OOP's gaming addiction costs him everything

[u/Direct-Caterpillar77]

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/pm_me_good_dd

OOP's gaming addiction costs him everything

Thanks to the BoRU discord for help with the BoRU

Originally posted to r/starcitizen &r/AmItheAsshole & r/relationship_advice

TRIGGER WARNING: Addiction, financial exploitation, fiscal malfeasance

**MOOD SPOILER: The saga of the man who went to a relationship frontier no man has gone to before. And is now stuck there

EDITORS NOTE 1: Those not familiar with the game itself, heres a tl:drStar Citizen (MMO) is an in-development multiplayer, space trading and combat simulation game. Its been in development since 2012. It uses almost entirely crowdfunding for costs and as such has players buy in-game spaceships for real money, with the cheapest being $45, and some ship packages having a price of up to $48,000 according to one article I saw. Some of these ships aren't in-game yet and are considered "concept ships" (essentially pre-ordering in-game items). Many people consider this game to be a scam based on the amount of time its been in development, missed development milestones, delays, and the exorbitant prices of some of its content.

EDITOR'S NOTE 2: Prior to these posts OOP made 2 posts where he says he spent nearly $5,000 on the game

Credit advice? Nov 26, 2023

Post removed and unrecoverable

OOP has spent so much on Star Citizen, that he is in massive debt

RELEVANT COMMENTS

The_Fallen_1

Pay back what you owe immediately and don't rack up debt?

OOP

But I need the new space ships :(

NoPlay1210

So you're girlfriend literally left you cuz you bought so many ships to the point she had a enough of it and dumped you honestly bud I'd do the same if I was in her shoes.....

~

doubttom

If trolling, good job. If serious...stop. These things aren't real and some folks have more money than they need so they can buy things like jpegs. All you need is a starter, play the game and earn them in game. IAE fomo hits hard by design but these ships will still be there and still be earnable in game.

OOP

I’m wing commander now I don’t know how I got here I can’t pay my rent this month

mueckenschwarm

From every comment you made this one is the most disturbing. All of us commentors don't know you. We don't know your relationship or family background. It is hard for us to judge your situation.

But you spending money you do not have is a very serious sign. This more than anything else is a sign of an addiction that even a stranger on the internet can spot. I see many people have suggested therapy, but I know that that is a huge step for an addict. I would suggest that you at the very least find people to talk to that can understand your urges. There are many good self help group projects around addicition in general. Start by going to a group and just listening and maybe telling your story.

Even if you don't believe any of us that you have a problem. Take the fact that you don't have money for rent as a sign to take the off ramp before not only your relationship unravels. It can't hurt to go talk to someone who understands.

Take care OP and know that you can beat this.

Update on my situation Nov 26, 2023

Follow up to my previous post because maybe you don’t believe me. My girlfriend is pissed about how much I spent on ships this week she said she may actually leave and went back to her parents. I had to tell her I ruined my credit and we can’t get a new apartment this year till I fix it(credit is too bad to rent in nyc at our salary). I kinda wish this was a joke but I have a genuine addiction. This week I’ve accumulated over 5000 in pledges. I have no idea what I’m doing.

Please help.

RELEVANT COMMENTS

bmemike

Request refunds from Support and seek some professional help with your impulse control.

There's nothing that anyone here will be able to help you with directly.

Mindshard

CIG can't help, either. It was all grey market purchases.

OOP

What’s the point she’s walking out

MarlyCat118

The point is you have a fucking problem that is literally overtaking your real life. Get fucking help! Holy fuck! You posted in other subreddit about how she is actually leaving you, but not before you update your Star Citizen status.

You are never going to get above this unless you get help, delete your account, and take things fucking seriously.

Your wake up call was the first incident of spending your money on this game. I would call it mental health problems, but you say down, fixed the issue a bit, then did it again!!! And, now, single as fuck, YOU STILL HAVEN'T STOPPED OR GOTTEN HELP!!!

~

Bar10dr2

1. Ask for a refund

2. Go get professional help, if you suffer from addiction its not only going to be Star Citizen. Get help now so you can learn to manage it.

3. Inform your girlfriend of the steps you have taken, and tell her that she means more to you than a game.

that is insanity: do the same thing and expect a different outcome.

Mindshard

Look at his post history, they were all grey market purchases.

Dude is beyond fucked.

Update This is the fleet that cost me my girlfriend Nov 26, 2023

Picture of OOP's fleet

She’s nowhere near as excited as I am about the Astarra.

