Star Citizen’s Chris Roberts Comments on Pay-to-Win Accusations

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Megalith

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In a post announcing the October 10 release date of Star Citizen Alpha 3.3, Chris Roberts offered insight on the removal of the player UEC wallet cap, which led some players to believe the title was turning into a pay-to-win game. This was done to make it easier for those who invested heavily in the now-defunct Voyager Direct web store (e.g., buying more than 150,000 UEC worth of items) to better segue into the current, in-game purchasing system. He also maintains that everything can be “earned in game via normal and fun gameplay.”

Not only that, but there will also be plenty of things that can only be earned by playing the game. Last but not least, Roberts confirmed that some players will have more than other players either because they will be grinding or because they have purchased better ships or equipment. In other words, yes; Star Citizen could turn into a pay-to-win game, though – as already mentioned – Roberts did say that everything that players can purchase can be obtained by simply playing the game.
 
Having items available in game doesn't make it not Pay 2 win. The Definition of Pay 2 win means you can pay money instead of investing game time to gain an advantage. Things like cosmetics aren't P2W because they don't give any advantage..Things like experience boosts..more powerful ships etc are absolutely undeniably P2W and no amount of reality distortion is going to change that. Sorry CR Try again..SC is absolutely P2W and there is No disputing that.
 
tetris42 said:
I'm with Chris on this one. You need to have a game in the first place for it to be pay to win, thus, nothing to worry about.
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I know, currently this is not pay to win, just pay and watch your e-peen sag ,as next month they announce an even bigger ship you can pre-order!
 
Dougie said:
I don't think people should keep putting money into this game at this point, but also I'm kinda tired of all the hate, it's really unpleasant how so many people want other people to get screwed.
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I want the project to succeed. But I can't deny my own experience. I'm not an apple fan. Apple shills and sc shills have quite a lot in common. They both will try to convince people that even the worst thing is actually a good thing and it is therefore by design.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Having items available in game doesn't make it not Pay 2 win. The Definition of Pay 2 win means you can pay money instead of investing game time to gain an advantage. Things like cosmetics aren't P2W because they don't give any advantage..Things like experience boosts..more powerful ships etc are absolutely undeniably P2W and no amount of reality distortion is going to change that. Sorry CR Try again..SC is absolutely P2W and there is No disputing that.
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A lot of people like to argue semantics these days, but when P2W first became popularized back in the late '90s(?) no one argued that paying for anything outside of the base game and/or subscription was considered P2W. There seems to be an evil aura surrounding the term which is what puts a lot of people off to it; this is usually caused by bad development decisions which are normally forced changes to the game design/economy brought about by corporate or financial backers demanding to see larger quarterly outcomes or a return investment.

If you really want to see how heated the P2W debate gets, hop on Black Desert Online and shout something about P2W or wait for a few hours on the newb server (or a day on any other for that matter), you'll see the debate heat up really quickly going into high detail about semantics if the fanatics are feeling frisky.
 
Skull_Angel said:
A lot of people like to argue semantics these days, but when P2W first became popularized back in the late '90s(?) no one argued that paying for anything outside of the base game and/or subscription was considered P2W. There seems to be an evil aura surrounding the term which is what puts a lot of people off to it; this is usually caused by bad development decisions which are normally forced changes to the game design/economy brought about by corporate or financial backers demanding to see larger quarterly outcomes or a return investment.

If you really want to see how heated the P2W debate gets, hop on Black Desert Online and shout something about P2W or wait for a few hours on the newb server (or a day on any other for that matter), you'll see the debate heat up really quickly going into high detail about semantics if the fanatics are feeling frisky.
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I am going to do this while bored tomorrow.
 
im going to make a prediction....

this games actual community will be in the thousands not hundred thousands or millions id be supprised if it has a active community over 1000 now or when all is said and done just seems to much of a elitest tech demo meaning only those with systems above average and wallets above average will play also ive seen little in the way of content that would keep anyone for any period of time except those that have invested so much they are determined to get their investment back


basicly im saying theres better options
 
Dougie said:
I don't think people should keep putting money into this game at this point, but also I'm kinda tired of all the hate, it's really unpleasant how so many people want other people to get screwed.
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If his backers weren't warned them maybe I'd feel bad for them. But so many of his backers are such smug asshats that f them
 
as someone who supported the game.. yeah Chris can fuck off. His argument was basically you can't pay to win because there is no such thing as win..

"Win exists only in your mind my child you see the fancy business men with their super model wives and their sports cars and fancy homes but have they really won or is it the homeless man unchained by meaningless possessions who is the true winner." - some guy with a shit ton of money justifying spending a million dollars on a sofa while other people starve.
 
