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Monday, November 4, 2024

A Look At EVE Online Activity In October 2024

In EVE Online's Second Expansion Era the month of October is usually an interesting point to look back on. Not only is the month the last one of the summer expansion, we can see how successful the last two expansions were in generating new activity, and presumably new players.


For once I can add some commentary from Jester on his graph. He believed that the increase was due to the big migration by The Imperium from Delve to the cluster's south and south-east. I believe the Crimson Harvest event had as much of if not bigger impact. Either way the average user counts grew from around 21,000 accounts to almost 23,000 accounts, slightly dipping down at the end of the month.


Looking at the numbers one can make the argument for both reasons for increased average concurrent users being valid. In high sec, the number of NPC kills increased by 15.1% in October compared to September. Even year-over-year making NPCs explode in high sec increased by 4.0%. But in null sec, major null sec movements seemed to dominate. The Crimson Harvest is a PvE event but NPC deaths in null security space decreased 1.8% from September. Overall, the end of the Scarcity Era continued with an increase of 24% of NPC explosions compared to October 2023.


Since the release of the Uprising expansion in November 2022 I have looked at low sec as a measure of the health of the game. After three months low sec once again witnessed over 200,000 player-owned ships dying in the security band. Also, I don't think Crimson Harvest had a big impact on low sec, with the number of NPCs dying in low sec slightly decreasing compared to September. Still, the number of NPC kills rose by 18% year-over-year.

Friday, November 1, 2024

Cloud Imperium October 2024 Sales Revenue Declines 36.9% Year-Over-Year

After recording a very good third quarter for 2024, Cloud Imperium Games' revenue from the sales from its online cash shop came in at $9.2 million according to the CCU Game dashboard. While the second highest sales month so far in 2024, the figure represents a 36.9% year-over-year decline from last October's total of $14.6 million in sales. For the year, the company's sales revenue is down by slightly more than $3 million, a 3.7% year-over-year decrease over the $80.7 million recorded in the first 10 months of 2023.

For those who keep track of new accounts (aka "new citizens"), October's 31,204 was 3.9% less than the total of 32,479 in October 2023. For the year, new account creation is down 29.8% for the ten seven months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.

Overall, the recorded sales tracked on the CCU Game dashboard is $735.1 million since the launch of the Kickstarter in October 2012. But Cloud Imperium has additional funding sources not tracked by the dashboard. Overall, the company has recorded $833.7 million in confirmed revenue (the funding page & the 2022 financial report).

  • Sales/Pledges: $735.1 million (through 31 October 2024)
  • Subscriptions: $33.0 million (through 31 December 2022)
  • All other sources: $65.6 million (through 31 December 2022)

In addition, the company has received a total of $63.25 million in outside investment. According to the 2022 financial report, $4.8 million of the amount was returned to investors in 2020. Including the outside investment money, the total amount raised by CIG to create Squadron 42 and Star Citizen is $897 million, or $892.2 million when excluding the returned funds.

October's stunning year-over-year sales decline does not necessarily represent a huge drop in interest in the game itself.  I expected a drop-off, especially after seeing CIG not repeat a big ship sale in the middle of the month. On 10 October 2023, CIG made the Drake Vulture the subscribers' ship of the month and apparently the promotion was very popular. At least, the beginning of the offer coincided with a big jump in cash shop revenue. One not matched in October 2024.

For me, November is now a critical month financially. CIG's cash shop revenue has not declined year-over-year since 2017. Over the previous six years, the median year-over-year sales increase for November was 25.4%. If CIG repeats that type of performance in November, the sales total will exceed $120 million. If the sales increase is only 19%, the company can match last year's total of $117.6 million. And if revenue can't keep up with 2023's aggressive sales and marketing plan for a second consecutive month? I think the internet will hear a lot of "the game is dying" from beyond Star Citizen's critics.

Thursday, October 31, 2024

CCP Games Begins Its Seventh Year Owned By Pearl Abyss

Time really flies, so much so I almost forgot another anniversary. The acquisition of CCP Games by Pearl Abyss was finalized in mid-October 2018. I was at EVE Vegas seven days later and if someone had told those I was with the Icelandic studio would engage in more video game development than the much larger Pearl Abyss over the next six years, I think we would have laughed.

