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That’s cause Star Citizen is a grift.
100% selling hopes and dreams. I understand there's a playable alpha, I was a backer for over a decade. There is no cohesive vision, just endless theory crafting and half baked implementations to maintain the illusion of progress, but every time they add something, they seemingly need to break something else for their 8 ticks-per-second system to be able to handle it...
I have fun. You don't have to pay more than the 45 € beginner pack, if you don't want to. Its still rough but you can see how the pieces start fitting together.
You don't have to pay more than the 45 € beginner pack
That's an absolutely obscene ask for an eight-year-old game with no prospects of being finished in the foreseeable future – let alone that it has macrotransactions for things like paints and intentionally puts you at a disadvantage to players who paid hundreds of euros for this stupid piece of shit grift.
nah it's not pay to win. it's not hard to earn in-game money and buy ships with that
Eh,depending on which state the "economy" is in, it can be pretty hard. There's threads all over spectrum about how Grundy and broken things always are.
If there was much game to actually win, I would definitely call it pay to win.
it’s not hard to earn in-game money and buy ships with that
If you can skip that process by paying real money, and the things you unlock are gameplay affecting upgrades, then that's pay-to-win. That's what the phrase originally meant before being diluted. Non pay-to-win microtransactions are purely cosmetic.
Not that people should be playing any game that's infested with a microtransaction funding model. Let alone one with a base price of $45, let alone one with absolutely absurd "micro"-transactions meant to prey on mentally ill people, let alone one that's already taken people's free money only to implement all of the above.
At one point in time horse armor was enough cause controversy. How did it all go so wrong?
I'll wait thanks, I have not paid that much in a game all year and don't intend to start now on something so unfinished.
they've funded a billion dollars and worked over a decade on a game. it should not be rough.
I've watched the pieces "start fitting together" for like 14 years now... There is fun to be had, but it's an ocean wide and an inch deep imo. SC stopped being fun for me the moment I realized most of the fun I was having was imagining hypotheticals to pass the time while fighting their shit product to function in some meaningful way. This becomes especially painful when you see all of the effort is supposedly going into a single-player game that we've barely seen while they fail to deliver an acceptably functional version of the product we actually play and use the ships we payed money for in...
It has other massive problems with the company's motives. For example: why balance the game to incorporate cohesive and effective multicrew ships, and sell 1 person a 725$(CAD) ship (hammerhead) to invite 6 other people to crew, when they can leave it's future balance a dream and have everyone in OP F8s (or whatever the current light fighter "meta" ship is at the moment) for 260$ each... 725$ dollar multicrew ship, or 1,820$ in light fighters. hrmmmmm A Hammerhead should melt light fighters according to it's stated purpose when sold, but it's been effectively useless for years and years now, as one very clear example of what's going on overall.
Multicrew will NEVER BE FUN until they're done milking their base, and they'll never be done milking their base.
Doesn't matter that you can try the game for free several times a year either. Stop having fun! Grrrrr!
/s
"Hey come pay yesteryear's AAA title price for a game that's been overpromising and underdelivering for the better part of the past two decades" is not the sales pitch you think it is...
Sunk cost fallacy is a bitch. One must be severely delusional to think that after paying however much you did AND waiting for 12+ years, having a barely playable alpha when the original timeline was for a 2015 release AND it's still being promised for a 2027 release (which, given the state of the alpha, is likely to be missed too), this is in any way acceptable.
How much of a financial investment do you think €45 is over 10+ years? It's nothing. There's literally no sunk cost fallacy here
Holy delulu. The fact that you didn't get anything for over 12 years AND you still protect the company AND urge others to invest is proof of the fallacy here. The inability to admit you've been scammed. That you didn't get what you've been promised over and over and over.
Bruh lmao
Where did I urge anyone to buy the game? Or protect the company for that matter?
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Hell of a grift.
Game development as a service.
$1 billion !?
That is insane.
Elite Dangerous had a budget of £8m... if Cloud Imperium Games can't release SC for a hundred times that amount it's because it's a grift.
You did a reverse EriKa KirK there. I think you meant "grift" not "gift"
I did indeed.
I blame Samsung's appalling autocorrect.
Probably want to get a different keyboard then (one that doesn't send them everything you type, for one)
so ducking annoying
🦆
🛞
it's because it's a grift.
Always has been.
Look at the price of those ships you can buy, its always looked like a very obvious attempt to keep rolling in money while always juuuuuuust being a bit too far away to release. But just give us a few more million and we'll toooootally release it.
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I'd be just fine with an Everspace 2 multiplayer expansion with just 1/10th of this budget.