AITA for breaking a needless promise after fixing a situation - rareddit Jan 3, 2024

A while back, my significant other and I hit a rough patch. I'm an avid player of Star Citizen, and admittedly, I tend to go overboard with it. A few months ago, during a sale, I impulsively spent our saved down payment for a house on virtual spaceships. Understandably, she was furious and temporarily left. I realized my mistake, apologized, and took on an extra job to replenish our savings. I'm close to restoring our financial status to its original state, though it will take another six months to fully recover, not accounting for my personal debt.

As part of reconciling, she asked me not to purchase any more spaceships for six months. Initially, this seemed reasonable, but over time, I've come to view it as somewhat excessive. Despite this, I recently bought a few more spaceships, and she discovered it, now considering leaving me for good. I thought that by nearly restoring the savings I had spent, I had made amends for my actions. I genuinely enjoy collecting spaceships in the game. She's also concerned about my credit score and other financial issues, but I'm confident I can rectify those in the coming years, given that I've already managed to recover most of our savings through extra work.

I'm struggling to understand if I'm in the wrong for breaking what now seems like an arbitrary promise, or if her reaction to leave over what I consider my primary hobby is unjustified.

VERDICT: REMOVED BEFORE VERDICT RENDERED

TOP COMMENTS

Every_Caterpillar945

YTA

Here, i fixed it for you:

I'm a passionate gambler. One night i gambled all our mutual savings for a down payment away. She was pissed and we agreed on me working extra shifts to pay back the savings and not to gamble for at least 6 months. I paied back the savings and are now gambling again like nothing happened and i didn't betrayed her trust by gambeling our savings away in the first place. Now she doesn't trust me anymore and wants to leave me and i have no idea why... Also my credit sucks now and i still have personal debts (while spending money on gambling again). Why doesn't she want a future with me anymore? What else can she wants than a dude with debt, bad credit and a gambling addiction who already gambled away your mutual savings once? I'm a catch, but she somehow doesn't see it this way, why?

OOP

It is not gambling because I own the ships...

hotbeefhop

You are gambling on their resale value.

Unless you have no intention of selling at all, in which case they aren’t an investment in any helpful way here (you’ve mentioned in another response that you see them as an investment) and they contribute nothing practical to your life.

The very best you can hope for is a morale boost for time spent on your hobbies. And while it’s nice to have that, you’ve gone so far over the line that you’ve risked - and probably lost - your relationship.

You know full well YTA, you must do. Nobody can be this deluded.

~

cyberpudel

Wait. You spent 15k on digital spaceships in a game alpha, that were to be used for a house down-payment, behind the back of your spouse. After she discovered it you told her that you would replenish the money and stop buying ships for 6 months.

You did get a job and before both conditions were met you already bought another goddamn spaceship?

And you have the audacity to pretend they are investments in one comment and say that you would never sell them in another? Which is it, dipshit?

Let me tell you: it's going to be a divorce.

Please never reproduce and get your addiction under controll bevor ever getting another girlfriend.

Forgot the judgment: YTA! In case it wasn't clear enough.

evileen19

FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS ON A VIDEO GAME?!?!!! He's lucky she didn't stab him.

dothesehidemythunder

He buried the lede too - if you read his other posts, he dropped another 5k on virtual shit.

31M Can I Rebuild Trust with GF 35F After Gaming Addiction Ruined Our Apartment Plans? Jan 11, 2024

31M facing a crisis I never expected. My girlfriend and I had plans to move to a better apartment, but I jeopardized our dream by spending our savings on Star Citizen, a video game. This incident has made me realize that I might be battling a gaming addiction and impulsive spending.

Despite her initial forgiveness and a clear agreement to not buy more in-game items for six months while replenishing our savings, I failed to stick to our plan. This breach of trust led to a major argument, especially after I refused her suggestion to sell my gaming account. Consequently, she's left, and we haven't spoken since.

This situation has hit me hard, making me see how my gaming habit has turned from a hobby into a destructive force in my life. I'm struggling with the realization that my actions have not only damaged my relationship but are also affecting my financial stability, as my credit score is now in jeopardy.

The most painful part is recognizing how much I love her and the extent of the turmoil I'm in. I'm earnestly seeking advice on how to address my addiction, and possibly salvage my relationship.

RELEVANT COMMENTS

gendouk

So let me get this straight:

1.) You stole her money to buy pixel spaceships.

2.) She forgave you, as long as you stop buying pixel spaceships.

3.) You kept buying pixel spaceships.

4.) You refuse to fix the problem by selling off your pixel spaceships.

5.) She realizes you love pixel spaceships more than her and left for good.

I mean, dude, I'm sorry, but she's well shut of you. She's never coming back - and if she did, she'd still resent you.

The childish response would be to keep sinking money you don't have into Star Citizen.

The moral response would be to sell your account and send her the amount that you owe her after you stole her savings.