But looking back, that's exactly what happened. Sure, the mobile game we played at the convention, EVE: War of Ascension, died a little-noticed death in 2019. My memory is a bit hazy, but CCP's new mobile game launched on Tuesday, EVE Galaxy Conquest, sounds a lot like the first planned mobile game set in the EVE universe.

CCP Games also partnered with Chinese gaming giant NetEase not only on running the Chinese EVE Online shard, but in producing a new mobile game. The transfer of the game from Tiancity was finally approved in March 2020, with the operation of Serenity restarting a couple of months later. But EVE: Echoes, the mobile game licensed and developed by NetEase, launched in August 2020. Looking back, these two moves worked to ensure 2019 was CCP Games worst revenue year under Pearl Abyss' ownership. Not bad for a studio many believed was dying at the beginning of 2018.

Future game development is being performed in-house. In addition to keeping EVE Online up-to-date with two expansions per year beginning at the end of 2022, the studio currently has two games undergoing player testing. The first, EVE Vanguard, is CCP's fourth attempt at creating a lasting first-person shooting game set in the EVE Universe. The game has undergone player testing all year and I would not be surprised if a release date was announced at the upcoming Fanfest in May. 

The second game is EVE Frontier. The oft-derided blockchain-based MMORPG is currently under development having missed the "blockchain games as flavor-of-the-month" wave from a couple of years ago. While I'm under an NDA, I can say the Phase V playtest begins on 7 November

On the other hand, CCP Games' parent company Pearl Abyss has not pumped out the content like the developers out of Iceland, Shanghai, and London. Of the three planned games the South Korean company announced, only Crimson Desert is still under active development. Work on DokeV was put on hold in order to concentrate on launching Crimson Desert. And as for Plan 8? The game is barely visible in the pipeline, at least on Pearl Abyss' quarterly earnings calls for investors.

Even on the publishing front our overlords in Anyang are playing catch-up to their not-so-newly acquired company. Much of the increases in profits over the past few years were due to moving the publishing of the Black Desert franchise internally. And as for China, Pearl Abyss switched in-country partnership to Tencent in May, which coincidently led to approval to operate Black Desert Online in China in June. BDO may begin operations in the world's second largest market at the end of 2024 or sometime in 2025.

I'm two weeks late to the party, but I haven't seen anyone make a big deal (or even mention) the 6th year anniversary of Pearl Abyss' acquisition of CCP Games. And given the need of CCP to go out and acquire on its own $40 million to help develop EVE Frontier, perhaps the oversight is warranted.

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

CCP Games News: Galaxy Conquest And EVE Online Patch Notes

Today is a pretty big day for CCP Games. To the outside world, the big news is the launch of EVE Galaxy Conquest, the studio's second mobile game and first developed internally. But to the null sec residents of EVE Online, today is also the day their infrastructure is forcibly changed over to the new Equinox sovereignty system.

First, the Galaxy Conquest news. While no new articles appeared on either the official EVE Online website or the CCP Games corporate site, an advertisement is on the EVE Online launcher. Apparently interacting with the Galaxy Conquest social media accounts earns players in-game rewards.

Also on the Galaxy Conquest website is an advertisement looking to enroll content creators in the Partnership Program.
EVE Galaxy Conquest is looking for content creators within our player community! Whether you are an accomplished content creator or an enthusiastic beginner, whether you plan to depict epic battles, dive into the meta, or provide tutorial guides, our team has prepared generous rewards for you. We look forward to seeing you showcase EVE Galaxy Conquest and grow your audience!

In addition to in-game rewards such as Quantum, As an EVE Galaxy Conquest partner you can expect the following:
  • Access to the devs via Discord
  • Featuring on CCP promotional channels
  • Sneak peak at upcoming content
On a business note, I have to make two predictions related to CCP's new mobile game. First, I don't believe the EVE IP meets the ₩20 billion quarterly revenue goal as stated to investors on Pearl Abyss' Q2 earnings call. I do believe that going forward that the revenue generated by Galaxy Conquest will allow CCP to meet the target in fiscal quarters in which the studio does not launch an EVE Online expansion. At least for the next 2-3 years.

On to EVE Online. Today's patch is not the only one released over the last week. I'll combine last Thursday's patch notes with today's to allow players to see all of the changes and fixes implemented over the past 7 days. I'll start with the sovereignty changes as to not bury the lede any further.

Features & Changes:

Sovereignty:
  • All remaining Sovereignty Hubs which were running in Legacy mode have been automatically converted into using the new mode.

