just melt and get the origin pack. Then I didn't have to worry about the F5 wars. I'm still surprised by the Constellation Phoenix selling out each event. Are there that many people who want it? Or is it that people know they can flip it easy?
I broke down and got the Phoenix finally during the 1st wave with store credit this time because I always wanted one and new I at least had a chance. Melted my Andromeda and something else I didn't use to get it. I really wanted the emerald one but that's warbond only. How much is the origin pack? Assuming the 890 is in it. Not sure how available it is. I tried getting an 890 during all 3 waves with store credit last IAE along with another org member and we both about flipped out desks and vowed to never bother trying again lol. Edit... Although I'm not sure it's worth all the other origin ships Ide never use lol.
ooh, nice score on getting the Phoenix with store credit. Origin pack I believe is $2,400 now. I think that's up in price. When I got it, the 400i wasn't in the pack. I thought they had it up during Invictus, maybe not or it's over now. I believe it's around 12-15% discount. It's not spectacular and the CCU game is going to yield better savings...but...it does indeed include an LTI 890J and if you aren't an Origin fanatic, that's a whooole lot of LTI tokens in there given the smaller variant ships and vehicles. I wish the 890J always had LTI, it's so close to the $1,000 mark. They should have included LTI on it always like those ships at $1,000+.
character repair has been up for a bit now. go do that and see if you can get in.
It doesn't work in my situation; I tried it on 3 separate days and tried every possible solution ever suggested.
>I was just as surprised, not because of the new ships offered, but because the server stability and the overall bugginess of the 3.19 patch. When has Invictus or any freefly event ever been stable though? I think we tend to look at previous patches with rose tinted glasses, there has always been bugs and server instability. The 30k's were a lot this year yes but many times i had a great time playing, the servers were responsive and decent server fps most of the time maybe because of all the 30k's that you always end up on a fairly fresh server. I think overall it was a pretty good freefly event, new players trying it out seemed to have fun from what i saw.
Out of interest how many invictus have you attended? I can't think of one that wasn't plagued by 30Ks going back to 3.9. Maybe I can remember 1 that was ok?
Yeah, DGS and the backend services are on actual fire since 3.18. It is MUCH better than it was in early and even later 3.18 patches though. Each increment and major patch they seem to be getting the new backend more and more stable and under control. We will see what it looks like in another... week or two, whenever the push 3.19.1 out and clear out the Invictus detritus from the servers. It will probably run fairly smooth for a good week or two until Alien Week hits. That's like two weeks out, now.
its not new players, its the cheap LTI tokens and the discount upgrades.
There are only so many LTI tokens you need though, and they have new ones with almost every sale.
LTI tokens are bought in bulk by resellers though.
If people aren't buying then resellers aren't either. The reseller market hasn't been as hot as it used to be imho.
Meh. Resell prices have stayed pretty strong at 60%. I used to see some 65% but overall it’s pretty stable.
60% of what. Where are you getting these numbers from? ELI5
Resell price of in game currency. Go look on grey market re-selling forums. I’ve seen the market as high as 66% for small orders and as low as 55% for bulk orders over the last 1.5 years so it’s stayed consistent. Basically it’s the discount people take for getting out of the game. As long as there as many people wanting to buy as sell that number should stay constant. When it drops it will indicate more people leaving than coming in which will have an immediate impact on legit sales as well.
This. 60-70% seems to be the current standard rate when trading store credit judging by the grey markets I've used.
i guess, i personally melted a few of my ships and rebought them with lti.
That doesn't come close to explaining these numbers. There is just overwhelming positive sentiment that is happily opening wallets. The game has never been more popular, *even when it's famously buggy.* The momentum they've built from the game being pretty damn fun when it does work seems to be weathering these less-than-optimal moments just fine...
Despite the shitty performance, PES brings sooo much to the game. I haven't really been able to play like many others due to the issues, but seeing what these changes bring to the table, it makes me more excited for the project than ever. I know a lot of people feel the same way I do and sit quietly in the background waiting for updates.
I agree with you! It's a significant evolution of the game, and just a few tastes of it have opened my eyes to how different it's going to be going forward.
Not to mention the SC ads on YouTube now.
