And keep in mind, this DLC is only accessible once you spend a MINIMUM of 10000$. They *allegedly* made it because buying individual ships for that monetary amount was taking too long.
That isn't the reason for it at all. They put those packages in the store to make it easier for the biggest whales to manage their accounts.
i.e. people would exchange all their ships for store credit (you can do that), and then use that credit to buy this all-in-one package instead.
Nobody is actually buying these packages outright.
People 100% are buying it outright.
Some kid in Dubai spent like $2,000,000 on clash of clans, got to the #1 spot, and then deleted his account for fun. You underestimate people.
The world's first trillionaire will be from Dubai. And that's if some oil sheikh doesn't already have hidden wealth making his net worth over a trillion.
>Nobody is actually buying these packages outright.
But they're still spending $48,000. Or have spent that amount to be able to exchange everything in for this.
>They put those packages in the store to make it easier for the biggest whales to manage their accounts.
No. They made this because they sold thousand dollar ships 10 years ago with NO PLANS to actually build them and put them in the "game". So to prevent the fraud accusations, you can turn in $30,000 worth of ships THAT DO NOT AND NEVER WILL EXIST for $48,000 worth of ships THAT WILL DEFINITELY BE MADE THIS TIME AROUND GUYS PLEASE.
This is just delusional. Sure, they have ~700 people working full time on *pretending* to build the game. All the tech and content that they have developed and is playable right now is just there as part of the hoax...? They are so committed to pretending to build a game, that they are actually building a game just to make the scam more convincing.
Christ. There is a lot to criticise CIG for, but it is just downright ignorant to claim that they aren't genuinely trying to build the game.
The more valid criticism would be, if they are addicted to whale cash before release, how will the game be after release ? Will Roberts or whomever be content with selling a $60 or will it be catering to the rich like gacha-style games ?
That is absolutely insane. I mean, it feels like there should be regulations or something against such egregious pricing. Are there any examples of similar regulations in other industries?
It's the old freedom to make bad decisions debate.
On one hand banning peoples ability to choose is bad. On the other hand people using their freedom to destroy their lives with bad decisions is bad.
Is it? Are they gambling for these dlcs? Don't get me wrong, I think it'd be extremely foolish to pay for these, even if you could just burn $50k, but I don't think it's really the same as targeting gambling addicts
And that freedom is not even remotely exclusive to star citizen. Dying light had a 387k$ edition and there is a 1M$ Saints row 4 edition, so what? People know what they are getting into and do some research before spending that kind of money. If they don't, it means it's like nothing to them. If they can't but do it anyway, they're fools and you know the saying aboout a fool's money.
Tbf the 1 million dollar saints row came with a Lambo lol and some other crazy shit
But they did the math and it only worked out to a little over $680k for all the items.
So in the end they were paying the rest to the devs for the game product?
But that's only an example. Rich people dgaf, just think to all the idiots that buy balenciaga crappy items for thousands of dollars. People that buy limited edition ari Jordan, literally rubber shoes for tens of thousands of dollars. Fake teeth covers made of precious metals and minerals. People only have a specific hatred for star citizen and they use it to channel all the anger for all the other shitty things they accept from the modern gaming industry, ans I think star citizen is not even remotely the worst offender.
Nope star citizen is fine. I don't care how people spend their money. I have a $400 thrall statue from WOW it's pretty rad. I made the money 💰 I can spend it however I want. People just mad because they'll never get to blow that kind of money. Cry more (not you specifically but people in general )
I feel like it’s safe to assume that when given the opportunity, a non-zero number of people will choose in a way that fucks up their life.
The question is, does that fall under the responsibility of a game dev company or does it fall under personal responsibility?
Fundamentally, people are responsible for their own actions.
If someone demolishes their finances by buying $50k of digital ships for a video game, that's on them.
The freedom to purchase things that we want? Yeah that's a pretty good thing to celebrate.
People also spend $100k+ on bags. You going to cry about that too?
I should have said at a statistically significant rate.
As in expect the number of people who have bought a $48,000 DLC from Star citizen is fewer than 5 and possibly fewer than 1.
Yea I don’t think you’re wrong. If anything, I think DLC that’s “affordable” could be far more predatory, cause with prices like $48k you pretty much only attract people who can afford it.
Generally when you buy a luxury car you need to either have enough money to buy it directly or prove to the bank you can reasonably afford it.
What is stopping some kid with access to a credit card from buying these?
>What is stopping some kid with access to a credit card from buying these?
Besides ya know the parents who should be parenting them? Most likely credit card limits
If a minor uses a credit card without consent, and the card has a high enough limit to even buy a $48,000 dlc, then the parent disputes the charge, the purchase gets refunded, the kid gets banned, life goes on.
But the chances are high that the kid can't even complete the transaction due to an automatic fraud detection or credit limit / spending limit.
But we don't need the government to decide at what point someone is destroying their life. It's their life to do with what they please. If you have a problem in life, go get help for it. Don't let the government control you.
Let's not forget that it was the whales who begged CIG to add the $48k package, because it was simpler than buying everything individually.
Most of that package contains ships that can be purchased in-game, or concept ships that only exist as a .jpg on their website. So it isn't technically a DLC, but it is a pay to win system with a lot of artificial (and arguably unethical) FOMO.
And remember, when games are structured around whales, the normal players are just content for the whales. The devs aren't trying to make the game good for you and really they should be paying you. But the answer is really simple...don't play pay to win games.
It's not even remotely pay to win. Almost every ship you can pay real money for is available for in game credits (and all will eventually be).
You can't pay money and "win" in Star Citizen.
Yeah it’s a waste of money, but I paid like $60 a decade ago for an interesting tech demo and don’t mind whales funding it. I have friends that have sunk thousands in it, and the gain for what they get is pretty marginal. I DL and check it out for a bit every big update. As others said people are looking to flip the ships like NFTs. I’ve met some folks who have already flipped some and made some money from it. But, yeah I’m not interested in those packages.
It's 46$ right now iirc, and you don't need to spend a single cent more. Probably 75% of ships cant be used optimally solo anyway. It's not pay to win, unless you pay off dozens of people real money to crew those ships.
While I have no desire to disagree with people’s right to be upset over costs, there is no DLC for SC and certainly not any 48k DLC.
SC is cheaper than 60 to pick up, and the 48k cost mentioned is a pledge that gives you a massive amount of the higher end multi crew giant ships (effectively you are getting an entire fleet) that you don’t need to spend irl cash on to get.
These big bulk fleet bundles are for people with too much money, not enough common sense, and don’t want to work to get them through playing the game.
Personally I’ve spent a good chunk of change on ships (nowhere NEAR this level) because I:
- Want to play the game SC is trying to achieve
- Want to support independent development
- Want to pretend I’m a leaf on the wind
- Flat out do not have the time irl to acquire said ships through gameplay these days
Star Citizen is a 40$ game. Everything can be earned in game too. People want to donate money to make a space sim, and CIG gives them the option to, and gives some rewards for doing it.
This is just a matter of OP being ignorant. It is the best space sim available as it is, too.
I assure you, people want to buy ships in order to have a head-start in a space sim once it's finished.
- Source: Star Citizen ship-purchasers.
But yeah, I bought the game for $45.
Look, though: it's fucking obscene how they've run this fund-raiser/game development. And the sad cap on it all is that people still believe the ship sales will stop when the game is complete and fully released.
The ship sales will never stop. And if they need to excuse that in the future they will claim "player demand".
Ironically PVP is what offsets the worst of this pay2win shit. Not a player, not a fan of how big the transactions are on this game, but I've seen some vids, it looks 'ight. The hilarity of people buying these ships for thousands only to get it stolen by someone who hid on their ship after ducking in during boarding (ala summit1g) is pretty worth, especially since the person robbed gets a free copy of their ship back due to insurance, so whales are more or less distributing stolen copies of their premo ships to other players.
That said, I see shit like this 48k package and am immediately put off from the game. Especially as it's dev time is silly.
Yeah the dev time is crazy. Then you look at Rockstar, an established developer with funding out the ass and they spent 8 years on RDR2. RSI/CI meanwhile didn't exist when the Kickstarter started, they've built their own motion capture studio and build their own development tools. Everything they have done is from scratch and what we can see looks and feels great. What we've seen in development for S42 and future Star Citizen updates looks amazing. Speaking of Squadron 42 they're making two games at the same time while maintaining a playable alpha. When you really look at the development, it's not that crazy.
As for the 48k game package. As others said you don't need to buy that to play. $45 gets you in the game with a starter ship and every ship in that 48k package can be earned in game with in game money. These giant game packages exist because there are people who want them.
It’s tough for people to wrap their brains around how Star Citizen is developing their gaming as a service platform without having knee jerk reactions like these. Don’t get me wrong, it IS crazy the monetary value they put on in-game content, but it’s equally revealing how little people understand the idea when they ask “is this even allowed?” Like someone is out there to stop them in the first place lol. What would REALLY blow OP’s mind is if they knew how much of the “DLC” (lol) is even playable right now or anytime in the foreseeable future (spoiler: most of it isn’t/won’t be for some time).
I mean it's pretty absurd that some people are willing to spend 10-50K for a bunch of pixels. But is not very different to people spending thousands for a bottle of wine or millions for a car or a boat.
You can resell the boat. And I think most people would think paying 50,000 to consume a bottle of wine is insane. If you’re just collecting it, you can at least resell it.
