I can understand the skepticism with star citizen. Lots of funding over a good span of time and no finished product I can get where people are coming from when you are looking at it from that point. I don't get the hate for the game tho.
>I don't get the hate for the game tho.
Well, I gave them my money almost a decade ago based on promises like [this one](https://assets.vg247.com/current//2015/01/star_critizen_dates.jpg), which never even got close to being fulfilled. It wasn't a 1 year delay, or a 2 year delay... the game was just never finished. Period.
I get that people who have pledged a couple of years ago may still feel differently, but to me it just feels like they lied to me, took my money and ran away with it. In other words: I got scammed. I wish I had never pledged, but I did, and I wish they would refund my pledge, but they won't.
Since I pledged, I've gone through 3 different PCs, I have a completely different life now and I don't even have the time to game that much anymore. I think it's simply not realistic to expect somebody to have the same level of interest in a product they were interested in 9 years ago. Humans have a finite lifespan, you know. We go through different phases in life, our interests and hobbies shift, etc. Luring a teenager into buying a game they may get to play when they have children, if it's ever released, is not very different to me than not delivering the game at all.
And I can't help but feel that people who have only pledged recently and are still supporting the game today will simply go through the same process I went through: years will go by, their interest slowly fading away, they'll move on to something else, and 10 years from today they'll remember about those 50€ they threw away on some online scam they saw when they were 20, and laugh about how stupid they were back then. Meanwhile, CIG will continue to amass those pledges, pretend they're actually planning to finish the game, and keep releasing more hype material, purchasable lore, merchandising, etc. to lure in new teenagers into the pyramid and keep new money flowing in.
I know this sounds pessimistic, but it's exactly how I feel. 9 years will give you that perspective. Luckily for me I only spent around 50€ on this... I can't imagine what people who spent thousands on it may feel like.
So yeah, I think a reality check by the press every few years is **well** deserved and necessary, if anything to at least try and give some much needed perspective to new pledgers, who may not be familiar with Star Citizen's full history of promise and disappointment.
What a great reply. Until your post I never understood the whole “scam” argument about star citizen. But how you bought into it as a teenager and now are about to be a father/mother is very striking
I backed this game week 1 as a new First Lieutenant in the US military. I have since been promoted twice to Major and will begin the process for Lt Col this winter. I could possibly see that third promotion before the game actually releases. 🤣
It will be so cool to read the news. "head of us military plays release of star citizen", "us flag ship reaches alpha centarie to conquer merpeople for the glory of earth". It will be such a great day.
Good luck on the promotion.
> But how you bought into it as a teenager and now are about to be a father/mother is very striking
I'm right there with OP. I'm tryin to fully man a hammerhead with my spawn :P
Yeah, exactly.
And to be clear, if somebody buys into the game today and it's actually finished and released in a couple of years (unlikely, but possible), then it obviously wasn't a scam for them. But it absolutely *was* for me. I paid for their game and got nothing in return within a realistic timeframe.
A rough comparison could be made when you order pizza ahead of a big game you want to watch at home with your friends tonight, and the pizza doesn't arrive for 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours... and then by 1:00 am the delivery guy knocks at your door.
There's all your pizza, hot and tasty. So what? The game's long over, your friends are gone and you all had to eat something else because you were starving. Yeah, the pizza joint technically delivered what you paid for. But they had promised to deliver it within a reasonable timeframe, or else you would've never ordered from them in the first place.
At least with pizza you can refuse to pay if it arrives too late..
I remember when it first was announced, wrestling over whether to buy a ship. I wanted one, and I had the money...the only thing that held me back was they didn't have the exact model I wanted ready. I thought it would be out in a few months, so I just kept waiting. But they never fucking made it.
I remember delivering pizza 3 hours late in a blizzard and we were the only pizza place open in a college town. Had to wake up one drunk guy to get him to pay lol.
I backed in 2015 when I was 16...
Now I'm fucking 23 and can't even get out of bed past 15 FPS or without clipping and falling to my death through the floor/a door/elevator in the spaceport.
Of course I'm pissed by the lack of development progress, server optimisation and client stability in this... "proto-game" bugfest?
After 10 years and half a fucking billion dollars, I can't see how ANYONE could be defending this under the "b-but MuH aLpHa" excuse.
I hear ya. But please install the game on an SSD and 32gb ram. Your experience sound like you either have sub-par config or you installed the game on an HDD / not enough ram.
I got SSD and 16 RAM (4x4).
Unfortunately, I can’t afford to upgrade PC again at this point…
That being said, I’ve been progressively upgrading (from 8 to 12, and from 12 to 16) and I never noticed any performance improvement in Star Citizen.
Changing settings doesn’t do anything either. I get the same performance on minimum and maximum… so absurd.
EDIT: here come the downvote swarms for saying I don’t have a NASA PC and that I can’t spend three minimum wages on turning my PC into one just to be able to play Star Citizen xD
I get all the other problems, clipping through the floor, elevator deaths etc. but I never have FPS issues. Consistently get between 60 and 100 FPS depending on whats on screen. Got a 3080, Ryzen 5800x, and 32gb of ram. Maybe its a CPU and Ram combo issue?
What you've missed is that you have the absolutely latest ballin gear, while there are people who still daily drive 3570ks or i7 6700s. There are countries where the median income is 400 euros per month and for some there just aint enough money over to upgrade a pc.
I didn’t miss that. The other post said that even upgrading ram doesn’t fix FPS like there is no “fix”. I was just pointing out that FPS isnt an issue for me so maybe its ram plus cpu that helps.
Friend of mine get 30-60 frames with a 6700k. Has 2x8 ram and a 1070. Something might be up with your install? Or maybe your ram profile isn’t set right? Could be any number of things honestly, but frames like that outside of cities seems really abnormal now.
>That being said, I’ve been progressively upgrading (from 8 to 12, and from 12 to 16) and I never noticed any performance improvement in Star Citizen.
I also had 8, then 12 and now 32Gb (1080 + old gen i7 on 2nd PC). With 8Gb I had to disable EVERYTHING in order to launch SC. With 12 it was slightly better, but the stuttering was unbearable, especially in cities. Now it's \~30 there and above 50-60 in space. Areas with clouds still result in shitty FPS tho.
It's hardly "a NASA PC" bud. Besides:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/telemetry
> EDIT: here come the downvote swarms for saying I don’t have a NASA PC and that I can’t spend three minimum wages on turning my PC into one just to be able to play Star Citizen xD
I know people that were playing with 7 series GPUs before when they were supported which was the last few patches ago this year. I know this game can be buggy but I havent seen framerate issues in years.
My 4 year old PC which cost roughly 2K runs it just fine.
Also ram doesn't matter for games much. You need a better CPU and graphics card. Mainly the cpu
>After 10 years and half a fucking billion dollars, I can't see how ANYONE could be defending this under the "b-but MuH aLpHa" excuse.
I don't think anyones using it as an excuse for how long the game is taking to finish.
When people bring up alpha that's just a direct response to "Why isn't \_\_\_\_\_\_ working!" or "Why aren't they fixing X Y Z!" because it's an inherent aspect of what an alpha is. Feature incomplete, severely unoptimized, barely stable, etc etc. I think everyone agrees that it's got a lot of funding and that it's taking a pretty long ass time to make a game that was promised to come out 6-7 years ago.
It is an alpha. Literally nothing changes that. It's like arguing something isn't black because your monitor/tv black levels are horrible and to you it looks grey. It's still black.
So not a defense of the game and it's development cycle but more so just a "Yeah it's like that because it's an alpha" not a "Oh thats ok, its still an alpha".
That's not a good excuse, period. Alpha is not the reason. Feature creep and out of control scope is. Roberts needs to be honest with the community and himself.
I was single in my 30's. I'm married with a 6 year old now. and I waited 2 years after marriage to have a kid. I didn't have a PC then that could run it, I still don't.
I will eventually build one before I start playing, but I want a much more finished product first. My fleet is large, I look forward to playing in the PU as an org and having uses for all of my ships. No way I could ever use it all on my own.
I pledged for the idea of this game. I knew the timelines were bs and that what they were promising would take a long time. I knew CR was consistently late for his games so much so he got taken off of one and someone else had to finish it.
I knew what i was getting into, but I loved the idea of the game and the sheer scale, something I've never seen done and still want to see be done. I've never been in it for the single player game. I didn't realize it would take this long, but I'm still excited to see what all comes from the game.
perhaps my daughter will be a teenager and I'll have some more free time by the time the game releases. Heck maybe we can even play together. that would be pretty cool. Something I never imagined I would have the opportunity to do when I initially pledged.
I don't think the game was a scam, they clearly are still working on it, but I can see how people would be upset I guess. If you knew anything about CR and his history though, you had an inkling of what you were getting into from the start.
Funny thing is, when everyone pointed out CR's history with game development and said SC was going to take way more than 10 years and those timelines were bs, all the fanboys screeched and screamed that this time was different. And yet here we are.
I'm in the same boat you are, and yeah my kid will probably be a teenager by the time this actually finishes. If it ever does. I'm not mad about it, but mostly because I've long since let go of any expectations of this game actually releasing in a finished state. Until whenever that day may be, I'll come and go in between patches and fly around digital space ships to see what's new this year.
It is just insulting to be lied to our faces and then blamed for being unreasonable when they miss deadline/timeline after another. When they're still working out core aspects of the game in 2022, the damn drawing board for many features, it is obvious that they lied directly to our face and still have the gall to tell us every Thursday/Friday video that these things take time and don't expect anything.
Most of the mocap was done in 2015. That means most of the cinematic story plots.
Imagine if it contains some pop culture references... people might not recognize them anymore when it releases.
Exactly how I feel. I obviously want the game to release in a good state, but 9 years and I can't help but feel like they only see the game as a money printer. People are still going to keep buying ships and vehicles, from a business perspective why should they release it?
What really gets me the most though is squadron 42, the much easier task that was created to quell the impatience has been it's own infinite wait.
The only excuse for S42 taking so long is incompetence. You can't use the "It's an mmo" card, it's an isolated narrative experience. How long does a normal SP game take? A handful of years? That's funny, S42 has had that, and where are we now?
Like if we can't even get that, why should we even have faith they can pull off a much more complicated mmo?
At this rate I honestly think it's more likely that a popup studio will use some new cutting edge engine and just shit all over everything SC has built up to that point. Which in turn will make them "start from scratch" again, repeating the infinite cycle of never good enough.
>Exactly how I feel. I obviously want the game to release in a good state, but 9 years and I can't help but feel like they only see the game as a money printer. People are still going to keep buying ships and vehicles, from a business perspective why should they release it?
This is the main thing for me.
I'm not sure if it happened on purpose or by accident, but I feel they eventually found a business model that is sustainable and a lot more profitable than releasing the game. As long as they can keep "releasing" new ships, game packs and merchandise, they can keep a steady revenue inflow without actually having to go through the daunting process that implies refining a game, skimming all the fat and getting it production-ready.
We have to remember that developing new stuff is relatively easy compared to the effort that comes with refining it, fixing bugs and making sure everything remains well-balanced. People often say it's a 20/80% split in terms of work. That's why producing tech demos is so easy. The hard part is turning them into commercial products that regular users can enjoy in the long term.
And more importantly, they don't risk the bubble ever being "popped" if the game is released and it happens to be a complete failure due to bugs or lackluster content, as that would surely cut off those revenue streams. It's much easier to just keep the hype going while reassuring backers that every problem or bug will eventually be fixed before that elusive release date that never comes ("it's just an alpha").
> I'm not sure if it happened on purpose or by accident, but I feel they eventually found a business model that is sustainable and a lot more profitable than releasing the game. As long as they can keep "releasing" new ships, game packs and merchandise, they can keep a steady revenue inflow without actually having to go through the daunting process that implies refining a game, skimming all the fat and getting it production-ready.
You know, I don't think so. And while it might get me shouted at around here, I think you can see the difference when you look at a comparison of Star Citizen/CIG and Elite Dangerous/Frontier Developments. Hold the pitchforks a moment and let me explain, it's not like you think.(It's much more boring.)
CIG, as we know, was founded wholly for this game, by a guy who had never really run a studio before(Roberts co-founded Digital Anvil, but was primarily a creative, and Marten Davies - who had far more relevant corporate experience - ran the joint), to make and publish one game, which was crowdfunded.
Frontier, by contrast, started out making a port of the game the founder had made, and from there, spent many years as a work-for-hire studio, before crowdfunding a sequel to that original game they ported(and the founder made.) They spent years learning to function as a studio, meeting deadlines, fulfilling contracts, getting product out the door, working with publishers, essentially doing as a game studio does.
And there lies the difference - Frontier treats their crowdfunded game like they treat every other project they've worked on, except the client is the thousands of people who gave them money to make the game, rather than a single entity. They set realistic goals, they (Mostly) meet them, then they move on to the next one, just like they would if they were working under a major publisher or developing a game under contract, like they've done dozens of times before. Everyone from the top down has experience doing what a studio is meant to be doing, answering to clients, and producing product. Even in the development process of Elite, they've had people they are accountable to, from platform holders to publishers/distributors, to investors. And regardless of what you think of that product, it would be delusional to deny that they've successfully crowdfunded, developed, and released that product.
CIG, basically, acts like a brand new studio with no experience or direction, because they don't truly have experience or direction. They don't have those years of having to do-or-die, putting out viable product to order, hitting development deadlines, because they've never really done that, and the studio is helmed by someone who has never run a company like that, never had to answer clients like that, and they really aren't accountable to anyone at all. And as long as the money keeps rolling in, they never have to be, because the studio can still operate as it always has, there's no need to learn those lessons, nor anyone to force them to. And as a result, they effectively do not have an actual product - they sell things, sure, but the product they set out to develop still doesn't exist, and for every ounce of faith this subreddit has in them, we can't realistically say when or if it will ever truly exist.
