And then, compare it to No Man’s Sky, who gave us lofty expectations, failed to deliver on launch, but actually kept with it despite no new revenue flowing into the game from existing buyers. And now we have something incredible. We have a universe that is unfathomably large. We have multiplayer, we have all sorts of events and quests. Freighters! You can piece together your own ships now.
I hope we can eventually build space stations or pilot Capital Ships. No Man’s Sky came out in 2016. In 8 years it has done far more than SC has done with far less of a budget.
Do I wish we could have everything that Roberts promised? Sure. But I also have a bridge to sell that you can at least walk over.
That was my concern long ago when I entered the game.
The problem is, CIG have financially incentivised themselves, knowingly or not, to never finish the game.
Being alpha game means you can wipe everything again and again. And they do! One thing they do not touch, however, are ships purchased with real world money. And players do buy those ships in order to not start the game from scratch over and over again, and pay a lot for it, in hundreds and often thousands of dollars!
Upon release, on the other hand, no wipes are planned, and this means one thing: revenue will absolutely plummet as players just buy ships for in-game currency instead of actual cash. Releasing the game now is a suicide move, as CIG won’t be able to blatantly extort players for their money anymore.
Not to mention that they also incentivise players to spend real-world money by having their website have a secret club for whales (I think you need to spend either $1K or $5K in order to have the button appear) to spend even more money then they did to even gain access originally.
Edit: clarity and conciseness: added “originally” to the end of the last sentence.
Yes, if you spend over $1k on the game you gain access to beta-testing etc.
And the most scary part? Plenty of people do spend this much money - I know many Carrack owners, for example, and this ship costed, when I remember it, $1200. Yes, very real $1200 for an in-game ship, and there’s plenty of buyers.
Heck, I know a person in Ukraine - not a high-income country by any standards, GDP per capita sitting at ~$5000, vs ~$85000 in the US - who spent about $6000 on the game by hiding huge portion of his income from his family for years. And this is not an exceptional case.
Yeah, Star Citizen is the world’s most expensive tech demo, that is the picture book definition of scope creep. It’ll just keep getting more and more complicated, but never get to any kind of a “complete game” state.
Do people just not know who and what Chris Roberts is?
This is what he’s done throughout his career - the only thing that’s notable about Star Citizen really is the scale of it and thus the opportunities he has to find ever more things to obsessively tinker with.
It’s entirely possible that if Microsoft hadn’t bought out Digital Anvil and given him the boot, this wouldn’t even be Star Citizen - it would be Freelancer, coming into its 25th year of delays.
I don’t, what else has he procrastinated on?
the wing commander series was famous for inflated development costs, freelancer was repeatedly delayed and eventually released like five years after it’s announcement, and since then… he’s been working on star citizen
Keep in mind Freelancer was released after Microsoft acquired Roberts’ company, kicked him out of a leadership role, and drastically slashed the scope.
Star Citizen is what happens when there is nobody above Roberts to say no, and now after years plenty of people under him with an interest in keeping the development churning.
Chris Roberts is still rich, and could probably retire right now without worrying about anything. He could tank the company, and he wouldn’t care.
When has any really rich person ever gone “you know what? I actually have enough now…”?
That’s the majority of them, but ragebait articles aren’t written about them, so you have no idea who they are.
Don’t be so easily manipulated by media.
I’ve genuinely been sat in meetings that got derailed for 30 minutes so that the placement of objects that players are likely never to interact with could be discussed in detail. There’s just no actual focus on getting the game done.
We have a saying here that translates to something like this: “perfect is the enemy of done”. Getting lost in details like this will always delay things a ton.
Also called bikeshedding.
My boss LOVES to throw that out all the time as a defense for when I inform him that he and mgmt are rushing something out the door that isn’t ready.
It definitely has wisdom but it’s not something to wave around all the time either.
Not that that’s the problem here, SC ain’t ever coming out and it’s not because of perfection. It’s because it’s a scam lol
Read this fucking gofundme trash: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals
Why would you complete a game when you can make a constant stream of income and increase that income stream with announcements and drip feeds.
Look at this madness https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals
Star Citizen sounds right up my alley in terms of game content and play, but I will never touch it due to the business model they’ve chosen.
All I want is a space pirate game that doesn’t require me to quit my job and dedicate my life to it in order to acquire a good enough ship to actually be competitive.
That, or a street racing MMO with realistic physics and a true-to-life level of customization and tuning, that has a map the size of small country. Like The Crew except no arcade physics and more than 5 players in a server. And also not shit.
