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Star Citizen creators takes on $46m investment, release financials, Squadron 42 Beta target Q2 2020

Boss

Boss

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
951
In a crazy day of news...

Cloud Imperium Games released the Squadron 42 roadmap with the target date of being in Beta in Q2 of 2020 : https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/board/2-Squadron-42




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As we look forward to the holidays, I wanted to give you all a couple of updates. The first item of news is the Squadron 42 public roadmap is going live today. As with our Persistent Universe roadmap, this is linked to our company's internal JIRA tracking system, so you can see at a glance the work remaining to complete the game. It was a lot of work to make sure every remaining task was broken down in detail and estimated to the best of our ability, and the same caveats will apply to the Squadron 42 roadmap as they do to the PU one, but our plan is to be feature and content complete by the end of 2019, with the first 6 months of 2020 for Alpha (balance, optimization and polish) and then Beta.
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Have taken on an $46m dollar minority investment to fund their marketing while all crowdfunding dollars will go strictly into game development, securing their independence and not needing a publisher : https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/letter-from-the-chairman/investment-news


Having a great game is only half the battle. As we look towards the release of Squadron 42, we have been acutely aware that having a AAA game that matches the biggest single player games out there only goes so far if no one knows about it. The games we will be competing with for attention have tens and, in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising behind them.

Other companies in a similar situation have normally tackled this problem by partnering with a Publisher for the marketing and sales of their game. As you all know I am not in favor of putting my destiny in the hands of a third party. On the other hand, I don't feel it would be right to go back to all of you to raise funds to market the game to other people; most of you already have a copy earmarked for you and I still strongly feel that the money brought in from our crowdfunding should continue to go to the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42.

Because of this, we started to investigate ways to raise money to fund the upcoming marketing and release needs of Squadron 42. We turned away some approaches from Private Equity and Venture Capital because we were concerned about them fully understanding what makes our company tick and pushing us towards short term decisions.

During the course of these discussions it became clear to me that if Clive and Keith joined us as investors in our company, we'd have true partners that respected what we had built, but also fully understood the ins and outs and the patience required with a business based on creating entertainment. Taking in like-minded partners helps us solve the need of funding the marketing and release of Squadron 42, but also stay attuned to what makes us special.

So, it's with this that I would like to announce that we have closed a minority investment into Cloud Imperium US & UK, from Clive's family office and Keith's Snoot Entertainment for $46M for approximately 10% of the shares in the Cloud Imperium US and UK companies, which is a testament to the value, future potential and longevity of the company.
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And have released full financials from 2012 to 2017 : https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cfo-comment-2012-2017-financials


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Overall, the accounting demonstrates that the Group is diligently spending the money we are collecting from our backers and customers on the game development and publishing, as set out from the beginning. There is not a direct annual correlation of our spend to our net income. A buffer arose in the early years as we wrestled with the scope of what our customers wanted, and whilst we accelerated early deliveries through third-party contracting, we were cautious with our growth and expenditure until we could better define what was needed. Since the scope of the production has become better understood, we have been able to plan our growth and optimize our areas of expenditure while still evolving based upon our open development ethos. This allows us to focus in on the detailed areas and key technologies and content that we believe will make this ground-breaking production a great success.

The Group plans ahead based upon the project roadmap and anticipating the continued and growing support of our existing and new backers and customers. That will mean accelerating spend in certain years, to move the production forward or cover key production goals or, unapologetically, cutting back slightly in other years based upon prudent budgeting, as we have the overriding discipline of aiming to balance our foreseeable budgets against our projected collections.

At the time of writing this report we have had our best month ever since we started this journey and we expect with the continued support of our existing and new backers and customers that we will create a truly inspirational game and experience that all of those involved in the community can take credit for and truly claim they have helped achieve.
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Venture Beat interview with Chris Roberts : https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/20/...another-46-million-to-finish-sci-fi-universe/

But yeah, this stuff is always interesting. People don't always appreciate how much work and effort it takes to make the modern game, where everyone expects this total detail and fidelity. People will complain that we're taking it too long, but the flip side is, "Well, what about this beautiful snow simulation? Why don't you have what this game is doing? You should do it exactly like that!" We all want to do that too, but it takes time and effort. Gamers see something out there and want it like that, but then they also want it as quickly as possible. There's always a bit of conflict that comes from that.

[....]

One problem we have is everyone just looks at the headline. "Star Citizen raises $200 million," and so they immediately think we're off on a deserted island sipping pina coladas on the back of our super-yacht. We have 500-odd people in five studios spread around the world and it costs money to run an operation like that. The money we bring goes all into development. So we said, "Maybe if we're just open about it and show the financials people will understand that." Of course there will probably still be some people that won't, but we can't do anything about that.

That was the impetus for sharing the financials with the community. It's something we've discussed internally for a long time, just because we feel like we owe it to everybody who's supported us. We're open about development, so why not be open about the other stuff?

[....]

We operate very much like a live product. What we do is every year we forecast what we'll be doing over the year, and that sets our spending targets. Generally we've been incredibly accurate on our forecasts over the last four years. We maybe had two to five percent deviation from our forecasts, which is pretty decent.

Yes, you could say, "You have $20 million in the bank, and that's only so much for operations." But there's not ever been a case where we've gone to zero dollars. There's no history to say we would do that. That's kind of like me saying — yes, if Electronic Arts didn't bring in another cent, they'd be out of money in short order, because they have pretty heavy running costs.

[....]

Our approach was that we wanted to — the money we're bringing from crowdfunding, we're committed to spending on the game and development. If we saw a change in that velocity or trajectory of the revenue coming in, we would make an adjustment on our internal development spending. We have a few levers to pull, but we've been pretty steady as we've gone along. We felt comfortable in our planning on that.

