If you’re busy today, don’t worry, we understand. We can assure you that this post does not contain a direct link to another 11,000 word manifesto, although Derek Smart claims that he’s working on a third piece on the whole Star Citizen hornet’s nest that he’s kicked over. A tweet from Smart indicates that he suspects Roberts Space Industries of planning to refund all of the Kickstarter backers, which – per aforementioned rambling manifesto – would leave all of the game’s remaining money limited by the TOS of the game’s independent crowdfunding and cut Kickstarter out of the loop. That’d total about $2.1 million, which is a pretty tiny chunk of the $85 million in crowdfunding the company has already raised.
Smart has also pointed out that the ban leveled against him came without any notification of how he had violated the TOS, as he further claims that he never used or posted upon the forums.
A Cloud Imperium employee sent PC Gamer the following statement: “It was obvious he was not a supporter of our project and was just using our visibility as a platform to gain attention and promote his current game and his past games. […] We have strict rules about people using our forums and chat for self-promotion and it was clear that he didn’t care about the project, or the backers, or a good game being made. He was just trying to create a huge fuss to make himself relevant at a lot of other people’s expense and distress. So we enacted our rights through Kickstarter (that we also have on our own TOS) and refunded him and turned his account off.”
In response to CIG comments last night, Smart further suggested he might pursue legal recourse:
@Ncrdrg yeah. but I'm going to make them pay. Florida has the STRICTEST defamation laws in the country. And they just gave me an opening
— Derek Smart (@dsmart) July 15, 2015
