First off, thank you for your reply and for the time you spent to dig up some examples. I am genuinely curious about why some people still consider this game to be a "scam".

There are many examples of executives of companies with real (not concept art) products/services that have been subject to penalties including criminal penalties. If you deny this, then you are not acting in good faith.

It's not that I'm denying this, it's that I don't understand the link you're trying to make here. For instance, a CEO can be charged with any crime and that might not affect the product/service of the company itself as long as that product is legitimate. For example a CEO of some Hotel chain could be found guilty for falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments from American voters. But that doesn't mean that the hotel services that the hotel provides are fraudulent.

I don't understand what you're getting at here which is why I was asking for some examples. Preferably in the form of either some company from a kickstarter or a software company, but I'll take what I can get.

sandworm

I am one of those backers that joined the game because of the sandworm, but I never felt like they advertised this as something that was currently in-game, just something that was planned. It's still planned for a future release in a different star system.

However, as far as creatures go, they have already added a flying creature and a wolf-like creature that hunts in packs. (I'm ignoring the turtle and alien pill bug since those don't have any sort of AI behaviour).

Another more pertinent example is the claimed status of the engineering gameplay from 2020.

You do realize that engineering gameplay is already available in-game in the Arena Commander... Right? There's still some work to be done on it, but it's playable. It hasn't been entirely brought over to the Persistent Universe (PU) yet, but as far as the PU goes, components are all removable/damageable. Removing/destroying the quantum drive makes it so that you actually can't jump, removing/destroying the shield component will disable shields, removing/destroying the power component will shutdown the power to the ship... Etc. You can also grab these parts from soft-death'd ships and swap them out with the components on your own ship.

Space Exploration gameplay with one system

They have already released a tech-preview to some players where we could jump between the current system and a neighboring system. I am personally one of the players who tested this out and I can guarantee you that this is real and it's not just them "lying about their capabilities". The release of this to all players is scheduled for the next quarter.

Non-combat gameplay with no economy

Are you talking about mining, salvaging, repairing, trading, and medical gameplay? That's all in-game already.

Or else are you referring to the Quantum Economy (also known as "Star Sim")? Parts of that have already been implemented but the full thing isn't in game yet. Considering their progress on everything else, I don't see any reason to worry about this.

FPS Gameplay with single digit ticks

Still happens, but then you just server hop until you find a good server. NPC AI has gotten a lot better compared to where it was at some years ago.

I did say that rather than delivering, he launched a multi-decade scheme to enrich himself, his family members and key senior insiders.

Ok, but this isn't some non-profit organization, so why does it matter if Chris Roberts is paying himself, his family members, and key insiders (investors?) for their work/investment?

With a key element of the scheme being lying about their capabilities and intentions while selling cash shop items (often literally in the form of JPEGs) that they have no intention of ever bringing into the game.

What capabilities are they lying about?:

• Object Container Streaming (OCS)? Already in game
• Server replication? Already in-game.
• Engineering Gameplay? Already in-game.
• NPC creatures? Already in-game.
• Server meshing? Already shown off in a tech-preview where players got to test it out.
• Multiple systems? Already shown off in a tech-preview where players got to test it out.
• Dynamic Server Meshing? Not out yet, relies on OCS, Server Replication, and Server Meshing to be completely in. Since they are finishing up Server Meshing, we can expect to see some work on Dynamic Server Meshing sometime soon.

often literally in the form of JPEGs) that they have no intention of ever bringing into the game.

I would be worried if they weren't churning through the backlog to release these ships... But they've almost always released a few ships with every major update (and sometimes with minor updates). Relative to the ones released, there's only a few left to be completed. See this slide from last year's CitizenCon:

Can you point out where in their finance themed blog posts (those are not financial statements) they shows total compensation for all members of the Roberts family and senior insiders like Ortwin Freyermuth. It is easy to find this informational for a company like Electronic Arts in their financial statements.