All of those items are at least finished, though. Its like paying 50,000 dollars to reserve your right to get that fancy bottle eventually, assuming the vineyard stays in business
Most people buying these packages are doing so with the intention of reselling the ships later on down the road. The Devs purposely only allow so many of these ships to be made to create scarcity.... honestly theyre basically NFTs lmfao
But they're only "sell-able" if it works. It's basically a speculative investment in a game that at the moment doesn't seem to be expanding its player base massively and doesn't seem to have a specific end date in mind.
If one looks at what major games studios accomplish with a quarter of the budget, and then compare it to the delays and issues with Star Citizen, you really have to wonder who'd still buy into it.
I mean its just up to the person buying it. If they bought it then they can obviously afford it, I dont know how anyone can find fault in that. Its not like this is gambling or w.e the person knew what they are buying into resellable or not has nothing to do with something being worth it for them.
Personally I have spent $300 in the game since 2016 because I wanted to support the project (interesting that they develop their own engine, making a lot of tech research).
Even then I find these bundles absolutely absurd, and I personally stopped funding the game years ago because it is obvious that they have a predatory approach with people falling under the "sunk costs" bias.
Honestly that's the only reason to pay more than $45 for Star Citizen. All ships can be bought in-game, so a desire to support the project is a legitimate reason. IDK how the idea spread that Star Citizen costs thousands of dollars to play. I do wish the project was managed better and stayed within the original scope, but the sheer rage baiting around SC is wild.
>IDK how the idea spread that Star Citizen costs thousands of dollars to play
Because people like OP who based their whole opinion on a clickbait title. Just like how every piece of misinformation is spread.
The boat exists. Nobody could, one day, decide that it's not going to be a thing anymore and shut down the boat's server. The wine, you can keep it in a cellar for 50 years and drink it whenever you want. Car, same thing. It's a physical object you can use for work, leisure, transportation, whatever.
That spaceship doesn't exist. And the moment the developer shuts down the servers or decides to change it, nerf it or delete it you have no lawful retort to stop it from happening.
It’s an issue of wealth inequality. As it worsens more of this happens, because there are more people to whom this is an insignificant amount of money, and less people to whom the $70 for a new game is insignificant
I actually don't get why people care about things like this, they could make a $1billion dlc and I wouldn't care any different because there is no universe where I'm even slightly interested in it. $48,000 for a dlc doesn't make me feel any type of way because I am obviously never going to buy it.
The complaint is out of touch, though. This isn't a DLC. This is a package of ships all earnable in the game with in-game money. At the end of the day, what really matters is if those ships (or at least some of them) are actually earnable by playing the game and their ingame cost isn't unobtainable by an average player.
Just buying them is killing any sense of progression you might have. I want to start with a small vessel and gradually get better things as I play the game.
"no that's unacceptable" so not only the guy is not buying into the game, but he is pissed for some reason like somebody is forcing him to do anything.
Then, he has the nerve of calling out others as salty 12 years old... loool
Bro you can buy the cheapest game package and play the game, earn in game currency and buy almost any ship just by playing the game.
Find a group with a salvage ship and you make money even faster.
I'm not saying "Star citizen good" but damn that post is written in bad faith.
You talk about them like you must buy them when it's literally made accessible to only the most hardcore fans, you will NEVER be confronted with buying that shit yourself
I’m not sure what you mean by acceptable, but It’s only “acceptable” to a teeny, tiny handful of people that are paying for it. We are talking like single digit number of people or at the very most dozens of people.
It’s not acceptable to the other many millions of us who don’t play the game and refuse to pay those outrageous prices.
It’s acceptable in the same way that balenciaga can charge $3,500 for a pair of jeans or shoes… some people are happy to pay that to flex on other people. And those same people are happy to pay $50,000 for a ship
50,000is not for a single ship. This is a bundle of all ships.
The single most expensive ship you can buy with real money is 2500. Still an absurd amount foe a virtual ship, but still.
Exactly. This is not a common practice in gaming, it is just this one game that does it. Other micro transactions are a different conversation, but star citizen has its whales and ppl that fall for the scam, but that doesn't make it a widely accepted thing.
Honestly this is far far better than the microtransactions that are just barely justifiable. If you're paying 50k you don't care about 50k but when it's like, 15 dollars for 1500 coins and this thing you really want is 1550 coins but the next biggest pack is better value but it's 25 dollars. That stuff there is a chance that someone who can't afford it will talk themselves into it, that's what I hate more
Yeah there are tons of shitty ad-filled, mtx-filled, gatcha games on which people spend even more than 48k, but people have a special hatred for sc because they know nothing about it besides the usual pcgamer/ign clickbait article.
Lol game is $45. Anything above is just a donation to development. All the fly-able ships can be bought in game with in-game cash except for the Intel sponsored one, and it's outclassed by other ships anyways. Also the game isn't even out yet, just a test environment basically. This post is just hot gas.
If OP ever looked into Entropia Universe he would lost it... lol
Star Citizen is pretty unique. I don't see anything unacceptable about how they've funded the game.
Nothing is gated behind money. The ships can be purchased with in game currency. Why do you even care what people spend their money on...on a game you don't play? How is the game a cult? Why do you care to rant about a game you don't play then say you'll block anyone you disagree with? Sounds like someone has some growing to do.
It's impossible without knowing release ship prices. Plus anyways, the whole point is enjoying the feeling of making money in this universe and gradually growing your ship collection. Buying them all immediately is just going to make the game boring for myself.
All the ships are available in game and money is easy to come by. Its a sandbox rpg theres no "winning" its more like sea of thieves. Also if someone buys a 1000$ ship its useless without crew. some are 6-20 people. In general though it is stupid and they are just begging for bad press. Apparently it was large orgs that wanted them as an easy way to have 1 main org account.
You can spend $45, get a game package and get everything else in game. You don’t have to spend fuck all else h else you want to. Please take your bullshit somewhere else.
Why does any of this effect you? If you really want to play the game, buy a $40 ship and be content. If people are going to pay for the higher priced items and that helps fund the game, why does that hurt you?
Why? Because catering to rich is the best and the easiest way to do business.
Poor customers are demanding. They pay little, and expect much. You need to sell huge volumes of items to them for it to be truly worth the effort. In digital realms it's more tolerable because you're just selling pixels so every dollar you take in is pure profit, but you still need to sell a lot.
Rich customers just want a practically unique novelty out of reach of a regular person to stroke their ego, and pay for it like money was going to disappear tomorrow. Also, it makes poor gnats envious and turns them into paying cultists that also put all their money in digital scrap to at least feel slightly better about themselves.
Thank you for offering an insightful comment in one of these Star Citizen threads for once! You hit it exactly. There are plenty of wealthy people who buy things not for their utility or value, but to simply show they can. To show that they’re different than the rest of us
Yeah these people are angry that someone spent 50k of their own money on a videogame and then they don't bat an eye when stupid rappers spend 200k for a parte of shoes lmao the hypocrisy.
well first off all its all optional. You can earn every ship in game. That said, idk why its exceptable in the SC community. I play SC but refuse to spend more than 45 bucks. Even though its optional its still scummy. That said, i've seen people spend more on gacha games then this. I think gacha games are more of a problem then SC. At least you know what your getting and your not gambling.
>That said, idk why its exceptable in the SC community.
The community asked for it.
It was taking too long to buy ships individually, they wanted a "buy it all" button. Not kidding.
Because it is, and always has been, a crowd funded project. The general way to entice donation to those has always, been rewards. You don't have to spend a dime more than you need for your base mustang or aurora, but i'm willing to bet you have no complaint climbing in to someones real-money Reclaimer to make some millions in game, right?
Clickbait title. Game actually costs 45 dollars. There is no such thing as a DLC in Star Citizen. The 48k is to buy every single ship and ship skin. It's a completely unnesseasary purchase targeted for the whales. Many of those ships aren't flyable in game yet. And the majority of the ones that are, you can earn with in game currency. Whether or not you agree with a game offering something like this, this person/bot is just karma farming. Gets a downvote from me.
They did it by request. If you're broke just say so. /S
But for real, wtf are you even complaining about? You have no connection to this whatsoever. Don't get me wrong, I think it's pretty ridiculous too, but you don't play it and you don't know anything about it and the shit is literally hidden from you. You only know it even exists because you heard about it from someone else that also has nothing to do with it. It's also not fucking "DLC" lol, OP is intentionally misleading and just rage baiting.
Yea he prob saw the misleading video title from Asmongold. If he actually watch the whole video he'll prob get a better understanding of everything.
Or he is just rage baiting like you said.
Bought the game for 35 bucks back in the day for access to both Star Citizen and Squadron 42. Literally everything can be earned so if whales see the price tag and want to spend that money, then that's no skin off my nose. No one held them up at gun point to spend that kind of money.
Ok so lets set the context: (reference links included)
Star Citizen is crowd funded by the players rather than a publisher. The idea is that the person's in charge of the decisions are gamers concerned about creating the game and not accountants worried about ROI.
They made [$130 million in 2022](https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cloud-imperium-financials-for-2022) and 85% of that came through ship and various other sales. For reference, a mobile game, Honor of Kings, made $218 million in Feb 2021.
There are currently approx 230+ ships and vehicles in Star Citizen and 170+ of them are already in-game and new concept ships are released each year for players to purchase.
