LOS ANGELES, October 18, 2012 — Last week’s high profile announcement of Chris Roberts’ return to gaming and his highly anticipated PC space sim game, Star Citizen™, caused such a rush of support, the servers at www.robertsspaceindustries.com (the Star Citizen site) that hosted the game’s independently maintained crowd funding program simply collapsed leaving thousands of would-be pledgers and supporters on the outside looking in for days.
Today, the legendary game designer announced a solution to that problem. Roberts and his newly formed company, Cloud Imperium™, launched a Kickstarter campaign, http://www.kickstarter.com/
Despite the problems, which included multiple days without any pledge service on the Roberts Space Industries site, the company still managed to raise one million dollars in one week. “It’s a testament to the will power of our amazing fans,” said Roberts. “At a time when most would have given up, some dedicated fans kept trying to log on and eventually were able to get through and make a pledge. We appreciate all those efforts and now with Kickstarter, we believe we have an answer for everyone.
“It is all about giving our fans the opportunity to choose the platform and payment provider they feel the most comfortable with. We asked whether they wanted Kickstarter as an option and they spoke! Between Kickstarter and the original site, which supports Paypal and major credit cards, I believe we have the tools in place to make everyone feel comfortable in backing this game. I would also like to take a moment to thank the great people at Kickstarter. They were quick to offer help and have been great as we put together a solution.
“Those who pledged via Roberts Space Industries through our very rough first week of operation and those who make a pledge going forward on Kickstarter or on our site will all have their pledges tied directly to their Roberts Space Industries account,” said Roberts. “Nothing has changed there. We just hope that people will understand the situation we were in and support us and support what we plan on bringing to the table for PC gamers everywhere.”
Roberts spoke directly to his fans about the situation in a You Tube video launched today, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?