  • It is no longer possible to remove rigs from structures which were eligible for rig removal.
Balancing:
  • The bounty rewards for the destroyer, battlecruiser and battleship NPCs which are exclusive to the Forsaken Sanctum/Teeming horde sites have been increased by 20%.

  • The chance of a Large Mercoxit Deposit spawning in a nullsec sovereignty system with a level 2 Prospecting Array Upgrade present has been increased by 3x

  • The Magmatic Gas cost to run a Metenox Moon Drill has been increased from 88 to 110 per hour.

  • Reduced the NPC buy order price of Superionic Ice.
Missions and NPCs:
  • The SoCT has expanded journal buy orders to Genolution stations, including new buy orders for recently discovered journal entries.

Defect Fixes:

Audio:
  • Combat music no longer plays over other music.
Gameplay:
  • Insurgencies - Fixed an issue where the pirate FOB could move from reinforced back to vulnerable again if there was a temporary outage with the external service while it was reinforced.

  • Insurgencies - Fixed a bug which could cause empire factional warfare HQ solarsystems (Amo, Intaki, Mehatoor and Onnamon) from not starting at suppression level 2.

  • Insurgencies - Fixed a bug where corruption effects could linger after an insurgency ended.

  • ESS - It’s no longer possible to place deployables (like Micro Jump Units and Mobile Tractor Units) closer than 1000km to the ESS in the main ESS room.

  • Fixed an issue where NPC kills would not be counted towards daily goals and events if an NPC was one-shot by a player.

  • Fixed an issue where NPC kills would not be counted towards daily goals and events if an NPC was killed indirectly with a smartbomb or an EDENCOM vorton projector weapon bounce and wasn’t targeted by any player directly.

  • Fixed a killmail bug which could occur if a player killed themselves in one shot (Such as dying to their own bomb in a stealth bomber/failing Ghost Site hack etc).

  • Fixed a killmail bug which could occur if a player got a final blow on a player’s ship, but the damage they did was all in one-shot and they didn’t damage the target previously.
Graphics:
  • Adjusted the distance from which certain objects are visible in space.

  • Shattered Paradigm decals no longer clip on the Orthrus.

  • IGC logo on Shattered Paradigm SKIN is now grey instead of red.

Monday, October 28, 2024

EVE Online News Not Important Enough For The News Feed

Over the weekend a couple of events concluded in the EVE Online world that didn't make the news feed. I didn't even think to check until I read Wilhelm's coverage of the CSM 19 election results on The Ancient Gaming Noob. I did manage to find some news on Twitter (aka X, which is a totally stupid name). 

For the first time since I started playing in 2009 I didn't vote. I might wind up doing a voting breakdown, but to be honest, I'm a bit burned out on CSM content. Also, I might have to install Python 2.7 on a computer and I've moved on to Python 3. Then again, I saw a presentation at Fanfest last year in which CCP plans to move on to Python 3 as well. I wonder if the election script will need any updating.

The other piece of news was the results of Alliance Tournament XX. 

A long-time tournament powerhouse, The Tuskers, defeated the winner of Alliance Tournament XVIII, Truth.Honour.Light. This year's win is the second for The Tuskers, as their previous win was in 2016. The Tuskers did not set a record for time between AT wins. That record still belongs to HYDRA RELOADED, winners of Alliance Tournament IX (2011) and Alliance Tournament XVII (2021).

Perhaps CCP will publish the news later on today. But I would have thought at least the CSM 19 results would have had better publicity from CCP. Unlike the finals of the Alliance Tournament, the news could have been set to release at any time.

Friday, October 25, 2024

Ashes Of Creation Alpha 2 Begins Today

I really didn't anticipate doing any coverage of Ashes of Creation. The game is still in an alpha state and probably 5 or more years away from a commercial release. But then a crazy thing happened. Tiny indie studio Intrepid Games stumbled into a tech war with the giant, 1000+ employee Cloud Imperium Games, developers of the upcoming Squadron 42 and Star Citizen. The technology? Dynamic server meshing. And since how Ashes of Creation performs can affect the finances of CIG due to the comparisons of each game's technology, I feel I need to at least do a little coverage.

The Alpha 2 testing of Ashes of Creation starts today for selected people. The full testing calendar describes a rollout lasting 7 months.