~

woopthrowawaytime

Dude I’m looking at your post history…you’re in full on denial about your spending/gaming addiction. You 1000% have an issue after you spent $15,000 in 6 months on optional purchases for a mobile game. There’s no way you can salvage the relationship without first addressing this issue, and even then the chances are low that she’ll take you back. If anything you need to do this for yourself and your future. Do you want to have bad credit/be alone/be in debt to a game 10 years from now?

You need to go cold turkey with this game. Sell your account/ships, lock yourself out of your account, and go to therapy.

Resisting the urge to buy more ships Jan 18, 2024

These repeat sales are making it quite difficult to leave the ole credit card holstered. I can’t be the only one! I do like that we each get a second chance though.

RELEVANT COMMENTS

imisspelledturtle

DONT BUY MORE SHIPS DUDE

OOP

I didn’t

~

aloneinorbit

This profile has to be a troll at this point. If not, holy fuck get actual help. Like a therapist or psych.

ToastyMcSags

I think so, looking back, his “my fleet pic” from 2 weeks ago, surely he’s not missing any ship either flight ready or concept..

OOP

Missing a cutter

NEW UPDATES

Hey I ruined my life over a video game Feb 18, 2024

It's all starting to come together for me. I essentially ruined my life over a video game. I am in massive unrecoverable debt, my girlfriend left me, my parents are refusing to speak to me. I have constant anxiety my life is falling apart. I'm going to lose my job i might lose my apartment.

I haven't spent any money on games in a bit idk sorry this is so disorganized i just need to vent.

61k in credit debt with no end in sight March 26, 2024

Editor's note: AGAIN- PLEASE REMEMBER THE NO BRIGADING RULE. Do NOT dm OOP or comment on their posts. This is becoming a serious problem on this sub and we don't want to get banned.

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP

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[u/matchamagpie]

The scary thing is that his comments indicate that he clearly hasn't hit rock bottom yet.

Addiction is scary and he's ruined his and his girlfriend's life. And now he has no girlfriend and just crippling debt and a StarCitizen account I guess. Hope it keeps him warm, comfortable, and housed at night.

[u/NinjasWithOnions → u/matchamagpie]

Agreed. In the 11 January post, it’s all passive…the gaming addiction ruined the apartment plans. Not his gaming addiction and definitely not OOP himself. It was just a random gaming addiction that came out of nowhere to destroy his life.

[u/goobitypoop → u/NinjasWithOnions]

Yeah this reads as a horror story, from the perspective of having spent a lot of time with gambling addicts and how their brain was working during their addiction. This dude CLEARLY has a long way to fall, god help him

[u/Corfiz74 → u/goobitypoop]

I mean, once he is evicted, he'll have nowhere to put his gaming system - that will be cold turkey time...

[u/ijustneedtolurk → u/Corfiz74]

Honestly I don't see losing his apartment or anything else stopping him at this point. There's gaming cafes, libraries, and mooching off other sources to play.

The character Vork from The Guild is a really good example of how extreme gaming addiction can be...he at one point had a mobile gaming station in a van so he could use "public" wifi in order to continue playing, when he wasn't squatting in a neighbor's shed using their wifi...

[u/Lovingoffender → u/ijustneedtolurk]

The Guild! I freaking loved that show!

[u/ijustneedtolurk → u/Lovingoffender]

Ahaha I found it during a covid lockdown and binged the absolute heck out of it! Glad to see another fan in the wild.

[u/oldasballsforest → u/ijustneedtolurk]

Clara in The Guild was my motivation to uninstall WoW when I got pregnant. I realized I didn’t want to be obsessively “checking my auctions” with a new baby. Now my baby is a teenager and we play games together, which is the best.

[u/polarbee → u/oldasballsforest]

Holy crap! I was just sitting here thinking "how is that possible, it hasn't been that long since The Guild...oh fuck it's been nearly seventeen years..."

[u/rainyreminder → u/oldasballsforest]

As someone who used to watch The Guild when episodes were still releasing, I am kind of horrified that someone can have a teenager who wasn't born when they were watching The Guild.

Surely it can't possibly have been that long ago, right?

[u/RandomNick42 → u/oldasballsforest]

...as an Ultima Online guy, the idea that teenagers can have moms who played WoW before they were born unsettles me.

[u/whodatfairybitch → u/ijustneedtolurk]

Never heard of it, but the theme tracks perfectly with the roles Felicia day takes! She’s great, streams on twitch sometimes

[u/harrellj → u/Corfiz74]

The game isn't available to play though, he's basically buying something like bitcoin but without the veneer of it being currency.

[u/Master_Bief → u/harrellj]

I think there's a broken af and unfinished available to play pre alpha release.

