This is going down in the history books as my all time favorite thread.
Star Citizen hasn't raised $170 or whatever million in crowdfunding. Selling micro-transactions for an unfinished game is not crowdfunding in any way shape or form. I don't know what Star Citizen raised from the initial kickstarter, and what they raised from their own website, before micro-transactions. But whatever the combination of those two numbers is, is whatever they actually raised via crowdfunding.
The funny thing here is that they don't have investors to pay back whenever they are finished. There is no interest on their capital, because they didn't borrow it. So, not only did they manage to get a ton of money, but they don't have to worry about paying investors back for 1.5 to 2 times the initial investment, like most other business do. This makes CIG one of the easiest companies to run and manage, because you have absolutely zero money worries at all. It's as if CIG rubbed a magic lamp, and was given borderline infinite amounts of cash.
So given the above paragraph, the fact that they haven't finished yet, is hilarious. It's been five years since development of the game really got underway. Yes, I know the kickstarter ended in late 2012, but they needed six months to get a crew together, so I'll give them that, and assume that development started summer 2013. Nearly infinite amounts of cash, and they are nowhere close to finished. Yes, other games have taken 10 or 8 years to finish, but those games had development start and stop. Those games had investors to worry about paying back, or higher ups, on a board of directors, looking to turn a profit. Those games, had someone walk in halfway through development, flip the coffee table, and force the developer to start over from scratch. Nintendo is infamous for flipping the proverbial coffee table on its own games. Star Citizen has absolutely no reason for development to start and stop. They don't have to worry about some big corporate bigwigs flipping the coffee table on them. And they have double or triple the amounts of capital that other devs work with. And it's all INTEREST FREE! But their game still isn't out yet. Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous!