It would be great if we sat on a billion dollars and we could work for 20 years without ever bringing any money in. [laughs] But we won't be anywhere near there until we release Squadron and get a little further on.

[....]

For me, as a developer — I feel like it's all about the game. In the end everybody liked Red Dead Redemption 2 and forgot that it might have been out a year earlier. They delivered. If it came out and didn't have that extra level of polish, it would have been a disaster. They took the time to make it right. If you look at the game industry, at the very height of it, with the biggest titles that's very consistently what you see. If you're just trying to push it out to make a quarter, you end up doing a disservice to the product, to the brand. If you make sure you spend the time to get it right, that's what burnishes it.

[...]

We wouldn't publish the road map if we didn't feel pretty good about it. We spent a fair amount of time breaking all the remaining stuff down. A fair amount of the R&D aspects are either behind us or almost behind us
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There's a lot more in the interview and it's a great interview, check it out if you're a fan!

KEY POINTS :
  • Financials show ~14m in the black in 2017. Burn rate looks sustainable for years at ~500 employees.
  • $46m dollar investment for 10% of the company, plan is to use for marketing costs. All crowdfunded funds used directly for game development.
  • Public roadmaps for both Star Citizen and Squadron 42 now both published (Star Citizen roadmap launched last year).
  • Squadron 42 : "our plan is to be feature and content complete by the end of 2019, with the first 6 months of 2020 for Alpha (balance, optimization and polish) and then Beta."
  • Make sure to check out the roadmap, it's extremely detailed!

As a Star Citizen/Squadron 42 fan - today has been a great and reassuring day. Looking forward to 2020 :)
 
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Kenzodielocke

Kenzodielocke

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,849
Not having a publisher has brought this game into this state. 2020 for a damn beta of your single player part. Jesus.
 

icecold1983

Banned
Nov 3, 2017
4,243
Did anyone honestly expect anything earlier? Will probably be on next gen consoles which is actually kind of funny.

Edit - if it ever releases. I still think theres a very real possibility it never actually materializes into a finished product
 
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grmlin

grmlin

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,291
Germany
can't wait to read here why this is ok. Lol.

I really wanted to play this SP space opera, I don't think I'll get it. Too bad.
 
Lant_War

Lant_War

Classic Anus Game
The Fallen
Jul 14, 2018
23,576
Yeah this game is never coming out. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets cancelled tbh.
 
CopperPuppy

CopperPuppy

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,636
Q2 2020 for beta seems crazy out there.

Were backers expecting this sort of timeline or is this a surprise even for them?
 
Jom

Jom

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,490
Um looking at the financials if they continue like they have in the past 3 years they've only got enough money for like 4-5 years maybe?
 
SRTtoZ

SRTtoZ

Member
Dec 8, 2017
4,624
So midway through 2020 for a beta of the SP. We also know not a single deadline has ever been met so we are probably looking at late 2020 at best. I wonder how long the hardest version of the game will take to finish? The actual massive multiplayer part.
 
Absoludacrous

Absoludacrous

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 26, 2017
3,182
Lant_War said:
Yeah this game is never coming out. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets cancelled tbh.
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That's not how this works. Their entire development strategy is to stretch development out as long as possible to keep people investing in new ships and such. 2020 has less to do the state of the game itself and more to do with the state of the people funding them.

I imagine it will also be in beta for a loooong time.
 
Memento

Memento

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
8,129
It will be really sad when it finally launches and there are 10000 more ambitious games out there using next gen tech
 

VectorPrime

Banned
Apr 4, 2018
11,781
If Q2 2020 is the optimistic estimate for a BETA I can't wait to see when it actually happens.

Remember this single player campaign was originally due out in 2014.
 
Meg Cherry

Meg Cherry

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,276
Seattle, WA
What are the odds on this beating Duke Nukem Forever's 14-year old development hell? A forecasted 2020 beta for the single player component of a massive MMO makes a 2026 release for the full product seem possible.
 
Basileus777

Basileus777

Member
Oct 26, 2017
9,202
New Jersey
Absoludacrous said:
That's not how this works. Their entire development strategy is to stretch development out as long as possible to keep people investing in new ships and such. 2020 has less to do the state of the game itself and more to do with the state of the people funding them.

I imagine it will also be in beta for a loooong time.
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They'd make more money selling ships in a released product. They have a large headcount with a high burnrate, they money they are raising isn't going to last that long, which is why they are going to venture capital here.
 
MisterR

MisterR

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,463
Jesus, Q2 2020 for the beta. They are gonna run out of money before this thing ever releases.
 
Absoludacrous

Absoludacrous

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 26, 2017
3,182
Basileus777 said:
They'd make more money selling ships in a released product. They have a large headcount with a high burnrate, they money they are raising isn't going to last that long.
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I strongly disagree. They have more people sold on the idea of what the game could be than they can sell on what the game actually will be.
 
Alexandros

Alexandros

Member
Oct 26, 2017
17,810
Cool, I can wait. I tried the recent Alpha of the game and it convinced me that they're buikding something truly special.
 

Deleted member 5596

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,747
I remember people telling me how a SQ42 2019 release was likely and how skeptical I was.

Well, there it is.
 

Deleted member 49804

User requested account closure
Banned
Nov 21, 2018
1,868
That's why you don't kickstart games.
People invest 250 million and get a few digital items.
Investors invest 46 million and get 9.3% of the company.
 

cgcg

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
430
They spent more time whipping up the roadmap than the actual game development.
 

Django.Mango

Member
Jan 31, 2018
802
I knew i would have to upgrade my pc when this game releases. This better will be the best of the freaking best lol. Like it tbh until now.
 
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