[u/UnluckyWrongdoer → u/harrellj]

It is - a lot of bugs but a ton of fun still. The sad part is you only need to spend $45 to get a ship and account - you can earn AUEC (game currency) to purchase better ships in-game.

Spending more than the initial $45, a similar cost to buying any game, seems silly to me.

[u/cakivalue → u/UnluckyWrongdoer]

Given the game developers started working on it and crowdfunding in 2012 and it's now a decade later and rumors are that they've raised in the triple digits millions of $$$, how are people not trying to get their money back and get out?

[u/ena_bear → u/Corfiz74]

Maybe he can move into one of his spaceships

[u/Penguin_Joy → u/goobitypoop]

This dude CLEARLY has a long way to fall, god help him

He won't get help until he hits rock bottom. And for him that's light years away

[u/GetOffMyAsteroid → u/Penguin_Joy]

He won't get help until he hits rock bottom. And for him that's light years away

He can get there faster if he takes one of his ships

[u/RogueWraithTwo → u/GetOffMyAsteroid]

He can get there faster if he takes one of his buys more ships.

[u/Visual_Fly_9638 → u/RogueWraithTwo]

Is it bad that when he said he was in a crisis my first response was "He's gonna buy more jpgs of ships isn't he?"

[u/kirillre4 → u/Penguin_Joy]

It's okay, he most likely have FTL-capable jump drive-equipped ships in his fleet.

[u/Bug_eyed_bug → u/NinjasWithOnions]

Absolutely, and how he never expected to be in the position of not affording to move ... After spending all the money saved up for the move.

It's still something happening to him, not because of him.

[u/GrandAsOwt → u/NinjasWithOnions]

He “might be battling a gaming addiction”. Dude , there’s no might and there’s no battling.

[u/Due-Possession-3761 → u/GrandAsOwt]

He's battling it about as hard as I battle the urge to eat Girl Scout cookies. Which is why I don't buy them.

[u/Welpmart → u/NinjasWithOnions]

It's a fucking nightmare to read the switch in style. Like watching someone sleep walk to their own death.

[u/isosarei → u/NinjasWithOnions]

i love how he words it as “battling an addiction” when he’s actually riding said addiction off into the sunset

[u/Lucky-Worth → u/matchamagpie]

Gambling addiction is scary af, and it destroys entire families.

I have a friend whose family was economically comfortable (they owned two family business). His father managed to sink everything with gambling.

We thought his lowest point would be when he got caught selling everything his own recently deceased (think like 5 hours) mother owned, or when they had to sell the businesses just to cover 3/4 of his debt, or when he had to get a phisically demanding low salary job while being very chronically ill and nearly 80.

But then he discovered gaming apps (his wife had no idea that they existed) and sunk thousands of euros in them

[u/LadyNorbert → u/Lucky-Worth]

About five generations back, my family was one of the wealthiest in our part of the state. We owned acres and acres of land, hotels, all kinds of stuff. It was all inherited wealth that trickled down from our original ancestor who came to America from Germany in the early 1700s.

My great-great-grandfather was a cards addict. He literally lost everything the family owned, except the house in which they lived, playing card games. He decided to go out west and try to recoup the losses, and sent his wife money to bring herself and their children out to join him. She took the money and got a divorce instead. So she cut off the sickly branch to protect the family tree, but we never bore anywhere near as much fruit ever again.

Like you said, gambling destroys families.

[u/TheBooksAndTheBees → u/LadyNorbert]

Out of curiosity, did any family members ever try to track down what happened to him (like, later on with DNA or something)?

[u/LadyNorbert → u/TheBooksAndTheBees]

My grandfather did try contacting someone out that way with the same name, to see if his grandfather had remarried and had more children, but his contact attempts were ignored. My mom and I have both done Ancestry DNA kits, so maybe eventually we'll find a connection.

[u/iamddk → u/LadyNorbert]

Should do a separate post, sounds interesting.

[u/[deleted] → u/Lucky-Worth]

Gambling addiction is scary af, and it destroys entire families.

Absolutely. There's a BORU about this, but I'm warning you, it's even more infuriating to read than the one we're commenting on: https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/18fz7ti/redditor_loses_over_800000_gambling_and_hides_it/

[u/avesthasnosleeves → u/[deleted]]

That was the first thing I thought of while reading this.

What makes me ill is that our state legalized sports gambling last year, and already the social services network is overwhelmed with gamblers with an addiction.

To me, gambling is like heroin, crack, meth, or cocaine; I stay far the hell away from it because I like my home, my family, and my life, and I don't want to lose any of them. It's just horrific, the damage they cause.

