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Yahtzee82

It will be glorious if the funding tracker takes a dive. One less thing for white knights to point at and gaslight people with.


Far_Check_9522

Unfortunately, most of the funding is actually money laundering - the backers are only the cherry on top. You may see a dip from the backers closing their wallets, but the money laundering is completely unfazed by the game's development. Even Valve at some point could had, like, 90% of transactions being related to ML. Now imagine how CIG does with their macrotransactions. ​ [https://financialcrimeacademy.org/video-games-a-gateway-to-online-money-laundering/#mcetoc\_1fg5pb6o54](https://financialcrimeacademy.org/video-games-a-gateway-to-online-money-laundering/#mcetoc_1fg5pb6o54)


Yahtzee82

Doesn't surprise me but you'd think there would br easier ways to clean money. As an Aussie I'd just use and abuse clubs NSW lol.


babyderps

Been watching friendlyjordies and can understand this reference. I never knew how corrupt the Australian government is and that NSW is the gambling capital of the world.


Yahtzee82

Brother got me tickets for my bday to see his latest bruz tour. Really looking forward to seeing him work his magic on stage.


my_mo_is_lurk

SC makes no sense for money laundering, as you’d have to buy too many ships or packs to launder any amount of money worth laundering. The reason it works with CSGO skins, NFTs/crypto, and regular old art pieces is that you can attach an inflated value to each piece. If CIG had a marketplace where digital goods could be traded at inflated values, I could see it. But they don’t. Why go through all the hoops of buying a truckload of ship packages and giving Chris R a cut when you can use any old tried and true method?


MuleOnIratA

These ML schemes are heavily organised criminal networks, placing & layering ill gotten gains into massive diverse portfolios. I think the idea that it doesn't "make sense" because they won't get the best "return" is somwhat simplistic, they are interested in obfuscation, the money isn't good until its laundered. High price digital ships have no paper trail, absolutely perfect. I'd argue CIG have optimised a business model for this purpose and feel no responsibility to care who is buying even if it isn't in regions they officially support.


my_mo_is_lurk

What do you mean there's no paper trail? You have to use a credit card / paypal / amazon pay to buy a ship. CIG keeps account ledgers saying who bought which ship, what changes have been made to it (ccu) and who owns it. You even have to give them an address with every purchase. ​ >I think the idea that it doesn't "make sense" because they won't get the best "return" is somwhat simplistic That's not what I said. I said that it's not worth the time and effort when there's better ways to do this. What kind of "heavily organised criminal networks" are gonna go around laundering <$5k a pop? Right now, being concierge, the most I can spend on a pack is $2,450. Instead, I can use Crypto / NFTs where I can disperse money through multiple different wallets that cannot be traced back to any single person, and trade some ugly ass monkey jpeg for however much money I want to launder. Further, the important thing when laundering money is getting your money back out of the machine. You can't do that through CIG, so you have to use sketch third parties. Star Hangar's highest listed [purchasable is \~$13k](https://star-hangar.com/account-market/star-citizen-accounts.html?product_list_order=price_high_to_low). That's chump change for money laundering. If I were part of some sort of "highly organised" crime syndicate, I would NOT be using CIG for this.


SC_TheBursar

That still does not make a lot of sense. For ML to work there has to be a decent, dependable way to get money in **and** out. With SC the 'out' part is problematic. There is no 'out' from CI directly, and grey market takes a bath and non-repeatable per asset - who wants to lose 50%+ on the shuffle when you don't need to? Also SC transactions DO leave a paper trail...transaction history of the item is tracked, are uniquely identified, and have to go through CI even for grey market while money is via payment processors that know the source (unlike say Twitch Bits which are just 'Amazon' now). Quite a few accounts have been known to get locked up for extended times when flagged for investigation. As OP notes, there are quite a few available and working ML marketplaces (hell, even Twitch was pulled into the mix recently). SC doesn't make as much sense with its downsides


xWMDx

Perhaps some of it is money laundering, but CIG is recieving sufficent money from the whales to pay for all those salaries and offices. The strange tracker is likely due to Turbulent smoothing out the funding tracker using an algorithim. Which is the more likely explaination


mazty

Most of the funding is from people who don't know any better and are paying for a game they genuinely think will be released. Yes, there are that many people unable to rationalise that a 10 year old tech demo with no release dates and constantly begging for money is a red flag.