Somebody, please make one of these two games already. I need this so badly in my lifetime before I die.
For racing, you have Fly Dangerous. It is also a successful FOSS game!
My dream is to make or at least be a part of the former
It is very hard
You want that online? If you’re okay with single player, the first one does exist: Check out the X series of games, the latest one is X:4 Foundations.
Idk about racing lmao
Gotta be online. Single player AI just isn’t good enough yet to entertain my dopamine-deprived brain. (I have ADHD).
I never fell for this, and I’m laughing at you if you did.
They got my $40 in 2012. I absolutely loved the Wing Commander series; Wing Commander II was an embarrassingly important part of my adolescense, I love space sims, and still had fond enough memories of the name Chris Roberts that I didn’t think he’d blatantly lie and steal from me.
How people are still giving these clowns money I have no idea.
One of my ex coworkers has spent somewhere in the ballpark of 12k. He sells, flips and trades rare ships to sell back to people after the exclusivity of the ship has expired. He’s made like 4k. I don’t understand gaming anymore.
to be fair this kind of expenditure and aftermarket exists in CCGs.
Yes of course! But I’d imagine the average CSGO/2 player is really only in for $100 or so on side market deals. Not 1000s. The lowest ship is like $35 or something.
CCGS, I meant like Magic the Gathering, Pokémon, Yu Gi Oh
What is ccgs?
Collectable card game.
Lol if that game is ever finished, I bet there’s going to be some people who paid way too much for a ship that turns out to completely suck but seemed ok on paper. Kinda like a PT cruiser, except it looked ok on paper.
Lmfao the PT Cruiser! My Grandmother’s new husband has one, and he put flame decals on it as one does…backwards.
Yes theres a shit ton to balance. Honestly no mans sky seems more appealing now adays. I might go fire that up on my xbone.
Squadron 42 is feature complete and is in optimization and polish phase. 30-40 hour campaign. It looks amazing. This was released this weekend, played live not prerecorded.
They released the game to the public this weekend? That is amazing.
Ohh, they didn’t? This is still not available? The FPS spin off that isn’t even the main game? They said it was played live but don’t show anyone playing it live? They just made more promises, the thing they are still doing after 700 million dollars and more than a decade has passed?
Okay then.
You sound like MAGAs discussing immigration under a Fox News post. Circle jerk of hate based on misinformation, but trying to talk reason to people who love to hate the thing they hate and don’t want to stop is not going to work. Keep on believing gaming journalists from disreputable tabloids who invent controversy for clicks. The engagement on Star Citizen hate posts is massive compared to others. Hating Star Citizen is directly more profitable for these sites. There is no oversight on truthfulness in gaming news.
CitizenCon was this weekend. There has been an uptick in hit pieces posted this week. That isn’t a coincidence. You are being being primed to react negatively to the content that will be posted from it.
No, it’s not an FPS. It’s 99% a space sim like Wing Commander with a few FPS parts. It is a full AAA game, maximum fidelity, 30-40 hour campaign. You don’t even know what you’re talking about. You could actually watch the video you have so many opinions about, but oh that’s right, it’s a conspiracy if it’s good.
I have hundreds of hours in Star Citizen and have enjoyed them all. That’s not very much compared to many, many others. They are growing in players and revenue for 10 years. That doesn’t happen to bad games. They release massive updates every quarter. They just bought a new campus in Manchester so they can hire more devs, on top of the existing thousand. It’s a genuinely fun game, right now, enjoyed by many. You don’t have to be one of them, but your tinfoil hat nonsense is just vitriolic skepticism from reading these tabloids, not critical thinking.
We’re out there, flying around, having a great time wanting y’all to join our space shenanigans. Just try it the next free-fly with an open mind. Even if you tried it before, try it now, it is improving every quarter, it’s a different beast now than a few years ago.
Man, when you have to compare someone to literal fascists because they don’t trust your untrustworthy videogame company, you have a problem.
I’m not, I’m calling them capitalist, investor run businesses, which they are. Inventing controversy is an ancient, reliable way to make money.
I’m calling star citizen haters a bunch of gullible cynics. There’s an emotional element in people’s need to hate star citizen. I think they’ve just been burned so much, any time something cool is promised, they automatically assume the worst. If Star Citizen delivers, it would be very, very cool and the hate is proportional. I’m having a great time in Star Citizen with a whole bunch of people right now. Anything else is just noise, be it promises from the devs or internet articles or salty people who can’t just ignore this game if they don’t like it like an adult.