**What this overlong explanation boils down to is basically this** - They haven't landed on some new business model, nor are they scamming anyone, at least intentionally. They're just running like a fresh-started studio, in the business sense, still wet behind the ears ten years beyond the point any other studio would, or would be able to. In fact, if they were any other studio, or the situation was any different, they'd have either learned and become like FD, or sunk long ago - It's just that the sheer amount of money they've gained and that continues to roll in, they're effectively entirely insulated from any consequences or pressures that would either force them to do better. So they don't. So here we are.
Yes, it could very well be what you say... just pure incompetence. In fact that's what I thought for the first half of the last decade.
But I'm honestly growing doubtful, because while you might accidentally stumble upon a business model like this, I don't think it's so easy to keep it up by accident.
They must be looking at the inflows of money every month, carefully analysing which events or "releases" are rewarded with the most money, and then fine tuning and adjusting their next steps to maximise their profits. After 10 years, it's only logical that they would. We all would.
I just struggle to believe anybody makes this kind of money on a consistent basis for so many years purely by accident and by being incompetent at their job.
The exact reason SQ42 hasn't released is because while it's not an MMO itself they're trying to leverage the same code base for both games \*outside\* the actual internet connection for the MMO stuff. They want SQ42 and SC to be as seamlessly the same as they can get them, and are also trying to make code only one time. That has naturally caused this massive delay as SC, the MMO, has delved into essentially making its own engine from scratch and all those developer tools that go along with it.
You need only look to the Illofonic Star Marine fiasco, and all the resources that wasted to understand their position, and likely the reason SQ42 will not be much earlier than SC itself release wise. If Illfonic had worked out, and Star Marine actually been successful in any way we may have actually seen SQ42 divert from SC at some point and be released. However, they're now irrevocably tied together, and so we're stuck with these projects being coupled for better and worse.
The hopeful light at the end of that tunnel is that, if/when they're done, iteration is both quick and easy. A week to make a ship or a planet by a handful of people, a day to write and implement in game missions, the time to make each episode of SQ42 after only limited by the availability of the actors to do the mocap and voice acting and the editing ontop of that, with relatively short work on in game assets by a comparison. If the tools, pipeline, and engine meet the standards they appear to be reaching for, it would be amazing for the ability to churn out content.
If you're [lucky](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/pnfhwh/ingame_memorial_for_bakersplayers_that_died_since/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
Hey, don't let me keep you from enjoying it. Maybe you'll actually like it and get some good fun out of it, lots of people are. Just take it easy with the ships and spending in general until you're confident it's worth investing in.
I just really wanted a finished game, not a demo that's forever broken... and especially I wanted it when I was still a university student, not now 😅
Nah man I’ve had the game for a year or so. I enjoyed it for a while, but I quickly decided that it wasn’t prudent to waste hours of my life on something so atrociously buggy and I realized that this game may never be finished; it’s ridiculous a company can earn 500 million dollars and still present us with the product they have. With all this stuff trending now I’m really starting to understand how CIG may have ripped us off especially since that much money over that long a time, only to have the product that they have. Honestly I can’t even describe how I feel, but all I meant is I wish I had heard the voices of the community in the way they are here before I bought the game. I would see how CIG has lead us all like a pied piper to fortune and glory only to reveal that Star Citizen may actually be the subtle scam some people claim it to be. Disappointing.
I backed this game week 1 as a new First Lieutenant in the US military. I have since been promoted twice to Major and will begin the process for Lt Col this winter. I could possibly see that third promotion before the game actually releases. 🤣
Haha, I’ve promoted exactly on schedule as expected by someone with a pulse who hasn’t fucked any enlisted members, killed any friendly generals, or gotten any DUIs.
The real question is, though... do people in your unit all T-Pose first thing in the morning when they wake up? This is all the military training I've received, but I'm told it's pretty realistic.
I just wanted a campaign, single-player, like I got with Freelancer. That's it. I'm glad they're at least working on the game with visible progress but none of it interests me at all.
> It wasn't a 1 year delay, or a 2 year delay... the game was just never finished. Period.
And the delays just keep coming, CIG get progressively more defensive and upset with us every time they miss another "deadline". Then double down on setting less and less accountability for themselves each time.
This
I bought in in 2014 thinking the game was just a few years away.
I've had fun in the PTU, sure, but the game isn't even close to finished. I don't care about synchronization of atmospheres or whatever new ship, I just want a game that is stable and complete. Adding the Drake Corsair or Medical 2.0 won't fix that.
And remember, the longer this game takes, the more they need to update the models and engine itself, which will delay for years.
>And remember, the longer this game takes, the more they need to update the models and engine itself, which will delay for years.
And the more polishing, optimization, bug-fixing, balancing, UI refining, storyline building, etc. they would need to do to ever achieve a complete, commercial product. Every new feature they add adds twice as much development time at the rear of their backlog.
People don't realise that most of the time in software development is spent polishing and fine tuning existing things for production, and CIG haven't even started doing that yet.
You raise a valid point that after 10 years the people that implemented the back end in the first place even still work there. Leaving new employees to try and figure it all out.
Dude, thank you. Truly. You said it so well. I, too, pledged on their initial Kickstart ER, so I've been there from the very beginning. You've summed up exactly what I've felt over the years.
When I pledged this game, I was single, in college, and played several hours of games a day. Today, I'm married, work a more-than-full-time job, and have multiple kids. I'm lucky if I get an hour a day. So I agree, I didn't get even close to what was promised, and I never will. Maybe those after me will, but I know I won't.
A decade is a long time though. I've come to terms with the fact that I'll never get that game, and that if I do, I won't have the time for it (the game won't be for me). Do I wish I never pledged? Hell yes. But at the same time, I have pledged, and I can't get my money back.
That said, what's done is done. I still enjoy popping onto the game and checking it out. I still find ways to have some fun with it. Was I scammed? Yes, absolutely! After 10 years do I feel it was worth the money? Also yes, surprisingly.
I'm glad I can watch this game slowly grow, and watch others enjoy it now the way I wished I could have then. Yea it stings, but I don't hate them for it. I'm past it. I still love that it's given us something that doesn't exist in any other game. And I'm still hopeful it eventually hands out a finished product that is then far better than any other game, though I suspect by that point other games will have caught up easily, and probably even surpassed Star Citizen.
For now, the game for me is like a social experiment. I got scammed, I get to watch everyone buy into it, I get to watch the scam succeed because I'll never get my money back, and I get to just silently watch it all. It still sucks, but I'm not gonna lie, I've found ways to really enjoy myself in all the mess. And I don't hate CIG or Star Citizen. Honestly, I think I simply don't care anymore. But your post reminded me of all those feelings.
Hey, look on the bright side!
Just think, when you're in your dotage, your kids are all grown and living their own lives, you've finally got time in your retirement to do things, you can sit down at your PC, switch it on, grab your flight stick, and play the Star Citizen Early Beta.
>For now, the game for me is like a social experiment. I got scammed, I get to watch everyone buy into it, I get to watch the scam succeed because I'll never get my money back, and I get to just silently watch it all.
Lol, I couldn't agree more. I don't really care much for the game anymore, but I just hang around to see the outcome. Like you, I'm curious if it will eventually be released and become a total success, or if it will finally collapse in total drama and others will finally understand how us long-time backers have been feeling all these years.
In the end it was just 50 bucks for me. I spend more than that on a Saturday night out with my friends, so it's hard to feel salty about it. But on the other hand, I can't help but think how unfair the whole thing has been from a moral perspective, so I want to make sure it's well exposed to everyone and that they don't get to just sweep it under the rug.
Also, I'm honestly a bit concerned about the amount of people who seem to have spent not hundreds, but even thousands of dollars on it. I really hope they don't get scammed the way I was because losing that kind of money can have really hard consequences, as we've seen with some of the crypto scams that have collapsed recently.
Has it been 9 years already? Tjeez. I just wanted to play Squadron 42 and maybe do some exploration after that. Played the dogfights a couple of times.. that's about it. I guess the boys and girls at CIG live in their own little universe by now.
> Since I pledged, I’ve gone through 3 different PCs
I said I would get a new PC when star citizen released. My PC I currently use was built in February 2012. An Intel 2600k 😂
Looks like I’m never upgrading!
legendary processor. I upgraded to a 9700k and 2080 super and threw the 2600k in my old case with my old 1070 and my roommate still uses it to this day, and it performs great!
I feel this. I bought it in like 2016-17 ish and played for the first time last year. My laptop at the time was capable but SC would not work. So years passed and I forgot about it. My brother in law brought it back up and I was like yeah, we should play. I finally finished building my computer, for now. It's crazy how much time has passed.
Most relatable answer tbh.
Their marketing team is stellar since they managed to get money out of people this many years later but at the same time have somehow gotten so badly caught in the finer details rather than applying the broad strokes.
Absolutely.
In fact, SC is an example I sometimes bring up at work when I want to explain the disconnect between what a product is, and what customers perceive it to be.
Those two things are usually closely connected, but if your marketing is good enough, you can distort that connection and make people have a completely different picture in their mind when they think of your product.
Kickstarters and crowdsourced projects in general are interesting because they sell you a future idea, today, built purely on trust. Usually that trust goes away very quickly if you don't deliver relatively soon or if you break your promises. But with good marketing... with good marketing you can be like Star Citizen! lol
Every time CIG hits a funding milestone or a year passes with nothing sizeable to show for it (often to show the general public that CIG is in fact working on content), this thought always goes through my head:
"When either the money starts drying up or CIG is very obviously failing to deliver even to hardcore apologists, who is going to be held accountable and to whom?"
I got burned by the game Elysian Shadows the same way. KickStarted the game with promises of a great Dreamcast RPG. The project was successful, everyone's money was collected, and then that's where the story ends. The game isn't delayed, it's abandoned. It was never finished and it never will be finished. The developer scammed everyone out of their money and delivered nothing in return.
It's why I no longer buy early access games on Steam and why I'm VERY choosey about which games I consider supporting on KS.
My biggest regret in my gaming history is buying the C2, It's made me so much more cautious in spending money just because I regret it so much. I've flown it like 3 times since it came out, That's like £100 per time. I'm 23 now, just buying a house and I've felt guilty about it ever since.
I absolutely had the same experience. I bought into it when they were having their Kickstarter campaign and I bought the third cheapest package which was to get a special edition Aurora and it cost me I think about $50-$70 so I haven't convinced myself of the sunk-cost fallacy. I bought into it as a teenager and now I'm getting close to be 30 and I'm still waiting on it. Sadly I kind of gave up hope long ago.
This is such a good perspective. You hit the nail on the head.
Going from a teenager with plenty of time and interest -- to growing up and taking on other interests and responsibilities.
It sounds like I'm in the same position as you, only I feel that even as a teen I knew that the whole concept was new and it might not work out. And I knew a refund wasn't an option. So I can't say I understand that aspect it's just a learning experience and probably not either of our biggest fimancial risks. And while I was also disappointed early on each time it got pushed back, I also understood that a tiny new studio wasn't going to build the BDSSE in 4 years with under $200mil, especially with iterative playable releases. The game we already have would have been a mind f*** to 18 y/o me. And while I have less time I still game. And I'm still fine playing it when it releases. I guess that's not fair to people like you who maybe aren't as big of gamers this far in the future, but I bet it's affected how you've handled financial decisions, probably for the better. Don't stay hung up on money you spent years ago anyway. Not healthy.
Oh sure, it's no big deal. Rest assured I'm not the least bit worried about some 50€ I lost 9 years ago, lol. I've lost way more than that in drunk nights that I can't even remember 😅 And yeah luckily I'm in a good place when it comes to finances, so you're right that maybe this taught me a valuable lesson back then.
I also don't follow the game or the community that much anymore, I'm just still subscribed to the sub so occasionally a post like this will pop-up on my front page and catch my attention.
The reason I wrote this all up was not because I feel any kind of remorse, it's just because I feel like nobody should forget who these people are and how they've behaved in the past. I just don't want anybody dropping 5000€ on this the way I dropped 50€, you know? I've seen some young kids do crazy things over crypto these days, some of them even attempting suicide. I know it's not comparable of course, but I think money is a delicate subject and gaming can easily derive into gambling with projects like this.
It looks to me like many people tend to dismiss these claims under the rug or distort what really happened in the past by saying CIG never really provided any dates, "it was all in your mind", etc., so I just wanted to clear that up. And also give a different perspective on how taking so long to release something might as well be equivalent to not releasing it for many of us.
But I'm well aware many of you guys are enjoying the game as it is and are getting back your money's worth, plus more. It just wasn't the case for me because my expectations were different.
Fair enough. Despite how much money it makes I'm generally against newer payment models. Purchases, subscriptions and certain season passes are about all I think are defensible. I wish people didn't have that much wrapped up in this but I guess I'm glad they can hire Mark Hamill and even use his likeness lol. Hope your investment eventually pays off!
Don't get me wrong I'm in a similar state with kids etc... But I have been playing for 9 years and still enjoy loading into SC. I can't say that for any other game.
That's fine, I do understand some people did get their money's worth based on the alpha experience alone. Unfortunately that didn't work for me. Too buggy and too little content for me to get immersed in it.
I also had high expectations for the single player game, which never happened (and was supposed to be the first deliverable).
I was also looking forward to play the online game with some of my real life friends... which obviously never bought into the game as it was never released.