  • 25 October 2024 - For players who attained Alpha Two access via a giveaway, or Kickstarter Pack, Kickstarter Addon, Pre-order Pack, and Pre-order Addon.

  • 8 November 2024 - For those who purchased a First Wave Bundle.

  • 20 December 2024 - For those who purchased a Second Wave Bundle.

  • 1 May 2025 - For those who purchased a Third Wave Bundle.

The wave bundles are a bit controversial. Charging to test a video game? Yet, people are willing to pay for the privilege. The bundles are:

  • First Wave - $120. Sales of the bundle end 1 November 2024.
  • Second Wave - $110. Sales of the bundle end December 2024.
  • Third Wave - $100. Sales of the bundle end 27 May 2025.

Each bundle comes with Alpha Two, Beta One, and Beta Two access, 1 Month of Subscription Time ($15 value), and $15 in Embers, the in-game currency. Remember when I mentioned 5 or more years until commercial release in the introduction? Intrepid is planning two rounds of open beta testing before launch.

The testing also feels more like the alpha testing I've seem from CCP Games in their player testing of EVE Vanguard and EVE Frontier. We are 7 months away from 24/7 testing of AoC. The schedule for how long servers are available for testing is below.

  • On Friday, October 25, 2024 Alpha Two begins. Phase I of this testing phase will be weekend testing that starts on Fridays and ends on Sundays.

  • On Friday, December 20, 2024 we will move to Phase II of this testing phase which will be periods of testing for 5+ days in a row.

  • On Thursday, May 1, 2025 we will move to Phase III of this testing phase which will be testing that is up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with downtime for game updates.

  • Note: Dates are subject to change due to development, but Intrepid will notify testers of schedule changes in advance.

One thing I think changed is that the Alpha 2 playtesting is not under an NDA. At least, a quick look at Twitch gives that impression. The NDA for the testing before Alpha 2 was lifted a few days ago

The allowance of streaming the Alpha 2 could lead to embarrassment for other developers, primarily Cloud Imperium Games. CIG's CitizenCon presented a vision of Star Citizen highly reliant on the ability to mesh servers together. If Intrepid shows the ability to have massive PvP fights with tech developed faster and with far less people than CIG, I can see a lot of sniping at Intrepid from Star Citizen white knights looking to defend their game by tearing another game down.

Which brings me back to the concept of the server meshing wars. People will defend their game on the claim that their favorite game studio is developing cutting edge technology. What that does to funding for the various games is something to watch for the future of crowdfunded gaming projects.

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

The Financial Implications For Cloud Imperium From CitizenCon 2024

I don't play Star Citizen, and with the latest news out of this year's CitizenCon, I probably never will. But the annual event had some financial implications for the future of Cloud Imperium Games I couldn't miss. I thought I'd take the time to record my observations.

2025 will be a rough year - The announcement of Squadron 42 not launching until the year 2026 shook up all my calculations about Cloud Imperium. Before, no matter what my estimates of the company's revenue, CIG would release a game in 2025 bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue and setting the company up to continue for a few more years. 

Now, I'm reviewing my calculations wondering if CIG will need to perform another round of layoffs in the United States to reduce costs. Shutting down the Los Angeles studio seems like an obvious move to get away from California's high cost of living and rigorous tax regime. Bringing on another outside investor to get the company through to SQ42's release now seems realistic.

Don't expect a mass movement of SQ42 devs to work on Star Citizen - I watched the final panel of CitizenCon with awe. The company's vision of Star Citizen on commercial release of the game is audacious in its vision. But that comes with a price. I honestly do not see how Cloud Imperium ships Star Citizen to the public before CitizenCon 2031. 

The implications are clear. Not only is CIG counting on Squadron 42 to bring in loads of money, SQ42's sequels will need to do so as well. I've watched some Star Citizen content creators complain about SQ42 diverting resources from work on Star Citizen. I have bad news for them. If they want adequate funding for Star Citizen development, don't expect a permanent internal shift in developers between the games to occur. 

No more sales exploiting LTI - Over the years I've observed a phenomenon called LTI token sales. Players will purchase a small, relatively cheap item with lifetime or limited time insurance and then "melt" the item down for store credit to buy an actually desired ship, transferring the insurance from the cheap item to the desired object. So items that normally would not attract much interest generate millions of dollars in sales.