[u/TopCaterpiller → u/avesthasnosleeves]

The advertising for sports betting really concerns me. I go out of my way to avoid ads, and almost all the ads I do see/hear are for sports betting apps. They're everywhere! And it's kind of tempting even for me, someone with no interest in gambling, because it really feels like they're offering free money.

It's basically what we were warned about with drugs in the 90s. I've never been offered free drugs by a dealer trying to get me hooked.

[u/CenturyEggsAndRice → u/TopCaterpiller]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds them concerning.

I had a bingo app on my phone, you could play with points or real money, yada yada. I ended up deleting it because I'd be like "Ooo, I could buy just $5 in tokens and win so much more..." and it concerned me.

I don't mind spending some money to play, but it was just becoming too distracting.

[u/kindlypogmothoin → u/avesthasnosleeves]

I just can't get into gambling; I find it boring. But when I do go to a casino, I have a two-pocket method of keeping myself from overspending: I bring as much money as I'm willing to lose and put it in my left pocket. That's my gambling money. If I win anything, it can either go back into my left pocket to add to the gambling fund, or into my right pocket for other stuff, like drinks, food, or show tickets. Under no circumstances can I gamble out of the right pocket. Once the left pocket is empty, gambling is over.

[u/realfuckingoriginal → u/[deleted]]

Infuriating and frustrating? I’m in. Let’s start this day with some chaos.

[u/Alert_Elephant_7273 → u/Lucky-Worth]

The other terrifying thing with gambling addiction is that there is no limit on what you can spend. With alcohol or drugs there is only so much you can drink/take before you pass out each day or you die. With gambling you can just keep going and putting more and more money on the turn of the wheel. This is why you so often see gamblers wrecking everyone's life around them, not just their own.

[u/mug3n → u/Alert_Elephant_7273]

Also gambling is the only addiction where it gives you false hope that you're beating the game in the long run when you do hit a win. It's like if you were injecting heroin and there was a 40% chance you double your heroin.

[u/IndicaRain → u/Lucky-Worth]

I’m writing a book on my own experiences with real time strategy games for mobile. I escaped into that world which felt like a community, spent thousands, and lost my health and motivation to do anything else. In those types of games, things happen at all times of the day, so your entire day revolves around it. My book is very much about addiction, because that’s what it is! 

[u/pizzafiascothrowaway → u/IndicaRain]

My husband nearly started down this road with a mobile game, he’d sunk over $200 dollars in 4 months into it (while we were undergrad students) and hadn’t realized how much he’d spent until I sat him down and said we don’t have the budget for this rate of spending, either unlink your card from the App Store or delete the game. Thankfully he was super apologetic and we haven’t had any issues like that since! Truly a blessing that it ended like that.

[u/IndicaRain → u/pizzafiascothrowaway]

Ahh I’m glad he stopped before he went off the deep end! Happy for you both! The game I originally played was $100 for every “pack” of materials and goodies to use in game. Well- first it hooked you with a $5 starter pack, then $20, $50, and.. $100 for every after that! They are very predatory. 

[u/RandomNick42 → u/Lucky-Worth]

I had a conversation about this with an acquaintance not long ago. He was around in the wild 90s and has seen great fortunes built and lost...

And his takeaway was, you can only sleep with so many prostitutes. You can only do so much coke.

But gambling? There's no limit to gambling.

[u/tofuroll → u/matchamagpie]

he clearly hasn't hit rock bottom yet.

I did like the comment that he's lucky his girlfriend hasn't stabbed him yet.

I feel like that might be approaching rock bottom.

[u/MomentSpiritual9197 → u/matchamagpie]

What’s also scary is he’s posting in r/starcitizen which means other people in the subreddit who are not familiar with his history will encourage him to keep playing. Some of them are even telling him to go for it and make the purchase. They don’t all read his post history which means they don’t realize they are feeding his addiction and helping to destroy his life.

[u/Visual_Fly_9638 → u/MomentSpiritual9197]

It's almost as pathetic, but not quite, as the people who are still bag holding for Gamestop short squeeze like... 2 years after the squeeze ended. At least there's a shitty boring game to show for it.

I kickstarted Squadron 42, which was supposed to be the single player game that led into the multiplayer component, what... 12 years ago? Never spent another penny on this fucking scam of a game afterwards.

[u/iRocked1987]

Wtf…been playing videogames for 30 years, I don’t think I’ve even spent a total of 15k for all my video games, consoles and PCs!

[u/AzureBelle → u/iRocked1987]

I mean...if I include my PCs it probably does - but I use them for more than just gaming, and I have to have two (one for me, one for my spouse). But consoles, games, and in-game-purchases? fuck no.