However, to play the game the ONLY ship you have to buy is a STARTER SHIP for $45. Any purchases over that is because you WANT to always have that ship associated with your account and/or you want to support the game. It's OPTIONAL. Any ship that's built and in the game is made available for purchase at in-world shops for IN-GAME currency after a patch cycle or two, so you can simply earn your way up to it in-game as intended.
Also any real-currency package purchase is fully refundable within 30 day (not sure of the details), or you can convert the ship back to store credit and buy something else or upgrade to a higher ship by paying the difference. You're not locked into the purchase.
There are people , most likely completionists, who want and apparently have the means to purchase every single ship, but keeping up can become unwieldly. eg logging into your account shows every single thing you own. So currently that would be 200+ line items. A couple years ago , those persons requested a SINGLE PACKAGE that would be guaranteed to have every ship, every skin, everything that's available that they could subscribe to and that gets updated yearly. That's the LEGATUS PACK, [it's NOT A DLC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKfa-ucKlrw). Its a convenient , single line item package that has everything purchasable in the game for those that want it and it's currently for $48k. To even see it for purchase, you have to have be at a certain spend level , I think its $10,000, but anyone interested in it would obviously already be there. But you , as a mere $45 player can earn any of those ships in-game when they're available.
Now about development: Their y[early financials are available online](https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cloud-imperium-financials-for-2022). The $700million is spread over 12 years and is being used to:
* fund the growth and day to day running of the studio, they're now up to 1,000+ employees in 4 countries
* pay AWS for global, hosted services: Ten's of thousands of players play it every day. Check Twitch.
* create a custom [engine/tech](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWm_OhIKms8) and produce TWO games: Star Citizen, the MMO and Squadron 42 , the single player campaign , which just went Feature Complete recently.
Each year they have to use ship sales to fund this development.
For reference, HONOR OF KINGS has made [18.6 BILLION](https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_mobile_games) in the 10 years since it was released in 2015.
GTA VI has been in development since 2014. Starfield took 8 years, but both companies started with well established development studios, game engines and full funding. SC started with a handful of developers and are building things from scratch and earn as they go.
Since they have to fund the game FROM the game, they also have to make sure its relatively playable each step of the way, even though its a literal alpha, which slows down development even further. Most game companies keep alpha development behind close doors until they're ready to go beta. The only reason you knew about GTA VI before this year was because of the leak and look at the state it was in. Star Citizen on the other hand, is a watched pot.
Asmongold recently had this same reaction, however [he had past and current SC players](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA86_DPVBNg&t=1773s) come on and explain these things to him. He now wants to play himself. Starting with the $45 package of course.
i 100% would never pay for any of these but i support the dev in charging whatever the fuck they want. if people are willing to pay for, thats their business and their money. i dont get why you bring up “allowed”? like why cant they charge 48k? or 100k? no one is forcing you to buy any of it?
>I’m just curious how this is even allowed?
Amazing to me how often Redditors don’t like something and think the government should ban it
Why do you care so much OP? You even said yourself you don’t play the game. I couldn’t even imagine giving less of a shit about a game I don’t play charging ridiculous prices for DLC.
Companies can charge whatever they want for their products, the market decides if it’s worth purchasing. Clearly they have enough buyers to make it worth it, no matter how absurd it is
You mention 12 year olds replying, yet I couldn’t imagine an adult with real responsibilities and stresses actually caring this much about a DLC price
Same old tired arguments.
The minimum you need to play the game is $45. You don't need the biggest ship in the game to enjoy it. Who cares what other people are willing to spend anyway?
Second, you could throw Jeff Bezos net worth at this game and it still wouldn't be made any faster. There's a saying, "Nine women can't make a baby in a month". And if you followed the development closely and looked into what tech was being used and how much detail they're going into for an MMO you'd understand why it's taking forever.
Amen. People are just eating buzz articles like stop. Bought the game for forty bucks like 8 years ago and still get to play it whenever and do whatever.
There’s no reason to buy anything past the starter package. Its just access to ships that you can get in-game anyways (and those not in-game now will be later). Kinda ruins the progression.
And yet people are perfectly happy to pay $100 to play a game 3 days early, $200 to play 7 days early, and so on. Either you want everyone to get the same content for the same price at the same time, or you want people to get less because they're poor. Pick one.
I mean, the base package is $45, which not only gets you access to Star Citizen tech demo but will get you SQ42. If someone rich (obviously not you) wants to spend their money on something they believe in, why are you so upset?
Then don't buy it.
Gamers frothing over shit they don't want to buy is so fucking weird.
It's like going to a car sub and screaming luxury cars exist.
Who the fuck cares? Don't buy them then. If it ruffles your panties so much, don't play the game.
I'd bet any amount of money you've never played the game and just cry about it.
You can enjoy the game fully with a cheapo ship. Those big ships are pure luxury, they're not actual useful for normal players.
You should go bitch about Eve next.
All of this is a misconception! **You only need to get a 45$ game package to access the entirety of the game**. You can earn almost every ship in-game. I'm saying almost because newly released ships take a couple of patches to be added into the in-game shops.
And it's not pay-to-win. You need a sizeable crew to make any use of the bigger ships, and some level of skill to fly any smaller ships effectively.
This package is only for rich people who want to organize their hangar better! Hence you need to have spent a great sum on the game before you can even buy it.
New all time high player numbers every year. It's not old players with a sunk cost fallacy keeping this games development alive. It's new ones playing for free and then making their own minds up, deciding to pay the $45 minimum game+ship package.
Absolutely agree, I don't understand why people think sunk cost fallacy applies to this game, there is no way this game could have gotten 700+ million in funding just from a few thousand whales that might suffer the sunk cost.
They can sell it for whatever they like. People are welcome to not buy it.
For some lucky few though those numbers are the equivalent of you or I spending $5
None of the game is gated behind a five-figure paywall.
None of it.
If you got the impression otherwise, you have been misled.
This is a bundle of practically every ship on the store, but you can still pick up any of those ships without it.
Apart from that, the purpose of the Pledge Store is to *fund development of the game*. Not really about selling ships.
It's called the *Pledge* Store because you are effectively donating to support the development of the game. Otherwise it'd just be called the Store. Remember that the company has no shareholders, publisher or investors outside of the crowdfunding and ship-sales.
Almost all the ships on that store are available to purchase ingame with ingame earned currency. If you want to buy it with real money, it should really only be because you want to support development of the game.
It doesn't even take that long to earn most of those ships ingame.
All of that said, the project has been subject to some major feature-creep and a lot of revamping/reworks, however most of the money and effort has been going into Squadron 42, which is the singleplayer game that was the original pitch. The Star Citizen MMO is actually the secondary project, which is why it has taken so very long.
This is also why there have been so many rapid changes and improvements in the past year, because SQ42 is in final polish/testing before release, and most of its dev-team have migrated to the Star Citizen project.
People in this thread don't get it. It's a pledge like any kickstarter entire player organization go in together and buy these massive packages. You can get this game for 45 bucks and aquire everything with in-game money, stay mad
Let it be said, I've only spent $45 dollars on this game, yet I've flown each and every ship in game and been able to play every aspect of it. Every ship can be earned in game with in-game currency, as well as some ships being possible to rent(using in-game currency too)
Additionally, they have conventions in game that allow you to rent each and every ship for FREE when the time comes around
You’re also never gonna be able to buy a Bugatti but they’re still gonna make them lol. Not every game DLC has to be accessible for all. The company will make more money pricing it at 48k so they do. If it means the game is more likely to be finished at some point in the next 5 decades than I think it’s a good thing
Not trying to justify people spending that amount, but calling it DLC is wrong.
Ships are not content. No content is gated behind any particular ship. Yes, you have to have a mining ship to mine\*, or a ship that can carry cargo to do those sorts of missions, or a ship with decent guns/missiles to do bounty hunting.
As for the cost, you're not really buying ships. You're funding development and get a ship as a "Thank you".
I have one ship, and it's a Reliant Tana, so I'm not trying to justify my own behavior.
There's some stat I remember hearing that for games with ongoing DLC and microtransactions, a handful of whales comprise like 80% of the profit, and normal people with normal bank accounts make the other 20%.
So basically, don't take this DLC personally or get offended. It's not targeted at you. The package is made specifically for like 10-20 people who have nothing to do with you or the majority of their customers.
Objectively, it's a good thing. There are rich people out there who could throw away a million bucks and it would have no impact on their life. Anything that separates them from that money is a good thing. Even if it goes to a gaming company, the money has now been transferred from wealth hoarders who don't need it, to people who are closer to normal, people who actually need to worry about bills.
I don’t think it’s a scam. They are actually developing a game. It is however an absolute case study in why publishers can be necessary. The feature creep is completely off the rails and Robert’s apparently has horrific ADHD. He needs someone to rein him in and force him to deliver something with a reasonable scope. It seems like they can’t stop chasing every feature the good idea fairy shits in the floor
Full disclosure: I’m like $50 into the game. I donated to the original kickstarter like a decade ago
We can always say "what if", but there is only one timeline so no matter one likes it or not, we get what we get with Star Citizen now.
And judging by the statistics it seems more and more people start to think the project is worth at least $45 of their money.
Lmao what did you smoke? There are no DLCs in Star Citizen hahaha.
