Star Citizen was once a crowdfunding darling, earning its entire Kickstarter goal within a matter of days. It was insane to watch it hit different milestones from $9 to $15, and even $20 million. Now the game sits at around $150 million in crowdfunding backing, almost five years after its Kickstarter campaign launched. A recent post on NeoGAF revealed that the game's developer, Cloud Imperium Games, has allegedly taken out a massive loan from the UK bank, Coutts and Co.
What was disturbing was that the studio had apparently put up everything they own, including the Star Citizen IP, its assets, code, etc. as collateral.
Naturally, this created a bit of a shock wave, particularly within the Star Citizen fanbase. As such, Cloud Imperium Games' co-founder Ortwin Freyermuth came forward on the studio's forums to address the concern.
Here's an excerpt from what he said:
We have noticed the speculations created by a posting on the website of UK’s Company House with respect to Coutt’s security for our UK Tax Rebate advance, and we would like to provide you with the following insight to help prevent some of the misinformation we have seen.Our UK companies are entitled to a Government Game tax credit rebate which we earn every month on the Squadron 42 development. These rebates are payable by the UK Government in the fall of the next following year when we file our tax returns. Foundry 42 and its parent company Cloud Imperium Games UK Ltd. have elected to partner with Coutts, a highly regarded, very selective, and specialized UK banking institution, to obtain a regular advance against this rebate, which will allow us to avoid converting unnecessarily other currencies into GBP. We obviously incur a significant part of our expenditures in GBP while our collections are mostly in USD and EUR. Given today's low interest rates versus the ongoing and uncertain currency fluctuations, this is simply a smart money management move, which we implemented upon recommendation of our financial advisors.
The basic gist is that the studio is actually getting an advance on a tax rebate rather than taking out a loan. Freyermuth references the collateral in question to be "absolutely standard" but only pertains to the studio's UK operations. He explicitly states that the collateral "specifically excludes Star Citizen" despite "some irresponsible and misleading reports."
Star Citizen has mostly stayed out of the limelight, but we expect that to change at Gamescom 2017, much like last year when the game made a pretty epic showing. Development may be going slow, but it is a game that is trying to do a lot of things very well, including First-Person Shooter mechanics.
Sources: [NeoGAF, PC Gamer, Gamespot]
