Comm-Link:The Pledge - and Grace Period

After finally getting a good night’s sleep the team here at Roberts Space Industries would all like to thank you for helping us make history.

It’s gratifying to see Star Citizen mentioned across the gaming and mainstream media; how its broken records, how it shows that people still believe in PC games, how they want to play a space sim, how it is another nail in the coffin of the traditional publisher model. We hope that you will feel the same way. Even though a lot of press and commentators are praising our skill in running a campaign, the secret sauce that really made Star Citizen happen was YOUR dedication. Your belief in this game energized us as the days got long. Your desire to play kept us going as we faced technical issues and growing mountains of work to do. The community YOU built made sure WE stayed believers. You made this game your own; big publishers may someday look back at this as the beginning of the end, a day when the players took over the development process and made it their own. So from all of us at RSI: good work, Citizens!

The Pledge
You’ve spent the last month pledging for the Star Citizen project with your money, your time and your trust. Now it’s time for us to do the same. We’ve created “The Pledge”, a founding document to let you know the standards to which we intend to keep ourselves to and how we will keep you informed and involved in the process over the next two years. .

Grace Period
In the aftermath of some of the craziest 48 hours we’ve ever experienced it’s become clear that there’s a sizable number of people that were unable to pledge, or adjust their pledges due to the difficulties with the RSI site. Many people tried repeatedly over the weekend, only for the site to crash at various points during the check out. Some people switched to Kickstarter, but there were also a large number of people that Kickstarter wasn’t an option and so they have been left high and dry. The focus of our campaign was, from day one, involving the fans and trying to give them as many options to support us as possible. The last thing we want to do is punish any of you, and so we have decided to adapt our plans and offer a grace period for all current members of the RSI community. If you have a membership, regardless of whether you have previously purchased a tier, you will be able to pledge at the current prices through this weekend. We will keep the limited add-on ships available through that time for everyone who tried to purchase one but wasn’t able. Everything will switch to the new pricing structure on Monday November 26th

Billing and Customer Service Issues
Over the last 72 hours almost 40,000 new members joined our community and combined with the RSI site going down, sometimes in the middle of someone’s transaction there are quite a few billing issues to resolve. We apologize for any inconveniences, and we just wanted to let you know that our customer support staff is working around the clock to resolve any issues. As there is such a high volume it will take at least a couple of days to work through the backlog of emails and intercom (our customer support software) messages. If you have any issues you would like resolved which you have not previously notified us via [mailto:billing@cloudimperiumgames.com billing@cloudimperiumgames.com] or [mailto:info@cloudimperiumgames.com info@cloudimperiumgames.com] please email [mailto:sandi@cloudimperiumgames.com sandi@cloudimperiumgames.com]. We’re dedicated to resolving any issues, so don’t worry, we will get to you and will do our best to fix any problem. We ask for you to please be patient. We’re a very small company, and while we’re staffing up to take care of our growing customer base, we only have two very overworked people dealing with fixing account issues – Cindy Armstrong, our CFO and Sandi Gardiner, our VP of Marketing.

Moving Forward
Look for updates from us in the very near future as we go about transitioning the site back to being focused on our community and telling the story of development. For those of our backers in the USA we wish you a warm Thanksgiving holiday for later this week. The biggest “Thank you” possible!

Chris Roberts and the RSI team.