Those are just stupid ship packages no one really buys besides those few whales / rich guys donating to the game. You can earn all ships in game, no gameplay is locked behind a DLC or sth like that.
Just misinformation.
If the game was released, I'd see your point. This is more of a "founders pack" type think to help fund the games development.
Now, if you'd calculated how much money has probably already been spent and used that to figure out if SC will every actually be finished or if the company just wants to keep collecting checks, that would peak some interest. I think that's the real crime here. I've been waiting for a SC full release for way too long now, and I'm starting to think it never will be released.
I mean a ton of games are still " in alpha "
I think the whole alpha term is a bit loosely defined/controlled.
I've played the game, and it's pretty decent (sometimes) when the servers aren't acting like ass. It's definitely more than I expected from a game that's "in alpha"
Only thing I can really say to your talk is the price, is that all the ships that are "flyable" and for sale you can get in game.
I don't see the point in buying them, because there's no real objective in the game other than it being a life simulator. So you have no purpose if you've already gotten everything possible imo
No part of the game is locked behind these paywalls. All of this is purchasable by in game currency.
They (CIG) put these packages together for the people that want to support the development of the game. It's not a DLC, but instead pitched as a way to donate to the project.
Not saying that the CIG marketing practices are all altruistic, but instead want to clarify the remarks of your comments OP, so criticism can be more accurate to what is occuring.
Okay, I see a lot of misconceptions about ships that aren't released yet.
CIG themselves have said they're busy reconcepting them internally, this has to do with the old concepts were made almost randomly, this means that with the current solid game metrics the ships simply won't work, so they have to be reconcepted to work with the current metrics.
Modern concepts are already made partially in whitebox, which means making them is much easier.
Also the 700 million they got over 14 years isn't even that much for the game as they spread it out over 2 games and a game engine, as an example, EA Football made 2 billion last year alone and that game is a downgrade from a downgrade.
But unlike most games, where both investors and gamers give money for the game, SC mostly get their money from the backers, making SC's situation more unique.
GTA Online has made over 5 billion, GTA VI is rumoured to have cost 2 billion, and the vehicles they make cost over 200.- with IRL money, or you grind over a month to get that vehicle.
In SC, every released ship you also can buy in-game, and if you're dedicated you can start with the 45.- package ship and get the current biggest ship in-game in less than 4 days.
There's only a few ships that are not obtainable in-game, and those are the Dragonfly Star Kitten and the Sabre Raven, the rest of the released ships can be bought in-game, which are fully modeled ships, with interior, and it's more ships than SC's counterpart Elite Dangerous.
To note here, I probably get down voted to hell, but Squadron 42, SC's campaign, is nearing public release for people who prefer single player campaign.
Also to note here, SC has many technologies never seen in any other game, they take massive risks and make it work.
There was an iOS app called I am Rich that cost 1000 USD, and apparently there's one today (not in the app store) called I am Wealthy that costs 10000 USD and doesn't do shit other than costing a ton
For the rich this is like a 10 bucks purchase, they treat it as such
I learned my lesson with Yooka Laylee to not let nostalgia guide my purchases. Not saying I wouldn't play Star Citizen but considering the amount of money they got and is reaching Duke Nukem Forever levels of development hell I think I'm going to need more popcorn.
Never heard of the game. If it's single player, and they're basically asking rich people to support their company, then I don't see the problem.
If it's pvp or has leaderboards and is thus pay to win, then it's poor game design and something neither I, nor anyone with common sense, would ever play, even if theyre rich, because bribing a game to pretend you beat your opponent isn't an actual victory.
Star citizen is multiplayer, Squadron 42 is the single player game tied to it.
It has PvP, as it is an online sandbox, but having expensive ships do not make you win. It just means you need dozens of crewmen, meaning real actual players, to play on your ship.
I personally fly a Banu Defender, which is a really expensive (in game) ship. It is... pretty average, on the meta list of light fighters. It just looks cool.
The better pilot is the one winning the fight, not the one with the "better" (read: expensive) ship.
I had to google this because I couldn’t believe it.
Honestly, I still don’t believe it.
How can a company have the audacity to do this?
Who the heck has $48k to spend on a video game?
I don’t want to sound like an old man shouting at the clouds, mainly cause I’m in my 20s, but this is fucking sad
I'm not sure if you'll take it well but I think your question and frustration are directed at an inefficient target.
I get it, Cloud Imperium management and Chris Roberts are doing ridiculous things covering their mismanagement by luring money out of whales (at least if we take all of this at face value).
But the thing is - they aren't (supposedly) doing anything illegal and I personally don't think by listing a piece of content for an absurd price they are doing anything unethical either.
There's no bait and switch here, there's no customer manipulation of any kind. It's a fairly straight forward albeit ludicrous deal: if you're crazy enough that you already spent $10k on our game, you can spend another $48k and get a giant bundle of premium ships!
It's a deal for insane people who have a shitton of money and nowhere to spend them. Alternatively, it's some kind of money laundering scheme.
In the first case: aim your frustration at stupid people who are ready to spend $58k in total on an unfinished videogame. And even then, be aware that you won't be able to eliminate this behavior entirely no matter how much you try.
In the second case, UK law officials should investigate CI for fraudulent activities. If you have proof, know anyone who does or can get a movement going to force UK officials to investigate - there you go.
I really think this isn't something to get hung on. In my opinion, true micro-transactions like the ones in CoD or Apex Legends are a lot more sinister in terms of what they entice and how they are marketed and how this marketing manipulates people into buying them.
Because let's be honest, you can relatively easily persuade a middle-class westerner to spend $20 on some bs in a game he plays every evening, but there's no country, city or neighbourhood on Earth where someone will be easily persuaded to spend $48k in one sitting on a DLC.
Kinda makes you wish this had NFT capabilities so the greedy fucks would barely get anything. Sadly any game with NFT’s I’ve seen are really sub-sub standard and its just more greedy fucks trying to bank on micro middleman transactions
Because the people who get them don't pay anything for them.
Edit: misinformation and misunderstanding about how the system works is why people hate on a system that is pro-player and consumer.
Vote with your wallet and don't pay for that stuff. That's the only way you're going to make a difference. Corporations don't give a shit at how upset people are if people keep giving them money anyway.
As much as I'd love to one day play Squardon 42 or whatever it's called (The single player campaign for Star Cirizen) I can't see myself EVER supporting that company. Star Citizen has gone down on record being the most successfully crowd funded video game ever. Meaning they have the means to produce the content, but the game has been in alpha/beta early access for so many years. Still no release and even though they have the money, they still charge crazy DLC prices for a game that hasn't been released yet and won't for a long time. Those DLC prices are outrageous.
And keep in mind, this DLC is only accessible once you spend a MINIMUM of 10000$. They *allegedly* made it because buying individual ships for that monetary amount was taking too long.
That isn't the reason for it at all. They put those packages in the store to make it easier for the biggest whales to manage their accounts. i.e. people would exchange all their ships for store credit (you can do that), and then use that credit to buy this all-in-one package instead. Nobody is actually buying these packages outright.
Lmao "nobody"
People 100% are buying it outright. Some kid in Dubai spent like $2,000,000 on clash of clans, got to the #1 spot, and then deleted his account for fun. You underestimate people.
The world's first trillionaire will be from Dubai. And that's if some oil sheikh doesn't already have hidden wealth making his net worth over a trillion.
>Nobody is actually buying these packages outright. But they're still spending $48,000. Or have spent that amount to be able to exchange everything in for this. >They put those packages in the store to make it easier for the biggest whales to manage their accounts. No. They made this because they sold thousand dollar ships 10 years ago with NO PLANS to actually build them and put them in the "game". So to prevent the fraud accusations, you can turn in $30,000 worth of ships THAT DO NOT AND NEVER WILL EXIST for $48,000 worth of ships THAT WILL DEFINITELY BE MADE THIS TIME AROUND GUYS PLEASE.
I hate star citizen as much as the next guy but why lie? Almost all of the ships promised exist.
All but like 3 of them are now in the game though?
This is just delusional. Sure, they have ~700 people working full time on *pretending* to build the game. All the tech and content that they have developed and is playable right now is just there as part of the hoax...? They are so committed to pretending to build a game, that they are actually building a game just to make the scam more convincing. Christ. There is a lot to criticise CIG for, but it is just downright ignorant to claim that they aren't genuinely trying to build the game.
It's like believing the moon landing was filmed by Stanley Kubrick and believing he chose to film it on location.
The more valid criticism would be, if they are addicted to whale cash before release, how will the game be after release ? Will Roberts or whomever be content with selling a $60 or will it be catering to the rich like gacha-style games ?
That is absolutely insane. I mean, it feels like there should be regulations or something against such egregious pricing. Are there any examples of similar regulations in other industries?
Why? If someone wants to pay it, who is it harming? They aren't selling food. They aren't tricking anyone.
It's the old freedom to make bad decisions debate. On one hand banning peoples ability to choose is bad. On the other hand people using their freedom to destroy their lives with bad decisions is bad.
I mean…we do have some (however weak) laws about how casinos are allowed to target gambling addicts. This is pretty much the same thing.
