Derek Smart – Page 2

Derek Smart, Indie Devs, And Death Threats

As those of you who follow my Twitter account (see right hand side of page) know, I spent a good part of last night following up on a story that broke earlier in the day yesterday. Derek Smart, game developer and ex-Star Citizen pledge, posted via social media that he had received a death threat over his continued criticism of Chris Roberts and the handling of Star Citizen’s development. While death threats have become common enough that the media pretty much glosses over them these days, the source of the threat was even more interesting.

The email, posted in full by Smart to social media, originates from an sae.edu email address owned by Carlos Bott, mobile developer and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland. Smart also posted the raw data from the email to show that it did indeed originate from the SAE servers. MMO Fallout was able to corroborate via a third party source who wished to go unnamed that the email did originate from SAE’s servers likely using Google Apps to manage their email.

MMO Fallout reached out to Bott, who has fully denied sending the email in question. Judging from my contact with both parties, it seems very likely that this could break out into legal action in the near future. For our readers, we suggest not jumping to conclusions or presuming guilt until more details can be shared.

Any further information will be covered as it arises.

Derek Smart Enlists Law Firm, Threatens Lawsuit

If you haven’t been keeping up with the kerfuffle between Derek Smart and Chris Roberts, it goes as follows: Derek Smart has been a very vocal critic of Star Citizen and Chris Roberts, over the fact that the game’s funding has grown to a massive level and over Smart’s belief that the growing scope of the game cannot be realized and will not be released. Cloud Imperium Games responded to Smart’s blog posts by unilaterally refunding his Kickstarter pledge and banning his game account, despite Smart not actually posting his criticism on the Star Citizen website. CIG then accused Smart of using Star Citizen to promote his own game, Line of Defense.

Since then, Derek Smart has been amassing what appears to be a small encyclopedia of evidence against Cloud Imperium Gaming, building up to what may become a class action lawsuit on behalf of backers regretting their purchase who are unable to get a refund through the official channels. This, presumably, in addition to a defamation lawsuit hinted at by Smart regarding public statements made by CIG against Smart when refunding his pledge.

Smart is encouraging people to get in contact not just with the Federal Trade Commission over unrefunded pledges, but to contact him as well. You can read the entirety of Derek Smart’s latest blog post here, but be warned: It’s massive and contains a lot of reference links. Clear out some time in your schedule before you sit down for a look.

(Source: Dereksmart.org)

Derek Smart Used Star Citizen “To Promote His Line of Defense Game,” Smart Refunded & Banned

In what might be the first case of public corporate banning, CIG’s Ben Lesnick has posted a message on the official forums announcing that they have refunded Derek Smart’s Kickstarter pledge and disabled his account, effectively telling the veteran developer that he is no longer welcome as part of the community. In a thread discussing the refund on the main forums, a poll has gathered close to 30% support for the option to refund one’s pledge.

Our ToS (or in this case, the Kickstarter ToS) allows us to refund troubled users who we would rather not have interacting with the community. The process lets us entirely disable their accounts, preventing them from playing the finished game. Think of it as the video game equivalent of a ‘we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone’ sign in a restaurant. We’ve used this ability a limited number of times in the past, always with the aim of improving the community.

The action was spurred when Smart first posted his belief that Star Citizen will never be released, as it was promised, leading up to his latest blog post asking for an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission as well as offering a list of demands. CIG accused Smart of using Star Citizen as a platform to promote his own game, Line of Defense.

(Source: Star Citizen)

Derek Smart Slams Star Citizen

Derek Smart is an industry veteran whose work and legacy goes back two decades, with the Universal Combat and Battlecruiser line of games, and he has bad news for those eagerly awaiting Star Citizen: It’s probably going to be a total disaster. Once you get past Smart reiterating his curriculum vitae, he gets to the meat of the article:

Without disrespect to anyone, I’m just going to say it: it is my opinion that, this game, as has been pitched, will never get made. Ever.