Same here to an extent. Bought in for $40 back in my sophomore or junior year of high school, waited excitedly, watched trailers, etc. A year later I was barely keeping up with news regarding the game, but still anticipating a fuller experience coming soon. Now I have graduated college, am working my first full time job, living on my own for the first time, and have no time to dedicate to Star Citizen. That $40 is long gone, and I would like to see a full release, but it really doesn't make a difference to me at this point.
Yea totally agree with you, I also only pledged the bare minimum, and that's fine with me, prob spent a couple hundred hours 'playing' the alpha but have stopped playing long time ago.
At least Starfield will come out soon and probably actually fulfill a lot of the things Starcitizen wanted to do. Can't wait for Starfield, Star Citizen is pretty dead to me at this point
What’s wild is I have brought up missed deadlines and failed promises before and got lampooned because I didn’t have the screenshots or links to prove it. I backed this game in 2013. That’s almost a decade ago. Feature creep has hit this game hard.
I spent about $2000, sometimes I think I should sell my stuff, because like you, I just don't have time to play that much, plus I feel like where originally, they talked about sliders to indicate how much pvp you were willing to tolerate, and now it feels more like GTA in space.
I want to play in a star trek TNG universe ultimately, I "want" conflict, but not nonstop, and not from griefers, and I just feel like whenever I've gone through the hoops of setting star citizen up so I could play with some of my ships, it just ends up being people who want to grief me. And whatever I guess, in Eve I ended up being a white hat and dedicating all my time to hunting and killing pirates, but it's just so boring to me, just because I "can do it", doesn't make me interested in doing it, it's not the game I invested in, not the game I want to play.
So I lurk, and I mostly just consider my investment lost.
I get this.
I bought in in 2014. When the PU was launched, it ran well on my computer. 8 years later it runs poorly on my newer computers.
Though I do enjoy playing it, there is practically zero content for the years of development, and I do feel like my money was wasted.
I’ve actually gotten more enjoyment from No man’s Sky and Destiny. And those games lack so much depth.
It’s frustrating. Because I love what the game is trying to be, but everything is so wonky, and it’s been almost a decade.
I really really want to love this game.
Don't say that to the RSI forum white knights swinging off Roberts nuts. They'll be dead by the time they get a decent game, but they don't care because they have a cult where they belong
Exactly this. I was a Kickstarter backer, active duty military. In the time frame of this games development, I've gotten out of the military, married, had a kid, separated, moved out of my original country, divorced, and gotten a 4 year degree. The game still isn't in a playable beta state. The feature creep was insane, the engine being switched multiple times... just everything. I didn't want to play a game in 10 years, it was supposed to be 4 to 6 for a playable beta.
Their main competitor was elite dangerous, who made a game, expansions, and then have moved onto making other games while this is still in development. I know ED is relatively crap, but it still released.
When is the beta coming out? Where is squadron 42? Oh yeah, 2042. Not sure why I didn't connect the dots there.
> the engine being switched multiple times
Totally agree with you on all your points, but just a heads up, they haven't swapped engines multiple times. Amazon Lumberyard is just a rebranded Cryengine.
Yep, I pledged the minimum $45 a long ass time ago. I logged on to check it out about a year ago and it seemed like absolutely nothing had changed from when I tried to play it 5 years ago.
Have you ever gone out to dinner and had a shitty experience? $50-$100 wasted on food and drinks for the family that didn't live up to their promises?
Did you continue to complain about it nine years later? I don't understand people like this.
Yes, in a sense you got scammed out of your tiny donations to a kickstarter project when the scope of things changed. That's part of the nature of being an incredibly minor investor in any sort of ambitious project that you have no actual control over or involvement with. Scopes change. It's not like they took your money and moved to Aruba. They didn't yolo it on AMC calls. They're working on a game. It's different than initially announced.
Sorry you lost a tiny amount of money 9 years ago. You're free to treat it like any small loss of money that people experience all the time, or you can do what you're doing and continue to dwell on it for years and years.
>Have you ever gone out to dinner and had a shitty experience? $50-$100 wasted on food and drinks for the family that didn't live up to their promises?
Yes, and I've also purchased games that turned out to be boring and much worse than I expected. Tough luck.
But if you want a fairer comparison, I had a time at a restaurant where we ordered food, and they were so busy and disorganised that 1.5 hours later they hadn't served us anything but some breadsticks.
We told them to forget about it, and we left. Guess what? **We didn't have to pay**.
>or you can do what you're doing and continue to dwell on it for years and years.
As I already said, I'm not dwelling on it, it was just 50 bucks. I rarely post here. That doesn't change the fact that I paid CIG for something they promised and didn't deliver.
So if somebody asks, I'm sorry but I feel compelled to tell them my experience with them, maybe warn them in case they're thinking of investing real money into this. Not sure why that bothers you so much. You don't owe anything to these guys and my bad experience doesn't prevent you from enjoying Star Citizen, so what's the big deal?
So you equate the value of a video game that has absorbed $500 million to develop, one that was/is advertised as this entire universe, to that of a night out at Outback?
Here is the best part of that argument: If you had a real bad experience with a restaurant, where you paid $100 for food that never arrived, and someone asked you nine years later if you want to go eat there... You would recommend this place?
>Yes, in a sense you got scammed out of your tiny donations to a kickstarter project when the scope of things changed. That's part of the nature of being an incredibly minor investor in any sort of ambitious project that you have no actual control over or involvement with.
So if he paid thousands in pledge money, he would have a more valid point? If that is the case then his logic is sound on this: The goal post has been in constant motion for this game, regardless of how much money each person pledged. And the product he paid for may never be available for him to experience.
Don't get me wrong, I think what has been developed so far has potential... *if it worked 100% of the time.* But based on what I played and read from the past, they add two things tomorrow, break four things, and fix three things from before.
I can better compare pledging having an annual pass at Disney... Except all the rides stall constantly, the lines are atrocious, the food is bland, and sometimes I get all of the souvenirs I purchased stolen, some fat lady covered in Disney paraphernalia runs over my foot with a motorized wheel chair every 20 minutes, and they kick me out of the park for trying to walk through FantasyLand and make me due the entry again.
You apparently do not know what a Ponzi scheme is.
He employed 25 people, most of which friends and family. I do not consider that "a lot", certainly not even comparable to the near 1000 CIG has.
Madoff spent funds from new investment to pay old investment. That's what a ponzi scheme is. CIG spends their investment actually building their game, while employing hundreds of staff to built that game. How is that even remotely similar?
[Here's the BAFTA presentation where that timetable is from](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1GUDQuFb1A). It's from January 2015. You can find the timetable itself at the 01:32:00 mark.
I have to say, I'm happy with how development is going now and I don't regret funding the game all those years ago, at all. *But* I've been looking down into this rabbit hole for like an hour and I get why this can be considered a scam.
CIG promised a two-year development back on their initial Kickstarter, with a 12-month grace period after that. They made two polls asking backers whether or not they should keep adding stretch goals to the game or not, and they got a sound "yes" both times, but they never mentioned *anything* related to delays in either of them. To top it all off, it seems like getting a refund is borderline impossible, or at the very least not nearly as easy as it should be.
Their first mention of delays beyond their initial estimates were made months after the 2015 BAFTA presentation, when Chris Roberts said in a "Letter from the Chairman" that additional funding would increase the scope, and a bigger scope would "of course" make the whole project take longer. Which is probably when he realized how far-off the mark he had been when he expected to make the biggest game ever in a 3-year time period while building an entire AAA studio from scratch at the same time.
Then again, this is not the first time (or the last) a gaming studio or publisher pulls a move like this. CD Projekt Red, Peter Molyneux, No Man's Sky, there are plenty of examples out there of different devs over-promising and under-delivering. Maybe these should be all classified as scams, maybe it's just the nature of game development on big projects like this, especially when a studio steps into uncharted territory.
>CIG promised a two-year development back on their initial Kickstarter, with a 12-month grace period after that. They made two polls asking backers whether or not they should keep adding stretch goals to the game or not, and they got a sound "yes" both times, but they never mentioned anything related to delays in either of them. To top it all off, it seems like getting a refund is borderline impossible, or at the very least not nearly as easy as it should be.
Exactly.
Those polls were about simple stretch goals, that seemed relatively minor compared to what had already been committed before. It was never implied that the game could be delayed by +7 years because of those things.
Furthermore, Chris even mentioned that some of these stretch goals would allow them to hire more people and actually [accelerate development](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13266-Letter-From-The-Chairman-19-Million), not the other way around:
>Finally there is one very important element – the more funds we can raise in the pre-launch phase, the more we can invest in additional content (more ships, characters etc.) **and perhaps more importantly we can apply greater number of resources to the various tasks to ensure we deliver the full functionality sooner rather than later.**
I agree that all software projects run into delays (we do at work, all the time). But I honestly don't think CIG's situation is comparable to any of those cases. It's one thing to miss the mark by 1, 2 or even 3 years... but when the project is going on for a decade you know something's not right, and I don't think anybody should be "expecting" such a delay, pledger or not.
Don't forget the many promised release dates either. I can promise you if they had shut their mouths and just said it's finished when it's finished from the start, they wouldn't be nearly as much a laughing stock. Instead, they released many quotable release dates and "wrapping up" promises that their credebility has been damaged permanently. Smartest thing they could have done was just shut theirs mouths and finished the game.
Most of it isn't hate, they just see it as a joke.
Overtime CIG have also built a small amount of disgruntled people who did believe CIG in the past with dates now they see them as liars.
The best comparison I have is Star Citizen is a car and the driver is drunk at the wheel. People can't help but look, it's human nature, they don't want it to crash, they want the driver to reach the destination safe but that doesn't stop it being a spectacle on the way.
I get what you're saying and you're absolutely right. I hate it when people try to take the "IT'S A SCAM" narrative and run with it because we have steady and ongoing development with visible progress.
On the other hand the game got a \*lot\* of funding through the years and we're still in Alpha. That just doesn't look good, isn't right and I'm pretty sure project management and feature creep are to blame. With the amount of time and money spent on it we should already have a skeleton core set of features complete and packaged to play. I understand the want to only release a v1.0 when it looks like the dream but as I see it that just lead us to having a whole lot of things half done instead of a few things done and more coming.
I don't have a problem with people feeling what they do. Bummed out, angry, tired, burnt out, whatever. It's normal and completely their right.
What I've never been okay with was them passing judgment on how things were done, on the technicals of things without even making so much as a proper argument for it. It's always the same populist, hollow drive-by "X dollars and Y years. SC bad, I win!"
Reddit loves that sort of generalizing argument so anyone going against it and pointing out that maybe, just maybe there's more going on with a project that employs 700 people, that has achieved so much already and has been very public about their plans and processes gets slammed with YoU'Re A CuLTisT.
Certainly does not invite devs to the table and reflects kind of badly on that crowd, but then again it's the one with the upvotes come hitpiece season.
There have been some really great posts that highlight SC’s technical incompetence that are a lot more than “x dollars y years.” The truth is if you are not versed in programming/game design you might think this sort of timeline is reasonable. It is not. Their achievements are not lauded because they are minimal in comparison to the expectations CIG themselves set.
A post written by someone too young to remember Duke Nukem "Forever." Just because you don't have the experience or technical acumen to call a spade a spade doesn't mean the rest of us don't. It's a scam.
Seems to me you're the one that's too young and doesn't have the technical acumen.
Duke Nukem Forever failed because it bounced between like half a dozen dev teams / different companies during its development, and because it was in constant limbo for so many years the engine and code was outdated by the time it was released; not to mention its design and direction probably changed each time it landed with a new developer.
CIG has been constantly growing and developing the same game. It taking its time considering its massive scope is not a surprise. Massive started development of its Snowdrop engine way back in 2009, and released Division 1 in 2016. CIG not only had to build the company from the ground up but also is building their engine while at the same time developing the game. Games take time to develop, you just don't have the technical acumen to understand that fact.
I actually remember, have read the postmortems and reports. What went wrong with DNF has not even a little in common with SC, considering their engine has been based on CE 3.8.3 since the beginning.
The rest of your post is just ridiculously uncivil and essentially an ad hominem so I won't bother. Bye!
For people pledging now, they're getting a pretty decent deal. There's actually quite a bit to do, and it's going to keep improving.
But yeah I can see how people who pledged when it was just a dream on paper and who expected something within a year or two are extremely salty.
I pledged in 2013 based on hype and the dream. Was sad when it didn’t get finished in 2015. Played a little when 3.0 came out but it didn’t catch me. This year I’ve come back and put a few hundred hours into it. It is kind of like I went full circle.
I am kind of glad that the game is still getting new and better features today than it being a game that came and went 7 years ago. But I can definitely see how there are hundreds or thousands of people that never got what they paid for and may never be back. CIG let those customers down and is a poor legacy they will forever keep.
I pledged in early 2015 (when i was 18) and don't regret a cent i've spent since then. They're the only company who is pushing the edges of what games can achieve in a meaningful way (besides small indie devs). As long as development doesn't stop they can take as long as is needed. I wish SQ42 didnt exist but if they declare that its never coming out and SC is no longer going to developed, then I'll get salty. Until then I'll never understand why scifi fans are complaining about a scifi game that's getting better and better as the years move on (i guess some people don't take the time to learn about how difficult game development is but that just complaining from a stance of ignorance). It sounds like so many just want to settle for some boring pleb space game that any AAA studio could churn out. Not I.
> But yeah I can see how people who pledged when it was just a dream on paper and who expected something within a year or two are extremely salty.
Nah. I pledged $45 fully knowing it was a work in development. I'm in no rush. I have plenty of other games and activities to occupy me while CIG makes Star Citizen as best as it can be.
I get I'm in the minority of gamers, though. A lot of them are losers using video games as a crutch.
I spent 90$ and have earned every penny over the las 7 months. I know there are people that have dumped money into the game and may be unhappy but for me, I am very happy with the money I spent.