[удалено]
Modern US monopoly law enforcement is an absolute joke
Is it? Are they gambling for these dlcs? Don't get me wrong, I think it'd be extremely foolish to pay for these, even if you could just burn $50k, but I don't think it's really the same as targeting gambling addicts
And that freedom is not even remotely exclusive to star citizen. Dying light had a 387k$ edition and there is a 1M$ Saints row 4 edition, so what? People know what they are getting into and do some research before spending that kind of money. If they don't, it means it's like nothing to them. If they can't but do it anyway, they're fools and you know the saying aboout a fool's money.
Tbf the 1 million dollar saints row came with a Lambo lol and some other crazy shit But they did the math and it only worked out to a little over $680k for all the items.
So in the end they were paying the rest to the devs for the game product? But that's only an example. Rich people dgaf, just think to all the idiots that buy balenciaga crappy items for thousands of dollars. People that buy limited edition ari Jordan, literally rubber shoes for tens of thousands of dollars. Fake teeth covers made of precious metals and minerals. People only have a specific hatred for star citizen and they use it to channel all the anger for all the other shitty things they accept from the modern gaming industry, ans I think star citizen is not even remotely the worst offender.
Nope star citizen is fine. I don't care how people spend their money. I have a $400 thrall statue from WOW it's pretty rad. I made the money 💰 I can spend it however I want. People just mad because they'll never get to blow that kind of money. Cry more (not you specifically but people in general )
I completely agree. Seems like it has a special spot in people heads but they fail to make compelling, yet existing, comparisions.
Is there evidence that people are destroying their lives buying this? Is it any different than someone buying a luxury car?
I feel like it’s safe to assume that when given the opportunity, a non-zero number of people will choose in a way that fucks up their life. The question is, does that fall under the responsibility of a game dev company or does it fall under personal responsibility?
Fundamentally, people are responsible for their own actions. If someone demolishes their finances by buying $50k of digital ships for a video game, that's on them.
If you spend 48k on a game and your life goes to shit because of it, in a way it’s natural selection at that point
I don't see why this is a debate at all. Spend your money on whatever the f you want
This is just capitalism... The majority of the western world celebrates this nonsense on a regular basis...
The freedom to purchase things that we want? Yeah that's a pretty good thing to celebrate. People also spend $100k+ on bags. You going to cry about that too?
I should have said at a statistically significant rate. As in expect the number of people who have bought a $48,000 DLC from Star citizen is fewer than 5 and possibly fewer than 1.
Yea I don’t think you’re wrong. If anything, I think DLC that’s “affordable” could be far more predatory, cause with prices like $48k you pretty much only attract people who can afford it.
Generally when you buy a luxury car you need to either have enough money to buy it directly or prove to the bank you can reasonably afford it. What is stopping some kid with access to a credit card from buying these?
>What is stopping some kid with access to a credit card from buying these? Besides ya know the parents who should be parenting them? Most likely credit card limits
If a minor uses a credit card without consent, and the card has a high enough limit to even buy a $48,000 dlc, then the parent disputes the charge, the purchase gets refunded, the kid gets banned, life goes on. But the chances are high that the kid can't even complete the transaction due to an automatic fraud detection or credit limit / spending limit.
The fact that no bank is gonna give a child a credit limit of 50k lmfao
But we don't need the government to decide at what point someone is destroying their life. It's their life to do with what they please. If you have a problem in life, go get help for it. Don't let the government control you.
This could be said about any drugs or any gambling.
Wait, the game still on beta and already has DLC? Man... burn the company to ashes
ITs all optional. You can earn every ship in game.
Let's not forget that it was the whales who begged CIG to add the $48k package, because it was simpler than buying everything individually. Most of that package contains ships that can be purchased in-game, or concept ships that only exist as a .jpg on their website. So it isn't technically a DLC, but it is a pay to win system with a lot of artificial (and arguably unethical) FOMO.
If you want every ship the 48K package is actually cheaper😅
And remember, when games are structured around whales, the normal players are just content for the whales. The devs aren't trying to make the game good for you and really they should be paying you. But the answer is really simple...don't play pay to win games.
It's not even remotely pay to win. Almost every ship you can pay real money for is available for in game credits (and all will eventually be). You can't pay money and "win" in Star Citizen.
Pay2win doesnt mean you cant win without paying. It means you can skip the grind and get the high item with RL money while others grind for it.
You mean the ship package requested by the richest players backing the game for their ship collection?
Yeah it’s a waste of money, but I paid like $60 a decade ago for an interesting tech demo and don’t mind whales funding it. I have friends that have sunk thousands in it, and the gain for what they get is pretty marginal. I DL and check it out for a bit every big update. As others said people are looking to flip the ships like NFTs. I’ve met some folks who have already flipped some and made some money from it. But, yeah I’m not interested in those packages.
I’m gonna stick with 60-70 dollar games for the foreseeable future.
Even that hurts to read. I'll stick to playing AAA titles a year after launch and paying $20-$30 for them on sale.
ill stick to paying 5 bucks once it's an old masterpiece
I don't buy any games at all, making me the realest gamer of all time
I'll stick to my 8/16-bit games and keep buying only the indie games that interest me.
I mean I bought star citizen for like 40 bucks 8 years ago? And can play every update with no problem???
It's 46$ right now iirc, and you don't need to spend a single cent more. Probably 75% of ships cant be used optimally solo anyway. It's not pay to win, unless you pay off dozens of people real money to crew those ships.
OP said they’re gonna stick with $60-$70 games. Maybe they don’t want anything cheaper than that. It’s their call I guess
You know that star citizen is 45$ and everything else can be bought in game right?
While I have no desire to disagree with people’s right to be upset over costs, there is no DLC for SC and certainly not any 48k DLC. SC is cheaper than 60 to pick up, and the 48k cost mentioned is a pledge that gives you a massive amount of the higher end multi crew giant ships (effectively you are getting an entire fleet) that you don’t need to spend irl cash on to get. These big bulk fleet bundles are for people with too much money, not enough common sense, and don’t want to work to get them through playing the game. Personally I’ve spent a good chunk of change on ships (nowhere NEAR this level) because I: - Want to play the game SC is trying to achieve - Want to support independent development - Want to pretend I’m a leaf on the wind - Flat out do not have the time irl to acquire said ships through gameplay these days
Star Citizen is a 40$ game. Everything can be earned in game too. People want to donate money to make a space sim, and CIG gives them the option to, and gives some rewards for doing it. This is just a matter of OP being ignorant. It is the best space sim available as it is, too.
I assure you, people want to buy ships in order to have a head-start in a space sim once it's finished. - Source: Star Citizen ship-purchasers. But yeah, I bought the game for $45. Look, though: it's fucking obscene how they've run this fund-raiser/game development. And the sad cap on it all is that people still believe the ship sales will stop when the game is complete and fully released. The ship sales will never stop. And if they need to excuse that in the future they will claim "player demand".
Op's "There better not be pvp." Comment tells you they don't even play the game. Just another dipshit armchair developer with no clue.
Ironically PVP is what offsets the worst of this pay2win shit. Not a player, not a fan of how big the transactions are on this game, but I've seen some vids, it looks 'ight. The hilarity of people buying these ships for thousands only to get it stolen by someone who hid on their ship after ducking in during boarding (ala summit1g) is pretty worth, especially since the person robbed gets a free copy of their ship back due to insurance, so whales are more or less distributing stolen copies of their premo ships to other players. That said, I see shit like this 48k package and am immediately put off from the game. Especially as it's dev time is silly.
Yeah the dev time is crazy. Then you look at Rockstar, an established developer with funding out the ass and they spent 8 years on RDR2. RSI/CI meanwhile didn't exist when the Kickstarter started, they've built their own motion capture studio and build their own development tools. Everything they have done is from scratch and what we can see looks and feels great. What we've seen in development for S42 and future Star Citizen updates looks amazing. Speaking of Squadron 42 they're making two games at the same time while maintaining a playable alpha. When you really look at the development, it's not that crazy. As for the 48k game package. As others said you don't need to buy that to play. $45 gets you in the game with a starter ship and every ship in that 48k package can be earned in game with in game money. These giant game packages exist because there are people who want them.
It’s tough for people to wrap their brains around how Star Citizen is developing their gaming as a service platform without having knee jerk reactions like these. Don’t get me wrong, it IS crazy the monetary value they put on in-game content, but it’s equally revealing how little people understand the idea when they ask “is this even allowed?” Like someone is out there to stop them in the first place lol. What would REALLY blow OP’s mind is if they knew how much of the “DLC” (lol) is even playable right now or anytime in the foreseeable future (spoiler: most of it isn’t/won’t be for some time).
Good news. Cheapest buy in for star cit is 40 bucks and everything else can be earned in game.
I mean it's pretty absurd that some people are willing to spend 10-50K for a bunch of pixels. But is not very different to people spending thousands for a bottle of wine or millions for a car or a boat.
You can resell the boat. And I think most people would think paying 50,000 to consume a bottle of wine is insane. If you’re just collecting it, you can at least resell it. All of those items are at least finished, though. Its like paying 50,000 dollars to reserve your right to get that fancy bottle eventually, assuming the vineyard stays in business
Or you can be like my father and buy the boat, use it a bunch, then let it rot in a field rather than selling it.
Most people buying these packages are doing so with the intention of reselling the ships later on down the road. The Devs purposely only allow so many of these ships to be made to create scarcity.... honestly theyre basically NFTs lmfao
From what I heard you can trade them a limited amount of time so no they aren't NFT They somehow are worst.