Did CIG change the importance of LTI to future buyers of its internet spaceships? The company came out with a post on the official forums to clarify the implementation of warranties and the impact on LTI.
Vehicles Attributed Through the Website, and not Earned In-Game

UNCHANGED PLAN: All insurance will last for varying durations, just like it's always have supposed to. (No change.)

UNCHANGED PLAN: Level 1 is chassis and original, purchase-included components only and is the insurance that has always been offered since the project began. (No change.)

UNCHANGED PLAN: [EDIT HERE WITH CORRECTED INFO BECAUSE I'M OLD AND OUT OF PRACTICE AND I SHARED SUPER-DUPER OLD THINKING ORIGINALLY] If your vehicle is destroyed without insurance, the intention is that there will be an additional in-game cost to recovering it, but it remains on your account and accessible forever. There will be ways to track its duration in game when the system is implemented, and a warning when you summon your vehicle if it is without active insurance. The choice to operate without insurance will be deliberate, very noticeable, and entirely yours. (No change.)

UNCHANGED PLAN, AND UNIQUE TO WEBSITE PROMOTIONS: Lifetime duration means you never have to bother with renewing it in-game. All other durations are intended to be renewed through in-game means once the system is fully implemented. This has always been chassis and stock components, meaning it is Level 1 insurance with a lifetime duration. (No change.)

FUTURE NEW ADDITIONAL OPTION: Level 2 adds custom components coverage to chassis. This is new and cool and especially important in a universe with massive crafting options and will be addable in game.

FUTURE NEW ADDITIONAL OPTION: Level 3 adds coverage to all your upcoming ship decorations, and still includes chassis and custom components, which is awesome and will be addable in game.
How will the change impact future ship sales and future revenue. I have the feeling revenue will decline as buyers do not choose the more expensive packages including insurance for any except the most expensive ships. I think the attraction of LTI was not losing ships purchased with real world money. The new system ensures that does not occur.

Expect more frequent ship and vehicle sales - I haven't just paid attention to the content at CitizenCon. I also watched the revenue roll in from the sales associated with the event. CIG failed to hold a sale a week ahead of CitizenCon like they did in 2023. Currently I estimate this month's cash shop revenue to be down at least $5 million from October 2023's total of $14.6 million.

But reduced revenue from not repeating the previous year's sales isn't the only cause for my belief. Comparing last year's CitizenCon (including the days before and after) to the similar period this year (October 18-21), sales were down this year. The 4-day period of October 20-23, 2023 saw cash shop revenue hit $4.4 million. This year, the cash shop revenue only reached $3.7 million.

Of course, one data point does not make a pattern. But if we see similar sales performance for next month's International Aerospace Expo, then expect to see more ship and vehicle sales in 2025.

Monday, October 21, 2024

What Will Star Citizen 1.0 Look Like?

Over the weekend Cloud Imperium Games held it's annual CitizenCon event in Manchester, England. Celebrating the 12th anniversary of the launch of the Kickstarter for Squadron 42 and Star Citizen, Heading into the project's 13th year, the company is facing some financial challenges. Cash shop sales over the last two years are apparently not keeping up with development expenses. CIG's North American studios underwent a significant workforce reduction at the beginning of 2024. And on day 1 of the convention, CIG founder and CEO Chris Roberts announced the company's single player game, Squadron 42, would not release until sometime in 2026. Unless otherwise noted, such a date usually indicates a release sometime in December 2026.

Into this environment CIG dropped its final presentation of the event, "The Stars My Destination: Star Citizen 1.0". The presentation spelled out what CIG considered the minimum viable product to release for commercial sale. Well, for sale without the development labels "alpha" or "beta". An outstanding question for years, what will the game deliver upon commercial release? 

First off, once the game is commercially launched, the company is promising improved performance, a polished experience, finished gameplay loops, and no more server resets. If a previously mentioned piece of content, feature, or star system is not present in the 1.0 release, the developers will add it in future patches. In other words, pretty standard stuff players expect from a game.

The presentation addressed a big issue from the original Kickstarter, the number of systems in Star Citizen at launch. According the the various stretch goals, the number originally was 100. Senior game director Richard Tyrer explained why the planned number of systems changed.
... the star systems of old are not the star systems of today. They were based on the Privateer and Freelancer model. They were unexplorable planets with an isolated and small landing zone and had automated landings ... and we all know how that went.