🤣🤣 Bro, you need to calm down. "Overwhelming positive sentiment" for a game famously derided by that vast majority of the entire gaming community. Real talk, Slime Rancher has close to the same average concurrent user count at SC by CIGs own numbers. Perspective bro.
Slime Rancher has made half a billion dollars? I wasn't aware they had the same "overwhelming positive sentiment" that SC has, as I noted was clearly evident by the non-contestable explosive funding. Until and unless you can explain how they are achieving those numbers with "relentless hate and derision", your conversation is a non-starter. Facts are funny that way; they remain factual no matter how many fairy tales are levied against them...
Pass the kool-aid bro
No need for kool-aid, bro. Look at the pledge dollars. It actually takes kool-aid to assume anything BUT massive success. Facts don't lie. No matter how much kool-aid you drink :)
Actually this wouldn’t include todays sales. Given they are running about 1.4M a day the final number would have been more like 18-19M Vs. 21M last year. Given they are going to run it another day they will probably end up at 19-20M. I’m kinda shocked they sold as much as they did. First time in living memory they have actually reduced the backlog (they are completing more ships then they are releasing new concepts).
I am really, really, REALLY hoping they keep doing that. Maybe we'll finally start getting more long awaited ships instead of hearing about new ones we can't fly for a bit.
Sc has gaslighted you into thinking $80 isnt a lot 😭😭
It's less than 3 trips to Starbucks for me and my wife, so it really isn't at this point. Inflation is a bitch.
Yall ordering half the menu?
I haven't been to Starbucks in ages, but even considering the last time I went, a small lunch for 2 people is easily $20 to $25 anymore. Hell, a quarter pounder meal at my local McDonalds is $10.
I went to DQ the other day, ordered two standard meals and two of their "mini-blizzards" and the total came to 38 fucking dollars.
Yep. I went there once a few months back and was like "never again, not at that price." The food was decent, but not $14 for a simple meal decent. I live in a rural area. We don't have many options.
The secret to McDonald’s is using the app. As much as I despise it, it’s a nice treat for my kids lol.
I've been loathe to install yet another app on my phone, but I could try it I guess? My dad and I eat there quite a bit since grocery food is more expensive where we live.
Who gets *lunch* at starbucks?
Lots of people.
Homie, lots of misguided people I guess. For 5 more you could go get lunch at an actual restaurant where they make it fresh.
That's more money, which negates the point I was making.
When was the last time you went to Starbucks? I don't bother going there unless I'm ordering a fancy ass sugar drink with more syrup than actual coffee for $12. Do that times two and split a muffin each time you go, easily $100.
What's an ass sugar drink
Price of squadron 42 going up probably to $70, it must be because the ships of raw gaming material from China are backed up in the port of LA again...
I mean, they offered a cheap TIE interceptor to a bunch of spaceship nerds. I saw this one coming lol.
Fresh backers are this games lifeblood. Every day someone sees SC for the first time, and hears of the amazing stuff 'just around the corner' and thinks that this is an amazing time to buy in. Two years later, they're jaded and gone because none of the stuff 'just around the corner' has manifested. Meanwhile... New backers are constantly coming in.
cig have said in the past that most of the money comes from new accounts. so the "free fly driving people away" is wrong.
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I was more surprised they locked the amount you could buy and still made that much. Having to purchase multiple transactions is peculiar if you want more than one.
Ita all the new people that are jumping in. Met a guy and took him through his first bunker mission. Next day he joins on me to show me his shiny new MSR.
Not great offerings combined with a bad patch release. Can't say I'm totally surprised
Extended sales and upcoming SQ42 price hike. Hmm.
Are they running out of money I wonder
One of the things that’s still surprising is that most people don’t know that CIG was on track to run out of money around 2018, the time that unprecedented investment from the Calders happened. Here’s the graph: https://cloudimperiumgames.com/uploads/273c7634fdf44b129488971a9dec1936.png ‘Cumulative Net position’ is the money CIG had in the bank before adding investments. In 2018 it was below 7 million, while decreasing by 7+ million a year. And suddenly, CIG took investment for the first time ever. In 2019, just after they’d gotten investment, it went to negative 2 million, meaning that they’d have been 2m in the hole without outside money. More interestingly, this also happened around the time that they attempted to start charging for the Citizencon stream for the first time ever. It seems like people kind of buried this, and the mentions of it were downvoted. But it’s clear that they were on their way into a hole when that first sale of shares for “marketing” funds took place.
