I don’t think there is any degree of truth in it. Simply evaluate everything Chris R has produced in the past and the quality of what his team has produced for SC and compare it against everything DS has produced in his career and draw your own conclusions.
Ignore the rumors and innuendo of the press and try the product for yourself.
Incidently, the Infinity project has had run-ins with him in the past, this isn’t the first time he has attacked a project.
Sure, CR was behind the Wing Commander series, but when he made his first attempt at SC in the form of Freelancer, Microsoft had to bail him out and take control of the project to see it was released.
The thing is, there are so many nagging issues I have with the way this project has been run, that the more I see pieces like this, and the more CR responds with aggression and attacks on the author, the more the concerns with this projeect take hold
I have concerns about their progress, too… or more specifically, when/if they’re going to run out of funding and fail to deliver.
They’re supposed to produce, what… 100 solar systems each with their own unique assets ? And so far, we’ve only seen the planet in the social module. That’s a helluva amount of content that’s missing…
A member on their forums also did a count on ships content ( ships sold / promised on their site, versus ships actually done or in development ). If I remember from the top of my head, it was like 10% of the ships are completed, 90% are yet to be produced.
The presentation of PU at Gamescom gave me a lot of hope, though. It looks really good, and I like how everything is seamless ( well, outside planetary landings, we haven’t seen any of these yet, and I wonder how they’ll do that in CryEngine ). I’m just worried about the state of their finances.
I’m not assuming anything at this point, one way or the other.
Until more time passes, and claims are proven correct or false, I’m not sure it’s wise to speculate all that much. I’m of the “wait and see,” opinion, fewer lives will be lost that way…
I can understand him getting angry over an article which in the last 25% personally attacks his wife.
Luckily I chose to put my money towards Elite: Dangerous. Yes it does have it’s own set of problem, but at least we got a galaxy sandbox to fly and fool around in.
That doesn’t mean that I won’t check out SC once it’s released. But until it is, I can always find new planets/systems in Elite: Dangerous to pass the time.
DS claims they only have 8M$ left in the bank; if this is true, they’ll have to shrink their company/close offices very soon.
CR claims they won’t run out of money, and they’re actually increasing the company size.
These claims are incompatible with each other. So in the coming months, it’ll become more clear who’s right or wrong.
Whether the claims are true or not (and I suspect there are at least elements of truth in them) the way that CR has responded does not seem to be very professional. In some ways putting so much effort into a reply lends credence to the accusations. Also, the external appearance of the project fits the allegations, it does all look like wallpaper.
My thoughts are the same as one of the more moderate ex-employees they interviewed; I think they will finish the game, but it won’t be all they have been promising.
Either way, the lesson to be learned here is: don’t invest in games that haven’t been released yet. Just quite that simple, really.
Except Infinity of course, right? Right?!
In many ways this is our core worry - if CIG implodes in spectacular fashion it could have the potential to negatively impact our Kickstarter and our game.
We’ll see. They’ve delayed creating a kickstarter for like… what it must be 3 years now, so my faith in them to deliver a full game in a timely manner isn’t exactly that great considering that all it takes to make a kickstarter is a short video and some text. Like… What is that, 5-8 hours of work, including filming, write-ups, etc.
I’m sure they’re all super nice, but actions speak louder than words.
I think you’ll find that our Kickstarter is a lot more than a short video and some text 
Also the filming by itself took an entire day, we finished at 10pm, and I had to fly to the other side of the world. Weren’t you paying attention to our updates on twitter!?
One of the major differences between SC and IB kickstarter is that SC only had a million dollar trailer and wild dreams starting off. IB apparently has a roughly ““finished”” product - well worth they hype from everybody whose come forward from the pre-pre-alpha playtesting - some spit and polish required.
Anyways my wallet is soooooo heavy… I wish I can get rid of all this extra weight I’m carrying around… nope, couldn’t say it with a straight face. I’ll get muh bobble heads though.
Yeah I think that about sums it up pretty good. While the production quality of our video may not be quite as good as SC’s you will not have to wait 2 years to receive your alpha dogfighting module - we have a game that you can play right now. On top of that those who pledge the appropriate tier will be able to start actively playing and participating in its development in fairly short order. For those who are interested this will absolutely be a journey you will be sharing with us every step of the way.
An apparent lack of Inovae’s own confidence is what will ruin your kickstarter, not the downfall of another already-funded project. There are several projects that have already amounted to scams so the trust toward crowdfunding comes from active transparency, not final delivery. Any implosion of SC at this stage of development would be a slow and drawn out affair (likely due to legal disputes). So your KS will be done and dusted before any effects are seen on kickstarter. However, I don’t forsee SC turning into vaporware either so technically there will be a finished product no matter what.
Inovae’s job is to provide a product, and you’ve had plenty of time to produce one and worked damn hard along the way. All you need is the final cache of money to get the project completed. We are relying on the trust that you will deliver on your promises.
Judging from the total hackjob that Escapist journalist put together, I do wonder if this issue is going to evolve into something other than crowdfunding so it might not affect you at all anyway.
Accept what is, and do what matters
The story is starting to be picked up by other news services now. here is a good example from Forbes:
Interesting that the author of that article decided not to mention DS at all.
What is “DS” ?
Uh, no.
On consequences for Infinity: I might be worried about any association with Smart. I am still sold 10 times over, and going to be talking the game up to everyone who’ll listen, but it honestly would make it bitter sweet if some part of my $$ support for Infinity went to Smart’s benefit somehow.
The sooner he’s history as far as most people care, the better. There’s just no dissociation between the mouth and the developer; can’t get one without the other.
I have no idea what you understood from my comment @Cinder, I was referring to the fact that Chris Roberts spent 50% of his +2k word letter talking about Smart, also he’s following his twitter and analyzing his statements.
That is borderline obsession, if CR was smart (excuse the pun) he would have ignored Smart from the beginning, the fact that CR is so damn involved talking about Smart is the reason Smart is even noticed.
DR is Derek Smart, as CR is Chris Roberts.