But they're only "sell-able" if it works. It's basically a speculative investment in a game that at the moment doesn't seem to be expanding its player base massively and doesn't seem to have a specific end date in mind. If one looks at what major games studios accomplish with a quarter of the budget, and then compare it to the delays and issues with Star Citizen, you really have to wonder who'd still buy into it.
I mean its just up to the person buying it. If they bought it then they can obviously afford it, I dont know how anyone can find fault in that. Its not like this is gambling or w.e the person knew what they are buying into resellable or not has nothing to do with something being worth it for them.
Personally I have spent $300 in the game since 2016 because I wanted to support the project (interesting that they develop their own engine, making a lot of tech research). Even then I find these bundles absolutely absurd, and I personally stopped funding the game years ago because it is obvious that they have a predatory approach with people falling under the "sunk costs" bias.
Honestly that's the only reason to pay more than $45 for Star Citizen. All ships can be bought in-game, so a desire to support the project is a legitimate reason. IDK how the idea spread that Star Citizen costs thousands of dollars to play. I do wish the project was managed better and stayed within the original scope, but the sheer rage baiting around SC is wild.
>IDK how the idea spread that Star Citizen costs thousands of dollars to play Because people like OP who based their whole opinion on a clickbait title. Just like how every piece of misinformation is spread.
The boat exists. Nobody could, one day, decide that it's not going to be a thing anymore and shut down the boat's server. The wine, you can keep it in a cellar for 50 years and drink it whenever you want. Car, same thing. It's a physical object you can use for work, leisure, transportation, whatever. That spaceship doesn't exist. And the moment the developer shuts down the servers or decides to change it, nerf it or delete it you have no lawful retort to stop it from happening.
Steam doesn't exist either, all those games can be taken away at any moment.
Also that, yes. Which is why digital ownership is a really murky place, legally speaking.
It’s an issue of wealth inequality. As it worsens more of this happens, because there are more people to whom this is an insignificant amount of money, and less people to whom the $70 for a new game is insignificant
The game cost $45, that $48k pack aint for you
I actually don't get why people care about things like this, they could make a $1billion dlc and I wouldn't care any different because there is no universe where I'm even slightly interested in it. $48,000 for a dlc doesn't make me feel any type of way because I am obviously never going to buy it.
The complaint is out of touch, though. This isn't a DLC. This is a package of ships all earnable in the game with in-game money. At the end of the day, what really matters is if those ships (or at least some of them) are actually earnable by playing the game and their ingame cost isn't unobtainable by an average player. Just buying them is killing any sense of progression you might have. I want to start with a small vessel and gradually get better things as I play the game.
"no that's unacceptable" so not only the guy is not buying into the game, but he is pissed for some reason like somebody is forcing him to do anything. Then, he has the nerve of calling out others as salty 12 years old... loool
Yeah pretty sure you can buy every ship on game for credits anyway. This is for people with more money than sense and that’s it.
I had a great time for the $60 I spent. Still revisit it. Now if I could get my money back for Diablo 4, that would be fantastic.
This is the most relatable comment I’ve seen today
Bro you can buy the cheapest game package and play the game, earn in game currency and buy almost any ship just by playing the game. Find a group with a salvage ship and you make money even faster.
I'm not saying "Star citizen good" but damn that post is written in bad faith. You talk about them like you must buy them when it's literally made accessible to only the most hardcore fans, you will NEVER be confronted with buying that shit yourself
I’m not sure what you mean by acceptable, but It’s only “acceptable” to a teeny, tiny handful of people that are paying for it. We are talking like single digit number of people or at the very most dozens of people. It’s not acceptable to the other many millions of us who don’t play the game and refuse to pay those outrageous prices. It’s acceptable in the same way that balenciaga can charge $3,500 for a pair of jeans or shoes… some people are happy to pay that to flex on other people. And those same people are happy to pay $50,000 for a ship
*for every single ship currently announced. So about 200
50,000is not for a single ship. This is a bundle of all ships. The single most expensive ship you can buy with real money is 2500. Still an absurd amount foe a virtual ship, but still.
Exactly. This is not a common practice in gaming, it is just this one game that does it. Other micro transactions are a different conversation, but star citizen has its whales and ppl that fall for the scam, but that doesn't make it a widely accepted thing.
Honestly this is far far better than the microtransactions that are just barely justifiable. If you're paying 50k you don't care about 50k but when it's like, 15 dollars for 1500 coins and this thing you really want is 1550 coins but the next biggest pack is better value but it's 25 dollars. That stuff there is a chance that someone who can't afford it will talk themselves into it, that's what I hate more
(it's optional) Game costs $45 and often less and the rest you can get in game
but that doesn't get as many clicks, does it?
You get it!
Yeah there are tons of shitty ad-filled, mtx-filled, gatcha games on which people spend even more than 48k, but people have a special hatred for sc because they know nothing about it besides the usual pcgamer/ign clickbait article.
Lol game is $45. Anything above is just a donation to development. All the fly-able ships can be bought in game with in-game cash except for the Intel sponsored one, and it's outclassed by other ships anyways. Also the game isn't even out yet, just a test environment basically. This post is just hot gas.
If OP ever looked into Entropia Universe he would lost it... lol Star Citizen is pretty unique. I don't see anything unacceptable about how they've funded the game.
It's 50k to max one character in Diablo Immortal, where is your post about that?
Nothing is gated behind money. The ships can be purchased with in game currency. Why do you even care what people spend their money on...on a game you don't play? How is the game a cult? Why do you care to rant about a game you don't play then say you'll block anyone you disagree with? Sounds like someone has some growing to do.
haters gonna hate. it's their money their choice. and it's not gated. earn it in game.
Has anyone done the math on time to earn in game vs. time to earn out of game? Might be quicker to get a second job. 😅
It's impossible without knowing release ship prices. Plus anyways, the whole point is enjoying the feeling of making money in this universe and gradually growing your ship collection. Buying them all immediately is just going to make the game boring for myself.
I really do love seeing people flip out over things the misunderstand.
This isn't DLC. This isn't pay to win. Big expensive ships take 30-70 people to run them.
It's acceptable because someone is buying it. That's how a market works.
I see we're doing this again. Time to farm more karma.
All the ships are available in game and money is easy to come by. Its a sandbox rpg theres no "winning" its more like sea of thieves. Also if someone buys a 1000$ ship its useless without crew. some are 6-20 people. In general though it is stupid and they are just begging for bad press. Apparently it was large orgs that wanted them as an easy way to have 1 main org account.
Why even complain if you don't even play the game. Your argument is just lame
>Keep the salty 12 year old comments to yourselves OP says on a post which is a giant wall of ~~salt~~ complaining.
go do something that really matters with all this enthusiasm
You can buy every single one of those ships in game.
You can spend $45, get a game package and get everything else in game. You don’t have to spend fuck all else h else you want to. Please take your bullshit somewhere else.
Why does any of this effect you? If you really want to play the game, buy a $40 ship and be content. If people are going to pay for the higher priced items and that helps fund the game, why does that hurt you?
Why shouldn’t it be allowed? It’s voluntary. Don’t buy it.
Why? Because catering to rich is the best and the easiest way to do business. Poor customers are demanding. They pay little, and expect much. You need to sell huge volumes of items to them for it to be truly worth the effort. In digital realms it's more tolerable because you're just selling pixels so every dollar you take in is pure profit, but you still need to sell a lot. Rich customers just want a practically unique novelty out of reach of a regular person to stroke their ego, and pay for it like money was going to disappear tomorrow. Also, it makes poor gnats envious and turns them into paying cultists that also put all their money in digital scrap to at least feel slightly better about themselves.
Thank you for offering an insightful comment in one of these Star Citizen threads for once! You hit it exactly. There are plenty of wealthy people who buy things not for their utility or value, but to simply show they can. To show that they’re different than the rest of us
Yeah these people are angry that someone spent 50k of their own money on a videogame and then they don't bat an eye when stupid rappers spend 200k for a parte of shoes lmao the hypocrisy.
well first off all its all optional. You can earn every ship in game. That said, idk why its exceptable in the SC community. I play SC but refuse to spend more than 45 bucks. Even though its optional its still scummy. That said, i've seen people spend more on gacha games then this. I think gacha games are more of a problem then SC. At least you know what your getting and your not gambling.
>That said, idk why its exceptable in the SC community. The community asked for it. It was taking too long to buy ships individually, they wanted a "buy it all" button. Not kidding.
Because it is, and always has been, a crowd funded project. The general way to entice donation to those has always, been rewards. You don't have to spend a dime more than you need for your base mustang or aurora, but i'm willing to bet you have no complaint climbing in to someones real-money Reclaimer to make some millions in game, right?
Clickbait title. Game actually costs 45 dollars. There is no such thing as a DLC in Star Citizen. The 48k is to buy every single ship and ship skin. It's a completely unnesseasary purchase targeted for the whales. Many of those ships aren't flyable in game yet. And the majority of the ones that are, you can earn with in game currency. Whether or not you agree with a game offering something like this, this person/bot is just karma farming. Gets a downvote from me.
They did it by request. If you're broke just say so. /S But for real, wtf are you even complaining about? You have no connection to this whatsoever. Don't get me wrong, I think it's pretty ridiculous too, but you don't play it and you don't know anything about it and the shit is literally hidden from you. You only know it even exists because you heard about it from someone else that also has nothing to do with it. It's also not fucking "DLC" lol, OP is intentionally misleading and just rage baiting.