You're right, financial statement was probably the wrong term here, I should have just stuck with "financials". Either way, you can't really compare a publicly traded company with a privately owned one, so of course that information may be easy to find for Electronic Arts. When I said that CIG has "been very open about their spending", I'm comparing them to other privately owned companies. CIG is much more open about their spending than what's required by any other privately owned businesses. If you're trying to dig up additional information you can try looking here: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/08815227/filing-history?page=1

And again, what's wrong if Chris Roberts is paying himself back along with his investors? Isn't that what we would expect?

Or do you have some evidence that he's abusing corporate funds and running the company into the ground?

Another good examples is CIG being misleading about the nature of the investment from the Calder family

I don't understand, what was so misleading about the nature of the Calder Families investments? Was there something malicious about this? If anything this just reveals the reason why most backers think that Squadron 42 is pushing for a release date sometime in 2025.

Are you trying to imply that CIG would go bankrupt if the Calder family decided to pull out in 2025? The 2025 date for them to cash out is optional, they could just wait until 2028.

Even if (worst case scenario) the Calder's decided to cash out everything in 2025 and SQ 42 hasn't released yet, couldn't CIG just get a loan to payoff any leftover that they owe?

Everything being said, what still stands out that makes Star Citizen/Squadron 42 a "scam" to you?

That must be it! I'm not seeing it that way through Voyager. Thanks!

The source code for GrayJay is available if you're concerned or want to work on a non-mobile app/service yourself, but otherwise I don't know of anything that combines the services like that.

https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay

A fun Easter egg on Chromium browsers is that, when you get to 100 tabs, the number just turns into a smiley face.

Blocked who? Blocked what? The first account listed on there is still actively posting.

Grayjay has been useful for that. I still follow people on YouTube, but if they setup a channel anywhere else I can switch my feed to draw from those sources instead.

Requiring solar is good for certain regions, but it might be better to make this more generic for any renewables especially because there are areas that don't get a lot of sun.

For instance, California requires all newly constructed homes to have solar installed, but that wouldn't work too well for places that are mostly cloudy throughout the year, or for places like Alaska.

The problem with Lemmy is that deleted posts will nuke all of the comments as well.

At least with Reddit, even if the post was deleted you could still get the answer by going through the comments.

There are many examples of companies with legitimate products [...] where management were criminals.

Can you name a few examples? I'm curious what kind of companies you're comparing CIG to.

Advertising fraud

Can you point to anything specific?

Crowdfunding fraud

There have been a lot of updates since the original crowdfunding campaign which original backers weighed in on and voted on. Is there a specific case you're looking at, or is this just a generic "not what was promised" statement?

When I think of crowdfunding fraud, I think of cases where devs have cut corners, barely hired anyone, and provided a ridiculously cheap product compared to what they were promising (if they provided anything at all).

With CIG they have hired a large team and have been very open about their spending (you can read up on their latest financial statements here: https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cloud-imperium-financials-for-2022). They have set up multiple studios around the world. The game doesn't feel "cheap" by any means, they're very open about the entire game development process and we actually get to see upcoming updates and they release major updates multiple times in a year.

If this was just a scheme to enrich oneself, he's either doing a terrible job at taking all the money for himself, or he's taking some money while actually delivering a legitimate product.

And if he's actually delivering a legitimate product, does it really matter if he's paying himself back along with his investors? Isn't that what we would expect?

Or do you have some evidence that he's abusing corporate funds and running the company into the ground?

Edit: formatting

Edit2: Fixed first quote.

Please define scam.

The game is playable today, and it's a lot of fun with friends. It's not a scam by any definition that I can think of, but some people stretch that definition.

I'm curious how you came to that conclusion.

Also coming... Space Cows!!!!

Edit: And it's "Tentative Quarter 3" which means we might actually see it (probably in testing) by CitizenCon.

In case anyone else is curious:

Why is Chrome taking action?

Certification Authorities (CAs) serve a privileged and trusted role on the Internet that underpin encrypted connections between browsers and websites. With this tremendous responsibility comes an expectation of adhering to reasonable and consensus-driven security and compliance expectations, including those defined by the CA/Browser TLS Baseline Requirements.

