What a week it’s been for Star Citizen and Derek Smart following his removal as a backer. Now he’s even more determined to get some answers from Chris Roberts and Cloud Imperium.
In his latest blog update he recaps over the events of the past week following his removal as a backer of Star Citizen. His determination to get to the bottom of what could be going on at Cloud Imperium has also prompted him to lay down another set of criteria he wants them to meet.
Included in this new list is his willingness to put in $1m if his own money to pay for a forensic accountant to look over the books on the behalf of backers and also the hiring an executive producer, a position Erin Roberts is currently filling following the departure of Alex Mayberry.
The list and final comments from his update are as follows:
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You, and your wife, Sandra Roberts (aka Sandi Gardiner), should resign, effective immediately, and relinquish control of this company to an interim CEO.
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Using the same rules you used to refund my pledge, without my asking, you are to immediately process refunds in the amount of $2,134,374Â as per the initial Kickstarter crowd-funding effort for those who request it. Those who want to wait to see the end (my instinct, from what I know now, is telling me that the end is looking a lot like a catastrophic total loss of this project), are welcome to do that.
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Give backers the opportunity to hire an independent forensics accountant, and an executive producer, to audit the company records, and give an accurate picture of the financial health of the company, and it’s ability to complete, and deliver this project in a timely fashion. I hereby offer to foot the entire costs of this effort. And I will put up to $1m of my own money, in an escrow account of an attorney’s choosing, to be used as-needed for this exercise. I will pay this price to prove that I had every right to seek these answers. So this money can either go toward a good cause (righting this ship), or to attorneys who are most likely to burn it all down anyway.
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If you ignore this, the more time passes, the more articles that myself, and investigative media write, revealing what we know, the more likely it is that this will end in legal (someone suing someone, and opening the flood gates) action, thereby  forcing you all to come to court and answer these questions.
As I warned before, unless there is full accountability from you, there is no version of this that ends nicely. If this ends in legal action, in any form, all relevant people who are still with your companies, or who have left, are going to be subjected to subpoenas, and depositions – under oath, as this process unfolds. This will just end up being messy, time consuming, and costly, for everyone involved. As you probably know, aside from your inner circle of sycophants, you and Sandra, have very few people who are going to put their future at risk, in order to lie under oath.
Derek sounds like he means business if he’s prepared to put his own money on the line to find out if there are real problems with the Star Citizen project. Even if he’s calling their bluff it’s a bold statement to make. The removal of his Star Citizen account has stirred the nest and other media outlets finally started to cover the story this week.
Chris Robert/Cloud Imperium are never going to take any of the above seriously so the discussion will likely rage on for weeks, if not months, and Derek’s $1m is pretty safe. He does however say he will take out a full page article in the New York Times to prove he’s right.
With Gamescom just around the corner Cloud Imperium will be making sure they have something more concrete to show.
