A black and white preview image representing our PC gaming community, Alienware Arena, with the words 'ALIENWARE ARENA' stacked in the center.

Forbes calls Star Citizen’s development "mismanagement on a galactic scale" and fans aren't happy

Peetstar | 05/02/2019

The article closely follows the development of Star Citizen and also gives us some insights in Chris Roberts personal life. The summary is quite harsh as the game was originally intended to be finished back in 2014. Now we are in 2019 and the game has raised close to $300 mil. via Kickstarter and other in-game purchases and it's not eve close to being finished. Roberts promised backers a "vast, playable universe with 100 star systems.” Not one of these systems are finished and the game boasts for now "two mostly finished planets, nine moons and an asteroid". Moreover Forbes calls the whole dev process "is incompetence and mismanagement on a galactic scale":

This is not fraud—Roberts really is working on a game—but it is incompetence and mismanagement on a galactic scale. The heedless waste is fueled by easy money raised through crowdfunding, a Wild West territory nearly free of regulators and rules. Creatives are in charge here, not profit-driven bean counters or deadline-enforcing suits.

Forbes have also talked to 20 former employees at Cloud Imperium (the company Roberts created for developing SC) and they "depict Roberts as a micromanager and poor steward of resources":

“As the money rolled in, what I consider to be some of [Roberts’] old bad habits popped up—not being super-focused,” says Mark Day, a producer on Wing Commander IV who runs a company that was contracted to do work on Star Citizen in 2013 and 2014. “It had got out of hand, in my opinion. The promises being made—call it feature creep, call it whatever it is—now we can do this, now we can do that. I was shocked.”

Of course fans retaliated on reddit and called the news article a hit piece against Star Citizen and also attacked the 2 writers:

Forbes has two 'journalists' review a video game which raised $300M but offers no financial analysis. Who the f--k cares what Forbes thinks of video games?

Matt Perez, first named author, apparently also writes for IGN, polygon and PC gamer.

The other author "follows the money", but where's any material on the financials?

Seems more like a piece for IGN, polgon, or PC Gamer, but they all turned it down.

However Forbes' article lines up with what other publications had to say about Star Citizen's development over the years.  Kotaku called the project in 2016 an " unwieldy, ever-changing dream project" and said that the game's development has been troubled.

Replies • 53
Avatar of PhoenixShi
Galactic

Sounds about right. When he was involved in game development, which he hadn't done for about ten years before starting this whole thing, he was just the creative team head. In any creative works related business, you need people not only concerned with the creative end, but the business end as well, or else things likely won't get done very effectively, and lots of money can get wasted. You could just tell that's what was happening, as self set deadline, after deadline was past, while he was just adding more, and more, and more things to the project, without really getting anything done, as well as going back to redo this, or that which had been at least mostly finished.


PhoenixShi said:

Sounds about right. When he was involved in game development, which he hadn't done for about ten years before starting this whole thing, he was just the creative team head. In any creative works related business, you need people not only concerned with the creative end, but the business end as well, or else things likely won't get done very effectively, and lots of money can get wasted. You could just tell that's what was happening, as self set deadline, after deadline was past, while he was just adding more, and more, and more things to the project, without really getting anything done, as well as going back to redo this, or that which had been at least mostly finished.

While I agree development is slow, I don't agree that they're wasting resources more than other developers.. like the article from Anthem (Eeeekk!!).  They've had setbacks yes, they've had a lawsuit with Crytech (Uhh, sue your customers? okay..) etc, but they've also got some amazing technology working that has made the potential of the game leaps and bounds better.  On your point about needing buisness minded people, they have that in spades, but it's difficult to butt heads with Chris.  His own brother Erin is one of those that gets VERY little credit for keeping things in check.  He's helped produce quite a few games last I checked, like the hit Lego games.  They also have strong studio heads in the other four studio locations across the globe.  This Forbes article is embarrassing, not to Chris and Sandi, everyone's got shit in their past.. but embarrassing to Forbes.  They've really taken a turn for the worse if they're dependent on writing pieces like this.







Avatar of PhoenixShi
Galactic
Dominister said:
PhoenixShi said:

Sounds about right. When he was involved in game development, which he hadn't done for about ten years before starting this whole thing, he was just the creative team head. In any creative works related business, you need people not only concerned with the creative end, but the business end as well, or else things likely won't get done very effectively, and lots of money can get wasted. You could just tell that's what was happening, as self set deadline, after deadline was past, while he was just adding more, and more, and more things to the project, without really getting anything done, as well as going back to redo this, or that which had been at least mostly finished.

While I agree development is slow, I don't agree that they're wasting resources more than other developers.. like the article from Anthem (Eeeekk!!).  They've had setbacks yes, they've had a lawsuit with Crytech (Uhh, sue your customers? okay..) etc, but they've also got some amazing technology working that has made the potential of the game leaps and bounds better.  On your point about needing buisness minded people, they have that in spades, but it's difficult to butt heads with Chris.  His own brother Erin is one of those that gets VERY little credit for keeping things in check.  He's helped produce quite a few games last I checked, like the hit Lego games.  They also have strong studio heads in the other four studio locations across the globe.  This Forbes article is embarrassing, not to Chris and Sandi, everyone's got shit in their past.. but embarrassing to Forbes.  They've really taken a turn for the worse if they're dependent on writing pieces like this.

If you feel your customer is ripping you off, or otherwise violating their contract, while not showing a willingness to correct matters, with there being a good sum of money involved, yeah, you sue them. His brother is supposedly a business mind that will stand up to him, that's a joke, right? Potential, almost fifteen years ago I asked the supporters of Vendetta Online (a space based MMO) why they support the game, and that's what they said, they're paying for potential. Now almost fifteen years later, and there's still stuff they promised back then that have yet to be finished, like for them to finally hit version 1.9, in a game they admitted was released prematurely, due to running out of money, again, and would be at a solid release ready state when they reach version 2.0, as it takes them waaaaaay longer than they predict to finish anything, until they eventually would stop giving expected dates often enough in the devs passion project, sound familiar?

 

Then this report, has been in-line with others on the matter made over the years, so either each of those unrelated publications looked at the facts, and all saw things were not going well, because things are not going well, and you're being biased, or each of those unrelated publications got it wrong, and all the biased fans are correct to have full faith in Roberts, despite all the warning signs. Guess which way I'm leaning.

 

 

 

mojrzesz2 said: My younger brother graduated three times since development of SC started. He's starting Uni this fall and I wonder if SC will be launched before he gets his Master's degree...

Your younger brother's kids may get that masters degree, while the game is still functionally unreleased. I'm kinda joking when I say that, and kinda not, as it is entirely possible it may never get released, for one reason, or another. That, or it could end up being like Vendetta Online, as I mentioned above, is "released" but in what they admitted was not really a release ready state, as they ran out of money, again, so put out what they had, in an effort to get some income rolling in. Now almost fifteen years later, is still not even at version 1.9, when they claimed that was right around the corner almost fifteen years ago, let alone finishing the fabled release ready mark of version 2.0.

edited