To give you an idea Stanton had four points of interest (POI) and the entire 100 systems only had 90 POIs. Compare that to Stanton today and we have 1626 points of interest. And that is going to be dwarfed once we start using the Starchitect tool you saw yesterday. 
The game will launch with 5 star systems. One system is already known to players: Stanton. The next planet will arrive with Alpha 4.0: Pyro. Sometime later, the 3-planet Nyx system which the developers have worked on in the past will show up in the 'verse. The final two systems are Castra (two planets) and Terra (four planets).

The game is going to launch with a main story to help players learn about the game. The game will introduce players not only to the types of gameplay but to the NPC guilds as well. For those who play EVE Online, the system sounds very much like the tutorial, career agent, and opportunity systems in that game, including the reputation grinds. A difference, though, is the presence of location stories. These missions will help add lore and character to the locations in the world.

The game will also have a full mission system based on NPC guilds. These guilds have agents with whom the player will interact. The game also has two guilds which engage in PvP and are in conflict with each other. 

The economy will be based on the StarSim (formerly known as Quantum) system. The system is described as dynamic and will automatically adjust the in-game prices based on player activity, so a functioning StarSim is an absolute requirement for a commercial release of Star Citizen.

Something the developers had to address is how ship insurance would work. Tyrer announced during the presentation.
We'll have three tiers of insurance with level one being chassis insurance, level two chassis and component insurance, and level three chassis, component and decorations insurance. Now insurance by itself will only pay out credits based on the wear and age of your ship ... insurance with a warranty though will give you back a new ship plus any other equipment or decorations based on their of insurance you had. Okay, so this is the bit you need to listen to. All ships bought on the pledge store will come with a permanent warranty and their appropriate insurance. This means you will always get your ships back if they're attributed to your account.
Obtaining warranties through normal gameplay sounded like they would be rare and hard to obtain.

Star Citizen will also ship with the ability to own land. In this area the game also imitates Final Fantasy XIV in which owning a plot of land requires service in a city's militia. Star Citizen will differ as players who complete the reputation grind and become "Citizens" will receive greater benefits than those who do not ("civilians"). The base building system is a key that needs to also be complete upon the game's launch.



The game will not just play in a open world sandbox full of missions, PvP and server wide events. The game will also have a wide variety of instanced events. Not stated in the presentation was the positive effects of moving such activity to their own servers. Not only are players protected from others interfering in their activities, but server performance should prove better for players as well.

The previously mentioned StarSim will also play a part in open world gameplay, spawning events and NPCs in relation to player activity as well as the economic activity it independently generates.


Players of EVE Online will find the security systems familiar in Star Citizen. Lawful system like Stanton, Castra and Terra will have internal security zones rated high, medium and low. The higher the security rating, the faster NPC security forces will respond to illegal activity like attacking other players. Successful piracy that captures a ship can be partially be thwarted by invoking a dead man's switch. At that point, the pirate has the choice of salvaging the captured ship, dismantling the ship at a fabrication hangar (chop shops in space!), or obtain a new title deed.


In unlawful systems, the bases needed to extract valuable minerals are attackable as no NPC security forces exist. Organizations can make their bases invulnerable through a shield network. However, the shields are a limited resource players need to bid for each week. Thus, station warfare is born and needs to be present upon the launch of the game.

The ultimate end game goal for organizations are player-built space stations. The stations are similar to the existing NPC run stations. The interiors are fully customizable while stations can grow externally with the addition of wings. Each wing has a specialization for specific tasks like refining and cargo handling. The stations also can have tints and logos applied to their exteriors. And did I mention the player-built stations can also build capital-size ships like the Bengal carrier?

Of course, failing to win your bid on shield resources leaves the station vulnerable to attack. The developers feel stations are so hard to destroy that raiding using boarding parties is the most likely form of attack. So all of that gameplay needs developing before Star Citizen 1.0 can launch.

Very ambitions goals for a game, which is why I have to return to finances.  How long will CIG need to create all the systems mentioned in this blog post? And if CIG needs three years to launch Squadron 42 after declaring the game "feature complete", how long for Star Citizen 1.0? I personally don't see how CIG can commercially launch the game in less than 7 years. Unless Squadron 42 and its sequels are a financial success, I don't see how the company finishes Star Citizen without additional outside investment.