Automatically assume the worst? WE’VE HAD OVER A DECADE to get to this point.
Every comment in these posts seems to be either “StarCitizen killed my family and dishonored my temple” or “can’t believe people let SC kill their family and dishonor their temple.”
Same old hate without real substance.
Chris can shut up the haters just fine by finishing the game.
Why do you need to publicly hate at all? These people are enjoying a toy they aren’t supposed to so now everyone has to hear your feelings on it? Y’all are nuts. Ignore the game if you don’t like it like you do with every other game you don’t like.
The haters can silence themselves by shutting up and touching grass. It’s a videogame, not a genocide.
They’re harpooning whales left and right, this isn’t some irrational difference of opinion.
So? A bunch a rich people voluntarily funding game development isn’t some moral failing, it means they don’t have to act like EA and Ubisoft to make a AAA game and I can get in for a good price. Attracting capitalist investors, as is traditional, is genuinely much worse. I paid $45 and have access to all the same content as the whales. I have hundreds of hours in game. If someone stupidly spends their life savings on pretend spaceships and regrets it, it’s not on Star Citizen.
It’s not like everyone has been tricked for ten years, we know what we buy when we buy it.
they don’t have to act like EA and Ubisoft to make a AAA game.
EA and ubisoft are shitting and pissing their pants with rage and jealousy because their own user base isn’t gullible enough to do that to.
LMAO you’re the MAGA-parallel here.
Is it really “love to hate” or is it just that after a decade of failed and ignored promises and dates year after year after year nobody has any real faith. 65 million dollars in stretch goals and it’s still a fucking broken mess, endless examples.
The squadron demo fucking crashed when it was shown at the con, yet its feature complete but also not releasing until 2026.
Have you even seen the insanity that is the stretch goals? https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals
It’s all but a grift, and here you are defending the grifters. Maybe in ANOTHER decade they’ll actually deliver what people were promised (and paid for!) years and years ago.
“didn’t show anyone playing it live.” Uh. Clive was literally playing on stage during the showcase. Complete with yearly CTD and all.
I’m all for shitting on CIGs trash practices, but you don’t need to lie to get there.
I’m just working off the video linked above. No video of the player, no commentary, no indication a person was actively playing it.
If they actually played it live, well bully for them. One point goes to star citizen.
The video is a redo from the guy who did it live at Citizen Con, because the demo crashed when they were onstage.
Okay, so they got the game “somewhat working” live? Well, that’s something I guess.
I guess that explains why the commentor above posted a pre-recorded video instead of the actual live video that undermines his argument that the game is nearly done.
I posted that video because it was the first one I found, it’s not a grand conspiracy to trick you, jesus. Get over yourself. Watch the actual live one then, I don’t care. Still looks like a fun game.
Looks like a fun game isn’t what is being discussed here.
What IS being discussed is if this so called “feature complete” game is ever gonna come out. If its feature complete how is it crashing in the first demo they show? 2026 is a long ways away for a feature complete game.
As a dev, I realize feature complete doesn’t mean done but it also doesn’t mean an extra two years lead time before release either.
Just like the rest of Star citizen, aspirational date after date with no serious commitment. What they do release is either a little or a lot broken. This shits been going on for over a decade, but yeah it’s totally different now (but like, not now, but in 2026!)
….but it lOoKs LiKe A fUn GaMe!!!
They claimed it was feature complete in 2023. And now they claim it is two years away from release. You really think polish and optimization takes three years? Of course, they’ve claimed it is just two years away every year since 2016.
They are lying to you.
Lol, one of us certainly has been lied to. Your last point is blatantly false, your first is based on your guess about how AAA game design works. Maybe it does take 3 years with a game this big, I don’t know. I’ll trust the many, many game devs who actually play the game and roll their eyes at comments like yours.
I’ve actually played the game, bought it and have no regrets. Hundreds of hours, new friends, new experiences. You passively absorbed the groupthink. I don’t care if it ever finishes, I’ve gotten more than enough fun per dollar out this game already. Cry about it if you want, just do it quietly.
I’ve played the game since 2015 when all we could do was walk around a hanger. When it comes to where SQ42 is at, we are being lied to about where it is. Them saying at Citcon that SQ42 is just 2 more years away is a dead giveaway that they are absolutely no where near a release, and the 2026 year is pure fiction. Like I said, they’ve been saying 2 years away since 2016.
I remember that one hangar! Oh nostalgia. You should try it again there’s a game there now.