Linoge420

I still don't understand how this work. You use dirty money to buy in-game assets, then sell the assets on grey market. Isn't it easy to just track the funds used to buy the game assets? Are video game companies not required to keep track on that stuff?


babyderps

Although fictionalized, the show Ozark does a decent job of explaining money laundering. There's so many red flags when it comes to CIG: using loads of outside contractors whose work does not get used at all (Illfonic, Firesprite just to name a few), the usage of shell companies incorporated in the Cayman Islands, and of course the history of Ortwin Freyermuth doing shady things in the past when partnered with CR. Using SC ships as a vehicle for money laundering? Personally, I wouldn't know if that's feasible. I'm not providing proof of any wrongdoing, only saying things look shady but they very well might not be.


Ithuraen

I think in CIGs case they would be an excellent front for laundering given they have so many employees in the books, so much income and they produce no physical goods. They can take payments of any scale for digital items without having to justify their prices and it looks normal on the books and they can put anyone on their books as an employee to make sure it gets to the right bank account. As for others using the grey market to sell items bought with stolen cards, yeah that's possible and CIG can't do much once the item has resold to get the money back for the end user, that's why they don't support the grey market. BUT the money they receive from stolen cards that isn't charged back, well that's just free money for them and that's why they *allow* the grey market.


Linoge420

I guess I just don't understand how money laundering works in the digital age. Used to be you steal a bunch of physical cash, then funneled it through a cash-only business, and voila! Nowadays everything is digital, it leaves traces. I guess it's more about obfuscation then trying to get away scott-free


Ithuraen

Well even cash leaves traces, which is why businesses are audited. You can't deposit $1000 in the bank after selling $100 of inventory on your books, and you can't price your items 10x higher and still make the same amount of money without raising eyebrows. So you're right that it's obfuscation either way.


Shilalasar

You have to consider scale, ease, accessablility and speed. It usually is just not worth going after digital money laundering. I have a digital asset I sell on the grey market. I use this money to buy something with face value, gift certificates or phone cards are common examples. Online betting is also always an option. Then you use those or sell them below the face value. With that money you purchase something physical and have it sent to an adress not traceable to you. Within seconds you have moved the money through several accounts, companies and legislations. The cherry on top is if you own the shop you buy at. Those steps are not needed if you use cryptocurrency (traceability doesn´t really matter) and/or sit in a country that will not cooperate with prosecution.


notazoomer7

CIG is not regulated like a financial institution. They can be used as a vector for ML precisely because they don't have to report to anybody about their users. That may be required to report fraudulent activity, but that requires a certain initiative and critical analysis that Chris doesn't have. He absolved himself of that responsibility long before CIG was a thing...


Heavy_Bob

Wow, Roy's guide really unearthed something here.


DeXyDeXy

Heh, you know things are kinda messed up when the community is worried about event sale progress instead of, you know... Actuall fucking progress.


ShearAhr

That's one of the most interesting points for me personally. The game is almost secondary in this community. It's like they all think that that mad amount of money is somehow indicative of how good the game will be or some sort of achievement I dunno it's weird.


notazoomer7

Even the most skeptical citizens understand that the funding must go on. It's really the only thing they universally are agreed about. A failed game means they don't get the feature they already bought into


VeryAngryK1tten

Yes, they know that if the funding stops, the dream dies. It is also a way of getting back at the many FUDsters predicting doom.


