Star Citizen has amassed a staggering $85 million in crowdfunding to date, but there may be serious trouble on the horizon, both for developer Cloud Imperium Games, Roberts Space Industries, and backers.
Funding for the game declined hugely in June, and many in the industry have addressed what they see as an inevitability: that Star Citizen cannot be released as it is currently pitched.
Longtime indie developer Derek Smart posted an extensive TwitLonger blog on where the game stands today and its likely future.
"Anyone who read the latest Chairman update," Smart wrote, "and watched the 10 for the chairman video and thinks this game has any chance of seeing the light of day, is delusional. Or just a fanboy clinging onto false hope. In fact, their funding fell off a cliff in June."
This isn't the first time Smart has raised serious questions about the viability of Star Citizen's funding model, but notes that his first blog on the topic came on July 4th, long after June's decline.
Since then, Smart said, "all they've done is damage control, while causing damage (e.g. killing my account) in other areas.
"Thus far, they've unscrupulously killed my account – while engaging in defamatory conduct, refunded me, refunded some others, un-banned some others, posted massive meaningless dev updates etc."
Roberts' has "increased the scope" of the game significantly from the original vision presented on Kickstarter and, Smart argued, "All these videos and dev blogs are going to come back and haunt him at some point in the very near future. I am going to say it again, this Star Citizen game, is never seeing the light of day as currently pitched."
So far, around 927,000 copies of Star Citizen have been pledged, and the $85 million raised are pre-sales, meaning backers will expect a return on their investment. At current rates, it's likely that money will be gone very quickly, and additional funding will be needed from another source.
Smart asked, "So the question is, who is going to continue pledging to a project that seemingly stands very little chance of completion, if they haven't first received what they pledged in the first place?
"F2P games work on the premise that most of the whales (those buying stuff), pay for those who don't buy anything. The ratio is massive, and even if the numbers go from 927K to 1m, it's not enough for long term financial success, even if 70% of those are whales who keep buying stuff. And with 255 (as of this July statement) employees, plus an undisclosed number of contractors, that monthly burn rate is killer.
"This business model, beyond this $85m pledge phase, is unsustainable."
This comes as Chris Roberts has once again been forced to defend the game and its scope as backers have expressed their ever growing skepticism of Star Citizen's future.
