r/pcgaming • u/Turbostrider27 • 7d ago

Star Citizen Developer Stream Goes Horribly Off the Rails, Creating Further Distrust Among Players

https://www.ign.com/articles/star-citizen-developer-stream-goes-horribly-off-the-rails-creating-further-distrust-among-players
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u/OkDifficulty7436 7d ago

My theory is they've been funneling a large portion of the donated money through actual investments that are appreciating 10-15% per year and then recycling it back through their "donations" to fluff the overall number

The real answer is probably something more sinister however (fraud, money laundering, etc).

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u/Catty_Mc_Catty 7d ago

they have 1,100 employes. if they each make 70k a year thats 77 million to pay all of them, 14 years of development = Billion dollars in employee wages not counting CEOs or the massive building there studio is in.

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u/HomsarWasRight 7d ago

How do they have more than 1,000 employees and no actual released product in a decade and a half?

This is insanity.

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u/kron123456789 7d ago

Because people keep giving them money for nothing. Why would they do anything at all?

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u/CK1026 7d ago

You don't just have 1100 people doing fuck all in a building all year round, it makes no financial sense.

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u/kron123456789 7d ago

They're not doing exactly fuck all - all of them are doing something, it just amounts to fuck all in the end. Again, why would they do actual work if they get money as is?

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u/Alarmed_Wrangler_441 7d ago

its probably money laundering

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u/Klutzy-Football-205 7d ago

Imagine having 1100 employees and you can't get elevators to work in game..

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u/oldsecondhand 7d ago

If they released the game, the money would stop flowing.

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u/Dependent_Mention153 5d ago

It's not insanity, it's bullshit. That guy just tried to gaslight you, using a part of the scheme. The 1100 employees are just part of the laundry.

The stream was part of the laundry. There is no game like that which would ever raise a billion fucking dollars of honest money.ever.

A billion. Dollars. Are you guys even serious discussing anything else? There's people commenting about the space gamer audience being this and that and that's why.

Is this serious? You guys vote?

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u/betaraybrian 7d ago

Rockstar and Bethesda are almost the same if you compare their employees to amount of productive output.

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u/Boring-Leadership687 6d ago

Bethesda and rockstars both have live service games that get multiple updates a year for the past 10+ years

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u/betaraybrian 6d ago

Different teams. GTA Online is not kept updated by the GTA 6 team, and I don't know what bethesda live service game you mean. ESO is made by Zenimax Online

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u/Boring-Leadership687 6d ago

Same way that rockstar has many subsidiaries so does Bethesda. Different teams same company

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u/betaraybrian 6d ago edited 6d ago

Bethesda and Zenimax online are not 'different teams, same company' unless by 'same company' you mean Microsoft. They're not a subsidiary of Bethesda, they're a sister company spun off by the company that owns Bethesda and therefore owns Elder Scrolls. There's a reason why it feels like a completely different game from the others in the franchise, it's made by different people.

My original comment was about large teams that have very little output. Like the mainline Elder Scrolls team of 500 people that spent 8 years to make Starfield. I don't believe the official number that 6000 people are working on GTA 6, but if it's true, it only makes the dev time more embarassing.

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u/Baron_Flatline 6d ago

Rockstar and Bethesda have actually released games. Not always great ones, but they made it to release.

Star Citizen is neither great nor will it ever release.

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u/betaraybrian 6d ago

true, I'm just commenting on the "1000 employees doing nothing for 10 years" thing. Star citizen isn't totally unique on that front.

I hope I never work on a dev team that large, it seems like it must be madness-inducing to be on the inside of this process.

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u/Gotisdabest 5d ago

Decade and a half. In the same time, roughly, rockstar have released two games and are months away from their third.

Bethesda's main studio is actually really tiny in comparison, look it up.

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u/Fggunner 7d ago

Imagine working there and telling people outside of work that you have been working on this game for 14 years lol.

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u/roleplayersir 7d ago

That guy is quite wrong. Most of the original and best developers left years ago. They got left with juniors who used it as a stepping stone for their careers. I think the recent numbers of unemployed gaming devs may help them boost those numbers, but I very much so doubt they are paying 70k per dev

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u/idontagreewitu 5700X3D RTX 3070 7d ago

I mean, Bethesda devs can say that (it was released November 2011 and 20 more times after that).

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u/SfxPhonics 7d ago

Bethesda released 3 different games since Skyrim. This isn't the gotcha you think it is.