Cobalt35 said:
All this time and still only announcing Alpha 3.3. I wish I could say that even the die-hard fans should be over it by now, but stupid people be stupid people.
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I don't think I've ever seen such a high alpha revision number.
 
Dougie said:
I don't think people should keep putting money into this game at this point, but also I'm kinda tired of all the hate, it's really unpleasant how so many people want other people to get screwed.
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I've rarely, if ever, seen anyone on [H] that wants it to fail. Most of us were excited when we heard a new WC like game was under development, but we are years past when Chris claimed it'd be out and there's not even a beta product.

Our outrage is often directed more at those that defend Roberts' tardiness as normal
 
Can you pay money to get things that can help defeat others? Yeah? Then it's pay2win period.

Because at the end of the day offering a mechanism that allows someone to leap frog over another without actually playing makes it pay 2 win.
 
As long as people are calling SC a pay to win game... Roberts wins.

Its not a game.

Its not in actual real development.

SC is to video game software... as Phantom is to video game hardware.

Roberts belongs in prison. Although with the way the laws are structured in the US that won't likely happen... especially if he finds a sucker to unload cloud gimporium software on. Anyone that believes Roberts exit plan for SC and Cloud Imp isn't the same scam he pulled with Digital Anvil... is stupid. I really hope this time around there isn't a company as bone headed as MS willing to be suckered into his game developing con. Hopefully he is stuck holding the bag till the bitter end and the inevitable law suits, and hopefully criminal investigation.
 
Everything that players can purchase is available by simply playing the game = grindfest for freeloaders. Just call it for what it is.

In Forsaken World, someone calculated that you would have to spend over a hundred grand to max out a character. Literally just one. That's just for stats. That's not including gear, orb mounts, etc. Doing it the freeloader way, you would literally spend 10 years just trying to max them out, assuming no new stuff was added in that time frame to extend it even longer. And that was about 6 or 7 years ago when I still played.
 
ChadD said:
As long as people are calling SC a pay to win game... Roberts wins.

Its not a game.

Its not in actual real development.

SC is to video game software... as Phantom is to video game hardware.

Roberts belongs in prison. Although with the way the laws are structured in the US that won't likely happen... especially if he finds a sucker to unload cloud gimporium software on. Anyone that believes Roberts exit plan for SC and Cloud Imp isn't the same scam he pulled with Digital Anvil... is stupid. I really hope this time around there isn't a company as bone headed as MS willing to be suckered into his game developing con. Hopefully he is stuck holding the bag till the bitter end and the inevitable law suits, and hopefully criminal investigation.
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So, you going to back any of that up with proof or.....? I have a lot of issues with SC and Roberts, but I don't for a moment believe that he is intentionally scamming people. You don't buy multiple studios and hire hundreds of people to pull off a scam. And if you think for one second that they could prevent hundreds of people from talking if Roberts and co really were intentionally scamming people I've got a piece of moon front property to sell you.
 
N4CR said:
I don't think I've ever seen such a high alpha revision number.
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You know the worst part? Being a software engineer, I could make an engine from scratch with all this functionality in about 18 months with a relatively small dev team. There's literally nothing there whatsoever that's that difficult to actually do.

This is the modern Duke Nukem Forever; the game will eventually "release", and the opinion will be "How the heck did it take this long to implement this little this badly?"
 
Derangel said:
So, you going to back any of that up with proof or.....? I have a lot of issues with SC and Roberts, but I don't for a moment believe that he is intentionally scamming people. You don't buy multiple studios and hire hundreds of people to pull off a scam. And if you think for one second that they could prevent hundreds of people from talking if Roberts and co really were intentionally scamming people I've got a piece of moon front property to sell you.
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You understand Roberts can't get actual real investors anymore right ? You know why that is... its not because investors don't see the value in Space games, or some other BS that Roberts spins. Its because Roberts has been taking investors for a very long time. Many of his German investors have managed to get their money back good on them, not that I feel that sorry for idiots that bought into a tax shelter scheme.

SC supporters seem to forget that Roberts initial pitch was... crowd source me X amount of money and I have investors lined up ready to jump in and finish this game.

Digital Anvil Roberts first game company released ONE game which was really developed by warthog games. It was a co poduction, the type where Warhog did all the real work and the team up allowed them to slap Roberts name on the game. After that they started developing Freelancer (or so they claimed) Roberts suckered MS into purchasing Digital Anvil, MS was at the time buying up smaller studios with projects getting ready to ship so they could land some exclusives. They where sold on a development house that had a game 90% complete. After they bought DA they realized their error. They got suckered hard Freelancer was barely a started project. All the other games DA was supposedly working likewise no where close to complete.