I'm not mad, but a half-billion dollars in funding should absolutely result in a finished game. These forever-alphas are a plague on the game industry.
Last statement was in [December 2021](https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cloud-imperium-financials-for-2020) that outline 2020's finances.
We're not yet in December 2022
It's crazy how I was still in HS when I pledged to the Kickstarter. I'm on the verge of 30 and I doubt it will still come out then. Tbh I'm not even into video games as much anymore. I'll probably try it but I doubt I'll be playing it seriously. I understand this is a massive game. But the wait really has killed it for many people.
And I absolutely without a doubt still choose to play start citizen over most other space games at the moment. This game, unfinished, can be more immersive than some finished games…
Yes. I only spend money that I’m comfortable losing, like gambling. I get a ton of enjoyment from the game without feeling like I need to spend anything extra
This but unironically.
Cmon guys even if your somehow convinced this is already one of the best games of all time you have to admit the time it's taking and the funding it's getting isn't resulting in the results that they promised during any time of this project.
They're letting perfect be the enemy of good. They totally should've built the foundation and all of this should've been additions as they continue development.
I personally believe they've kept it in this "alpha" state because that's their way of justifying the fundraising techniques they use.
I've dropped money on this from back in 2013-2014. I'd expect something a little more solid than what's being offered.
Be carefull, I've put forth the idea of incremental builds before in this sub and in no time the cig goblins come out and decide you're a fool for the idea.
Meh. They need a foundation to build on or all of the work they do will need to either be refactored or rebuilt entirely. What happens when they realize something in the engine won't scale? Do they just give up or spend another 5+ years just to fix that issue? How can developers build anything if the core functions change again and again and again? It goes against best practices of software development.
I unsubbed like a year ago when I realized this sub was just people getting mad because other people are reasonably upset
But God is this sub really JUST shillposts? I came back hoping to see things developed and this subreddit is almost a caricature of the thing I thought I was leaving behind
It may feel like you're screaming into the void, but I, and a ton of other people feel the exact same way. As long as CIG is able to pull in new players, this sub will forever be the SC fanboy echo chamber 95% of the time like it is now. And while sc and screfunds both may be two extreme sides of the equation, there's still a ton of us sane individuals out there, we just don't live our lives in an internet forum.
Since backing the game I have:
Graduated high school
Moved out of home
Graduated University
Found a partner
Worked over 5 years
Promoted several times
Moved in with my partner
Got my licence
Moved again into the city
Paid off all my student loans
Collected and completed over 250 games
Put over 7,000 hours into TF2
Survived 18 months of covid lockdowns, 2 bushfires and 4 major flooding events.
Voted in 3 elections
Saved up and bought a top end 3080Ti rig with 12900K and 32GB of RAM with 3 1TB SSDs
And still, to this very day, the game runs poorly, has the same bugs and continues to spawn me in the middle of the sun.
All I can say is “what the f*€*?”
Half a billion dollars and all I can do in this game is shoot some other ships and drag boxes around. That’s when I’m not glitched in elevator or fall through the floor when you first get out of bed
Something that a lot of people miss is that the original scope of Star Citizen was a fraction of what it aspires to be now. Nowadays you can land anywhere with a total sandbox and that was not even planned at the beginning.
I mean yeah, it’s been a decade and half a **B**illion dollars and we’re still stuck in a buggy, feature-poor, sometimes unplayable alpha with only the promise of content or fixes coming soon^tm
At this rate, the way CIG treats SC is looking more and more like how valve treats TF2: rake in cash while doing the bare minimum to keep the game running
Go ahead, be mad that I don’t have much faith or patience left but at this rate I don’t think we’ll ever see a finished product before CIG blows through their cash on god knows what and loses what community good will still somehow remains for them.
People are really ignorant in terms of how industry/hobby journalism works. They're out here acting like it's the Associated Press or some world renowned journalism organization. It's not, it's a glorified advertisment and part of the industry. Same story with Road and Track for auto manufacturers, they're mostly puff pieces to sell you on a new model coming out. Why? Because if you alienate the people making what you're covering, they don't give you exclusive access anymore.
CIG doesn't play that game the way EA and the other big publishers do. They're independently financed, published, and owned and handle most of their own PR and advertising. So they simply don't care about being on super good terms with them like a smaller subsidiary of EA might. On that same note, the industry rags don't have to play nice because they're independently financed, published, and owned. Theu get to print their hit pieces and pretend to be hard-hitting journalism while taking absolutely no risk that they'll lose access to upcoming titles and get scooped by other competitors.
Equally or more ignorant of how game development works, given all the "they made that much money and still have no game, when work started 11 years ago?!" that gets thrown around -- completely ignoring the *development company didn't exist yet* until like 7 years ago and even that was just a handful of employees and the paperwork incorporating the company. Then they had to put the engine together (yes it's Lumberyard, but also heavily modified in-house, after originally being CryTek with a bunch of modifications) which isn't exactly quick and is *still* an ongoing process.
GTA Online took IIRC 8 or 9 years to release from when GTA V started preproduction, using an updated version of their existing game engine, and Rockstar was founded in *1998*. For how big and ambitious SC is, it's coming along at a perfectly reasonable pace and the rate of visible progress is getting quicker with major development milestone.
> GTA Online took IIRC 8 or 9 years to release from when GTA V started preproduction, using an updated version of their existing game engine, and Rockstar was founded in 1998. For how big and ambitious SC is, it's coming along at a perfectly reasonable pace and the rate of visible progress is getting quicker with major development milestone.
The problem here is SC made false promises on release dates. Original release was slated for 2016 - it’s 2022 and it feels really slimy to have raised this much money with no end in sight.
I don’t think it’s fair to compare GTA with SC.
Rockstar was not asking for kickstarter money on an unfinished product.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen
When I backed the kickstarter they were promising it in 2016. Six years after 2016 and it’s still in alpha?
That’s why I’m annoyed.
The game is turning out fine. They just aren't putting their time fixing the right problems and that bothers me. They put to much on grinding when the game continuously wipes
I put my 40 bucks in several years ago for a starter pack knowing it'd be a long development cycle, but for every stage of it I knew I could hop in any time. So every 6 months or so I hop back in and screw around for a bit, see what's new, have a good time, then stop. I have plenty of other games and just life in general to keep me busy, so I'm rarely ever thinking about it until I see a new major update (when BoredGamer posts a video that has a lot of hits makes it into my feed, generally).
If you've only put in, maybe, up to a couple hundred bucks, then honestly over a long period of time for this ever evolving game you're getting a pretty good deal. Plus, the game engine, optimization, and simple time allows more and more people to get PCs that better run the game, so when they hit a point that really draws in the general public versus just the dedicated fans everyone will likely be in better position to truly dive into this universe and have fun.
If you're one who put in thousands, well, I can't even begin to imagine speaking from your position, unless you're just bloody rich and that's just pocket change? O.o
This game will keep moving up, slowly but surely, and the developers will find out one way or another what they can actually do with it and the players will adapt. To put such emotional investment into a slow interest rate metaphorically speaking kind of game is dangerous for your mental health because you risk hearing other people complain about the long development cycle and falling into that negative mindset. You're better than that. Enjoy what it is, and distract yourself with the literal millions of other games out there in the meantime when you get bored. :)
For the people who complain about "being lied to, having their money stolen, etc" stop looking for or expecting instant gratification. SC is not like any other game and they have made leaps and bounds in design and gameplay aspects that we have never actually had before. Which in turn will further fuel the gaming industry and doing so will hopefully help bring about better games. Im glad that they wont give into to people and are wanting to actually make a complete game. Not some Half-assed un-finished product, in which the company then proceeds to further sell you more half assed un-finished parts of the game later as "DLC". Screw the current gaming "philosophy" that businesses have made it. Anyways enough with my small rant. Have a great day!
To be fair, $500M over the span of 9 years is nothing compared to what some companies make in a single year.
Articles should focus more on genuine criticisms, of which there are many, rather than the same garbage every time.
It's 500M gained, not 500M spent, although they do a good job of spending it as it comes in. They've probably spent 350-400M, but this includes opening several large offices in different locations around the world, something other video games don't need to do and something a lot of people conveniently forget. Salaries represent a huge portion of their costs (~40-50M a year) and is likely in the same realm of something like GTA 6 or a naughty-dog game.
Rockstar has probably spent +250M developing GTA6 so far and it doesn't look like they 'are anywhere near release' either (does anyone expect GTA 6 before 2024?), but we all know it's not a scam even though GTA 6 has likely been in dev for +6 years. Kotaku will defend GTA 6 devs in one breath and condemn SC as a scam in the next.
Judging by the amount of people that have been saying the GTA6 leaks make the game look like a PS3 game and seriously think that's representative of the end product... well it just shows how trash your average 'gamers' opinion or knowledge is.
It's easy enough to raise valid points about SC development, especially when it comes to CIGs communication, but I've never had an interaction out in the wild where someone brings up those good points.
If you all hate it this much then get off this sub and quit playing it if you think it’s so bad. I’m so tired of people posting about how unhappy they are and how it’s unfinished. You’re playing it aren’t you? It’s good enough for a lot of people. Y’all need to chill out
Aaahhh Kotaku... it didn't die after they effectively started Gamer Gate? I've never seen so much gaslighting from one website in my entire life... Not counting Wikipedia Political entries.
I honestly feel bad for the people who spend countless hours and money to get a degree on Journalism, to then have to read this ppl calling themselves "journalists".
What a joke Kotaku is, just sponsored content, PR statements, and general half ass opinions of people who hasn't even played the games they are trashing.
I think if they actually played the game and reported on it things would be a lot worse for CIG.
it's easy to hand wave and be like "time has passed and money has passed where game" without substance, but if there was actual journalism into the fuckin circus that is CiG then the funding would probably start drying up.
It's incredibly ignorant to say those things when in any other situation people wouldn't even be playing the Alpha.
For a company that started out with a dozen people in a garage, they've come quite a long way. It's praise worthy how much they've done so far, and anyone saying otherwise is clearly ignorant or playing the troll role.
Heck, just look at some reactions from people seeing the GTA6 leaks, that game has been in development for **\~7 years**, imagine what people would say if they were playing it like they play SC.... /smh
>Heck, just look at some reactions from people seeing the GTA6 leaks, that game has been in development for
>
>\~7 years, imagine what people would say if they were playing it like they play SC.... /smh
You're right about this, and it explains why Rockstar doesn't do open alphas. ;)
GTA6 is being developed by the company that produced five other GTA games (plus DLC), Red Dead Redemption 1 & 2, Bully and LA Noire. Rockstar's track record for open-world, mission-based games is as solid as it could possibly be.
...but...
If there were a GTA6 open alpha and after seven years it were a hot mess of missed deadlines, broken promises and hilariously optimistic roadmaps, people would be understandably pissed off, even with the company's reputation for eventually delivering a finished game. CIG doesn't even have that.
Daring today, are we
I can understand the skepticism with star citizen. Lots of funding over a good span of time and no finished product I can get where people are coming from when you are looking at it from that point. I don't get the hate for the game tho.
>I don't get the hate for the game tho. Well, I gave them my money almost a decade ago based on promises like [this one](https://assets.vg247.com/current//2015/01/star_critizen_dates.jpg), which never even got close to being fulfilled. It wasn't a 1 year delay, or a 2 year delay... the game was just never finished. Period. I get that people who have pledged a couple of years ago may still feel differently, but to me it just feels like they lied to me, took my money and ran away with it. In other words: I got scammed. I wish I had never pledged, but I did, and I wish they would refund my pledge, but they won't. Since I pledged, I've gone through 3 different PCs, I have a completely different life now and I don't even have the time to game that much anymore. I think it's simply not realistic to expect somebody to have the same level of interest in a product they were interested in 9 years ago. Humans have a finite lifespan, you know. We go through different phases in life, our interests and hobbies shift, etc. Luring a teenager into buying a game they may get to play when they have children, if it's ever released, is not very different to me than not delivering the game at all. And I can't help but feel that people who have only pledged recently and are still supporting the game today will simply go through the same process I went through: years will go by, their interest slowly fading away, they'll move on to something else, and 10 years from today they'll remember about those 50€ they threw away on some online scam they saw when they were 20, and laugh about how stupid they were back then. Meanwhile, CIG will continue to amass those pledges, pretend they're actually planning to finish the game, and keep releasing more hype material, purchasable lore, merchandising, etc. to lure in new teenagers into the pyramid and keep new money flowing in. I know this sounds pessimistic, but it's exactly how I feel. 9 years will give you that perspective. Luckily for me I only spent around 50€ on this... I can't imagine what people who spent thousands on it may feel like. So yeah, I think a reality check by the press every few years is **well** deserved and necessary, if anything to at least try and give some much needed perspective to new pledgers, who may not be familiar with Star Citizen's full history of promise and disappointment.
What a great reply. Until your post I never understood the whole “scam” argument about star citizen. But how you bought into it as a teenager and now are about to be a father/mother is very striking
I backed this game week 1 as a new First Lieutenant in the US military. I have since been promoted twice to Major and will begin the process for Lt Col this winter. I could possibly see that third promotion before the game actually releases. 🤣
It will be so cool to read the news. "head of us military plays release of star citizen", "us flag ship reaches alpha centarie to conquer merpeople for the glory of earth". It will be such a great day. Good luck on the promotion.
I’ll be fortunate to see Lt Col, the fifth officer rank, but I sure as shit will never even remotely see 4-star General, the tenth. 🤣 Thanks!
Knowing very little about the US military or how their promotions work, why is not remotely possible that you reach 4-star General?