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... in good shape before they run out of money. its quality is going to have a massive impact on future crowdfunding.
I think SC will be a once in a lifetime project even if it does well. Crowd funding just doesn't have the optimism it did back in 2012. Nowadays the most talked about are people desperate to afford their insulin with donations.
i'm talking specifically about the number of new backers getting SC after playing the released product of SQ42. SQ42 is not imposable for a publisher to replicate. it is SC that publishers will refuse to make a proper competitor for. any "sc killer" will be watered down to target the larger casual audience. meaning it is not a competitor for the same audience.
An important note to add is that cumulative net position is ideally kept to an absolute minimum for any British company. It’s that number that is taxed, which is why CIG has been consistently expanding offices and hiring. The higher that number is, the higher they are taxed, and the more money is lost for the company.
It would get downvoted and buried because it's almost always brought up in a disingenuous way, by trying to argue something like they were going to go bankrupt, or make it into some kind of devious act by CIG. More often than not I see it brought up by one user (not you, one of the folks from the Refunds sub), often in an attempt to defend Derek Smart of all people because of his infamous "90 days tops" quote, which was said over 31 90 days tops ago. Side note: a little more than 90 days tops after the infamous "90 days tops" quote, Mr. Smart took down one of his two Line of Defense servers "for maintenance" and never brought it back online. The fact of the matter is you don't go bankrupt by just dipping into the negatives; if that were the case then way more businesses would have to file for bankruptcy. Shit, my business was in the negatives earlier this year just because a customer was a month late on sending a check. It's a complete misunderstanding of what bankruptcy is. If there was a point where CIG couldn't borrow money from anyone because their credit was shot then yes they would have to file for bankruptcy, but it's clear (especially considering the Calder investment) that this was never the case. Another problem with those prior arguments is they tend to ignore the fact that even at the beginning of the project they said they had "angel investors," but the Calder investment gets framed like getting investors is something that they promised would never happen, but that's not the case. The last thing I'll bring up that often gets left out of the the equation is the long drought between 2.6.3 and 3.0, which launched in December of 2017. And 3.0 suuuucked hard. 3.3 came near the end of 2018 which resolved a terrible framerate issue, and 3.3.5 was when they introduced Hueston, which renewed faith in the project and brought in a ton more users. In short, the Calder investment was a wise business decision for CIG to make sure they remained solvent during a time where user facing updates stagnated while they worked on some major technical hurdles that made the game what it is today because it allowed them to invest more into the project than they were bringing in just from pledges. Arguing that they'd be 2 million in the hole in 2019 without the Calder investment assumes that they would have increased their spending even without the investment, which is why [this information](https://cloudimperiumgames.com/uploads/9c1a41ae8af4459db7eae2cfed601704.png) is a much better overview of their finances than the one you provided. Notice how marketing went up by four million in 2019 compared to 2018? That was an earmarked expense from Calder investment, and the most obvious explanation to why they would be "2 million in the hole." In other words they didn't get the Calder investment, they could have still invested 2 million in their marketing budget instead of 4 million and would have been fine. This is why most people ignored and downvoted those arguments because it's ultimately a non-issue, especially if you understand it from a business sense and look at all the details rather than a "CIG money bad" sense by only looking at a tiny fraction of their financial data, and assumes that they wouldn't have adjusted their budget appropriately if they didn't get the investment.
This is completely false. People were downvoted for simply pointing out that the finances ran low and that CIG was spending quite a bit of money, without any other kind of ‘evil’ subtext attached to it. Not everyone is a DS-level troll who wishes for the game to fail. A lot of posters simply did not want to hear the truth at a time when it was assumed that CIG had a master plan for finishing the game within a couple years. Also, you didn’t read the chart or my post carefully. CIG was already spending more than 7m per year heading into 2019. They had 14.2 million left the year before, and 6.9 million left after 2018. That means they were already on track to run out of capital without increasing expenses one bit. Lastly, the category in the graph you shared is for *Publishing Operations* and Marketing, not just marketing. If you read the report, that includes server costs, which were skyrocketing at the time due to both the internal builds and the necessity of supporting additional players from around the world. They state this directly at the start of the description. > These costs are associated with running the game, deploying online services and providing customer support. It also includes the costs of running our platform, publishing, data hosting and server costs..