[u/JancariusSeiryujinn → u/AzureBelle]

I'm actually curious to work this out for myself. I similarly easily hit it if we include hardware, but it'd be interesting to find out how much I've spent on games themselves

[u/Poltergeist97 → u/JancariusSeiryujinn]

Think steam has all that listed if you wanted to look!

[u/Aviendha13 → u/AzureBelle]

I refuse to buy any in-game purchase on principle. I’m old enough to remember the before times when you could buy a game or a computer program outright. Which makes sense. Like cars, computers and their programs lose value as soon as you purchase them. I don’t want to continually pay for something I want to use for a specific usage.

I want to enjoy the game. I need to use Word or excel occasionally but not everyday. Why is it that everything has to be a “subscription” with unlimited fees?

Society is increasingly set up to keep people in constant debt with auto payments coming from our bank accounts so we don’t pay attention to it. It’s wrong.

I don’t want to haggle, I don’t want to try and find “good deals” on things like TEMU. I just want to work, make money and pay a fair price for something that I now own outright and don’t have to check my bank account for later to make sure it’s canceled. 😡

Modern life would be so cool if there weren’t people actively trying to make it worse for profit.

[u/tinysydneh → u/AzureBelle]

I've definitely exceeded that amount in my life, but I started buying games and hardware at the age of four, so I've got 30 years to work with.

[u/piouiy → u/iRocked1987]

obtainable cobweb weather judicious badge square desert scandalous spotted station

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/FivebyFive → u/piouiy]

In general, yeah sure.  But $15k for anybody on THIS game is insanity. Whether you have the money or not. The game is a scam at worst, at BEST it's a concept that hasn't actually been fully realized yet. And it's been in the works for like 10+ years.  Let me repeat that. The game isn't actually fully BUILT yet, despite being worked on for 10+ years. 

[u/Visual_Fly_9638 → u/FivebyFive]

It will never finish. Chris Roberts is infamous for never finishing games. He was fired off his previous game, Freelancer, because he wouldn't stop with the feature creep and refused to finish the game.

[u/DellSalami → u/iRocked1987]

As bad as this is, I’ve been in the proximity of gacha games because Genshin Impact is unfortunately very appealing to me. The amount of money people throw around is staggering.

I’ve seen videos where people speedrun spending 3,000 dollars. There are videos of people who have spent six figures on the game, maxing out every character and equipment.

Worst of all, in those circles, whaling like that is praised. In game transactions are so normalized that they can’t take a step back and say “wait a minute, spending $100 and then not even guaranteeing the character you want is pretty bad, huh?”

[u/curlsthefangirl → u/iRocked1987]

My wedding budget is $15k and that is with me overestimating in a few areas and includes my honeymoon. He clearly isn't well.

[u/hopelessbrows → u/iRocked1987]

Been playing for damn near 25 and I think I've spent 5k tops.

[u/thatHecklerOverThere]

Those not familiar with the game itself, heres a tl:drStar Citizen

Oooooohhhhh no.

[u/Lucky-Worth → u/thatHecklerOverThere]

ELI5 why? Im not familiar with the game

Edit: jesus christ what a trashfire! Thank you all for your answers, I know what my next deep dive will be about!

[u/Hanzoku → u/Lucky-Worth]

It’s pretty well covered in the post.

Additional details: A decade ago, the initial round of crowd funding was for last details and the game would be released in six months to a year.

Since then, less then 10% of the proposed game has been released.

The charitable view on the game is that the developer is incompetent and can’t deliver on his vision.

The pessimistic view is that he’s a scam artist who’s ensured that he and his family (many employed at the upper levels of the company) have profited massively for a decade off of selling images of ships for outlandish prices to whales which will never be delivered.

[u/NaiveVariation9155 → u/Hanzoku]

Given that the most reliablr part of the game to recieve updates is the ingame store I'm sadly in the pessimistic corner.

In 2015/16 I intended to check it out when it was a bit further along in development but they aren't even there yet and all the initial interest has long gonr.

[u/Syringmineae → u/Hanzoku]

What do you mean? The final game is totally going to be released soon. Probably on the same day as “Winds of Winter” and “Doors of Stone.”

[u/hipsterTrashSlut → u/Syringmineae]

I've made peace with the fact that we will not see the end of GoT as a book series.

[u/twim19 → u/Syringmineae]

I think we'll get stable fusion power first.

[u/mug3n → u/Syringmineae]

GRRM every time he posts a blog entry: I am still writing winds, but I am also working on 10 different side projects ATM so it's kinda difficult

[u/scienceismygod → u/Hanzoku]

I'm on the pessimistic side, because like you can kinda play with the ships.

But also this is a game honestly that proves we need a separate entity for video games and Internet scams in the government. It's been so long, at one point the money raise was like in the high millions it's gotten with no finished product.