I backed it a lifetime ago and have gone back and forth between “it’s a scam” and “maybe it could happen” so many times that I just don’t care any more. As broken as it is and as slow as progress has been, there has never been anything like it. I check in a couple of times every year and usually have fun seeing the sights for a week or two. I think I’ve had enough enjoyment from it to justify my original cost.
Even though their goals are unreasonable, irrational, and completely mad, they have somehow managed to fund stable development for over a decade and have actually made meaningful progress. Will I live to see it realized? Who knows. I wish them luck for both their sakes and the people who spent big money on this ridiculous dream, but unlike many others, I have no hard feelings personally. I’d like to see it realized someday, but I have no more money to give them even if I wanted to.
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I swear social media people with a very limited grip on what "scam" and "grift" means are more obsessed with Star Citizen than us who actually play it. I log on to do some space trucking when I need to relax, or want to check out whatever new has been added. I've gotten more value out of that game in the last couple of years than any I've bought since. Many AAA games I don't even remember playing.
I like this take.
It seems like there are ‘victims’ caught up in the hype and sinking way too much money into SC. But if the gameplay is enjoyable, and fits your budget? Enjoy it. Hell yes.
My friends were very excitedly talking about setting up a corp in this when it was first announced.
They wanted my buy-in, and I asked if I could be head of HR, to which they said "yes".
So I bought it, created our corp, and performed my ideal goal: set up a corp recruitment posting called "entry-level Star Citizen player" which required 10+ years in Star Citizen.
We're now at the point where I have to find my log-in and change that to 20+ for the joke to make sense again.
I spent 40$ on it back in 2013. I looked forward to playing the single player campaign.
Then I found a girl. Went through university. Got a career. Had two kids. Got a divorce. And now I have time to play it again, but feel like I've mostly grown out of gaming.
GG Chris Roberts.
Average Store Citizen player
We just need to buy another ship guise, they're so close to release!
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looks like shit
I can somehow understand the people who funded it in the first place, but who invests now in a project which has already been in development hell for more than a decade and produced barely anything playable. Every whale has already been milked - what return of investment can an investor expect of Star Citizen?
Not to defend SC too much, and full disclosure I don't play it. But I have friends who DO play it and it seems like they are having a lot of fun?
They aren't evangelists for the game or anything, so its not a fanboy situation. They just play it a lot, and with lots of other people. They have an online community and meet up IRL for events. Post vids of their exploits. It seems fun to me? I asked them about the bugs and stuff and they fully admit it is buggy and things are broken, they make no apologies for it. They figure out workarounds and share it with the crew. I don't know, these guys are usually pretty critical of games but they seem happy weirdly. Maybe a cult?
There is no fucking way that I am ever going to pay for a fake star ship or anything so I'm not even considering it. And the entire funding model of the game seems batshit insane to me. But to me it seems like the idea that the game is unplayable doesn't really match the reality? Its clearly not a good value proposition at all.
It definitely is actually "playable" now, and I've had a good amount of fun playing it this year, but it certainly isn't ready for release or anything.
That said, the network infra they have created is pretty cool: 600+ player servers with relatively little issue, and the goal of 1000 long term is quite a feat of engineering.
They fucked themselves overpromising so much back at the beginning by giving the release dates they did while using like, Unity or something, and now they have the infra/engine to deliver, but nobody trusts them to actually do so.
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It's still $45 to access the game if you don't have it yet(and that counts as a pledge, and therefore part of the game's funding), but yea as a player and a backer I essentially agree. You're basically spending money to skip game progression after the final wipe before release(whenever that happens).
IMO it takes some of the enjoyment out of the game even in its current buggy alpha form. You can earn basically everything except for the most recently(ish) released ships(and some cosmetic items) entirely within the game.
You do get a game to play for $45 though. A game with a zillion bugs and issues but a game nonetheless. I personally feel like it was worth $45 for the entertainment value I've gotten out of it. Not worth the amount I spent(like a decade ago), but the first $45 feels worth it now.
That being said, don't buy the game if you expect a polished experience.
yeah but how sick is the game gonna be after $1 billion in funding
People still contribute to this scam? That‘s a shame.
Gonna get Senior Citizen before full release Star Citizen
Me having spent zero dollars on this. Only interaction ever was installing that hangar thing back when it was the only thing. Maybe there was some demo when the space station first became available and some fps gameplay test.
Still looking forward to it. If the story is good, works on Linux, I'll buy it. I remember a decade ago being worried the Haswell and Maxwell PC I was putting together wouldn't be good enough when Star Citizen would drop. Not very concerned anymore
Star Citizen works well on Linux via a community-maintained tool called LUG. Getting other fancy peripherals like head tracking requires some creative use of a Windows VM, because those peripheral makers don’t support Linux. If Squadron 42 ever actually materializes, then the community will have it covered.
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this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2025
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