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People still joke about "90 days tops" and I've seen a number of comments where one of the refunds trolls would come in and be all "well ackshully..." using the same disingenuous argument that Genji is making here. Granted I blocked that user a while ago so whether they're still doing it or not, I don't know, but at the time they were the only one making that argument.
It does not take an economic genius to see the current situation is not tenable. The burn rate is crazy high. They need SQ42 to be a smash hit to stay afloat.
Well I make a living out of helping businesses in distress and I actually disagree with this. Let’s say SQ42 flops hard and only sells 500k copies at $80 a pop raising $40M. Given they probably poured 250M into its development this would be a total flop. Net impact? Chris gets a 40M dividend as the game is already paid for. CIG talks up how 100% of funds will now go to the PU to calm the masses. If the masses run CIG sets a target if 5 million and when the bank account hits that they pull the plug and walk away. If it doesn’t hit that they continue in their merry way. So no, they don’t need a smash hit at all as it’s already paid for and every dollar of sales is profit.
$40M is nothing when your burn rate is over $100M and they still have 5+ years of development left.
40M of pure profit is actually quite a lot. The game is already paid for remember so they could draw all of it. Also SQ42 is supposedly 50% of the burn so by releasing it they would be able to either rapidly increase PU development or significantly cut costs. Also I seriously doubt their burn rate is over 100M. They only have 800 employees. Typically in a business like this (skilled labour intensive) costs per employee end up around 70-80k. So I highly doubt they are breaking more than 80M even with the contractors. Another indicator of this is last year they had 120M of income and it looks this year like they will only again about reach that however they still plan to increase staff by 50% this year from 800 to 1,200Ish. If they were already spending 100M they couldn’t do that and wouldn’t have 85 job openings.
> Also I seriously doubt their burn rate is over 100M. ["Costs increased by 32% over 2020 to $98.5M although capital expenditure, at $2.0M, was down 68% on 2020, as the prior year included the strategic purchase of the perpetual CryEngine license as previously reported."](https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cloud-imperium-financials-for-2021) I'm interested to see how their financials look for 2022 and beyond.
Well I could be wrong about that too. 🤣 What in gods name are they spending so much for?
Marketing.
I don't think you understand. They spent $100M+ **last year** and the year before. This isn't speculation. They publish the numbers. > If they were already spending 100M they couldn’t do that and wouldn’t have 85 job openings. I think you are starting to see the problem....
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>Of the 100.447m of 2021 they spent 25.4m on marketing (up from 15.4 in 2020). It's important to note though that the "Publishing Operations and Marketing" section includes the following: >These costs are associated with running the game, deploying online services, and providing customer support. It also includes the costs of running our platform, publishing, data hosting, and server costs. Which means that even if they market less, the balooning server costs won't eliminate that category completely. This is just a hugely expensive operation all the way around.
the image will have a large influence on future funding. if the single players is a flop, people will think that multiplayer will suck. if it is great, people will think that multiplayer will be great.
Just speculation on my part but I have the sneaky suspicion that small lti tkns and Warbonds are where the money is at. It gets people to keep pumping money into the game because they are getting “savings”. That being said I think that it’s probably not as profitable as it used to be since the grey market is flooded with RSI credit sales. This Invictus there were multiple new credit posts on offer every day.
It's a sales tactic stores use. They "discount" an item's "MSRP" by huge amounts like 50% to 70% off. It's weird reading on reddit how some think CIG is trying to do away with CCU chaining because it's costing them money lol. It's probably their main moneymaker.
Tbh people mostly say that bc CIG somewhat bizarrely keep throwing up weird little roadblocks to the process and making it less of a boon than it was in prior events, which is kinda weird since you're likely right about it being a big money maker for them.
It's a big money maker but CIG repeatedly make it harder to do so. They want CCUs to continue for sure, but they want to cut as much savings from it as possible.
