Six Years Later, Star Citizen Is Still Raking It In

$330 for a ship is just plain ridiculous. I refuse to pay $30 for a ship in World of Warships, and that is a game playable now.

 

I hope for the players' sake, this game ends up being everything it's supposed to be.

 

ftfy

 

Star Citizen is a master class on profiting off irrationality when it comes to sunk costs.

 

holy fuck. nope. maybe if/when its done.

 

What a fucking ripoff of a game. Is 2948 the release date, seems optimistic at this point.

 

So do I because it isn't very good at the moment.

 

Can't be mad at them for their very unique business model.

There is a lot of value in someone owning something even if it's digital / virtual.

Also, I should point out a few obvious common sense legal points before I see anyone start yapping about how all of these is fraud and BS and this man and his company are ripping people off, etc etc. Which, there is a lot of talk out there amongst haters.

In short, no.

There is an inherently extreme amount of accountability at play here due to the utterly massive scope of the financials. Meaning, they are absolutely covering their asses with a small army of corporate attorneys. In fact, I am going to assume they have a few law firms working on their behalf in various roles / degrees.

 

This year's CitizenCON take was only about 50% of last year's total.

Hopefully people are finally waking up to this sham.

 

Add in Confirmation Bias of the White Knight Cult also.

 

Certainly it's the most anticipated game in the history of games. It cannot, in my opinion, be good enough to justify the wait. I listened to a bartender go on and on about that game three or four years ago. It's passe before being released.

 

why are people still giving this idiot money????

 

That's a lot of conjecture, there is no inherent accountability, because crowd funding creates no contract between the funder and the fund. There is no guarantee of delivery or that the product will even exist.

The only point you really have is that intangible assets can still have value, but in this case that value is predicated on the eventual use of those assets in a product.

 

I don't believe Roberts intended this to be a scam when he started; he kind of fell backward into making it a scam when he realized it would be much more profitable if the "game" was eternally in development. I think he was as surprised as anyone at just how many fools were willing to keep throwing money at him.

 

I watched Chris Robert's whole presentation where he laid out future plans etc.

I made it about halfway through before thinking "are you.... fucking.... kidding.... me??!??"

I'm so glad I never put any money into this trainwreck back in 2012 or whatever.

 

You sound as if there is no legal or social recourse on behalf of the backers, there is. You can go to prison, be fined, loss of professional reputation. Sorry, your career is over if you are a convicted felon especially at his level. Investors wouldn't even allow him in their offices to visit. This is not a $20,000 Kickstarter board-game that never see's the light of day.

In fact, I would direct you to the many cases where people have attempted to rip others off via these types of websites. Also, many states have proposed legislature that directly answers these risks.

There are dozens of press releases from AG's all over the country in this regard.

Here is one such example.

https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/ag-makes-crowdfunded-company-pay-shady-deal

If you want more, I can post additional content. State AG's are not playing around with these people any longer and haven't for the past few years.

To suggest there is no accountability is ludicrous.

Also, I would urge caution in your message here. You don't want to give the illusion that if you back any of these projects, you yourself / the general public are automatically at a loss if the project goes south. Many do, most don't.

 

Every time I see that name 'Roberts' I think of the Dread Pirate Roberts.

 

Isn't the reason he went to crowd funding because he was effectively blacklisted from the industry?

 

This game is branded like a cult/religion. Of course it’ll keep on making money from followers.

 

There are still people carrying water for this game. Reminds me of all those 80's televangelists. Beyond all rationale people keep throwing money at it.

 

Fools & their money.....

 

I think it is important to note the following.

First, nobody 'has" to buy any ships. 99.9% of all ships, items etc.. EVEN COSMETICS (the only exceptions of which I am aware are a few early crowdfunding era items) are said to be attainable in game. The only thing you need to play is a game package that includes a Star Citizen (ie MMO public universe key). If you want to play Squadron 42, the sister-project more traditional mission/story based space sim in the vein of an enhanced Wing Commander,, youi'l need a key for that as well. You can pick them both up in a package for around $60 last I checked - as with most crowdfunding titles earlier pledges get cheaper stuff (ie there was time when you'd get both for a $30 basic package if you purchased early , but there are often special events like CitizenCon itself and the Nov Anniversary sale when there are cheaper or packages with more stuff for the same price). Everything else you can attain in game.

Next, the "buying of ships" is basically a way to continue to expand development with a reward for those who want certain things "right away". Most importantly, this is a temporary measure that is planned to STOP when the game is launched, to be replaced by a system where the only things to buy with real money are in--game services (ie account tokens that can be used to create a totally customized NPC servant etc...), optional subscriptions (similar to those present currently, but revamped for post-launch I'd imagine), and a capped amount of the singular game currency, UEC (ie not special premium only currency, the basic "gold" so to speak). The exact amount we won't know, but the design docs say it is intended to be relatively low; allowing players who don't play as frequently for a week or two to make up some of the currency they may have otherwise acquired had they been playing an average amount and sufficient to pay their (in-game) bills like insurance, repair/refit/port fees etc. Other means of monetization include continued game sales and expansion-style content (ie SQ42 will have both minor and major expansions, both content heavy), but they're not planning on selling items for real money nor the volume of game currency that would effectively allow you to buy ships or whatnot.

So long as both of these principles remain true, I don't object overall or consider the game to have a player unfriendly / greedy monetization strategy. This is not to say there aren't some individual decisions that I've seen them make - especially in 2018 - that concern me, but the overall model does not seem to be "pay to win / pay to not suck / pay for exclusive goodies" or many of the other types of toxic monetization. Don't get me wrong, if CIG turns about on either of the above principles, I will be incredibly let down and furious, but if things are implemented as planned then they'll be one of the few MMOs (conventionally developed or crowdfunded) to monetize in a player-friendly way without exclusivity. I can understand why many object to selling expensive ships in development looking at it from how most MMO developers monetize - that it will either be a pay-for-exclusivity or a pay-to-win system etc. However, neither of these will be true if they keep to the above policies and everything falls into place.