After that Roberts got into movie production. The only thing Ascendant Pictures was any good at was laundering money, and enabling German tax evasion schemes.

Roberts has a long history of fraudulent business practices. He escaped justice as I see it in the whole VIP medienfonds thing. Schmid went to jail.. and multiple German banks ended up paying back millions to investors. To be clear... when that fund was being sold ROBERTS claimed to have raised over 750 Million dollars for production of 20 films. (VIP pulled in north of 900 million... almost all of their shady money was tied up with Ascendant projects) The German court did want to talk to Roberts about what and when he knew what... but he wiggled out of showing up and sold off or closed down everything he could which seems to have worked for him. (I doubt Roberts ever chances going on a German Vacation)
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0343266/news

The long and short is... all his movies where financed with German medienfond money. Where the fund manager would take peoples "investment money" at the time Germany considered investing in a movie production a business collaboration instead of an investment... meaning there where massive tax advantages. The fund managers however would only spend 20% of the fund on actual movies... they would deposit the rest into their bank accounts, and take out loans secured by the money. Investors would get a guaranteed payout down the road at some point no matter how much money the movie project made or lost. So for German investors it was a tax shelter that paid them back their principle 10 years later. The fund manager would keep their money... and pay off the bank loans with interest, movie profits if there where any, and really by simply getting new investors to pony up for new productions. (there was very much a ponzi element to the scheme)

Roberts knew exactly what he was into.

Now.... he is getting investment money he doesn't even have to pay back. I have zero doubt he has spent 20% of that money at most on the actual production... while the remaining 80% is in his bank account making him money. When he eventually sells Cloud Imp... I'm sure his books will show that 100% of those funds where spent. lol

PS to really boil down the response....
Do you believe his production of Lucky number sleven... lord of war... outlander ect ect where scams ? no you don't because you see a movie. However they where scams... his German partners went to jail and the German banks that bankrolled all those films have lost civil cases in the 10s of millions of dollars with investors. It was all a big scam. The German Gov even changed their laws for movie investment in 2010.... because of VIP. (more then 3/4 of the films VIP financed where Ascendant films... and 99% of the money used to make Ascendant films came from VIP)
 
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In EvE you could slap down a CC and plex your way into a Titan. I don’t see anybody really claiming that EvE is P2W.
 
Wow, [H]ardOCP, where the "intelligent" trolls be lurking. Am I shocked? Naaaaah.

I look at it this way... If it succeeds,which it very well may, many can enjoy eating Troll-nails. If it fails, well I guess we have almost 500, push-the-envelope-and-say-what-if, game developers that will shift off to other projects bringing with them a much needed infusion of experience that will only help the formulaic stagnation in an industry that many of us have chosen to accept as the norm.

Sounds to me more like a win-win for all of us.
 
Yeah I'm with most of yall... how can it be P2W when the game is still Alpha? I WANT this game to be released, but then what will it be?

I guess I need to dig up my old ISOs of Freelancer...
 
dougdougdoug said:
Anytime I read this:

everything can be “earned in game via normal and fun gameplay.”

I know they are full of shit.
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Yeah, no way in hell you're getting the current ~$!50 ships with 10-15 hours of gameplay. Seems like it will be closer to 100 or so hours to get a decent fighter. Anything bigger may take even longer.

They claim once the game goes live ships will no longer be sold. But will they continue to sell short cuts such as in game credits, resources or items used to get the ships notably faster? Doubt it. Sure you can't buy a ship, but you can buy 100,000 UEC to buy a fighter for $200. Totally not pay to win. A starter scout ship can take down a top of the line fighter. Really, we promise.
 
LightsOut41 said:
Except for the people that lost thousands based on CR's bold-faced lies.
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Don't feel sorry for those who spent thousands or even tens of thousands on this game. They pledged/donated the money knowing damn well that they may never see a return in the form of a completed game with possibly years of enjoyment value. Seems like everyone gets their information from front page click-bait articles now days or perhaps genuinely don't comprehend or don't want to understand the ludicrous ambitiousness of this game. Pot shots are an easy hit when you are standing in front of the barn with a shotgun.
 
LightsOut41 said:
Except for the people that lost thousands based on CR's bold-faced lies.
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Have you seen any one of them admitting that it was a loss? They are the ones fighting for his honor tooth and nails. And claiming they're already reaping the benefits of their clever investment.
 
LightsOut41 said:
Except for the people that lost thousands based on CR's bold-faced lies.
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Didn't they say that all purchases could be refunded up until the point of release? If so, then refusing to return money is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
 
Lakados said:
In EvE you could slap down a CC and plex your way into a Titan. I don’t see anybody really claiming that EvE is P2W.
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Because no-one cares about eve. Is it even a game? I'm not so sure.
 
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