Just being eligible for it is a sign that you need to make some life changes.

I like elite dangerous but I don't like that you have to spend hundreds of hours grinding just to accomplish even the most minor gameplay advancement. No Man's Sky and Starfield are more playable space games that that grindfest. I wish someone would just remake elite dangerous for normal people.

The game costs $45, for the record. For an MMO. With no subscription fees.

WOW costs $155 per year.

Kinda hard to consider them poor if they can afford the $10k it costs to whale out $48k more :-\

Released is a strong word, lol. Agreed though, it is completely unprecedented

Seems it got much worse.

Seems like it's going great for the developer.

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I can only assume you've no idea what Star Citizen is. 🤦🏽‍♂️

I'd be willing to pay with real life money if they were real life spaceships.

Yeah, Star Citizen is world renowned master of squeezing immense amounts of cash from its userbase.

First, they have many ship tiers, and as the most basic ones cost $40+, they feel comfortable charging more for bigger ships, with some ships costing well over $1000.

Second, they commonly introduce wipes in updates, and those wipes only affect everything players accrued in-game, not purchases made with real cash. So you either accept having your entire progress wiped again and again, or you give up and buy your fleet for cash (and any meaningfully gamechanging ship costs hundreds of dollars). The developers claim that this is due to bugs and exploits being found, and that eventually everything will stay forever, no matter how you bought it, but they are obviously aware of the situation and will probably make sure this never happens.

Third, the game does a good job at immersing you into the universe, so some players really go for a second life there. For them, it is the successful counterpart of the Metaverse.

And just like that we end up with people spending insane amounts of money on in-game ships. Half of the players I know spent over $300 on the game, and I personally know people who spent upwards to $8000.

Scary part is that many of them aren't rich, and one of the people I know literally saved for years and hid $8000 from their family to buy a ship pack. He is living in Ukraine, a country with GDP per capita of $4350.

If this is a genuine question you have some epic story to treat yourself to about how the bestest game of all times was ~~made~~ promised

A few of the most broke-assed people I know in my gaming circles are all in on this game. The rest of us tried to gently prod them away but it's like a cult.

It is 100% a multi-level-marketing feeling I get from the active players that keep trying to reach out and get us in on it. I'm talkin late 90s Quixtar MLM pyramid scam feels.

unfortunately by todays late stage mercantile economy this is just a bad deal