I got lost and gave up when gamergate and twitter got involved.
yeah. i mentioned it in the star citizen thread. there's a shit storm happening.
@608,613 (B)
tl;dr disgruntled ex-employees talk bad about their workplace. some claims are bizzare and outlandish, many have been outright denied. other haven't. accusations of racist hiring practices (despite their being dozens of indians, asians, and latinos) and claims they are going broke.
also the article was pushed out before (well actually after) cig gave a response. it just wasn't included.
it's a "sky is falling" article that got picked up and circulated and the fallout is still raining down. but, they are hiring, opening a new office, and pulling in 75k a day even during slow weeks.
the last sale has netted another million. despite all the rumors of money trouble CIG is acting like they've got plenty. they also say the rumors about having an excessive burn rate are just false.
we'll see. cig claims to have never been healthier, but detractors claim the opposite and insist people should stop pledging and ask for refunds. unfortunately the detractors have a lot of traction becuase delays in content releases are being used as "proof" that the game "will never get made."
it feels like an attack on their funding model, a FUD marketing campaign meant to slow down/stop funding and also progress. and the media is picking up on all this confirmation bias and reporting it as if there are no other interpretations.
and then employees complaining is just more "proof" that the game will fail, and that was enforced by the one sided article bashing cig and giving them no time to respond to allegations of professional misconduct.
@608,613 (B)
It's like a online gamer magazine accused star citizen of fraud by kickstarter
The Escapist made an article explaining their previous SC article, by the way:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/14727-The-Escapist-Explains-Its-Star-Citizen-Sources-Vetting-and-Respo
TL;DR: they seem to have verified their sources as legitimate ex-CIG employees, and the Escapist claims that none of the sources were Derek Smart. I don't know if or how much this legitimises their previous article, but here it is anyway.
@608,621 (squeegee)
So do you think that this and Derek Smart's drama will actually stop, or at least slow down Star Citizen? I recall that when this stuff was starting you seemed pretty unconcerned about it, but nowadays you seem more worried about it.
@previous (Killer Lettuce !!iNo3FkiZx)
the escapist is standing behind the sources, yes, and they are being called verified and all that. i don't disbelieve it, but for a period of time the sources were in question because they appeared to have been lifted word-for-word from anonymous postings. The escapist denies using any anonymous sources and claims the sources they used are legitimate. fair enough. CIG denies many of the allegations being made, and the Escapist offers nothing in the form of proof. they even say in the article it's "up to the reader to decide who to believe."
so, idk, looking at the content of the allegations, man, some of it is weird. it raises eyebrows for more than one reason. First of all they are verbatim allegations that have been made by Manzees. He was an old backer and was refunded for harassing the female staff at CIG. He spread a bunch of rumors with sock puppet accounts that Sandy was "queen bee" and told guys they "had no balls" and shit. and it's like any other ban evading troll, there's a text voice. And all over social media, and every article, anywhere and everywhere. Probably even on the Escapist comments, you'll find him. he's got a bunch of handles, and he always leaves super long walls of text with a kind of recognizable broken english. And he got a few phrases he likes, like "queen bee."
So, like if you're mad at your boss for whatever reason and you want to slander them good, then anonymously corroborate years worth of trolling by claiming sandy won't hire females (
they have tons of females) and needs to be "queen bee." and i know that sounds like a reach, and that i'm desperately grasping at straws as a white knight, but the whole reason that Chris even mentioned Derek Smart is because every one of the allegations comes from
his narrative. not to mention that Derek Smart claims to have informants and insiders and all that, so he's been talking about them all colluding for a while. and then this article where they all corroborate Derek Smart claims?
i don't know what to believe, honestly. both sides claim polar opposites. i think the truth is somewhere in the middle. all we know is that there are disgruntled employees, but that CIG is in the process of hiring more than 10 people this next week. does that imply a collapsing company or a growing one shaking off detritus. i guess it just depends on your perspective.
I think that the Derek Smart drama is causing harm, yes. if to nothing else than to the morale of the community. I think the delay in FPS brought us to an all time low and Derek Smart sucker punched the community when it was down. we still haven't gotten up. at first it seemed like the thing would blow over soon enough, the FPS was overdue and people were on pins and needles anticipating it. a release of FPS in the summer would have created enough noise to drown him out. but, that didn't happen. the delay has dragged on and on and morale has just sunk lower and lower with each attack from Derek Smart's social media campaign. Funding took a nose dive, but i'm sure it was due mostly to the delay.
my theory on worry
it's more like anxiety than worry. i've hyped this game a lot, but i like to think that when there is a question or some controversy that i bring it up here where i collate a bunch of info about the game. i guess i want to try and not be the worst kind of fanboy, the one that is blind. i probably am blind to a lot of things Star Citizen, and i do give commentary and put my slant on things, but i don't want to be withholding if there's some kind of schism occurring in the community. i don't
really think that's happening, but i'm seeing more and people i'd
never thought would even question the project start to lose hope entirely. the social media "attack" that's been going on for months is really taking a toll on people's spirits.
but that really means that the ball is in CIG's court. citizencon and some big reveals are happening next Saturday. and from what we hear the "great merging" is done and the whole of the game is in one dev stream. it's sounding like there won't be separate patches for Star Marine and Multicrew. Normally we would have patched yesterday, but we didn't. there is speculation that something big is about to go onto the PTU, so it's possible that at Citizencon they will announce the launch of "the Baby Persistent Universe," (one star system to testbed career mechanics and multicrew) which is pretty much exactly what everyone has wanted for years. the faster they can get it out to the community the better. and Star Marine game modes need to be released as soon as possible. like, months ago.
that's really the only thing that will stop the Derek Smart drama and end the bad press, it's all up to CIG. the community needs to have real progress in their hands.
@previous (squeegee)
so, tl;dr butthurt ex's and sensational journalism?
@previous (FuckAlms !vX8K53rFBI)
that's my read on it. we'll see. i'll judge the project by the content. i still think they'll deliver.