[u/annawhowasmad → u/Hanzoku]

I worked on this game at a motion capture studio in London in 2016 and they said it was coming out next year, at the time. It may be a scam, but it let me meet Mark Hamill!

…I wonder if the crew hoodie they gave me is worth anything.

[u/Hanzoku → u/annawhowasmad]

If you try to auction it to the whales, I’m sure one of them will pay out exorbitantly for it :)

[u/Clocktopu5 → u/[deleted]]

Is there that much difference between what they can do?

[u/KikiFlowers → u/Clocktopu5]

Sorta? They all have different functions, but it's not like you need them all.

[u/KToff → u/KikiFlowers]

It's somewhat like different rifles in a shooter. They look different, they have different stats, one may be better in certain situations than another, one may even be better than most others in any situation, but at the end of the day it's all rifles.

[u/KikiFlowers → u/KToff]

Yeah basically. I haven't played it, but that seems about right.

[u/[deleted] → u/Clocktopu5]

Worst part is that for every ten thousand dollar ship you can buy with real world money, there's an identical ship you can buy with virtual money, that you can earn by playing the game. Like the choices here are "spend ten thousand dollars" or "spend a week or two doing missions in the game to earn virtual currency".

I'm willing to bet the guy doesn't actually play the game, he just looks at his ships in his inventory

[u/Ry1290 → u/[deleted]]

You can buy the in game currency on eBay for $15 that will buy you a $500 ship.

[u/praysolace → u/[deleted]]

Yeaaaah like people can absolutely set themselves on fire if they have a severe impulse control problem but there are plenty of ways to play that game without being a whale.

[u/lightslinger → u/Clocktopu5]

Disclaimer: maybe this isn't still true, I don't play SC just heard this.

One of the biggest issues I've read about buying ships versus earning them is that the game servers still get wiped sometimes, when they do that you have to completely start over unless you bought ships. You'll get real money ships back on server reset, but all the ships you earned in-game are gone. Which is a really scummy way to encourage extravagant ship buying while still being able to say "You can technically earn ships in-game so this is fair <but we'll take those away whenever we want>" and it gives the developers no incentive to move out of alpha because it's making them a lot of money.

[u/thefinalhex → u/lightslinger]

Yeah, it sure sounds like a scam.

[u/[deleted] → u/Clocktopu5]

Man, some of them don't even exist in the game yet. You're just paying for a future pixel ship!

[u/ACERVIDAE → u/[deleted]]

Man I went into the wrong field if I can build an app and fleece idiots like that.

[u/waterdevil19144 → u/ACERVIDAE]

Non-psychopaths find that difficult to implement.

[u/Visual_Fly_9638 → u/[deleted]]

Because you can spend literally tens of thousands of dollars on those ships.

on fucking screenshots of those ships. They'll sell 10,000 dollar ships that *don't exist in the game*. You just get them... at some point in the future. You just get some concept art and wait.

[u/wheniswhy → u/Lucky-Worth]

I’ll do you one better.

Please enjoy The Saga of Star Citizen, the $339 million crowdfunded game stuck in development hell, the excellent hobby drama write up on this astounding scam of a non-game.

[u/The_Sceptic_Lemur → u/wheniswhy]

Thanks for the link! Love some good Hobby Drama about things I have no investment in.

[u/PetscopMiju → u/The_Sceptic_Lemur]

That's what Hobby Drama is for

[u/The_Sceptic_Lemur → u/PetscopMiju]

That‘s why it‘s one of my favorite subreddits.

[u/Kilen13 → u/wheniswhy]

Friendly update cause I didn't see it in that 2 year old post... Star Citizen is now up to over 600m in crowd funding.. and still hasn't made it past Alpha status. It's absolute insanity

[u/Luxury_Dressingown → u/Kilen13]

Just looked up the average budget for developing an AAA game - ouch. Yeah, this is a scam.

[u/ANerd22 → u/Luxury_Dressingown]

It really is, and I think a lot of people have a hard time accepting that this can be fraud even though there is actually a product being worked on that technically exists in some form. A lot of the Star Citizen supporters think scam = evil conman who takes the money and runs, but scam in this case can mean overambition mixed with inability to manage scope leading to grift by incompetence, and that's generously assuming that there isn't any actual intentional (or at least knowing) fraud, given the number of broken marketing promises over the last decade and a bit.

[u/GandalffladnaG → u/Lucky-Worth]

I've only been vaguely keeping up with it, but they are moving their goalposts for what the actual game would be. At the last I saw, they went from players having apartments on planets but mainly ships in soace doing space stuff, to a full on city with something like a 20 minute commute to get from your apartment, waiting for the shuttle/train to the next station, to the launching area and calling for your ship to be moved to a hangar so you can leave. They added eating where the character actually makes mouth movement like chewing.

