Star Citizen: Ship Sales in the Night 
A deranged amount going on as usual. This is genuinely a tiny sub-set of it. (Apologies for the giant post
)
No NDAs Needed: Everyone loves a leak. Here's a fireside chat between an ex 'SQ42' dev and the ex Digital Anvil dev who hangs out on SA:
Brief post:
Had lunch with an ex-designer from the Squadron 42 studio today. But nothing groundbreaking to say other then to continue to confirm what is known
-Endlessly frustrated after a year of everything on that game changing over and over again, leading to all the work needing to be constantly scrapped or reworked. He left in total frustration
-Massive attrition constantly occurring every month
-Liked Erin but said he is a slave to his brothers insanity
-75% of the studios time is pulled to help make assets and movies with the other studios, to sell to whales
-Sandi is a very frightening woman and the studio is told in advance to just sit quietly and act really busy when she would visit. Do not even say hi to her or make eye contact. Its safer to be anonymous. Chris would be a bit more chatty but would talk down to people and handlers would usher him away if you talked for more then a few minutes.
-Did not believe the game was a pure scam at the start, just that it morphed into an unachievable product (because chris) and everyone knows that. Staff is mostly first timers who just need jobs but can’t get hired at better places.
-Chris has some odd shoelace fetish and stopped production, for a few weeks, with a large portion of the art team who needed to make them all scratch again on every boot
-Arena commander was made purely to help whales “believe” and get more funding
- Ex Designer had never heard of Derek Smart. Studio was encouraged to stay out of forums. Especially Reddit
-Did not have to sign any legally binding gag contracts when he left. Was free talk about it if he wanted but just didn’t care enough to talk in forums. Said it was just sad and depressing there and felt bad for the guys who had to remain because of no prospects elsewhere.
-Even with the switch to Lumberyard, the engine is not enough (and probably never will be) to make the MMO game that chris wants - but would be capable of making sq42 if chris ever reigned it into a scope that was possible
-Never provided any design direction to the sq42 team for mechanics or gameplay, And Is perceived as completely uneducated on game development
-Did make one joke at lunch and said “but in the end it will all be okay, because chris will code it”
There’s more but its all just blah blah blah stuff that the forum already knows. It just confirms it again
To add a little spice, the character team has quit en masse once, and a second 75% masse in the last 4 years at the England studio are in a constant state of rollovers with replacements
-Lumberyard have dropped CIG as a tier 1 preferred studio because they no longer believe it will be something that will bring the engine/amazon any future credibility. Are now betting on a couple other developers.
-No one in the studio has any clue on how chris has pulled off the funding windfall either
Progress Watch: 
With focus very much on the Hail Mary pass that is SQ42 (whereby Luke Skywalker will fly in to save the day), Star Citizen itself offers up the decidedly anaemic 3.6 update. Here's what has been
cut in total: 
A Historical Eye: 
Courtesy of SA, a look at how far short of the 2016 3.0 roadmap the current game is:
This is the only roadmap you need. Simple and easy to read! And you even have an official presentation about it!
3.0 was supposed to be out by the end of 2016 with them needing "two to three months between releases" for the next ones.
Original presentation) Young Employee of the Month: Zane Bien is 3 years out of uni and he's now
Global UI Creative Director. Yay!
Engine Goes Into Reverse?: Amazon Struggles to Advance in Videogame Industry With projects getting dumped, and the rather obvious news that Cryengine isn't particularly good for the multiplayer gaming they're trying to push alongside AWS, things aren't looking great for the whole Lumberyard project right now.
Goliath Hires David: 
CIG were dominating in the lawsuit. Crytek's shiny lawyers abandoned them, leaving claims of imminent CIG victory & demands for a $2mil bond unchallenged. And then some plucky IP lawyers stepped into the fold and started swinging wildly.
Crytek's Latest Plays: A (non-IP) lawyer & space nerd assesses (video) TLDR: - Crytek claim the game license is still in effect, regardless of CIG starting a fresh license with Amazon. This is new, and all kinds of fun cheekiness.
- The Punctuation Punch: They spotted CIG's deliberate omission of a comma, smooshing two clauses together. The claim that a stand-alone SQ42 wasn't covered by the license seems strong.
- Claims that their receipt of code fixes from CIG post-litigation proves they're making headway, and not heading for inevitable defeat.
- If Crytek really are out for 'justice' over payouts, as they claim here, might explain why they split with their big lawyers. Not caring about the cash pot at the end of the rainbow would be a point of contention.
- They totally dodged the key 'Crytek are broke' claims. Weakkk.
-CIG's pushback- Waiting on the judge to rule. Bond looking likely still.
Much Adieu About Nothing: I've kept out the accountancy, the eyebrows raised at Chris's new mansion purchase, the curious examples of past bluster and bizarre practices, and the many many bugs currently riddling the pre-alpha itself. And all the other stuff. There's always more...
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