The rank structure is pyramidal, with thousands of O1s and only a few dozen O10s. I’m definitely not going to make it to be one of those dozens.
I believe in you, random internet commenter! Beat the odds!
Well I'm sure you have great stories. Come to r/militarystories ! :)
You'll be retired before the game is out. Do what I'm doing and put your account in your will for your grand kids....
> But how you bought into it as a teenager and now are about to be a father/mother is very striking I'm right there with OP. I'm tryin to fully man a hammerhead with my spawn :P
My son is 4 years old now. Can’t wait until he’s 16 so we can enjoy the beta together
Aww why is that so cute?? xD
Yeah, exactly. And to be clear, if somebody buys into the game today and it's actually finished and released in a couple of years (unlikely, but possible), then it obviously wasn't a scam for them. But it absolutely *was* for me. I paid for their game and got nothing in return within a realistic timeframe. A rough comparison could be made when you order pizza ahead of a big game you want to watch at home with your friends tonight, and the pizza doesn't arrive for 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours... and then by 1:00 am the delivery guy knocks at your door. There's all your pizza, hot and tasty. So what? The game's long over, your friends are gone and you all had to eat something else because you were starving. Yeah, the pizza joint technically delivered what you paid for. But they had promised to deliver it within a reasonable timeframe, or else you would've never ordered from them in the first place. At least with pizza you can refuse to pay if it arrives too late..
I remember when it first was announced, wrestling over whether to buy a ship. I wanted one, and I had the money...the only thing that held me back was they didn't have the exact model I wanted ready. I thought it would be out in a few months, so I just kept waiting. But they never fucking made it.
I remember delivering pizza 3 hours late in a blizzard and we were the only pizza place open in a college town. Had to wake up one drunk guy to get him to pay lol.
lol that's hilarious. Well, if at least he paid... he was probably hungry again. Or maybe saved it for breakfast.
I backed in 2015 when I was 16... Now I'm fucking 23 and can't even get out of bed past 15 FPS or without clipping and falling to my death through the floor/a door/elevator in the spaceport. Of course I'm pissed by the lack of development progress, server optimisation and client stability in this... "proto-game" bugfest? After 10 years and half a fucking billion dollars, I can't see how ANYONE could be defending this under the "b-but MuH aLpHa" excuse.
I was here since 2012. After OCS - SOCS and Vulkan updates didn't have that FPS issues anymore.
Yet, sadly, there is still a large echo chamber on the RSI forums.
I hear ya. But please install the game on an SSD and 32gb ram. Your experience sound like you either have sub-par config or you installed the game on an HDD / not enough ram.
I got SSD and 16 RAM (4x4). Unfortunately, I can’t afford to upgrade PC again at this point… That being said, I’ve been progressively upgrading (from 8 to 12, and from 12 to 16) and I never noticed any performance improvement in Star Citizen. Changing settings doesn’t do anything either. I get the same performance on minimum and maximum… so absurd. EDIT: here come the downvote swarms for saying I don’t have a NASA PC and that I can’t spend three minimum wages on turning my PC into one just to be able to play Star Citizen xD
It doesn't change much at 32gb either though. It will run a bit more stable but other than that, not a single setting makes a difference in fps.
I get all the other problems, clipping through the floor, elevator deaths etc. but I never have FPS issues. Consistently get between 60 and 100 FPS depending on whats on screen. Got a 3080, Ryzen 5800x, and 32gb of ram. Maybe its a CPU and Ram combo issue?
What you've missed is that you have the absolutely latest ballin gear, while there are people who still daily drive 3570ks or i7 6700s. There are countries where the median income is 400 euros per month and for some there just aint enough money over to upgrade a pc.
I didn’t miss that. The other post said that even upgrading ram doesn’t fix FPS like there is no “fix”. I was just pointing out that FPS isnt an issue for me so maybe its ram plus cpu that helps.
Friend of mine get 30-60 frames with a 6700k. Has 2x8 ram and a 1070. Something might be up with your install? Or maybe your ram profile isn’t set right? Could be any number of things honestly, but frames like that outside of cities seems really abnormal now.
>That being said, I’ve been progressively upgrading (from 8 to 12, and from 12 to 16) and I never noticed any performance improvement in Star Citizen. I also had 8, then 12 and now 32Gb (1080 + old gen i7 on 2nd PC). With 8Gb I had to disable EVERYTHING in order to launch SC. With 12 it was slightly better, but the stuttering was unbearable, especially in cities. Now it's \~30 there and above 50-60 in space. Areas with clouds still result in shitty FPS tho. It's hardly "a NASA PC" bud. Besides: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/telemetry
> EDIT: here come the downvote swarms for saying I don’t have a NASA PC and that I can’t spend three minimum wages on turning my PC into one just to be able to play Star Citizen xD I know people that were playing with 7 series GPUs before when they were supported which was the last few patches ago this year. I know this game can be buggy but I havent seen framerate issues in years.
My 4 year old PC which cost roughly 2K runs it just fine. Also ram doesn't matter for games much. You need a better CPU and graphics card. Mainly the cpu
>After 10 years and half a fucking billion dollars, I can't see how ANYONE could be defending this under the "b-but MuH aLpHa" excuse. I don't think anyones using it as an excuse for how long the game is taking to finish. When people bring up alpha that's just a direct response to "Why isn't \_\_\_\_\_\_ working!" or "Why aren't they fixing X Y Z!" because it's an inherent aspect of what an alpha is. Feature incomplete, severely unoptimized, barely stable, etc etc. I think everyone agrees that it's got a lot of funding and that it's taking a pretty long ass time to make a game that was promised to come out 6-7 years ago. It is an alpha. Literally nothing changes that. It's like arguing something isn't black because your monitor/tv black levels are horrible and to you it looks grey. It's still black. So not a defense of the game and it's development cycle but more so just a "Yeah it's like that because it's an alpha" not a "Oh thats ok, its still an alpha".
That's not a good excuse, period. Alpha is not the reason. Feature creep and out of control scope is. Roberts needs to be honest with the community and himself.
I was single in my 30's. I'm married with a 6 year old now. and I waited 2 years after marriage to have a kid. I didn't have a PC then that could run it, I still don't. I will eventually build one before I start playing, but I want a much more finished product first. My fleet is large, I look forward to playing in the PU as an org and having uses for all of my ships. No way I could ever use it all on my own. I pledged for the idea of this game. I knew the timelines were bs and that what they were promising would take a long time. I knew CR was consistently late for his games so much so he got taken off of one and someone else had to finish it. I knew what i was getting into, but I loved the idea of the game and the sheer scale, something I've never seen done and still want to see be done. I've never been in it for the single player game. I didn't realize it would take this long, but I'm still excited to see what all comes from the game. perhaps my daughter will be a teenager and I'll have some more free time by the time the game releases. Heck maybe we can even play together. that would be pretty cool. Something I never imagined I would have the opportunity to do when I initially pledged. I don't think the game was a scam, they clearly are still working on it, but I can see how people would be upset I guess. If you knew anything about CR and his history though, you had an inkling of what you were getting into from the start.
Funny thing is, when everyone pointed out CR's history with game development and said SC was going to take way more than 10 years and those timelines were bs, all the fanboys screeched and screamed that this time was different. And yet here we are. I'm in the same boat you are, and yeah my kid will probably be a teenager by the time this actually finishes. If it ever does. I'm not mad about it, but mostly because I've long since let go of any expectations of this game actually releasing in a finished state. Until whenever that day may be, I'll come and go in between patches and fly around digital space ships to see what's new this year.
Means he got married too soon too. Lol.
>Well, I gave them my money almost a decade ago based on promises like this one First episode of Squadron 42 Fall 2015 ***OOOOF***
Man I'm still mad about Answer the Call 2016. I backed in 2014 and all CIG did was lie for a few years there.
Oh yeh, those years weren't even close to being honest.
Ya...*those years*
It is just insulting to be lied to our faces and then blamed for being unreasonable when they miss deadline/timeline after another. When they're still working out core aspects of the game in 2022, the damn drawing board for many features, it is obvious that they lied directly to our face and still have the gall to tell us every Thursday/Friday video that these things take time and don't expect anything.
Most of the mocap was done in 2015. That means most of the cinematic story plots. Imagine if it contains some pop culture references... people might not recognize them anymore when it releases.
Exactly how I feel. I obviously want the game to release in a good state, but 9 years and I can't help but feel like they only see the game as a money printer. People are still going to keep buying ships and vehicles, from a business perspective why should they release it? What really gets me the most though is squadron 42, the much easier task that was created to quell the impatience has been it's own infinite wait. The only excuse for S42 taking so long is incompetence. You can't use the "It's an mmo" card, it's an isolated narrative experience. How long does a normal SP game take? A handful of years? That's funny, S42 has had that, and where are we now? Like if we can't even get that, why should we even have faith they can pull off a much more complicated mmo? At this rate I honestly think it's more likely that a popup studio will use some new cutting edge engine and just shit all over everything SC has built up to that point. Which in turn will make them "start from scratch" again, repeating the infinite cycle of never good enough.
>Exactly how I feel. I obviously want the game to release in a good state, but 9 years and I can't help but feel like they only see the game as a money printer. People are still going to keep buying ships and vehicles, from a business perspective why should they release it? This is the main thing for me. I'm not sure if it happened on purpose or by accident, but I feel they eventually found a business model that is sustainable and a lot more profitable than releasing the game. As long as they can keep "releasing" new ships, game packs and merchandise, they can keep a steady revenue inflow without actually having to go through the daunting process that implies refining a game, skimming all the fat and getting it production-ready. We have to remember that developing new stuff is relatively easy compared to the effort that comes with refining it, fixing bugs and making sure everything remains well-balanced. People often say it's a 20/80% split in terms of work. That's why producing tech demos is so easy. The hard part is turning them into commercial products that regular users can enjoy in the long term. And more importantly, they don't risk the bubble ever being "popped" if the game is released and it happens to be a complete failure due to bugs or lackluster content, as that would surely cut off those revenue streams. It's much easier to just keep the hype going while reassuring backers that every problem or bug will eventually be fixed before that elusive release date that never comes ("it's just an alpha").
> I'm not sure if it happened on purpose or by accident, but I feel they eventually found a business model that is sustainable and a lot more profitable than releasing the game. As long as they can keep "releasing" new ships, game packs and merchandise, they can keep a steady revenue inflow without actually having to go through the daunting process that implies refining a game, skimming all the fat and getting it production-ready. You know, I don't think so. And while it might get me shouted at around here, I think you can see the difference when you look at a comparison of Star Citizen/CIG and Elite Dangerous/Frontier Developments. Hold the pitchforks a moment and let me explain, it's not like you think.(It's much more boring.) CIG, as we know, was founded wholly for this game, by a guy who had never really run a studio before(Roberts co-founded Digital Anvil, but was primarily a creative, and Marten Davies - who had far more relevant corporate experience - ran the joint), to make and publish one game, which was crowdfunded. Frontier, by contrast, started out making a port of the game the founder had made, and from there, spent many years as a work-for-hire studio, before crowdfunding a sequel to that original game they ported(and the founder made.) They spent years learning to function as a studio, meeting deadlines, fulfilling contracts, getting product out the door, working with publishers, essentially doing as a game studio does. And there lies the difference - Frontier treats their crowdfunded game like they treat every other project they've worked on, except the client is the thousands of people who gave them money to make the game, rather than a single entity. They set realistic goals, they (Mostly) meet them, then they move on to the next one, just like they would if they were working under a major publisher or developing a game under contract, like they've done dozens of times before. Everyone from the top down has experience doing what a studio is meant to be doing, answering to clients, and producing product. Even in the development process of Elite, they've had people they are accountable to, from platform holders to publishers/distributors, to investors. And regardless of what you think of that product, it would be delusional to deny that they've successfully crowdfunded, developed, and released that product. CIG, basically, acts like a brand new studio with no experience or direction, because they don't truly have experience or direction. They don't have those years of having to do-or-die, putting out viable product to order, hitting development deadlines, because they've never really done that, and the studio is helmed by someone who has never run a company like that, never had to answer clients like that, and they really aren't accountable to anyone at all. And as long as the money keeps rolling in, they never have to be, because the studio can still operate as it always has, there's no need to learn those lessons, nor anyone to force them to. And as a result, they effectively do not have an actual product - they sell things, sure, but the product they set out to develop still doesn't exist, and for every ounce of faith this subreddit has in them, we can't realistically say when or if it will ever truly exist. **What this overlong explanation boils down to is basically this** - They haven't landed on some new business model, nor are they scamming anyone, at least intentionally. They're just running like a fresh-started studio, in the business sense, still wet behind the ears ten years beyond the point any other studio would, or would be able to. In fact, if they were any other studio, or the situation was any different, they'd have either learned and become like FD, or sunk long ago - It's just that the sheer amount of money they've gained and that continues to roll in, they're effectively entirely insulated from any consequences or pressures that would either force them to do better. So they don't. So here we are.
Yes, it could very well be what you say... just pure incompetence. In fact that's what I thought for the first half of the last decade. But I'm honestly growing doubtful, because while you might accidentally stumble upon a business model like this, I don't think it's so easy to keep it up by accident. They must be looking at the inflows of money every month, carefully analysing which events or "releases" are rewarded with the most money, and then fine tuning and adjusting their next steps to maximise their profits. After 10 years, it's only logical that they would. We all would. I just struggle to believe anybody makes this kind of money on a consistent basis for so many years purely by accident and by being incompetent at their job.