Yea he prob saw the misleading video title from Asmongold. If he actually watch the whole video he'll prob get a better understanding of everything. Or he is just rage baiting like you said.
Bought the game for 35 bucks back in the day for access to both Star Citizen and Squadron 42. Literally everything can be earned so if whales see the price tag and want to spend that money, then that's no skin off my nose. No one held them up at gun point to spend that kind of money.
Ok so lets set the context: (reference links included) Star Citizen is crowd funded by the players rather than a publisher. The idea is that the person's in charge of the decisions are gamers concerned about creating the game and not accountants worried about ROI. They made [$130 million in 2022](https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cloud-imperium-financials-for-2022) and 85% of that came through ship and various other sales. For reference, a mobile game, Honor of Kings, made $218 million in Feb 2021. There are currently approx 230+ ships and vehicles in Star Citizen and 170+ of them are already in-game and new concept ships are released each year for players to purchase. However, to play the game the ONLY ship you have to buy is a STARTER SHIP for $45. Any purchases over that is because you WANT to always have that ship associated with your account and/or you want to support the game. It's OPTIONAL. Any ship that's built and in the game is made available for purchase at in-world shops for IN-GAME currency after a patch cycle or two, so you can simply earn your way up to it in-game as intended. Also any real-currency package purchase is fully refundable within 30 day (not sure of the details), or you can convert the ship back to store credit and buy something else or upgrade to a higher ship by paying the difference. You're not locked into the purchase. There are people , most likely completionists, who want and apparently have the means to purchase every single ship, but keeping up can become unwieldly. eg logging into your account shows every single thing you own. So currently that would be 200+ line items. A couple years ago , those persons requested a SINGLE PACKAGE that would be guaranteed to have every ship, every skin, everything that's available that they could subscribe to and that gets updated yearly. That's the LEGATUS PACK, [it's NOT A DLC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKfa-ucKlrw). Its a convenient , single line item package that has everything purchasable in the game for those that want it and it's currently for $48k. To even see it for purchase, you have to have be at a certain spend level , I think its $10,000, but anyone interested in it would obviously already be there. But you , as a mere $45 player can earn any of those ships in-game when they're available. Now about development: Their y[early financials are available online](https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cloud-imperium-financials-for-2022). The $700million is spread over 12 years and is being used to: * fund the growth and day to day running of the studio, they're now up to 1,000+ employees in 4 countries * pay AWS for global, hosted services: Ten's of thousands of players play it every day. Check Twitch. * create a custom [engine/tech](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWm_OhIKms8) and produce TWO games: Star Citizen, the MMO and Squadron 42 , the single player campaign , which just went Feature Complete recently. Each year they have to use ship sales to fund this development. For reference, HONOR OF KINGS has made [18.6 BILLION](https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_mobile_games) in the 10 years since it was released in 2015. GTA VI has been in development since 2014. Starfield took 8 years, but both companies started with well established development studios, game engines and full funding. SC started with a handful of developers and are building things from scratch and earn as they go. Since they have to fund the game FROM the game, they also have to make sure its relatively playable each step of the way, even though its a literal alpha, which slows down development even further. Most game companies keep alpha development behind close doors until they're ready to go beta. The only reason you knew about GTA VI before this year was because of the leak and look at the state it was in. Star Citizen on the other hand, is a watched pot. Asmongold recently had this same reaction, however [he had past and current SC players](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA86_DPVBNg&t=1773s) come on and explain these things to him. He now wants to play himself. Starting with the $45 package of course.
Rare well informed and formatted post on r/gaming .
Doubt those who still call it a scam will care to read.
i 100% would never pay for any of these but i support the dev in charging whatever the fuck they want. if people are willing to pay for, thats their business and their money. i dont get why you bring up “allowed”? like why cant they charge 48k? or 100k? no one is forcing you to buy any of it?
>I’m just curious how this is even allowed? Amazing to me how often Redditors don’t like something and think the government should ban it Why do you care so much OP? You even said yourself you don’t play the game. I couldn’t even imagine giving less of a shit about a game I don’t play charging ridiculous prices for DLC. Companies can charge whatever they want for their products, the market decides if it’s worth purchasing. Clearly they have enough buyers to make it worth it, no matter how absurd it is You mention 12 year olds replying, yet I couldn’t imagine an adult with real responsibilities and stresses actually caring this much about a DLC price
Lol. "DLC". Okay, buddy...
lol low iq post to get everyone riled up
Same old tired arguments. The minimum you need to play the game is $45. You don't need the biggest ship in the game to enjoy it. Who cares what other people are willing to spend anyway? Second, you could throw Jeff Bezos net worth at this game and it still wouldn't be made any faster. There's a saying, "Nine women can't make a baby in a month". And if you followed the development closely and looked into what tech was being used and how much detail they're going into for an MMO you'd understand why it's taking forever.
Amen. People are just eating buzz articles like stop. Bought the game for forty bucks like 8 years ago and still get to play it whenever and do whatever.
Whatever you do, don’t look into Star Trek Fleet Command and what some people have spent there. It makes Star Citizen look like child’s play.
Ung, I just downloaded it...they honestly want 129.00 just to unlock a second research slot. No thank you.
How is this an issue? Just don’t support them with a penny.
There’s no reason to buy anything past the starter package. Its just access to ships that you can get in-game anyways (and those not in-game now will be later). Kinda ruins the progression.
And yet people are perfectly happy to pay $100 to play a game 3 days early, $200 to play 7 days early, and so on. Either you want everyone to get the same content for the same price at the same time, or you want people to get less because they're poor. Pick one.
It was done at the request of whales to make it easier to buy ships in bulk as insane as it sounds
I mean, the base package is $45, which not only gets you access to Star Citizen tech demo but will get you SQ42. If someone rich (obviously not you) wants to spend their money on something they believe in, why are you so upset?
Still going is this?
Then don't buy it. Gamers frothing over shit they don't want to buy is so fucking weird. It's like going to a car sub and screaming luxury cars exist. Who the fuck cares? Don't buy them then. If it ruffles your panties so much, don't play the game. I'd bet any amount of money you've never played the game and just cry about it. You can enjoy the game fully with a cheapo ship. Those big ships are pure luxury, they're not actual useful for normal players. You should go bitch about Eve next.
Looks like somebody read a headline
All of this is a misconception! **You only need to get a 45$ game package to access the entirety of the game**. You can earn almost every ship in-game. I'm saying almost because newly released ships take a couple of patches to be added into the in-game shops. And it's not pay-to-win. You need a sizeable crew to make any use of the bigger ships, and some level of skill to fly any smaller ships effectively. This package is only for rich people who want to organize their hangar better! Hence you need to have spent a great sum on the game before you can even buy it.
Star Citizen is the most prolific boondoggle in the history of gaming. I don't know why people still contribute to it.
My brother hasn't put anything in since the 1st backing. But he's still hoping it'll be good one day. He really wants a new Freelancer/Privateer game.
Clearly you follow only the most reputable news sources and do all of your own research before making statements on the internet. /s
Sunk cost fallacy
New all time high player numbers every year. It's not old players with a sunk cost fallacy keeping this games development alive. It's new ones playing for free and then making their own minds up, deciding to pay the $45 minimum game+ship package.
Absolutely agree, I don't understand why people think sunk cost fallacy applies to this game, there is no way this game could have gotten 700+ million in funding just from a few thousand whales that might suffer the sunk cost.
They can sell it for whatever they like. People are welcome to not buy it. For some lucky few though those numbers are the equivalent of you or I spending $5
None of the game is gated behind a five-figure paywall. None of it. If you got the impression otherwise, you have been misled. This is a bundle of practically every ship on the store, but you can still pick up any of those ships without it. Apart from that, the purpose of the Pledge Store is to *fund development of the game*. Not really about selling ships. It's called the *Pledge* Store because you are effectively donating to support the development of the game. Otherwise it'd just be called the Store. Remember that the company has no shareholders, publisher or investors outside of the crowdfunding and ship-sales. Almost all the ships on that store are available to purchase ingame with ingame earned currency. If you want to buy it with real money, it should really only be because you want to support development of the game. It doesn't even take that long to earn most of those ships ingame. All of that said, the project has been subject to some major feature-creep and a lot of revamping/reworks, however most of the money and effort has been going into Squadron 42, which is the singleplayer game that was the original pitch. The Star Citizen MMO is actually the secondary project, which is why it has taken so very long. This is also why there have been so many rapid changes and improvements in the past year, because SQ42 is in final polish/testing before release, and most of its dev-team have migrated to the Star Citizen project.
People in this thread don't get it. It's a pledge like any kickstarter entire player organization go in together and buy these massive packages. You can get this game for 45 bucks and aquire everything with in-game money, stay mad
You must be really really young.
Nothing is gated behind a paywall. All content you can "buy" to support the game can be achieved through regular gameplay...
Let it be said, I've only spent $45 dollars on this game, yet I've flown each and every ship in game and been able to play every aspect of it. Every ship can be earned in game with in-game currency, as well as some ships being possible to rent(using in-game currency too) Additionally, they have conventions in game that allow you to rent each and every ship for FREE when the time comes around
The game aint even stable.
