I can't imagine that people will keep shoveling money in for another ten years.

It sounds from the article like they're starting to lay people off.

Roberts then touched upon changes at Cloud Imperium Games, some of which have to do with recent layoffs and a controversial relocation plan IGN reported on last month. Rich Tyrer is now senior game director, overseeing the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42 alongside Roberts. Roberts said CIG had made the “difficult decision” to ask the Los Angeles development team to relocate to join other teams, primarily in Manchester, England, as well as Austin, Texas, and Montreal, Canada.

One member of staff called this “a mass layoff, disguised as a relocation of staff”, given the struggle in moving to another country “with little or no notice.”

If you did fund it early, you got ships with unlimited insurance and the single player game is part of your package.

Even if they release a road map to 1.0 have they hit any of their goals on previous road maps?

Skull and Bones...

This perfectly summarizes my experience every time I hop into the game after a year.

You're saying that physics based coffee in mugs and new cape physics didn't fix all the major issues when they implemented those two years ago? I swear they prioritize the dumbest work possible.

Just wait for server meshing bro /s

Oh there's a good reason for the flight controls change. Because the fucking neck beards who spend $10k on a "realistic flight sim" setup demand that their loud whining be accommodated or they will never stop whining on the official forums because their idiotic controllers couldn't beat people flying with a keyboard and mouse. Because, you know their Cheeto stained fingers obviously know more about how futuristic space combat will work than actual engineers designing a space combat sim.

This is basically why I stopped playing. The willingness to let idiots dictate game design and balance made the meta insufferable and impossible to follow.

Go comment anything other than throat-gargling fealty on their communities, and see how quickly the trogs pile on. 🤪

It's Twinkies, so a little different, but still tasty.

They wanna make a space life sim, basically. Right now you can buy ships with cash to support them, but can also use in game $. If you helped with cash, then you get certain perks like 1 off paint jobs, or lifetime in game insurance on the ship you bought. New mechanics have been slowly added to the game, in which if you have bought any cash ship, from $40 - 1000s, then you get their single player game when it releases, and immediate access to the games current online alpha.

The online alpha was SERIOUSLY impressive last I played, and that was early 2019. I bought a $35 starter ship pack very early on. I thought, "if this game succeeds then it'll be very worth it, if it fails or is a scam, I only lost $35." Which is what I think everyone's attitude should be towards it.

It's been in development for about 12 years. This was 6 years ago:

https://www.pcgamesn.com/star-citizen/star-citizen-pack-27000-dollars

For a game that isn’t technically out yet, Star Citizen is doing very well as it continues to rake in huge sums of money, and now there’s a new way to plunk down a bunch of it at once. The new Legatus Pack, which includes most of Star Citizen’s ships and a bunch of extras, is available for $27,000 USD.

Sure, that sounds like a lot of money, but consider what you’re getting: 117 ships, including the Anvil Carrack and Aegis Sabre, plus 163 extra items like the digital soundtrack and a digital copy of the Star Citizen novella.

I don't think that they started out intending to "scam" players. I think that what happened was that they just mismanaged a development project, and every time they slipped and missed where they intended to be, the only way to dig themselves out was to keep making more-extravagant promises and figure out ways to take in larger sums of money to "fix" things. And what actually happened was that they kept digging themselves deeper into a hole; there's no way that they're going to deliver something that someone who spent the kinds of money that they've taken in is going to be happy with, not to mention all the physical items that they've promised to develop and send to people and haven't. The developer doesn't even have a good way out if things go badly -- the developer can't cut off the process without the people who have committed money for all the promises feeling ripped off, and no one potential customer can end the process, can't say "well, the publisher cancelled the project".

Many years back, a traditional game development process would have had the publisher, someone familiar with the game development process, say "this project has gone off the rails" and have cut them off from more funds, but because they're getting funds by making more promises to players, they can keep going as long as players keep committing more funds. There's an increasingly-large divergence between promises and what they can do.

I think it just highlights why the traditional game development process makes sense. That is, there's a legitimate reason for having the publisher raise the money, have experience with the development process, and have oversight authority and milestones on a project and a single party with the ability to cut off funds if things go badly. If you're a developer, it may chafe to have a publisher breathing down your neck, but...

In this case that seems to be the crux of the issue. Star Citizen players pay top dollar for mediocre ingame content.

People who take money are expected to deliver equivalent goods.

Not really no

Except X4 is actually released with multiple expansions to boot.

I thought it was c-beams...

Neither of those games took more than a year or two to become enjoyable. Not to mention neither of them cost their buyers hundreds or even thousands of dollars to enjoy. Bit of a silly comparison.