Smart does not believe that any company capable of building the game that Roberts has pitched, especially not for less than $150 million. When the game eventually does go belly up, as the blog post states, the same media that have been reporting on the game’s funding stretch goals will be the first to vilify the developer.

The hype surrounding this project since its 2012 inception is going to guarantee that every media outlet is going to want a piece of the action, and most of that is going to be based on sheer speculation, wanton conjecture, bullshit anonymous “sources” etc., because the focus would be on vilifying Chris and crew, rather than focusing on what mistakes were made.

Star Citizen first popped up on Kickstarter back in 2012 when other industry veteran Chris Roberts asked for a mere half a million to get his game off the ground and to make it look enticing to private investors. The space sim community responded by throwing a sack load of money in Roberts’ direction, $2.1 million in the Kickstarter campaign alone. Even so, with the Kickstarter campaign over and done with, the momentum of the cash flow didn’t stop. It sped up, to the tune of $84 million.

Since then, the game has become synonymous with big money, and you can say what you want about the morality of selling $2,500 singular digital ships for a game that doesn’t exist, people are still lining up to give Roberts money hand over fist. As the cash pile increased, so did the scope of the game, to the point where the the original pitch is just a blip on the current design plan.

And the more that Star Citizen has seen its vision broadened, the further behind the game gets, and the more money it seems to bring in, and the more agitated that early backers seem to be getting. After three years of development, backers have been graced with a hanger and an incomplete Arena Commander mode where players can battle with some of their ships.

You can read the entire thing at the link below, but be warned: It is a long read.

(Source: Dereksmart.org)

3000AD Reconsidering Free To Play After Weekend

Line of Defense, MMO Shooter currently in an early state of development, recently ran a free play weekend that has developer 3000AD rethinking whether or not free weekends will be on the menu for the future. Derek Smart slammed the negative reviews as “disingenuous” and criticized gamers for not reading the documentation provided, not understanding early access, and blaming the game for their low-end computers.

This will probably be our first and our last free play weekend because clearly “free” sometimes tends to attract the wrong demographic.We did this in order to test an aspect of the game that couldn’t have other wise been tested due to the fact that the paid EA tiers have no access to the F2P Starter Kit. So now that we know it works and that SteamWorks entitlement, auth etc are solid; Q.E.D.

You can read the entire announcement at the link below.

(Source: Line of Defense)

Line of Defense Momentarily Made Free On Steam

Line of Defense went into early access last week and while the idea was that players would need to purchase one of the game’s founder’s packs to gain access, a mistake in the game’s Steam listing caused the title to be made available for free to anyone, buyer or not. The mistake was fixed by Valve, but not before several thousand players had managed to start the client download. Since the players had not purchased the game, however, they were still unable to access the servers and were thus unable to play. Several of those players then took to Steam’s review system to show their anger.

In a news piece on the Line of Defense website, Derek Smart responded to complaints, noting that while the game will eventually be free to play, the current box price is to weed out players simply looking for something new and free to toy around with.

We know that a lot of you are excited about the game; but the whole purpose of pricing this Early Access tiers this way is so that we can attract a specific dedicated crowd during the next three to four months of testing. It is a very large and involved open-world game. We’re a small indie team. For those reasons and aside from the fact that we do not have the resources, we simply don’t want to be distracted by large numbers of players who – for the most part – won’t contribute any meaningful feedback to the game.

Line of Defense is currently in early access on a heavily staggered release system.

(Source: Line of Defense)

Line of Defense Early Access Now Available

Line of Defense, the MMOFPS by 3000AD, is now available for purchase on Steam’s Early Access program. The servers don’t go live until around 10am on September 16th, you can get your hands on the early access packages for 50% off for the time being. The sale lasts until the servers go live and you can find a comparison on what each package includes at the following link. Features will be turned on one by one as early access progresses, with the final product launching free to play for all with an optional upgrade.

(Source: Steam)

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