I've backed more than a handful of ambitious crowdfunded MMO projects to see where they go, and Star Citizen is one of the ONLY ones that is not focused on exclusivity and FOMO. Most campaigns try to encourage pledging based on the idea that if you don't do so now, or pay X amount, you'll likely lose out on Y forever with Y being either unique items or cosmetic variants thereof. Didn't back during an early period or buy an expensive package? Well you'll never have THAT particular sword or THAT model castle because they're exclusive to backers from the Kickstarter era that are $1000 and up! Star Citizen is unique in that they don't do any of this - everything from the largest and most expensive ships to the cosmetics and other items will be able to be found in game (with a few minor exceptions that I don't find objectionable, like a single skin for those who were there prior to the first 5 million in funding)! I believe that this is one reason they did so well and had so many backers especially early on because contrary to industry and what has become the typical pathogenic monetization strategies today to squeeze people for all their worth, SC proved that an open-handed approach can be very successful as well. They didn't need to say "If you don't buy this ship skin now you';ll never see it again" , and I contend that they'd probably not do as well if they tried to be like everyone else!

I can only hope they remain constant and these policies do not deviate because doing so will hopefully have ripple effects throughout the entire industry, putting an end to the kind of restrictive and predatory monetization schemes (and associated issues_ that have become commonplace in many aspects of gaming today. Should they fall and end up compromising on their vision in order to maximize profit - even when things have been sustainable and profitable based on those contributing voluntarily - then it will prove the corrupting influences and be a massive disappointment, but all we can do is watch and wait.

 

The problem right now is not what they plan to do after the game releases. The problem is the fact that this "game" is still in alpha after 6 years and $200 million, and there is no telling when it will enter the beta phase, let alone actual release.

 

It will remain in alpha until their income begins to significantly drop, then they will bolt on a few more features and proclaim it is now in beta, and they will dangle that carrot for as long as possible

It's so frickin' obvious what is happening and how it's going to play out, yet still the mass of gullibles continue to heedlessly toss dollars at Roberts.

 

Yep, the problem is that $200M was not enough to take the game to beta stage. If that was not enough, what will be enough? $500M... 1bn... 2? Will the backers stop funding until this threshold is reached?

Was fun to watch the whole process, will be fun to continue watching.

On my side I gave Elite money before that game was released. I had my fun, but sadly the game diverged from my expectations after the release. However, at least there is a game out there and I had fun for a while.

 

Maximum effort post. I'm in for 5 JPEGs.

 

I paid 30 a million years ago. I have a semi-annual "is this a game yet" check I do.

It is still completely unclear if there will ever really be a "yes". And no, the tech demos with kinda-sorta-gamey-stuff doesn't count.

 

Its only been 8 years, cut them some slack, cmon! An ambitious project like Star Citizen needs at least 20 years to complete. Look forward to it anyway!

 

Humans will develop FTL travel before Star Citizen is released.

 

No studio sells shit like that and doesn't want people to buy them. The "they're optional" argument is and has always been bullshit with pay-to-win microtransactions. And, yes, SC is pay-to-win. It is one of the most extreme examples of it to ever exist.

 

Star Citizen sort of reminds me of the Crazy Horse Memorial. You can't say it's vaporware, because they keep working on it. But it does seem kinda slow, especially since they originally thought they'd be finished by 1980.

 

I believe that the same people keep giving money. They just can't deal with the fact they got conned. They keep pumping in the cash hoping that the ship gets righted and that a game will come out. I think it is about saving virtual face at this juncture.

 

I'm a backer (cheapest package) and feel like I'm getting my entertainment value from that money just screwing around with these alphas and watching the updates.

This update was amazing. A bunch of the worst qualities in games all in one stage demo!

• Bad/slow dialog from the quest giver.
• Fetch quest. Granted not a terrible one with the multiple parts and a bit of detective work, but still, pretty generic.
  
• Incredibly long transit times. I mean they were talking about trains to less populated areas running once every 5 minutes. Missed your train? You get to just stand there and wait. Fun!
• Griefing from other players. Some other player squad showed up and blew up their parked ship. Apparently multiple players will be given the same quests to encourage these lovely encounters. Time to walk back I guess, unless you have friends online and in the area.

Really impressive all of the whales CIG have managed to hook with this game though.

 

I can see this conversation in my head, where Robert's is talking to his wife or something, "They just keep throwing money at me! what am I supposed to do, other than roll in it, that is, we already that, didn't realize how hard it is to get lube off of $100 bills...."

 

This game is a big ass ponzi scheme. Once its "Finished" I'll bet you dollars to donuts that the developers will close up shop and take your money with them. The game will end up being vaporware or some kind of F2P game when the developers sell the rights to some Chinese development studio.

 

i'm just sitting back with popcorn and trying not to take a side. Will Star citizen ever see a dime of my money?

If they deliver a finished product? Maybe.

 

I used to think I could get into this game if it ever got released.

But as time goes on I realize this game will only cater entirely to the people whose real life is so uneventful and social-less that they have to live a “second life” in the worlds best most realistic space sim ever. The thought of even the faintest level of commitment is exhausting.

I’m sorry but I have a job, a life, and actual friends. No thanks.

 

Fuck this conversation until 2020. Which is getting close.

 

I think we need st4rk and Mut1ny 's deep insights here. Star citizen forever! /s