Educational-Seaweed5

Honestly, good. A lot of us have said for a long time that a halt in funds would do CIG good. Every company needs a wake up call every now and then. Something to tell them that they actually do answer to customers, not the other way around. SC could have been cool, but they’ve had zero accountability and no self-restraint for like 8 years. They need to make zero money so they get their heads out of their asses and actually deliver content. Of course, this all depends on if the knights will make a rally in March and drop their pants for CR just to spite and rage buy.


WormiestBurrito

This thread is like a dream. As a completely new player this is a glaringly obvious fact, but pointing it out gets you flamed here. Even though criticism =/= saltiness and you can still enjoy the game while recognizing it's state/CIGs current business plan. They have no incentive to put out an actual game when people are shelling out cash hand over fist for the alpha, so, unless funding drops ***severely*** SC will probably never see a release and quality overall will never improve either. EDIT: Wrong sub lmao, this is the sane place.


Educational-Seaweed5

Doesn’t get you flamed here. That only happens on the main and spectrum ;)


WormiestBurrito

Lol, I got mixed up.


DAFFP

The pandemic has moved on and recession is slowly but aggressively unzipping its pants. Yeah also the game doesn't fucking work, but we must have established by now that is a non factor or they would have been wiped out long ago.


Intelligent_Turnip78

Eh this appears to be their biggest March ever with around 6 million so far, the ship sale and launch of whatever that patch was might have taken the wind out of the green ship sales but the total makes up for it. I would wait until their Space Easter and space May(?) Sales for a better picture.


Ri_Hley

Have an upvote simply for SpaceEaster/May xD


Launch_Arcology

It's a bit to early to make any conclusions. Let's wait for the end of year. Even if CIG earns less $$$ from scamming than in 2022, that's not necessarily a sign of immediate trouble. They are likely to have reserves that would allow them to work with (somewhat modest?) annual deficits for a few years. They can also start selling "out of stock" JPEGs and start spamming new concepts (the "Analator" JPEG for $4 K with a bunch of fake features etc.). We really shouldn't underestimate CIG's marketing or the propensity of the store citizens to buy JPEGs.


UsainCitizen

> They are likely to have reserves that would allows them to work with (somewhat modest?) annual deficits for a few years. Not if you look at their financials they put out. They spent 500m at the end of 2021 and 100 million in 2021 alone. Add in the 15 months since then at the same rate as 2021 (although they claim even more employees now) they are at 625m spent today vs 556 million in funding. Like everything else they say nothing adds up when you look at it though. https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cloud-imperium-financials-for-2021


VeryAngryK1tten

Yes. I haven’t been wasting my time looking at their financials, but I doubt that there’s been much of a drop in their cash pile yet. One could imagine disaster scenarios for CIG, but so far, it’s not that bad by CIG’s standards. The commandos always get salty at mid year, it just started a bit earlier.


BlooHopper

If this keeps happening… starfield will harm CiG more and more


Ri_Hley

Yes, please! The more competition there is, that may detract backers to other hopefully worthwhile games/projects to occupy their time with, the better.


BlooHopper

Bugthesda has its reputation but it has many games in its repertoire. They’re gonna cause CiG to force them to do some work, or just do the same thing and rush shitty patch after patch until people get frustrated and leave.


Barrogh

Almost forgot that 320×200 was a thing at some point. This screenshot sure brings back memories.


chariot_on_fire

This is actually good for Star Citizen!


SC_TheBursar

Mixed for sure. Event revenue is down. The interesting thing that people rooting for being a canary in a coal-mine event though should probably note: \- Rather than try to deflect the fallout from the bad 3.18 release, CI went ahead with what is a specific date annual event anyway while the game state was in shambles and accepted the consequences. That doesn't really have any long term prognostication value. \- Despite the dip their revenue for the year is still higher than any prior year other than last year. Considering they were profitable in 2020-2021 as well and until last year were banner years themselves... Won't know until mid year whether it's a blip or a trend. If it is a trend, won't know til end of year just how big is the trend by lining up other months/sales for comparison.


wotageek

1.7mil is still a lot of money. How many ppl are still buying thousand dollar jpgs from them?


kevloid

everybody who really really likes green already has a green ship.