[atzero]

I am a Star Citizen backer, and have been since 2015. I have over $1200 spent in this game (over the course of the last 7 years). My most expensive, and longest held ship, the Orion, is not flyable yet. Yet, I regret absolutely nothing.

Its funny how you guys are saying "Why isnt it released yet", without also acknowledging that every single game that has "released early" has been a massive dumpster fire. Not to even mention that, CIG have literally had to create new tech out of thin air to accomplish their goals. The feats of strength CIG have pulled off are already huge.

They have created an in-game solar system, with full size planets, that you can fly around, walk around, with no loading screens, anywhere. They have created tech that allows artists to procedurally create planets, at will. Their Quantum AI simulation aims to be the largest, and deepest AI simulation in gaming history.

Couple this, with that CIG is really making two games. Star Citizen, and Squadron 42. Granted, we havent seen a whole lot of SQ42, but it is there.

Anyone that claims Star Citizen is a scam is hoping for its destruction and is being disingenuous. CIG is extremely transparent that this is not a finished product, and that you are buying a PLEDGE. They call the people who buy their pledges BACKERS. They literally make you click the box saying you understand that. They also publish a Roadmap and a Release Tracker, which they regularly make good on. However, certain top of line features are pushed so the teams can work on other things, and the hugely invested player base just wants to play the game that they enjoy with new stuff because they know that CIG is creating something special.

Look at the progress, and content added to the Persistent Universe over the years. We went from having just Port Olisar (PO), to PO and surrounding POIs, to PO/POIs to nearby moons that we couldnt land on, to PO/POIs nearby moons that we could land on, and so on. They added mining, missions, trading, hauling, bounty hunting, hacking, fps combat, even illegal drug smuggling. They have added hundreds of ships, ship weapons, and handheld weapons combined. Currently, Star Citizen has a larger weapon variety than Battlefield 2042. They have added 4 entire planetary systems including 4 major new cities, 4 major ports, several moons, all with their own points of interest. All without any loading screens whatsoever.

They even have a fucking convention every year called CitizenCon where they unveil a bunch of stuff they have been working on. In one of the latest ones, they showed off jumping to a whole new system.

Also what about their YouTube channel which has literally thousands of videos showing their progress over the years? Does that count for anything?

But no, its def a scam. Or, and more likely, its a game that a lot of people believe in, like myself. I would rather give $1200 to CIG for a moonshot game, that has the potential to be genre defining, than give it to scumbags like EA, Activision/Blizz, Ubisoft, etc, who release broken cash-games.

If SC is a scam, its the worst run scam in history.

[Jochim]

I bought a copy in late 2016. At the time CIG were running their "Answer the Call" campaign. At the previous year's citizen con they'd announced Squadron 42 would be coming out in 2016. When I bought in I figured even if they don't make the 2016 release window how long a wait could it possibly be, given they'd committed to 2016? Well, it's been 6 years and the email updates indicate that they're still working on extremely rudimentary features. They're nowhere near wrapping up something that was apparently a year away from release 6 years ago.

CIG later announced they'd be creating what is effectively a Battlefield clone called Theatres of War. Originally shown off at citizen con 2019, It's now been 2 years later and even that doesn't sound like it's coming any time soon.

CIG go beyond just giving bad estimates, they're persistently found to be outright lying about the state of the game and at the rate of progress they're making we'll probably be dead if it ever releases.

SC might not be an intentional scam, but if it isn't then the people running it are so incompetent that it might as well be.

[floren]

> If SC is a scam, its the worst run scam in history.

I don't know, it seems like Croberts and his buddies have managed to live pretty comfortably for over a decade by selling spaceship JPEGs and promises.

[toovs]

Did you even read the above post whatsoever? If all you have are spaceship jpegs, I'm not sure what game you're playing but it isn't star citizen.

[mrtranscendence]

I've never played Star Citizen, but I've heard from many parties that it's full of frequent, immersion-breaking bugs that aren't fixed in lieu of adding more new features. Is it a scam? Maybe that's too harsh. But it's eight years into unmet promises and scope creep, and that doesn't make me hopeful for the game's future.

[CobrastanJorji]

Instead of discussing whether Star Citizen is a scam, let's imagine what Star Citizen might have been like if it were a scam. Pretend you're a scammer. You're going to run a Kickstarter scam. You describe a huge video game that has a bunch of features everyone wants. You hope to rake in a few tens of thousands of dollars, but somehow it succeeds beyond your wildest expectations, and now you've got more money than you've ever seen in your life. So, what do you do if you're running a scam? Well, first you start using some of the money to raise even more money. Start offering a bunch of extras, solid gold spaceships shaped like dragons or whatever. Don't worry about game balance. Then use some of the money to develop an actual game demo. Don't worry about bugs, priority #1 is cool pictures that will enable you to raise more money. Keep spending more money on marketing. Keep reaching out for more rounds of investments. Do keep working on tech demos because you're now in the business of raising money. You're not at all opposed to actually making a game, and if you happen to finish making something, that'd be great, since you can sell it for even more money, but you've already achieved all of your goals. As things start to slow down, you announce another game and repeat the whole process.

Now, that's quite likely not what happened, but from the outside, the symptoms look the same. Here's what I imagine is most likely version:

I've got experience making space games. I want to make another space game. I take a guess at how much it might cost to make (say, $23 million and two years), but I'm not actually any good at estimating cost and development time. I'm in way over my head, but I've got a LOT more money than I've ever had to manage before, so at least I can hire a lot of people. The people I pick aren't any better at this than I am, or I'm not listening to their advice. We're two years out from launch. No Man's Sky comes and goes and the reaction to the release is existentially terrifying to me. Gotta keep adding stuff! Oh god we're running out of money somehow, gotta get more money so we can finish this. Hire more people! Oh god our staff is up to 600 and people think we're a scam just because we haven't released a game yet. Put the whole development calendar online, we're working hard here, please please make this work. We're two years out from launch. Oh god how are we out of money again. Raise more money, hire more people! The early graphics look stale now, gotta refresh them. We've been two years out from launch for almost a decade. I'm still confident that the game will be out in two years, but I'm smart enough to recognize that I've been confident about this for six years and that fact fills me with dread.