What a colossal waste of money. Thor: Love and Thunder had a budget of half that, and that film is a classic contender for 'Big Blockbuster Budget Franchise Film' fame.
I could build an entire theme park for that amount of money, from scratch. 10+ Roller coasters, footpaths, restrooms, in-park IT offices, the works!
Why spend so much but not complete the game? Because the gravy train keeps rolling. Game studios are motivated to ship the game because until they ship, they don't get paid as a company, yet the employees keep drawing paychecks, etc.
But this studio has no motivation to do that, they are getting the pay out now.
To be completely fair, a movie and an amusement park can only give you few hours (maybe days) of fun, but a good game provides way more than that.
I played Freelancer before I moved to Linux, that's a few years of fun experience, and as a bonus I also met many interesting people in that game. It's just a good investment for my entertainment.
The primary problem that Star Citizen faces at this moment is not poor management of money, instead it is that the fun the game provides is not unique any more.
For example, Elite Dangerous, which you can download and play right now, can deliver I'd say 70% of the fun that Star Citizen promises. There is no reason for me to lock my eyes on Star Citizen anymore, especially when you consider the fact that gaming is just a small part of ones live and spaces games are naturally grindy (maybe not correct, but the space game that I played, Freelancer, EVE Online and Elite Dangerous all require some level of time investment), you can only play so much.
All things considered, Star Citizen is not on top anymore. And that's .... scary if I'm Chris Roberts.
How many Donnie Darko movies they can make before they start hitting diminishing returns? I wonder how many people want to watch 111 of them. There would be some natural variance between performances, editing, lighting, and the like, but it might be a niche audience who can appreciate those nuanced differences between what many might believe are effectively the same films.
movies area poor comparison. the best movie of your life you can watch maybe 10x (20 hours). a game you like, you can play for thousands upon thousands of hours.
Edit: to be clear, I am implying SC stands to make much more than 50mil a year, much like GTAV and COD make multiples of their development cost year over year. /edit
They still have that incentive, because SQ42 is a standalone game they intend to sell to a broader market and SC is an MMO "forever game" they intend to monetize.
If you think 500m is a lot, go look at how much money games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto Online make year over year. 500m over 10 years is 50m a year, and not in profit. Blockbuster games are making much more than that much more quickly. To say nothing of the billions in scummy phone game microtransactions.
Cloud Imperium Games is multiple offices and 700+ employees, if the intent really was to not release they definitely don't need that many people sucking down wages. It's not like a VC scam where they can trick investors with headcount growth.
Making two games, and the game making is the marketing. The proof of that is in the very topic of the conversation, the funding.
I won't pretend it's not still a lot, but you can't point to another project like this for comprison. GTAV was built by an established team with history of making that kind of game, using an established IP and engine. It is not apples to apples.
I am talking about what SC stands to make. Revenue from GTA Online was 1 billion dollars in 2020 alone, which was 8 years after it launched.
Games are often run like an ongoing concern now, a business all of it's own. SC stands to gain more than 50m a year if they reach their goal of being "the" space MMO.
> if the intent really was to not release they definitely don't need that many people sucking down wages.
Of course they do. They need artists to build the ships they sell and they need developers to create demos of stuff they have no hope of delivering, in order to convince people to continue parting with their money.
Frankly, you have not researched the project if you think this is what is happening. Invest some time into checking it out, you will probably be surprised. The information is right there, it's become a very transparent development.
You are also still wildly off the mark if you think the farce you imagine happening would take 700 people.
I could build an entire theme park for that amount of money, from scratch. 10+ Roller coasters, footpaths, restrooms, in-park IT offices, the works!
Why spend so much but not complete the game? Because the gravy train keeps rolling. Game studios are motivated to ship the game because until they ship, they don't get paid as a company, yet the employees keep drawing paychecks, etc.
But this studio has no motivation to do that, they are getting the pay out now.