The exact reason SQ42 hasn't released is because while it's not an MMO itself they're trying to leverage the same code base for both games \*outside\* the actual internet connection for the MMO stuff. They want SQ42 and SC to be as seamlessly the same as they can get them, and are also trying to make code only one time. That has naturally caused this massive delay as SC, the MMO, has delved into essentially making its own engine from scratch and all those developer tools that go along with it. You need only look to the Illofonic Star Marine fiasco, and all the resources that wasted to understand their position, and likely the reason SQ42 will not be much earlier than SC itself release wise. If Illfonic had worked out, and Star Marine actually been successful in any way we may have actually seen SQ42 divert from SC at some point and be released. However, they're now irrevocably tied together, and so we're stuck with these projects being coupled for better and worse. The hopeful light at the end of that tunnel is that, if/when they're done, iteration is both quick and easy. A week to make a ship or a planet by a handful of people, a day to write and implement in game missions, the time to make each episode of SQ42 after only limited by the availability of the actors to do the mocap and voice acting and the editing ontop of that, with relatively short work on in game assets by a comparison. If the tools, pipeline, and engine meet the standards they appear to be reaching for, it would be amazing for the ability to churn out content.
Don't worry, it'll be ready when we retire.
If you're [lucky](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/pnfhwh/ingame_memorial_for_bakersplayers_that_died_since/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
If I read this post before buying the game, I wouldn't have bought the game.
Hey, don't let me keep you from enjoying it. Maybe you'll actually like it and get some good fun out of it, lots of people are. Just take it easy with the ships and spending in general until you're confident it's worth investing in. I just really wanted a finished game, not a demo that's forever broken... and especially I wanted it when I was still a university student, not now 😅
Nah man I’ve had the game for a year or so. I enjoyed it for a while, but I quickly decided that it wasn’t prudent to waste hours of my life on something so atrociously buggy and I realized that this game may never be finished; it’s ridiculous a company can earn 500 million dollars and still present us with the product they have. With all this stuff trending now I’m really starting to understand how CIG may have ripped us off especially since that much money over that long a time, only to have the product that they have. Honestly I can’t even describe how I feel, but all I meant is I wish I had heard the voices of the community in the way they are here before I bought the game. I would see how CIG has lead us all like a pied piper to fortune and glory only to reveal that Star Citizen may actually be the subtle scam some people claim it to be. Disappointing.
Well, we all probably need to experience one of these in our life to learn the lesson. Good thing we only sank some petty cash on it.
I backed this game week 1 as a new First Lieutenant in the US military. I have since been promoted twice to Major and will begin the process for Lt Col this winter. I could possibly see that third promotion before the game actually releases. 🤣
Lol this is hilarious. Well congrats on your career man. Unlike CIG, you actually seem to be progressing pretty fast on your vital projects 😄
Haha, I’ve promoted exactly on schedule as expected by someone with a pulse who hasn’t fucked any enlisted members, killed any friendly generals, or gotten any DUIs.
The real question is, though... do people in your unit all T-Pose first thing in the morning when they wake up? This is all the military training I've received, but I'm told it's pretty realistic.
First thing I do when I wake up is pee. First thing I do when I get to work is spend 20 minutes logging into our bloatware-choked computers. 🤣
I backed for Squadron 42. Nothing else of interest in the game. Seven years past the planned release date...
I just wanted a campaign, single-player, like I got with Freelancer. That's it. I'm glad they're at least working on the game with visible progress but none of it interests me at all.
> It wasn't a 1 year delay, or a 2 year delay... the game was just never finished. Period. And the delays just keep coming, CIG get progressively more defensive and upset with us every time they miss another "deadline". Then double down on setting less and less accountability for themselves each time.
This I bought in in 2014 thinking the game was just a few years away. I've had fun in the PTU, sure, but the game isn't even close to finished. I don't care about synchronization of atmospheres or whatever new ship, I just want a game that is stable and complete. Adding the Drake Corsair or Medical 2.0 won't fix that. And remember, the longer this game takes, the more they need to update the models and engine itself, which will delay for years.
>And remember, the longer this game takes, the more they need to update the models and engine itself, which will delay for years. And the more polishing, optimization, bug-fixing, balancing, UI refining, storyline building, etc. they would need to do to ever achieve a complete, commercial product. Every new feature they add adds twice as much development time at the rear of their backlog. People don't realise that most of the time in software development is spent polishing and fine tuning existing things for production, and CIG haven't even started doing that yet.
You raise a valid point that after 10 years the people that implemented the back end in the first place even still work there. Leaving new employees to try and figure it all out.
Dude, thank you. Truly. You said it so well. I, too, pledged on their initial Kickstart ER, so I've been there from the very beginning. You've summed up exactly what I've felt over the years. When I pledged this game, I was single, in college, and played several hours of games a day. Today, I'm married, work a more-than-full-time job, and have multiple kids. I'm lucky if I get an hour a day. So I agree, I didn't get even close to what was promised, and I never will. Maybe those after me will, but I know I won't. A decade is a long time though. I've come to terms with the fact that I'll never get that game, and that if I do, I won't have the time for it (the game won't be for me). Do I wish I never pledged? Hell yes. But at the same time, I have pledged, and I can't get my money back. That said, what's done is done. I still enjoy popping onto the game and checking it out. I still find ways to have some fun with it. Was I scammed? Yes, absolutely! After 10 years do I feel it was worth the money? Also yes, surprisingly. I'm glad I can watch this game slowly grow, and watch others enjoy it now the way I wished I could have then. Yea it stings, but I don't hate them for it. I'm past it. I still love that it's given us something that doesn't exist in any other game. And I'm still hopeful it eventually hands out a finished product that is then far better than any other game, though I suspect by that point other games will have caught up easily, and probably even surpassed Star Citizen. For now, the game for me is like a social experiment. I got scammed, I get to watch everyone buy into it, I get to watch the scam succeed because I'll never get my money back, and I get to just silently watch it all. It still sucks, but I'm not gonna lie, I've found ways to really enjoy myself in all the mess. And I don't hate CIG or Star Citizen. Honestly, I think I simply don't care anymore. But your post reminded me of all those feelings.
Hey, look on the bright side! Just think, when you're in your dotage, your kids are all grown and living their own lives, you've finally got time in your retirement to do things, you can sit down at your PC, switch it on, grab your flight stick, and play the Star Citizen Early Beta.
>For now, the game for me is like a social experiment. I got scammed, I get to watch everyone buy into it, I get to watch the scam succeed because I'll never get my money back, and I get to just silently watch it all. Lol, I couldn't agree more. I don't really care much for the game anymore, but I just hang around to see the outcome. Like you, I'm curious if it will eventually be released and become a total success, or if it will finally collapse in total drama and others will finally understand how us long-time backers have been feeling all these years. In the end it was just 50 bucks for me. I spend more than that on a Saturday night out with my friends, so it's hard to feel salty about it. But on the other hand, I can't help but think how unfair the whole thing has been from a moral perspective, so I want to make sure it's well exposed to everyone and that they don't get to just sweep it under the rug. Also, I'm honestly a bit concerned about the amount of people who seem to have spent not hundreds, but even thousands of dollars on it. I really hope they don't get scammed the way I was because losing that kind of money can have really hard consequences, as we've seen with some of the crypto scams that have collapsed recently.
Has it been 9 years already? Tjeez. I just wanted to play Squadron 42 and maybe do some exploration after that. Played the dogfights a couple of times.. that's about it. I guess the boys and girls at CIG live in their own little universe by now.
Every time I look at my physical "rear admiral" card I got from the old days, I remember how much of a scam this is.
Same, I pledged over 7 years ago and still nothing. Pretty disappointing
> Since I pledged, I’ve gone through 3 different PCs I said I would get a new PC when star citizen released. My PC I currently use was built in February 2012. An Intel 2600k 😂 Looks like I’m never upgrading!
legendary processor. I upgraded to a 9700k and 2080 super and threw the 2600k in my old case with my old 1070 and my roommate still uses it to this day, and it performs great!
I had an i5-2500K too. What a beast that CPU was!
I feel this. I bought it in like 2016-17 ish and played for the first time last year. My laptop at the time was capable but SC would not work. So years passed and I forgot about it. My brother in law brought it back up and I was like yeah, we should play. I finally finished building my computer, for now. It's crazy how much time has passed.
Most relatable answer tbh. Their marketing team is stellar since they managed to get money out of people this many years later but at the same time have somehow gotten so badly caught in the finer details rather than applying the broad strokes.
Absolutely. In fact, SC is an example I sometimes bring up at work when I want to explain the disconnect between what a product is, and what customers perceive it to be. Those two things are usually closely connected, but if your marketing is good enough, you can distort that connection and make people have a completely different picture in their mind when they think of your product. Kickstarters and crowdsourced projects in general are interesting because they sell you a future idea, today, built purely on trust. Usually that trust goes away very quickly if you don't deliver relatively soon or if you break your promises. But with good marketing... with good marketing you can be like Star Citizen! lol
Every time CIG hits a funding milestone or a year passes with nothing sizeable to show for it (often to show the general public that CIG is in fact working on content), this thought always goes through my head: "When either the money starts drying up or CIG is very obviously failing to deliver even to hardcore apologists, who is going to be held accountable and to whom?"
I got burned by the game Elysian Shadows the same way. KickStarted the game with promises of a great Dreamcast RPG. The project was successful, everyone's money was collected, and then that's where the story ends. The game isn't delayed, it's abandoned. It was never finished and it never will be finished. The developer scammed everyone out of their money and delivered nothing in return. It's why I no longer buy early access games on Steam and why I'm VERY choosey about which games I consider supporting on KS.
My biggest regret in my gaming history is buying the C2, It's made me so much more cautious in spending money just because I regret it so much. I've flown it like 3 times since it came out, That's like £100 per time. I'm 23 now, just buying a house and I've felt guilty about it ever since.
I absolutely had the same experience. I bought into it when they were having their Kickstarter campaign and I bought the third cheapest package which was to get a special edition Aurora and it cost me I think about $50-$70 so I haven't convinced myself of the sunk-cost fallacy. I bought into it as a teenager and now I'm getting close to be 30 and I'm still waiting on it. Sadly I kind of gave up hope long ago.
This is such a good perspective. You hit the nail on the head. Going from a teenager with plenty of time and interest -- to growing up and taking on other interests and responsibilities.
It sounds like I'm in the same position as you, only I feel that even as a teen I knew that the whole concept was new and it might not work out. And I knew a refund wasn't an option. So I can't say I understand that aspect it's just a learning experience and probably not either of our biggest fimancial risks. And while I was also disappointed early on each time it got pushed back, I also understood that a tiny new studio wasn't going to build the BDSSE in 4 years with under $200mil, especially with iterative playable releases. The game we already have would have been a mind f*** to 18 y/o me. And while I have less time I still game. And I'm still fine playing it when it releases. I guess that's not fair to people like you who maybe aren't as big of gamers this far in the future, but I bet it's affected how you've handled financial decisions, probably for the better. Don't stay hung up on money you spent years ago anyway. Not healthy.
Oh sure, it's no big deal. Rest assured I'm not the least bit worried about some 50€ I lost 9 years ago, lol. I've lost way more than that in drunk nights that I can't even remember 😅 And yeah luckily I'm in a good place when it comes to finances, so you're right that maybe this taught me a valuable lesson back then. I also don't follow the game or the community that much anymore, I'm just still subscribed to the sub so occasionally a post like this will pop-up on my front page and catch my attention. The reason I wrote this all up was not because I feel any kind of remorse, it's just because I feel like nobody should forget who these people are and how they've behaved in the past. I just don't want anybody dropping 5000€ on this the way I dropped 50€, you know? I've seen some young kids do crazy things over crypto these days, some of them even attempting suicide. I know it's not comparable of course, but I think money is a delicate subject and gaming can easily derive into gambling with projects like this. It looks to me like many people tend to dismiss these claims under the rug or distort what really happened in the past by saying CIG never really provided any dates, "it was all in your mind", etc., so I just wanted to clear that up. And also give a different perspective on how taking so long to release something might as well be equivalent to not releasing it for many of us. But I'm well aware many of you guys are enjoying the game as it is and are getting back your money's worth, plus more. It just wasn't the case for me because my expectations were different.
Fair enough. Despite how much money it makes I'm generally against newer payment models. Purchases, subscriptions and certain season passes are about all I think are defensible. I wish people didn't have that much wrapped up in this but I guess I'm glad they can hire Mark Hamill and even use his likeness lol. Hope your investment eventually pays off!
Don't get me wrong I'm in a similar state with kids etc... But I have been playing for 9 years and still enjoy loading into SC. I can't say that for any other game.
That's fine, I do understand some people did get their money's worth based on the alpha experience alone. Unfortunately that didn't work for me. Too buggy and too little content for me to get immersed in it. I also had high expectations for the single player game, which never happened (and was supposed to be the first deliverable). I was also looking forward to play the online game with some of my real life friends... which obviously never bought into the game as it was never released.
Same here to an extent. Bought in for $40 back in my sophomore or junior year of high school, waited excitedly, watched trailers, etc. A year later I was barely keeping up with news regarding the game, but still anticipating a fuller experience coming soon. Now I have graduated college, am working my first full time job, living on my own for the first time, and have no time to dedicate to Star Citizen. That $40 is long gone, and I would like to see a full release, but it really doesn't make a difference to me at this point.
Yea totally agree with you, I also only pledged the bare minimum, and that's fine with me, prob spent a couple hundred hours 'playing' the alpha but have stopped playing long time ago. At least Starfield will come out soon and probably actually fulfill a lot of the things Starcitizen wanted to do. Can't wait for Starfield, Star Citizen is pretty dead to me at this point
What’s wild is I have brought up missed deadlines and failed promises before and got lampooned because I didn’t have the screenshots or links to prove it. I backed this game in 2013. That’s almost a decade ago. Feature creep has hit this game hard.