They haven’t been saying two years away every since since 2016. It’s a running joke that they say it every year, but it’s not actually happening. That one in 2016 made everyone facepalm, even employees. Chris Robert’s is pathalogically optimistic about a lot of things, lol. Even in the Star Citizen community, we make fun of that sort of thing. We paid for Star Citizen early access, we have Star Citizen early access. If we get Squadron 42 as well, great! If not, it’s not that big a deal. Disappointing, but the world will go on.
I think they believe their times when we say them. The scope of things said after the 2 years thing in 2016 increased by quite a bit when their funding had another boom. They aren’t intentional lies so much as just being wrong an feature creep making dust of previous plans. But they have a lot more to show now than they did before, it is being made in good faith. It’s just had a slow start to build the studio from nothing and a lot of budget increases.
It’s definitely got a Duke Nukem Forever type problem. We will see a finished game one day, but the development has seen a lot of design changes partway through. We’ll see if we end up with a mess, but we will end up with something, I believe. And again, if not, it’s still just a videogame. We’ll live.
OK. Never played SC so honest question here; What is wrong if the game is technically not complete? I mean the way I thought is that this means that it keeps evolving and expanding so new content and features become available as the game development progresses. What am I missing? Is this a similar situation to the Eve Online BitterVets?
Game keeps wiping players inventories including the in-game money used to buy ships. You can’t progress in the game, they just wipe you.
Long story short, they severely fail to deliver on their promises and also mismanaged their development incentives so that they are not financially interested to ever release, or even make the game fully playable.
SC is a scam. They sell ships for real money that only half work. The game is riddled with bugs, quests don’t complete. Users state is regularly wiped so there’s no point on progressing in it and instead of finishing the game they ask players for much more money to work on tiny niche technical problems that sound super important on presentations but don’t move the needle even a little bit towards a finished game. At best, it is video game history most expensive physics toy. In reality, when you scrutinize their finances executives have pocketed most of the money raised and devs have been paid poor wages and overworked to a constantly moving target. They have never finished a single roadmap item, but they have announced to fanfare at least 5 different development roadmaps that are the very definition of scope creep. Lots of announcements but never a release. Any competent studio would’ve delivered at least three completed games in the same timeframe for that amount of money. They’re an online asset store that sometimes let’s you fiddle with the digital models, not a video game.
They consistently make promises for things that will exist in the future, which then takes them years beyond their expected timeframe to achieve, or just never do them because some other past promise or promise they will make later makes an original promise either totally unworkable or wildly different.
So, so many missed deadlines, which uh, actually were just aspirational.
And… this is a game that sells you ships, gear, for hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of real world dollars.
Some crazy promise will be made and oh, turns out that means we have to rework something like half the game’s systems to support that, but also they’re adding new content constantly that is always in some limbo state between following the old system’s paradigms and attempting to follow the new system’s paradigm.
What you end up with is a constant state of everything being a bit broken, and a lot of stuff being completely broken.
Its less like a released game getting DLCs and more like an alpha test that just never ends.
Which, again, costs hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Instead of focussing on getting the core of the game finished and THEN expanding it they do it the other way around.
For example the mining loop now is broken again, people bought mining ships and vehicles with $$ and they are completely unusable. Not to mention all the bugs and instability. I hope they succeed but right now things are not pointing to something enjoyable within the foreseeable future at all.
The game is exactly the same as it was the first time I played it except now the lift always shows up.
Don’t listen anyone here, positive or negative. Try the next free fly and see for yourself. Too many feelings for an honest answer.
But here’s my 2 cents anyway, ha ha: I enjoy it, they are pushing out regular massive updates that make it more and more fun every quarter. They grew a studio from 8 people to over 1000, which takes years to do, so complaints that they have taken 10 years of full scale development are incorrect. Some people don’t like the idea it may never be the full game they set out to make, which is fair, it’s possibly the most ambitious game to date. But it’s being made in good faith, reports of a scam are about as reliable as moon landing conspiracy theories for many of the same reasons. In the meantime, what they do have is already a lot of fun. You only need to spend $50 to get in, people spending more are doing so voluntarily and generally without regrets. They have more players and revenue every year than the year before, this wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t already a fun game for many.
Gameplay is like a second life in space. It’s very spaceship centric, but there’s lots to do besides pilot. It’s slow paced, the design does prefer immersion over convenience a lot of the time.
If you like big, slow (with moments of high intensity), immersive, cinematic games, or if you like sci fi it’s definitely worth a try. Lone wolf play is doable, but taking a role on a crew is more fun (at least for me).