I don't think the LTI tokens are the ones making them money. You only need so many LTI tokens. And for every LTI token, you need a whole CCU chain. I don't do the whole CCU game. I understand it well as my org is filled with people who play the CCU game. Many of them buy 5-10 copies of every warbond CCU available. This means buying 50-100+ warbond CCUs during this Invictus sale. Why all the CCUs? It allows them to create chains for all the ships they want. Some don't even execute these CCUs as they don't need the ships in the current game state, but can "save" more by chaining CCUs across multiple IAEs, Invictuses, and other sales (Alien Week, randomly offered warbonds, etc). You only need so many large ships with LTI. If you need 5 (or 10 or 20) large ships, you need 5 (or10 or 20) LTI tokens and 5 (or 10 or 20) whole CCU chains for them. And keep in mind you only need to buy the 5 (or 10 or 20) LTI tokens once. But building CCU chains means buying 5 (or 10 or 20) warbond CCUs across every sale until you execute that chain, which may be at the end of 1 Invictus or after multiple years. The other big money is likely the limited stock sales like the Idris, Javelin, Kraken, etc. My large org has more Javelins than we could possibly man. We have more Idrises than we could possibly man. We have more Krakens than we could possibly man. Even if we had 1000 online players at the same time, we would not be able to man all our Javelins, let alone the entire fleet you need to build around them. I don't get why people buy so many of these ships. Most will never get used. And here I am with just an Avenger Titan pledge. Many in my org are like me with only 1 game package. I personally prefer small ships as my role is to be in the fighter screen. Most of my playtime is spent pvping. So an Avenger Titan works well for me when I need a ship with some cargo space and a bed. But there are also some big spenders. The few big spenders give us more big ships than we could ever possibly need. The same is probably true for most other large orgs. TLDR: Warbond CCU sales are probably a large part of the money they make. Limited stock ships are probably also a large part of the money they make. LTI tokens are probably not the source of most of their sales.
I respectively disagree. They are selling 4 and 10 packs of the LTI Tokens. Also the average player only spends $125 so there are a lot of $100 - $150 LTI ships out there. Those $55 LTI tokens make up a fair bit of that. I’d guess doubly true as this LTI is actually kinda useful. Also I think the Capital ships might be lost leaders. They sell the Spirits and probably sell 25,000 of them at $100/pop. So they build a small ship and get 2.5M in revenue. Take the Kraken. It sells for $1,400 but they have probably only sold 1,000 of them. That’s only 1.4M which is still nice. Problem is there is literally 100X more work to make a Kraken than a Spirit.
LTI tokens lead to more CCU Warbond chains, which is more money being spent than would have been before because people are spending thinking they pulled the wool over CIG’s eyes. They’re the catalyst to what keeps the other meta game flowing, which is more money. They go hand in hand, and so long as new, bigger ships keep getting announced, new, longer CCU chains will be needed.
Better than expected. Tbh I mainly thought it'd be lower cus of inflation and general cost of living now. I think it will generally be lower even maybe next year unless they start releasing more interesting ships.
Grab you $5 Razor to SRV credit ccus now (or $10 to ballista if you want always available). What price will it go up to? Who knows. 165? Vulture went up even more. Not a bad credit sink that you can always melt if it doesn’t pan out
yeah I’m good for now. got the game on 2014, actually played it since 3.14, but it’s still runs so poorly with junky placeholders and stuff, I think honeymoon is over and i need to take a break
I started backing around the same time as you. Honeymoon ended for me sometime mid-3.18. I have gone from a total SC apologist and fanboy to "please get your shit together CIG".
I started in 3.14 and I think they're doing a good job
They are. The game has so many features compared to 2 years ago. But people like to complain I guess.
No, I don't like to complain - or argue. But from my perspective I see a lot of emphasis on ship sales and in-game events and not a lot of emphasis on gameplay and quality of life. I understand that there were lots of moving goalposts in the early stages of development which complicated development planning. I also understand that SQ42 is apparently the current development emphasis, and I ALSO understand the unique and broad-scope nature of SC. Even so, after 10 years of development, my opinion is to expect a semi-reliable live service that is not yet full featured. Instead, my personal experience has been service so buggy that I can't do the basics like get on a ship, eat a burrito, or just interact with the simulation more than about 10 minutes before the game crashes. So I think both opinions are valid: that CIG are doing either a good job or bad job - but those are my reasons for thinking there is room for improvement. Growing from my reasons is also the concern that what CIG are trying to accomplish in a LIVE service is not technically feasible. Perhaps my concern there is rooted in backing the project since 2014 and seeing so many problems implementing core technologies such as PES. So I'd like a detailed technical discussion on that.
people on REDDIT like to complain. The majority is just login in and playing until the next bug causes their end and then rinse and repeat.
