Sounds to me like this loan is only putting up S42 as the collateral, and Star Citizen itself is excluded?
Is it a desperation move to acquire enough money to launch S42 and hopefully get enough cash flow to keep SC development going?
Hard to say without more details about the loan.
But to me it feels like some part of history is repeating.
Chris Roberts left Origin in 1996 (where he made Wing Commander) and started Digital Anvil to build an extremely ambitious space game called Freelancer.
Microsoft got wind of this, liked what they saw, and made a deal to throw a ton of money at Digital Anvil to fund Freelancer.
Unfortunately, Freelancer development slipped bigtime, and eventually Microsoft ended up buying the whole company in 2000.
Chris Roberts left (or was fired depending on who you believe), and DA shipped a single player game called Starlancer (set in the same universe), which received middling reviews (metacritic 78).
Freelancer was drastically cut back in scope, and Digital Anvil finally shipped it in 2003, to good but not outstanding reviews (metacritic 83)
Any of this sound vaguely similar?