Over the past six years, we have observed a pattern of compliance failures, unmet improvement commitments, and the absence of tangible, measurable progress in response to publicly disclosed incident reports. When these factors are considered in aggregate and considered against the inherent risk each publicly-trusted CA poses to the Internet ecosystem, it is our opinion that Chrome’s continued trust in Entrust is no longer justified.

did they really not think to prevent ships without QD from entering the JP?

I'd say this was more of a feature rather than an issue. A quantum drive was necessary just to "activate" the jump point, but anyone could go through once activated (for a short window).

While smaller ships could technically "steal" the jump, this wasn't the case every time, multiple ships could enter at the same time if we timed it correctly.

So you could have had a large ship (like the Hull-C) enter the jump point with an escort/smaller fighter providing cover.

Most of this testing was just to test the actual mechanic of jumping between systems, it wasn't meant to be something that was released to the larger player base.

A common saying I've heard among other programmers is "Crawl, Walk, Run". Basically take little steps when experimenting with new code/features so that you can make changes as you see fit and so that it's easier to debug. So, something that you may see as an elementary thing may not be something that they see as a basic necessity just to test out this mechanic.

This isn't like building a house where you have blueprints and everything works the first time you put it up. It's more like being told to take the existing model of a submarine and converting it into a something that will keep you alive in space. At a glance, there are aspects of the design that are useful, but there's a lot that can be easily overlooked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsUBRd1O2dU

That being said there are a lot of moving parts and the more people you have involved in a project, the harder it is to keep everyone on the same page. I think this image summarizes the process pretty well:

I agree, I'm not a fan of the QD jamming.

I kind of see why they're doing it though. What we saw in the tech preview was that smaller ships have an advantage over bigger ships. What would happen is that a big ship would activate the jump and then smaller ships (with our without QDs) would quickly rush in, if the bigger ship was too slow the jump point would "shrink" and then they would be bounced back (and everyone in its path would have to evade like mad).

I'm hoping that it's still possible for people to "cut the line" as long as the ATC can hand out fines/CS to those that jump the line (mostly because I want ships without Quantum Drives to still be able to go through).

If you live in El Salvador you can pay your taxes in bitcoin... that makes it a "real currency" according to your test.

Source video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeE_gLl3j94

I would much rather users on here not manipulate titles to make it sound worse than what the actual article is claiming. It's intentionally misleading.

There's more to "AI" than just ChatGPT...

I think you're mixing up what AI actually means here, you would probably like this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGIpdiQrFDU

But in brief, what about DLSS? The ML models for that get improved with every driver update.

STT models like whisper that are great at transcribing/translating.

Object recognition models for drones to keep the camera centered on you and for object avoidance.

ML models for finding new cures.

Models in astronomy for finding planets... Etc.

You're trying to tell me that everything "AI" is trash and not getting better?

Twisted Metal.... Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time... A long time.

No problem. The previous version barely had an animation for entering the jump point (it was still really cool), but everything after that was just greybox.

They're usually ok with giving Evocati some really raw builds where the mechanics are barely in place. Most of this was just to prove that jumpgates were working for a larger player base rather than having all the details worked out.

Sometimes there are builds where you can't even make it to your hangar and the entire 3-4 hour test is like a "Ground Hog Day" of waking up, crash to desktop, wake up, 30k, wake up, take off, teleported back to the spaceport, ctd, game fails to load, etc. It's definitely not the kind of stuff an average player would want to do.

Usually they give Evocati a heads up of something like, "don't spawn at A18, because you'll wake up and fall through the ground" so that we can avoid the worst bugs, but sometimes we just end up finding bugs where even seeing a specific NPC will trigger a server crash, or playing with the power settings on your ship will crash the entire server, or dropping a bomb from an A2 will crash the game for anyone in the immediate vicinity...

But sometimes we also experience hilarious bugs (like when water physics were first introduced) where dropping an A2 bomb in the ocean would cause the water to splash/extend out to space. Other times you get to chill on a ship with some of the devs and tour the solar system with far more players in the game than Live has ever seen.

Anyway, the TL/DR of it is, it's not very surprising if Evocati ends up with some placeholder mechanics while we test something out (at least not to us).