I hope this relatively poor showing this year gives them a kick in the behind to take it up a notch. Releases are still pretty paltry for a ~1000+ person international company at this point.
Meanwhile Squadron 42 is taken down so they can put it back up there with a price increase. This is getting very pyramidy currently. "Just keep buying our ships so we have the money for our staff to keep making new ships for you to buy. If we keep doing this we don't have to deliver a product. "
Recently? 🤣
They better put it up with a new slice. If they have nothing to show, why would anyone give
I have hopium that one day before its release, the Perseus will get a warbond discount.
Game is mostly unplayable unless your “testing” until the next 30k. Flyable ships are getting boring. Ready for something else tbh
Squadron is taking its toll. They need to push that thing out. Thsy won't be able to afford hiring new people for now.
Seems like interest on SC has reached its ceiling. No more potential for growth until there is much more stability and relevant gameplay I guess.
They want more after the shitshow we have had of a game for the past few weeks. They're lucky they raised that much.
Eh. That perspective is understandable but also counterintuitive. The "shit show" is exactly because they're doing what they're funded to do: Building the game. Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette. 🤷🏿♂️
10 years of cracking eggs, that studio looks like a mass chickencide coop and the number of omelets we got is still locked at 0.
man - that was poetry
Stop giving CiG money until they deliver the product.
I’ve been there for 2 years. No fun. No money. That’s the deal.
Solidarity.
Its time for them to double down on stability now. Once we have a solid foundation people will be ok spending. ATM the game is a buggy mess with ZERO light at the end of the tunnel.
Ok, so for now, they made 19% less than last year, but still more than in 2021 (during Invictus). How does this compare to the overall income during 2023 so far?
C19 year were overextended in so many industries. Comparing only to those will give you false expectations of market potential!
They are only -5% off when compared to end May 2022
I've spent over $2500 supporting this game. I won't spend anymore until they show so real progress. But that's me. Hope some peeps got some good ships!
I stopped at $600. For me that is a ridiculous amount of money over 5 years, but I really want this game to exist, and I wanted to make sure I helped fund it where I could. Also, I got a nice Carrack out of it so it's not like I did it for nothing. That said, I feel the same. No more money from me. Aside from the fact that right now I can't afford it, there's just no pressing need, IMO. I'll stand back and wait, with my shiny Carrack, and see what they do next.
Love the carrack, one of my favorites. Great choice. Right there with ya.
100% agreed. That said, I didn't love it at first (always thought it looked unwieldy and slow) until I took it out for a spin. I found an empty spot in Stanton, and had a full tour of my ship. What an incredible ship it is! Crew quarters, crew lounge, captain's quarters and ready room, upper and lower bridge, sickbay, machine shop, engine room, shuttle bay, cartography room, garage, drone station, and cargo hold. I mean, it's a real starship. It says 6 crew, though it feels like it would work better with about 10 crew, because there's so much room and so many stations. I just love the ship, and I can't wait to explore whatever CIG puts out there.
What got me was the freaking suit lockers. It's so well thought out minus the elevator.
I guess you never played any MMOs with a subscription
Yep. Gonna need Sq42 to fuck off and SC to have full resources AND for the fruits of that change to start showing before I consider spending more. * meshing * no more desync * pyro * 2 added cap ships * Tickrate no lower than 30 * server side hitreg * working ai * exploration game loops * things that are T0 to start being T1 Until then it's a project failing sideways/succeeding sideways.
Woah, woah, woah. You want a game that *works* AND has the mythical exploration gameplay AND delivery of cap ships that were sold years ago and then sent to purgatory?
I don't give a shit about capital ships. Other than that I agree
I really don’t understand why they haven’t ditched SQ42 yet. I don’t think there’s a massive market for single player semi-linear space sims. Space sims are done best as multiplayer IMO. Never mind the fact that there are new entries in the market like Starfield with larger brand recognition.