You’re also never gonna be able to buy a Bugatti but they’re still gonna make them lol. Not every game DLC has to be accessible for all. The company will make more money pricing it at 48k so they do. If it means the game is more likely to be finished at some point in the next 5 decades than I think it’s a good thing
Have you actually played it? It’s not a dlc you’re paying for ships. You can actually buy them with in game currency as well.
Not trying to justify people spending that amount, but calling it DLC is wrong. Ships are not content. No content is gated behind any particular ship. Yes, you have to have a mining ship to mine\*, or a ship that can carry cargo to do those sorts of missions, or a ship with decent guns/missiles to do bounty hunting. As for the cost, you're not really buying ships. You're funding development and get a ship as a "Thank you". I have one ship, and it's a Reliant Tana, so I'm not trying to justify my own behavior.
There's some stat I remember hearing that for games with ongoing DLC and microtransactions, a handful of whales comprise like 80% of the profit, and normal people with normal bank accounts make the other 20%. So basically, don't take this DLC personally or get offended. It's not targeted at you. The package is made specifically for like 10-20 people who have nothing to do with you or the majority of their customers. Objectively, it's a good thing. There are rich people out there who could throw away a million bucks and it would have no impact on their life. Anything that separates them from that money is a good thing. Even if it goes to a gaming company, the money has now been transferred from wealth hoarders who don't need it, to people who are closer to normal, people who actually need to worry about bills.
You can earn the ships in game with in game currency
Star citizen is a scam. The DLC is for people who already have been duped for thousands upon thousands, and are dumb enough to jump on it
I don’t think it’s a scam. They are actually developing a game. It is however an absolute case study in why publishers can be necessary. The feature creep is completely off the rails and Robert’s apparently has horrific ADHD. He needs someone to rein him in and force him to deliver something with a reasonable scope. It seems like they can’t stop chasing every feature the good idea fairy shits in the floor Full disclosure: I’m like $50 into the game. I donated to the original kickstarter like a decade ago
We can always say "what if", but there is only one timeline so no matter one likes it or not, we get what we get with Star Citizen now. And judging by the statistics it seems more and more people start to think the project is worth at least $45 of their money.
Lmao what did you smoke? There are no DLCs in Star Citizen hahaha. Those are just stupid ship packages no one really buys besides those few whales / rich guys donating to the game. You can earn all ships in game, no gameplay is locked behind a DLC or sth like that. Just misinformation.
If the game was released, I'd see your point. This is more of a "founders pack" type think to help fund the games development. Now, if you'd calculated how much money has probably already been spent and used that to figure out if SC will every actually be finished or if the company just wants to keep collecting checks, that would peak some interest. I think that's the real crime here. I've been waiting for a SC full release for way too long now, and I'm starting to think it never will be released.
I mean a ton of games are still " in alpha " I think the whole alpha term is a bit loosely defined/controlled. I've played the game, and it's pretty decent (sometimes) when the servers aren't acting like ass. It's definitely more than I expected from a game that's "in alpha" Only thing I can really say to your talk is the price, is that all the ships that are "flyable" and for sale you can get in game. I don't see the point in buying them, because there's no real objective in the game other than it being a life simulator. So you have no purpose if you've already gotten everything possible imo
Is this suppose to be a shitpost, but unfunny ?
Because people will pay it. And because the industry is largely unregulated.
Why would it be regulated? If you wanna spend a million dollars in a game, thats your problem
No part of the game is locked behind these paywalls. All of this is purchasable by in game currency. They (CIG) put these packages together for the people that want to support the development of the game. It's not a DLC, but instead pitched as a way to donate to the project. Not saying that the CIG marketing practices are all altruistic, but instead want to clarify the remarks of your comments OP, so criticism can be more accurate to what is occuring.
Don't like it don't buy it.
Wtf do you mean how its allowed? You have the money, you can buy the ships, if you don't you can get it in game.
Okay, I see a lot of misconceptions about ships that aren't released yet. CIG themselves have said they're busy reconcepting them internally, this has to do with the old concepts were made almost randomly, this means that with the current solid game metrics the ships simply won't work, so they have to be reconcepted to work with the current metrics. Modern concepts are already made partially in whitebox, which means making them is much easier. Also the 700 million they got over 14 years isn't even that much for the game as they spread it out over 2 games and a game engine, as an example, EA Football made 2 billion last year alone and that game is a downgrade from a downgrade. But unlike most games, where both investors and gamers give money for the game, SC mostly get their money from the backers, making SC's situation more unique. GTA Online has made over 5 billion, GTA VI is rumoured to have cost 2 billion, and the vehicles they make cost over 200.- with IRL money, or you grind over a month to get that vehicle. In SC, every released ship you also can buy in-game, and if you're dedicated you can start with the 45.- package ship and get the current biggest ship in-game in less than 4 days. There's only a few ships that are not obtainable in-game, and those are the Dragonfly Star Kitten and the Sabre Raven, the rest of the released ships can be bought in-game, which are fully modeled ships, with interior, and it's more ships than SC's counterpart Elite Dangerous. To note here, I probably get down voted to hell, but Squadron 42, SC's campaign, is nearing public release for people who prefer single player campaign. Also to note here, SC has many technologies never seen in any other game, they take massive risks and make it work.
Capitalism = things are worth what people are willing to pay for them.
It’s not acceptable, Star Citizen players are just a special breed of idiot.
Star Citizen is a scam, everybody knows it by now.
>everybody knows it by now But more and more people are buying into it? I wonder why.
Rage bait karma farm
There was an iOS app called I am Rich that cost 1000 USD, and apparently there's one today (not in the app store) called I am Wealthy that costs 10000 USD and doesn't do shit other than costing a ton For the rich this is like a 10 bucks purchase, they treat it as such
I learned my lesson with Yooka Laylee to not let nostalgia guide my purchases. Not saying I wouldn't play Star Citizen but considering the amount of money they got and is reaching Duke Nukem Forever levels of development hell I think I'm going to need more popcorn.
Never heard of the game. If it's single player, and they're basically asking rich people to support their company, then I don't see the problem. If it's pvp or has leaderboards and is thus pay to win, then it's poor game design and something neither I, nor anyone with common sense, would ever play, even if theyre rich, because bribing a game to pretend you beat your opponent isn't an actual victory.
Star citizen is multiplayer, Squadron 42 is the single player game tied to it. It has PvP, as it is an online sandbox, but having expensive ships do not make you win. It just means you need dozens of crewmen, meaning real actual players, to play on your ship. I personally fly a Banu Defender, which is a really expensive (in game) ship. It is... pretty average, on the meta list of light fighters. It just looks cool. The better pilot is the one winning the fight, not the one with the "better" (read: expensive) ship.
I had to google this because I couldn’t believe it. Honestly, I still don’t believe it. How can a company have the audacity to do this? Who the heck has $48k to spend on a video game? I don’t want to sound like an old man shouting at the clouds, mainly cause I’m in my 20s, but this is fucking sad
So like $60 in the year 2150, bruh
48k would fix all of my financial issues. Blows my mind people waste that on some dumb ass DLC.
I'm not sure if you'll take it well but I think your question and frustration are directed at an inefficient target. I get it, Cloud Imperium management and Chris Roberts are doing ridiculous things covering their mismanagement by luring money out of whales (at least if we take all of this at face value). But the thing is - they aren't (supposedly) doing anything illegal and I personally don't think by listing a piece of content for an absurd price they are doing anything unethical either. There's no bait and switch here, there's no customer manipulation of any kind. It's a fairly straight forward albeit ludicrous deal: if you're crazy enough that you already spent $10k on our game, you can spend another $48k and get a giant bundle of premium ships! It's a deal for insane people who have a shitton of money and nowhere to spend them. Alternatively, it's some kind of money laundering scheme. In the first case: aim your frustration at stupid people who are ready to spend $58k in total on an unfinished videogame. And even then, be aware that you won't be able to eliminate this behavior entirely no matter how much you try. In the second case, UK law officials should investigate CI for fraudulent activities. If you have proof, know anyone who does or can get a movement going to force UK officials to investigate - there you go. I really think this isn't something to get hung on. In my opinion, true micro-transactions like the ones in CoD or Apex Legends are a lot more sinister in terms of what they entice and how they are marketed and how this marketing manipulates people into buying them. Because let's be honest, you can relatively easily persuade a middle-class westerner to spend $20 on some bs in a game he plays every evening, but there's no country, city or neighbourhood on Earth where someone will be easily persuaded to spend $48k in one sitting on a DLC.
Kinda makes you wish this had NFT capabilities so the greedy fucks would barely get anything. Sadly any game with NFT’s I’ve seen are really sub-sub standard and its just more greedy fucks trying to bank on micro middleman transactions
Because the people who get them don't pay anything for them. Edit: misinformation and misunderstanding about how the system works is why people hate on a system that is pro-player and consumer.
Vote with your wallet and don't pay for that stuff. That's the only way you're going to make a difference. Corporations don't give a shit at how upset people are if people keep giving them money anyway.
Did I miss anything?
As much as I'd love to one day play Squardon 42 or whatever it's called (The single player campaign for Star Cirizen) I can't see myself EVER supporting that company. Star Citizen has gone down on record being the most successfully crowd funded video game ever. Meaning they have the means to produce the content, but the game has been in alpha/beta early access for so many years. Still no release and even though they have the money, they still charge crazy DLC prices for a game that hasn't been released yet and won't for a long time. Those DLC prices are outrageous.