Saturday, October 19, 2024

Squadron 42 To Release Sometime In 2026

The first day of Cloud Imperium's CitizenCon completed about an hour ago with a live playthrough of the tutorial of Squadron 42 and a release year. 2026. Oh, and the game crashed to desktop twice and encountered a rather embarrassing bug at the end. Not a very auspicious gameplay reveal.

What I do want to point out is I think Chris Roberts perhaps misled some people on just how close to release Squadron 42 at last year's event. Roberts made the announcement in 2023 that the game was "feature complete" and just needed some polish before being released. I think a lot of people thought that meant the game would come out within 12-18 months. I personally thought the game would release sometime before CitizenCon 2025 at the latest, giving CIG two years to get the game ready.

By announcing the game's launch in 2026, I now expect the game to release sometime in the final quarter of 2026. I believe the outside investors may be a little unhappy as delaying the release of the game approximately 12 months affects the calculation of the investors' returns when they exercise their put options at the beginning of 2028. Hopefully the news does not result in the Calders' exercising their put option in 2025 instead of waiting three more years.

I should add Roberts did not mention pricing for the game, although the game is expected to take 30 to 40 hours to play.

Friday, October 18, 2024

Alliance XX Tournament - The First Weekend's Schedule And Rules

The activity in EVE Online continues this weekend with the first of the final two weeks of Alliance Tournament XX. The feeder rounds are over and for a change I can actually follow the brackets. Here are the brackets, with a focus on times for the first weekend.

Winner's Bracket Schedule


Loser's Bracket Schedule

Hopefully the brackets with the scheduled times helps plan for the big fights. The rules have also changed a bit, with the key changes listed below.
  • This tournament is now sponsored by the Guristas. As such, the previous CONCORD directives have been rescinded, reducing multiple pirate faction ship costs instead. Gallente-sponsored ships from ATXIX have had their costs restored.

  • The top 4 winning teams from ATXIX have been invited back by the IGC and will have no cost of entry.

  • The PLEX Silent Auction Buy-ins have been removed this year, and the entry cost has been increased from 3,000 PLEX to 4,000 PLEX.

  • Flagship rules have been adjusted to allow prize ships from the previous three alliance tournament to be fielded. Additionally, several previously restricted ships are now allowed.

  • The point system has been overhauled. The new point cap per team is 200 points, and multiple ships now have new unique point values.

  • Boosters that don’t directly impact the tournament, such as Cerebral Accelerators, are now allowed.

  • Instead of 4 total bans submitted to the referee, 2 bans will be submitted by both teams and then shared, followed by 2 additional bans from each team that will also be shared.

  • Several new ship hulls from the Equinox and Havoc expansions have been added to the tournament.
Today CCP released the specifications for ATXX's prize ships: Sidewinder, Cobra, and Python.

Sidewinder, Covert Ops Frigate


Cobra, Force Recon Cruiser



Python, Black Ops Battleship


The prize ship distribution this year includes everyone who wins at least one match.
Prizes

3 New Alliance Tournament sprize ships are to be issued. The Sidewinder (Frigate), the Cobra (Cruiser) and the Python (Battleship).

This Year’s Prize Ship Distribution:

The prize breakdown for Alliance Tournament XX is as follows:
  • 1st (winner of finals): 40x Sidewinder, 40x Cobra, 20x Python
  • 2nd (loser of winner’s bracket): 30x Sidewinder, 30x Cobra, 15x Python
  • 3rd (loser of match 61): 20x Sidewinder, 20x Cobra, 10x Python
  • 4th (loser of match 60): 12x Sidewinder , 12x Cobra, 6x Python
  • Top 6 (2 teams, K.O. in losers round 6): 8x Sidewinder, 8x Cobra, 4x Python
  • Top 8 (2 teams, K.O. in losers round 5): 6x Sidewinder, 6x Cobra, 3x Python
  • Top 12 (4 teams, K.O. in losers round 4): 4x Sidewinder, 4x Cobra, 2x Python
  • Top 16 (4 teams, K.O. in losers round 3): 2x Sidewinder, 2x Cobra, 1x Python
A total of 385 ships rewarded!
Victory SKINs are also awarded for each match victory, including in the feeder rounds. So every winning team is playing for 10 Enforcer, Marshal, Pacifier and Monitor SKINs per match.

I don't know if I will watch the tournament live but I might try to catch the YouTube videos when I'm not running around. Live gets hectic and I won't get the chance to watch the coverage live.