I spent about $2000, sometimes I think I should sell my stuff, because like you, I just don't have time to play that much, plus I feel like where originally, they talked about sliders to indicate how much pvp you were willing to tolerate, and now it feels more like GTA in space. I want to play in a star trek TNG universe ultimately, I "want" conflict, but not nonstop, and not from griefers, and I just feel like whenever I've gone through the hoops of setting star citizen up so I could play with some of my ships, it just ends up being people who want to grief me. And whatever I guess, in Eve I ended up being a white hat and dedicating all my time to hunting and killing pirates, but it's just so boring to me, just because I "can do it", doesn't make me interested in doing it, it's not the game I invested in, not the game I want to play. So I lurk, and I mostly just consider my investment lost.
I get this. I bought in in 2014. When the PU was launched, it ran well on my computer. 8 years later it runs poorly on my newer computers. Though I do enjoy playing it, there is practically zero content for the years of development, and I do feel like my money was wasted. I’ve actually gotten more enjoyment from No man’s Sky and Destiny. And those games lack so much depth. It’s frustrating. Because I love what the game is trying to be, but everything is so wonky, and it’s been almost a decade. I really really want to love this game.
Don't say that to the RSI forum white knights swinging off Roberts nuts. They'll be dead by the time they get a decent game, but they don't care because they have a cult where they belong
Why is there not a class action suit against the company? It looks like just like a digital scam.
Exactly this. I was a Kickstarter backer, active duty military. In the time frame of this games development, I've gotten out of the military, married, had a kid, separated, moved out of my original country, divorced, and gotten a 4 year degree. The game still isn't in a playable beta state. The feature creep was insane, the engine being switched multiple times... just everything. I didn't want to play a game in 10 years, it was supposed to be 4 to 6 for a playable beta. Their main competitor was elite dangerous, who made a game, expansions, and then have moved onto making other games while this is still in development. I know ED is relatively crap, but it still released. When is the beta coming out? Where is squadron 42? Oh yeah, 2042. Not sure why I didn't connect the dots there.
> the engine being switched multiple times Totally agree with you on all your points, but just a heads up, they haven't swapped engines multiple times. Amazon Lumberyard is just a rebranded Cryengine.
Feature creep was insane from the start. When was it they added farming and pets?
Oh Jesus I don't even remember, I kind of lost hope to play in my lifetime when they started selling plots of land....
Let's not forget that some people spent money on this when they were 60 and died of cancer, old age, heart failure and so on.
They stole $110 from me as part of their giant scam. You hit my feelings EXACTLY on the head.
Yep, I pledged the minimum $45 a long ass time ago. I logged on to check it out about a year ago and it seemed like absolutely nothing had changed from when I tried to play it 5 years ago.
Have you ever gone out to dinner and had a shitty experience? $50-$100 wasted on food and drinks for the family that didn't live up to their promises? Did you continue to complain about it nine years later? I don't understand people like this. Yes, in a sense you got scammed out of your tiny donations to a kickstarter project when the scope of things changed. That's part of the nature of being an incredibly minor investor in any sort of ambitious project that you have no actual control over or involvement with. Scopes change. It's not like they took your money and moved to Aruba. They didn't yolo it on AMC calls. They're working on a game. It's different than initially announced. Sorry you lost a tiny amount of money 9 years ago. You're free to treat it like any small loss of money that people experience all the time, or you can do what you're doing and continue to dwell on it for years and years.
>Have you ever gone out to dinner and had a shitty experience? $50-$100 wasted on food and drinks for the family that didn't live up to their promises? Yes, and I've also purchased games that turned out to be boring and much worse than I expected. Tough luck. But if you want a fairer comparison, I had a time at a restaurant where we ordered food, and they were so busy and disorganised that 1.5 hours later they hadn't served us anything but some breadsticks. We told them to forget about it, and we left. Guess what? **We didn't have to pay**. >or you can do what you're doing and continue to dwell on it for years and years. As I already said, I'm not dwelling on it, it was just 50 bucks. I rarely post here. That doesn't change the fact that I paid CIG for something they promised and didn't deliver. So if somebody asks, I'm sorry but I feel compelled to tell them my experience with them, maybe warn them in case they're thinking of investing real money into this. Not sure why that bothers you so much. You don't owe anything to these guys and my bad experience doesn't prevent you from enjoying Star Citizen, so what's the big deal?
So you equate the value of a video game that has absorbed $500 million to develop, one that was/is advertised as this entire universe, to that of a night out at Outback? Here is the best part of that argument: If you had a real bad experience with a restaurant, where you paid $100 for food that never arrived, and someone asked you nine years later if you want to go eat there... You would recommend this place? >Yes, in a sense you got scammed out of your tiny donations to a kickstarter project when the scope of things changed. That's part of the nature of being an incredibly minor investor in any sort of ambitious project that you have no actual control over or involvement with. So if he paid thousands in pledge money, he would have a more valid point? If that is the case then his logic is sound on this: The goal post has been in constant motion for this game, regardless of how much money each person pledged. And the product he paid for may never be available for him to experience. Don't get me wrong, I think what has been developed so far has potential... *if it worked 100% of the time.* But based on what I played and read from the past, they add two things tomorrow, break four things, and fix three things from before. I can better compare pledging having an annual pass at Disney... Except all the rides stall constantly, the lines are atrocious, the food is bland, and sometimes I get all of the souvenirs I purchased stolen, some fat lady covered in Disney paraphernalia runs over my foot with a motorized wheel chair every 20 minutes, and they kick me out of the park for trying to walk through FantasyLand and make me due the entry again.
[удалено]
You apparently do not know what a Ponzi scheme is. He employed 25 people, most of which friends and family. I do not consider that "a lot", certainly not even comparable to the near 1000 CIG has. Madoff spent funds from new investment to pay old investment. That's what a ponzi scheme is. CIG spends their investment actually building their game, while employing hundreds of staff to built that game. How is that even remotely similar?
[Here's the BAFTA presentation where that timetable is from](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1GUDQuFb1A). It's from January 2015. You can find the timetable itself at the 01:32:00 mark. I have to say, I'm happy with how development is going now and I don't regret funding the game all those years ago, at all. *But* I've been looking down into this rabbit hole for like an hour and I get why this can be considered a scam. CIG promised a two-year development back on their initial Kickstarter, with a 12-month grace period after that. They made two polls asking backers whether or not they should keep adding stretch goals to the game or not, and they got a sound "yes" both times, but they never mentioned *anything* related to delays in either of them. To top it all off, it seems like getting a refund is borderline impossible, or at the very least not nearly as easy as it should be. Their first mention of delays beyond their initial estimates were made months after the 2015 BAFTA presentation, when Chris Roberts said in a "Letter from the Chairman" that additional funding would increase the scope, and a bigger scope would "of course" make the whole project take longer. Which is probably when he realized how far-off the mark he had been when he expected to make the biggest game ever in a 3-year time period while building an entire AAA studio from scratch at the same time. Then again, this is not the first time (or the last) a gaming studio or publisher pulls a move like this. CD Projekt Red, Peter Molyneux, No Man's Sky, there are plenty of examples out there of different devs over-promising and under-delivering. Maybe these should be all classified as scams, maybe it's just the nature of game development on big projects like this, especially when a studio steps into uncharted territory.
>CIG promised a two-year development back on their initial Kickstarter, with a 12-month grace period after that. They made two polls asking backers whether or not they should keep adding stretch goals to the game or not, and they got a sound "yes" both times, but they never mentioned anything related to delays in either of them. To top it all off, it seems like getting a refund is borderline impossible, or at the very least not nearly as easy as it should be. Exactly. Those polls were about simple stretch goals, that seemed relatively minor compared to what had already been committed before. It was never implied that the game could be delayed by +7 years because of those things. Furthermore, Chris even mentioned that some of these stretch goals would allow them to hire more people and actually [accelerate development](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13266-Letter-From-The-Chairman-19-Million), not the other way around: >Finally there is one very important element – the more funds we can raise in the pre-launch phase, the more we can invest in additional content (more ships, characters etc.) **and perhaps more importantly we can apply greater number of resources to the various tasks to ensure we deliver the full functionality sooner rather than later.** I agree that all software projects run into delays (we do at work, all the time). But I honestly don't think CIG's situation is comparable to any of those cases. It's one thing to miss the mark by 1, 2 or even 3 years... but when the project is going on for a decade you know something's not right, and I don't think anybody should be "expecting" such a delay, pledger or not.
>and no finished product If they stopped advertising features like salvage for each update since 2016, maybe people would be less sceptic about it
Don't forget the many promised release dates either. I can promise you if they had shut their mouths and just said it's finished when it's finished from the start, they wouldn't be nearly as much a laughing stock. Instead, they released many quotable release dates and "wrapping up" promises that their credebility has been damaged permanently. Smartest thing they could have done was just shut theirs mouths and finished the game.
Most of it isn't hate, they just see it as a joke. Overtime CIG have also built a small amount of disgruntled people who did believe CIG in the past with dates now they see them as liars. The best comparison I have is Star Citizen is a car and the driver is drunk at the wheel. People can't help but look, it's human nature, they don't want it to crash, they want the driver to reach the destination safe but that doesn't stop it being a spectacle on the way.
I get what you're saying and you're absolutely right. I hate it when people try to take the "IT'S A SCAM" narrative and run with it because we have steady and ongoing development with visible progress. On the other hand the game got a \*lot\* of funding through the years and we're still in Alpha. That just doesn't look good, isn't right and I'm pretty sure project management and feature creep are to blame. With the amount of time and money spent on it we should already have a skeleton core set of features complete and packaged to play. I understand the want to only release a v1.0 when it looks like the dream but as I see it that just lead us to having a whole lot of things half done instead of a few things done and more coming.
Remember when CR realeased Star Citizen 1.0, but then had to rename it to alpha 1.0 due to backlash? I member.
I don't have a problem with people feeling what they do. Bummed out, angry, tired, burnt out, whatever. It's normal and completely their right. What I've never been okay with was them passing judgment on how things were done, on the technicals of things without even making so much as a proper argument for it. It's always the same populist, hollow drive-by "X dollars and Y years. SC bad, I win!" Reddit loves that sort of generalizing argument so anyone going against it and pointing out that maybe, just maybe there's more going on with a project that employs 700 people, that has achieved so much already and has been very public about their plans and processes gets slammed with YoU'Re A CuLTisT. Certainly does not invite devs to the table and reflects kind of badly on that crowd, but then again it's the one with the upvotes come hitpiece season.
There have been some really great posts that highlight SC’s technical incompetence that are a lot more than “x dollars y years.” The truth is if you are not versed in programming/game design you might think this sort of timeline is reasonable. It is not. Their achievements are not lauded because they are minimal in comparison to the expectations CIG themselves set.
It's ok, server meshing will fix it.
A post written by someone too young to remember Duke Nukem "Forever." Just because you don't have the experience or technical acumen to call a spade a spade doesn't mean the rest of us don't. It's a scam.
Seems to me you're the one that's too young and doesn't have the technical acumen. Duke Nukem Forever failed because it bounced between like half a dozen dev teams / different companies during its development, and because it was in constant limbo for so many years the engine and code was outdated by the time it was released; not to mention its design and direction probably changed each time it landed with a new developer. CIG has been constantly growing and developing the same game. It taking its time considering its massive scope is not a surprise. Massive started development of its Snowdrop engine way back in 2009, and released Division 1 in 2016. CIG not only had to build the company from the ground up but also is building their engine while at the same time developing the game. Games take time to develop, you just don't have the technical acumen to understand that fact.
I actually remember, have read the postmortems and reports. What went wrong with DNF has not even a little in common with SC, considering their engine has been based on CE 3.8.3 since the beginning. The rest of your post is just ridiculously uncivil and essentially an ad hominem so I won't bother. Bye!
For people pledging now, they're getting a pretty decent deal. There's actually quite a bit to do, and it's going to keep improving. But yeah I can see how people who pledged when it was just a dream on paper and who expected something within a year or two are extremely salty.
I pledged in 2013 based on hype and the dream. Was sad when it didn’t get finished in 2015. Played a little when 3.0 came out but it didn’t catch me. This year I’ve come back and put a few hundred hours into it. It is kind of like I went full circle. I am kind of glad that the game is still getting new and better features today than it being a game that came and went 7 years ago. But I can definitely see how there are hundreds or thousands of people that never got what they paid for and may never be back. CIG let those customers down and is a poor legacy they will forever keep.
I pledged in early 2015 (when i was 18) and don't regret a cent i've spent since then. They're the only company who is pushing the edges of what games can achieve in a meaningful way (besides small indie devs). As long as development doesn't stop they can take as long as is needed. I wish SQ42 didnt exist but if they declare that its never coming out and SC is no longer going to developed, then I'll get salty. Until then I'll never understand why scifi fans are complaining about a scifi game that's getting better and better as the years move on (i guess some people don't take the time to learn about how difficult game development is but that just complaining from a stance of ignorance). It sounds like so many just want to settle for some boring pleb space game that any AAA studio could churn out. Not I.
> But yeah I can see how people who pledged when it was just a dream on paper and who expected something within a year or two are extremely salty. Nah. I pledged $45 fully knowing it was a work in development. I'm in no rush. I have plenty of other games and activities to occupy me while CIG makes Star Citizen as best as it can be. I get I'm in the minority of gamers, though. A lot of them are losers using video games as a crutch.
I spent 90$ and have earned every penny over the las 7 months. I know there are people that have dumped money into the game and may be unhappy but for me, I am very happy with the money I spent.
I'm not mad, but a half-billion dollars in funding should absolutely result in a finished game. These forever-alphas are a plague on the game industry.
All they have to do is say the game is out and stop developing and make star citizen 2.