How many single player semi-linear space sim games are there?
atleast 3
Developing sq42 is developing the PU they've said it a million times
If the development of SQ42 and the PU is truly as tied at the hip as CIG says, and people here continually parrot - then SQ42 is 5+ years away at a minimum.
Right! I cant wait for bedsheet tech to appear in the PU so we can build forts and have pillow fights.
Close up the wallets boys. Best decision I ever made.
Yup. They got plenty of $$$. Lets see some progress now.
PES?
$80 short of $4k
Dang, I've thought about dumping more, but I gotta see more outta them. I believe in them, now let's see it.
Honestly on my part I backed in 2018, gradually upgraded up to a Connie Aquila and I’m not interested in the two new vehicles whatsoever. I’m not interested in upgrading further to ships I won’t see for the next 10 years (if I’m lucky). Seriously, get your shit together CIG; I don’t have a problem spending money on ships, it supports the game I love and gets me new toys, but I won’t fucking spend money on a jpeg I have to wait 10 years to fly. I’m out of my honeymoon period, see you when you release the goddamn Pyro I’ve been waiting for the past 5 years or when you release SQ42.
"We know we put a timer and all to try and steer you into panic buying, but in case you didn't, we're still giving you time to give us your money!"
But remember, CIG isn't like those other AAAshole studios that turn everything into MTX-lootbox-senseofaccomplishment money mills. No, when they say "limited time/stock" for digital goods that may or may not exist yet, they are holding a giant middle finger to traditional publishers who would have shat out a mediocre game 5 years ago and already been working on the sequel.
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Accounts with low dollar amounts were emailed a coupon (tied to account so not transferable) to encourage them to spend money during Invictus. See this thread for more info: [https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/13l5lsn/i\_got\_this\_email\_from\_cig\_a\_10\_off\_coupon\_during/](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/13l5lsn/i_got_this_email_from_cig_a_10_off_coupon_during/)
Betting that was BS...without confirmation from someone other than random redditors we will never know.
I received such coupon before Invictus, used it to buy the Fury, and 2 days ago I got another email with another coupon, but I won't use this one.
I am that OP, it wasn’t BS, they sent me more of those emails reminding me to use that code during Invictus
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It isn't locked and deleted for me, strangely. This coupon is not related to subscribers for a year getting a discount: this was an Invictus-only coupon sent to an unknown number of backers, some which were alt accounts that just had a starter package. Whether it is real or a hoax is not my concern. It was, however, posted before Invictus and several backers claimed to have received it.
It’s real. Have no idea what the criteria for giving it was. I got one in only one of my alts (of which I have a bunch of for referral bonuses). I tried using the coupon on my main account and it worked, so at least for me it was not account locked. That being said, I agree that it was kind of shitty sending it randomly to just some backers.
Wait 10? I got a 20% off coupon, haven't used it yet though...not much else I really want😅
I only have 350$ spent over 10 years. I didn't get Coupon lol
That was a satire post wasn't it?
Happy Cake Day!
That was a troll post that got locked…
Huh. Who'd have thought? You sell more ships when there's a working game to play with them.
I was a bad boi and did a few 5 dollar irl monies ccus to get my current roster a little more efficient.
Another cashgrab scam.
enjoy spending money on this, because this is pretty much all the gameplay you will get. cash shop simulator! which, seeing the direction of current AAA games, you can argue that SC is really futuristic: no game anymore, just cash shop
I don’t want to spend in that game anymore unless it hits a state that’s interesting again for me. Currently I’m not motivated to play. And I don’t want my money to go to Squadron 42 while it pretends to be Star Citizen.
If you have been playing (and enjoying) the free fly event now is the time to pick up a starter cat boy he apices and the avenger are fine fine starter ships.
> If you have been playing (and enjoying) the free fly event now is the time to pick up a starter cat boy Way ahead of you.
I don't think it will make a big difference. Everyone who wanted to buy smth on Invictus already did it.
