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[-] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Like Chris is "working" for free...

[-] ninjan@lemmy.mildgrim.com 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

He isn't, but he's not out there buying multiple sports cars and a yatch either. I really do believe there isn't anything sinister going on, just a whole bunch of good intended people wasting a collosal amount of money on a dream project where devs get to do exactly what they want and don't need to adhere to deadlines, no crunch, no job security threats and just no pressure. It's probably bliss working there but they have no hope of ever making an actual finished product because there is literally noone there with the goal to push a product out the door on X date. It will be done when it's done, and everyone who's ever worked in such a loose environment knows that means never until someone comes in and lays down the law.

And before someone comes in and says "Y indie project bla bla" remember that there is a VAST difference between a small game with say 1000-5000 man hours behind it and a large AAA game which Star Citizen aims to be which entail at minimum 100.000s of man hours of work. You can be extremely loose and take your time with a small idea like say Vampire Survivor and scope creep it to hell and back and it still won't take more than a year or two until there just isn't anything more to do but release it.

There is probably some clever parallel to draw here to utopian political ideologies but my brain is mush after a grueling week so I'll leave that to someone else.

[-] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

Didn't ex employees come out to talk about all the money being wasted on luxury like paintings for the office and shit?

[-] ninjan@lemmy.mildgrim.com 2 points 1 year ago

The biggest waste is all the employees and the offices to house them. Details like decorations and conference tables are just a red herring, it's not the real issue. Just look at their road map, and then consider that they have 1100 people on payroll working on that roadmap, not including third parties like voice actors etc. It's fascinating.

[-] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

I knew I had seen something recently:

https://reddit.com/r/starcitizen/s/ieaGZ4CRwu

Look at the bit on the Manchester office.

[-] ninjan@lemmy.mildgrim.com 1 points 1 year ago

It's just because that irks you when there are layoffs. But office supplies are assets, they're on the books and while they depreciate over time it's still something that can be sold and doesn't cost anything after you've bought them. The actual office building is different, since you generally rent it and the staff you need to pay monthly and you can't sell them to recoup part of the investment. High quality chairs etc cost a fortune, but they also last a decade plus in many cases. Still earlier this year they had 1000+ employees, that isn't sustainable for a game relying on donations basically. You need predatory microtransactions for that to workout which is of course part of the reason CIG monetizes in the way they do, they need to keep the boat afloat.

If the average salary is just $20k yearly were looking at a salary spend in excess of $20 million a year, not including offices or payroll taxes, benefits etc. And I imagine that the average salary is higher than that. If they are laying people off the reason is that someone in finance is putting his foot down saying this just can't go on.

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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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