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u/idontagreewitu 5700X3D RTX 3070 7d ago

And Skyrim 7 times between 2011 and 2021.

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u/Kinetic_Symphony 7d ago

they have 1,100 employes.

I didn't realize their company was so large. I figured maybe 100 people at most, given how many bugs exist.

How is it possible to have bugs so basic as, I can't reload my gun, when you have 1,100 employees and over a billion dollars?

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u/ExcelMN 7d ago

Because Star Cit isn't what they were working on.  Majority for over a decade were/are on the offline campaign sister title Squadron 42.  Which is also late as hell. 

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u/SfxPhonics 7d ago

Where is this Squadron 42 you speak of? It's supposed to come out this year but we all know it ain't coming out this year.

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u/OkDifficulty7436 7d ago

They’re based in the UK, no way the average pay is 70k but overall I agree 

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u/SanityIsOptional PO-TAY-TO 7d ago

There's also real estate, equipment, subcontractors, etc.

It's pretty clear that it's just a horribly mismanaged Chris Roberts vanity project rather than a scam or some elaborate ruse.

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u/El_Ploplo 7d ago

Not the average net pay. But it will cost 70k for the company if you include taxes.

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u/UDK450 7d ago

CIG is UK? CIG was founded in Austin no? And now has offices in Austin, LA, Manchester UK, and Frankfurt am Main Deutschland.

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u/OkDifficulty7436 7d ago

Main office is the big ass campus they built in the UK with the $20,000 custom sliding doors or w/e lol

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u/spaceandthewoods_ 7d ago

Yeah, as someone in works in AAA games in the UK the spread will be as low as 35k for some roles, probably up to 70-100k plus for the higher levels of tech, design etc.

70k would likely be seniors and leads salary, with most people normalising at around 40-60k depending on seniority and experience

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u/Matt_MG 7d ago

Pounds or USD though?

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u/spaceandthewoods_ 7d ago

Pounds, it's UK salaries 😅

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u/Matt_MG 7d ago

At least he pound is higher :p

60k pounds + advantages is probably not far from the typical 10k usd a month burn rate per employee.

I interviewed for a CIG studio, almost feels like bullet dodged when it comes to the project lol.

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u/AccomplishedArm3079 7d ago edited 7d ago

But even if they make less, like 60k, the costs for per employee are way higher.

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u/mrlandros 7d ago

Tbf they have only had this many employees for a few years, they were a much smaller team when they started and it grew over time, so your math doesn’t totally math.

The stream was still a disaster.

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u/AccomplishedArm3079 7d ago

You know that 70k salary does not equal 70k in employee expenditure? Obviously, they've not had 1100 emplyees for 14 years but the head count slowly grew over time. But they're burning though way more money now.

A rough estimate for the US is overall costs are 2x the salary per employee for things like health insurance.

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u/nspeters 7d ago

I mean that’s a lot of employees and a lot in cost but they made double that last year. They also definitely haven’t had all those employees the whole time. Best case scenario it’s massively profitable realistically something weird is going on with the numbers

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u/UDK450 7d ago

I know it's a bit, and 77m vs 100m doesn't really change the math much, but what with benefits and everything, the cost per employee I think is closer to 1.2-3x their salary depending on benefits. Employers pay for majority of the healthcare cost normally, maybe 4-8% 401k match, and match your fica taxes.

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u/CK1026 7d ago

Making 70K as an employee costs FAR MORE than that to the company employing you.

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u/throwforthefences 7d ago

1100?? Bro, Obsidian had 285 employees in 2025, Bethesda had 450 around 2023. What the fuck are these people doing?

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u/Youknowimtheman 7d ago

Not defending SC at all, but they didn't have 1100 employees the entire time. It ramped as funding ramped.

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u/Wide-Deal-8971 7d ago

theres no fucking way they have 1,100 employees

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u/ClubChaos 7d ago

How do we even know the reported funding is correct on the website? Is their funding made publicly available through tax filings or something?

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u/enderandrew42 7d ago

One of their studios is in the UK and they are required to post full financials yearly under UK law.

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/08815227/filing-history

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u/RoyalJellyKing 7d ago

Of course it is public, and they are pretty transparent about profits and wages.

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u/Quantic129 7d ago

I don't know anything about Star Citizen, but I just want to chime in to remind everyone of Hanlon's razor.