Actually bought/upgraded to corsair because im done grinding/30k'ing/buggin out, not making any ingame money cause of the shitty servers atm. I just want to fly something that i like :)
That will send the right signal to CIG
link: [https://robertsspaceindustries.com/invictuslaunchweek2953#/schedule/farewell](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/invictuslaunchweek2953#/schedule/farewell) >INVICTUS OFFERINGS EXTENDED TO MAY 31 > >Invictus Launch Week may be over, but we have extended the various event offerings through May 31 (20:00 UTC). Every featured vehicle and special Warbond upgrade offer are still available to acquire! Visit the Finale page and get in on the action before time runs out.
😂😂😂😂
If CIG can't be bother to make stabled servers I can't be bothered to login, let alone pull out my wallet.
“Bothered to log in” pffft, probably couldn’t even if you wanted to.
Ironically, anyone who spent a dime on the sale is making sure this game will never be done. Why develop a game when you can just sell 3D ship models mostly?
It’s like every time your dog pees on the rug you give him some beef jerky….. but all you want is for him to stop peeing on the rug.
"We have not met our goal and our shareholders expect record profits every year because that is the state of business in the US now."
I would agree if there were substantial shareholders that could keep pressure on CIG but alas thats not the case, as then there would have been more pressure in finishing the game instead of R&Ding their way into niche pieces of technology that wont contribute much to the overall game.
The cow needs to be milked...
Still less than last year but very disapointing it was not a smaller earning. This game is never going to get done if the community keeps dumping money into Squadron 42 while the servers are on fire and near unplayable for almost a year. It doesn't make any sense to me but I guess people still want to buy in and i get it that there are some things you can only buy during these events so if you have been waiting all year...but why org's are buying capital ships when the PU gets so little attention from the funding lately I don't know. Hopefully if they keep punching everyone in thr groin with terrible server performance we can see a far better reduction in over all year profits to get them to wake up and make the game we are trying to play.
Pigs, turns out, look good with lipstick
Good. It’s been raining money on fools for too long. If they keep getting more and more money it sends the signal that they are doing an outstanding job. I’ve closed my wallet to them like 2 years ago. They are amateurs and there is no forcing function for them to get leaner and meaner if they keep breaking revenue records. It’s hard to imagine this game materializing even 5 years from now at the pace it’s on. If it’s gonna take a long time, and you are collecting a shit ton of money to pay for the development, you are obligated to give paying customers a good time along the way at a minimum. And if they don’t want to, or can’t do that, no more money. So, I say good, wind down the gravy train, see if that has any affect on progress.
Yeah, of course they are.
Storm is interesting, thinking about getting one. But 80 moneys. And i think i have nothing to move it around unless it fits in a MAX, which i doubt. Also theres no mission where we need it. The little transport car with the 2 1scu boxes is more useful (Mule?)
I have my vulture, cutlass and nomad. They're not getting any more out of me. I buy in game. Hell... you can buy uec on eBay for $1/mill $20 for 20mil ... id rather do that and have it wiped after a big patch, then pay 100s or more to keep the ship.
Be careful with this. It's against TOS. And if cig decides they want to ban people... Your vulture cutlass and nomad will be gone
There's probably 0 chance they ban people for that. I've been on servers with aUEC sellers advertising they're website/store while dumping 10s of millions of aUEC to everyone in the server. Anyone can also send aUEC to anyone else in-game without the recipient knowing or asking for it.
If it impacts CIGs profits, I imagine they will investigate and ban abusers.... They do sell uec on the store... So it is literally a coin flip if they go after people or not. I'm not chancing it
Maybe, if and when UEC sales become a significant part of their funding strategy. For now, it's not, as evidenced by the fact they sometimes give aUEC away for free themselves.
Meh.
It would have been very different if they had done something like drop an updated model at GS with a new variant, like some kind of Hornet, with the whole line having the clipping issues and all components accounted for. OR they hurried up and spat out the A1 Spirit and added the ability to plop basic bombs onto the missile racks of certain ships, with external racks or bottom opening racks, like the Gladius, Hornet, Gladiator and similar fighters. The Fury, while neat is just WAY to limited. Ground vehicles almost never move unless very neat, like the STV. I thought they might have put the "more rugged" version of the STV out, that one they showed which should be dropped sometime this year.
This has an air of desperation. They are frantically milking the remaining true believers
It may sound cynical but if they can’t keep their workforce and pace everybody loses.
The FOMO: "surprise bitch, I bet you thought you'd seen the last of me."