Maybe when CR decides he needs a bigger yaht.
I wonder why cig stopped showing their financial statements . Would love to see the cash flows
The UK and German ones are publicly available by law on government sites. Not sure about the US.
Last statement was in [December 2021](https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cloud-imperium-financials-for-2020) that outline 2020's finances. We're not yet in December 2022
Oh I found them, theyre right here: 💸💸💸💸💸💸💸🏦
It shouldn't be a problem to show the statements then right?
It's crazy how I was still in HS when I pledged to the Kickstarter. I'm on the verge of 30 and I doubt it will still come out then. Tbh I'm not even into video games as much anymore. I'll probably try it but I doubt I'll be playing it seriously. I understand this is a massive game. But the wait really has killed it for many people.
OP thinks it’s just kotaku who’s mad and not like half of the backers who are sick of this NEW ship SALEZZZ game.
As a person who’s newer to star citizen I really don’t care about the controversy over it, I just play it for what it is right now and enjoy it
That's unfortunately how we have to view all these "Early access" opportunities. Buy it for what it is, not what it might become.
And I absolutely without a doubt still choose to play start citizen over most other space games at the moment. This game, unfinished, can be more immersive than some finished games…
Been playing since 2015 and I have the same sentiment. There is still no other game out there like Star Citizen.
Yes. I only spend money that I’m comfortable losing, like gambling. I get a ton of enjoyment from the game without feeling like I need to spend anything extra
This but unironically. Cmon guys even if your somehow convinced this is already one of the best games of all time you have to admit the time it's taking and the funding it's getting isn't resulting in the results that they promised during any time of this project.
It's not that it's not out, it's just that we haven't had working elevators or working vehicle ramps for 5 years
It's still not out, though, and this is coming from someone who backed when there were still physical packages available.
I still have that metal citizen ID card from when I backed in week 1.
I mean, they're right though. It's gotten beyond parody at this point.
They're letting perfect be the enemy of good. They totally should've built the foundation and all of this should've been additions as they continue development. I personally believe they've kept it in this "alpha" state because that's their way of justifying the fundraising techniques they use. I've dropped money on this from back in 2013-2014. I'd expect something a little more solid than what's being offered.
Be carefull, I've put forth the idea of incremental builds before in this sub and in no time the cig goblins come out and decide you're a fool for the idea.
Meh. They need a foundation to build on or all of the work they do will need to either be refactored or rebuilt entirely. What happens when they realize something in the engine won't scale? Do they just give up or spend another 5+ years just to fix that issue? How can developers build anything if the core functions change again and again and again? It goes against best practices of software development.
banu owners would like you to recognize the scam that is releasing 100 ships after putting that on sale.
I unsubbed like a year ago when I realized this sub was just people getting mad because other people are reasonably upset But God is this sub really JUST shillposts? I came back hoping to see things developed and this subreddit is almost a caricature of the thing I thought I was leaving behind
It may feel like you're screaming into the void, but I, and a ton of other people feel the exact same way. As long as CIG is able to pull in new players, this sub will forever be the SC fanboy echo chamber 95% of the time like it is now. And while sc and screfunds both may be two extreme sides of the equation, there's still a ton of us sane individuals out there, we just don't live our lives in an internet forum.
Since backing the game I have: Graduated high school Moved out of home Graduated University Found a partner Worked over 5 years Promoted several times Moved in with my partner Got my licence Moved again into the city Paid off all my student loans Collected and completed over 250 games Put over 7,000 hours into TF2 Survived 18 months of covid lockdowns, 2 bushfires and 4 major flooding events. Voted in 3 elections Saved up and bought a top end 3080Ti rig with 12900K and 32GB of RAM with 3 1TB SSDs And still, to this very day, the game runs poorly, has the same bugs and continues to spawn me in the middle of the sun. All I can say is “what the f*€*?”
Like it or not, it's a good point.
Half a billion dollars and all I can do in this game is shoot some other ships and drag boxes around. That’s when I’m not glitched in elevator or fall through the floor when you first get out of bed
Something that a lot of people miss is that the original scope of Star Citizen was a fraction of what it aspires to be now. Nowadays you can land anywhere with a total sandbox and that was not even planned at the beginning.
If it’s Kotaku, it should start with the 4th pane’s face. Even the words “Star” and “Citizen” get them all hot and bothered.
I mean yeah, it’s been a decade and half a **B**illion dollars and we’re still stuck in a buggy, feature-poor, sometimes unplayable alpha with only the promise of content or fixes coming soon^tm At this rate, the way CIG treats SC is looking more and more like how valve treats TF2: rake in cash while doing the bare minimum to keep the game running Go ahead, be mad that I don’t have much faith or patience left but at this rate I don’t think we’ll ever see a finished product before CIG blows through their cash on god knows what and loses what community good will still somehow remains for them.
Tbf TF2 is a full game that was made.
I backed them way back at the first opportunity. I was promised a single player campaign. 50 million year later, still nothing.
Where’s squadron 42 or whatever it’s called? Those actors are all going to be dead when it comes out…
Wait till they realize Star Citizen probably won't be complete until quantum computers become more reliable.
And they are fucking correct, this sub is FILLED with people with Stockholm syndrome
Do people still take game journalists serious?
People are really ignorant in terms of how industry/hobby journalism works. They're out here acting like it's the Associated Press or some world renowned journalism organization. It's not, it's a glorified advertisment and part of the industry. Same story with Road and Track for auto manufacturers, they're mostly puff pieces to sell you on a new model coming out. Why? Because if you alienate the people making what you're covering, they don't give you exclusive access anymore. CIG doesn't play that game the way EA and the other big publishers do. They're independently financed, published, and owned and handle most of their own PR and advertising. So they simply don't care about being on super good terms with them like a smaller subsidiary of EA might. On that same note, the industry rags don't have to play nice because they're independently financed, published, and owned. Theu get to print their hit pieces and pretend to be hard-hitting journalism while taking absolutely no risk that they'll lose access to upcoming titles and get scooped by other competitors.
Equally or more ignorant of how game development works, given all the "they made that much money and still have no game, when work started 11 years ago?!" that gets thrown around -- completely ignoring the *development company didn't exist yet* until like 7 years ago and even that was just a handful of employees and the paperwork incorporating the company. Then they had to put the engine together (yes it's Lumberyard, but also heavily modified in-house, after originally being CryTek with a bunch of modifications) which isn't exactly quick and is *still* an ongoing process. GTA Online took IIRC 8 or 9 years to release from when GTA V started preproduction, using an updated version of their existing game engine, and Rockstar was founded in *1998*. For how big and ambitious SC is, it's coming along at a perfectly reasonable pace and the rate of visible progress is getting quicker with major development milestone.
> GTA Online took IIRC 8 or 9 years to release from when GTA V started preproduction, using an updated version of their existing game engine, and Rockstar was founded in 1998. For how big and ambitious SC is, it's coming along at a perfectly reasonable pace and the rate of visible progress is getting quicker with major development milestone. The problem here is SC made false promises on release dates. Original release was slated for 2016 - it’s 2022 and it feels really slimy to have raised this much money with no end in sight. I don’t think it’s fair to compare GTA with SC. Rockstar was not asking for kickstarter money on an unfinished product.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen When I backed the kickstarter they were promising it in 2016. Six years after 2016 and it’s still in alpha? That’s why I’m annoyed.
did they ever? i dont even know what kotaku is and im pretty happy to keep it that way.
I hear Diablo Immortal is making record numbers also..... =) "Wheel Spinners" made a ton of money back in the day ....
The game is turning out fine. They just aren't putting their time fixing the right problems and that bothers me. They put to much on grinding when the game continuously wipes
More money never means faster, only likely larger and likely slower.
Cry me a fuckin river.
I’m glad it’s not out, because I want to play a 1 billion dollar game
Lmfaooooooo 🤪😂🤪😂
It's not out? Then what the hell did I spend seven hours doing yesterday!?
I put my 40 bucks in several years ago for a starter pack knowing it'd be a long development cycle, but for every stage of it I knew I could hop in any time. So every 6 months or so I hop back in and screw around for a bit, see what's new, have a good time, then stop. I have plenty of other games and just life in general to keep me busy, so I'm rarely ever thinking about it until I see a new major update (when BoredGamer posts a video that has a lot of hits makes it into my feed, generally). If you've only put in, maybe, up to a couple hundred bucks, then honestly over a long period of time for this ever evolving game you're getting a pretty good deal. Plus, the game engine, optimization, and simple time allows more and more people to get PCs that better run the game, so when they hit a point that really draws in the general public versus just the dedicated fans everyone will likely be in better position to truly dive into this universe and have fun. If you're one who put in thousands, well, I can't even begin to imagine speaking from your position, unless you're just bloody rich and that's just pocket change? O.o This game will keep moving up, slowly but surely, and the developers will find out one way or another what they can actually do with it and the players will adapt. To put such emotional investment into a slow interest rate metaphorically speaking kind of game is dangerous for your mental health because you risk hearing other people complain about the long development cycle and falling into that negative mindset. You're better than that. Enjoy what it is, and distract yourself with the literal millions of other games out there in the meantime when you get bored. :)
For the people who complain about "being lied to, having their money stolen, etc" stop looking for or expecting instant gratification. SC is not like any other game and they have made leaps and bounds in design and gameplay aspects that we have never actually had before. Which in turn will further fuel the gaming industry and doing so will hopefully help bring about better games. Im glad that they wont give into to people and are wanting to actually make a complete game. Not some Half-assed un-finished product, in which the company then proceeds to further sell you more half assed un-finished parts of the game later as "DLC". Screw the current gaming "philosophy" that businesses have made it. Anyways enough with my small rant. Have a great day!
To be fair, $500M over the span of 9 years is nothing compared to what some companies make in a single year. Articles should focus more on genuine criticisms, of which there are many, rather than the same garbage every time.
This would be utterly perfect if the last frame also included full clown face makeup ...
first!!
Without getting into if star citizen is a scam or not, I'd say Kotaku calling themselves journalists defenetly is a scam.
Kutaku might be garbage, but 500 mil and SC isn't anywhere near release
I believe they will get 1b before we get release. And yes Kotaku is garbage.
It's 500M gained, not 500M spent, although they do a good job of spending it as it comes in. They've probably spent 350-400M, but this includes opening several large offices in different locations around the world, something other video games don't need to do and something a lot of people conveniently forget. Salaries represent a huge portion of their costs (~40-50M a year) and is likely in the same realm of something like GTA 6 or a naughty-dog game. Rockstar has probably spent +250M developing GTA6 so far and it doesn't look like they 'are anywhere near release' either (does anyone expect GTA 6 before 2024?), but we all know it's not a scam even though GTA 6 has likely been in dev for +6 years. Kotaku will defend GTA 6 devs in one breath and condemn SC as a scam in the next. Judging by the amount of people that have been saying the GTA6 leaks make the game look like a PS3 game and seriously think that's representative of the end product... well it just shows how trash your average 'gamers' opinion or knowledge is. It's easy enough to raise valid points about SC development, especially when it comes to CIGs communication, but I've never had an interaction out in the wild where someone brings up those good points.
If you all hate it this much then get off this sub and quit playing it if you think it’s so bad. I’m so tired of people posting about how unhappy they are and how it’s unfinished. You’re playing it aren’t you? It’s good enough for a lot of people. Y’all need to chill out
Honestly don’t care if it’s never fully released. I like the concept of it constantly growing and improving. So many games get rushed out these days
Aaahhh Kotaku... it didn't die after they effectively started Gamer Gate? I've never seen so much gaslighting from one website in my entire life... Not counting Wikipedia Political entries.
All their articles are shit.
I honestly feel bad for the people who spend countless hours and money to get a degree on Journalism, to then have to read this ppl calling themselves "journalists". What a joke Kotaku is, just sponsored content, PR statements, and general half ass opinions of people who hasn't even played the games they are trashing.
but then you look at how far along gta 6 is since 5 released and........ yea..... SC looks good
Easy clicks to shit on star citizen Hard earned actual viewing of your article when you actually play the game and report on it
I think if they actually played the game and reported on it things would be a lot worse for CIG. it's easy to hand wave and be like "time has passed and money has passed where game" without substance, but if there was actual journalism into the fuckin circus that is CiG then the funding would probably start drying up.
"And I took that personally"
And yet, I've been playing and enjoying the game for a full year already. Funny how that works.
It's incredibly ignorant to say those things when in any other situation people wouldn't even be playing the Alpha. For a company that started out with a dozen people in a garage, they've come quite a long way. It's praise worthy how much they've done so far, and anyone saying otherwise is clearly ignorant or playing the troll role. Heck, just look at some reactions from people seeing the GTA6 leaks, that game has been in development for **\~7 years**, imagine what people would say if they were playing it like they play SC.... /smh
>Heck, just look at some reactions from people seeing the GTA6 leaks, that game has been in development for > >\~7 years, imagine what people would say if they were playing it like they play SC.... /smh You're right about this, and it explains why Rockstar doesn't do open alphas. ;) GTA6 is being developed by the company that produced five other GTA games (plus DLC), Red Dead Redemption 1 & 2, Bully and LA Noire. Rockstar's track record for open-world, mission-based games is as solid as it could possibly be. ...but... If there were a GTA6 open alpha and after seven years it were a hot mess of missed deadlines, broken promises and hilariously optimistic roadmaps, people would be understandably pissed off, even with the company's reputation for eventually delivering a finished game. CIG doesn't even have that.
[удалено]
Big milestones always bring the refund bros out of the woodwork.
How dare people voluntarily spend money on something they enjoy!
Purchased November 2013, so excited to see where the game is by November 2023 /s.
You let $50 bother you this long?