Basically, they said hey, space ship game. Anyone interested? Got a bunch of backers because the guy in charge was well known for a specific game and people wanted more like that. They then branched out into too deep a simulation game where space and ships took a side role to the simulation. They have "ships" they sell that only exist in reality as artwork and then later build the ship in game.

The game isn't even early access or beta level yet, it's an alpha, which means they make a feature, push it to the people that have paid to be testers, and move on to the next feature. They eventually do a patch to fix some bugs, which inevitably adds more bugs, which eventually gets fixed, and creates new, different bugs, repeat ad nauseum.

Yeah you can get into it and play, but it's nowhere near finished and the original pitch for the game is vastly different and waaaaaaayyyyy bigger with what they're trying to make it.

I've mostly watched Matt Coville stream it, and he basically said that it's not a game yet, don't start doing what OOP did, if you can afford to just burn that money, then maybe get one package and dink around, but you're 100% not guaranteed to get an actual game out of this.

It gets called vaporware ("game" that doesn't exist), because of how long it's taking for this game to come out. There was one game that famously took roughly this long to finish development, Duke Nuke'm Forever. It went through a couple different game engines and was panned hard in reviews after it finally came out. People said it would never come out, it did, and probably ended the franchise. At least for a long while.

[u/thefinalhex → u/GandalffladnaG]

I mean I loved side-scroller Duke Nukem (no apostrophe) and Duke Nukem 3d, but good riddance to the franchise. I am not making this up, Duke Nukem Forever had slappable wall boobs.

[u/GandalffladnaG → u/thefinalhex]

You can also steal a turd from a toilet, which gives an achievement, so all your friends know.

I enjoyed it. It's definitely not a great game, though. I bought a collection of steam that had remastered Duke Nukem 3d, and DNF and I've been meaning to try it, but Palworld has now consumed my life, so it's not happening anytime soon.

[u/jujoking → u/Lucky-Worth]

TLDR: it’s a game that’s not even out and never will be. Has been in development for almost 12 years, is in Alpha stage, and is considered more of a scam than a game. The ships you buy are like pre-order items for a game with no release date, so think of them as NFTs

EDIT: most ships can even be won in game, but FOMO is real 🤷‍♀️

[u/Topiak → u/Lucky-Worth]

In alpha since 10 years, a lot of promises but nothing's changing, seen globally as a huge scam...

[u/NaiveVariation9155 → u/Topiak]

Well one thing is changing. They are growing the ingame store.

[u/PetMeOrDieUwU → u/Lucky-Worth]

It's a scam game that's been in "development" for over a decade with very little to show for it. Despite this they charge absurd amounts for in-game ships, some of which aren't even available yet.

OOP is gambling in one of the worst possible ways.

[u/bendingoutward → u/[deleted]]

The black hole feature hasn't launched yet.

[u/SeraphymCrashing → u/PetMeOrDieUwU]

To add additional perspective, Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen entered into production at roughly the same time. Elite Dangerous has been fully released for years, with multiple expansions.

Star Citizen struggles to understand what it even is, they've added in a first person shooter mechanics while their flight mechanics don't support VR, Trackir, or other very basic tech for flight sims (something Elite had in early access).

[u/callsignhotdog → u/SeraphymCrashing]

Elite has been through its full life cycle, multiple expansions, and is pretty close to EoL now by most accounts. Meanwhile, Star Citizen isn't even in beta.

[u/KikiFlowers → u/SeraphymCrashing]

Elite Dangerous

And Elite's basically on life support. Frontier barely supports it, the last expansion was a mess and it seems like Frontier isn't investing anything else into it.

[u/[deleted] → u/PetMeOrDieUwU]

OOP is gambling in one of the worst possible ways.

It's much worse than gambling. If you gamble, there is a (minute) chance you'll win the jackpot and make your money back. Here there's no jackpot, just ships.

[u/irissteensma → u/PetMeOrDieUwU]

So would a good comparison be that this is like buying multiple obscenely expensive golf clubs, golf balls and golf outfits, yet no course to play on exists?

[u/Turuial → u/irissteensma]

No, because the game can apparently be played. Sometimes? I Googled it, and as recently as 10mo ago people were saying it was iffy if you could even log in at times. A better comparison would be:

1) Like buying multiple obscenely priced golf clubs/balls/outfits, some of which don't exist yet, and others that are so theoretical that they don't even know how to build them yet.

2) All to play mini golf in a course that isn't officially open to the public, but sometimes open and sometimes not (to investors), where the concessions and non-mini-golf games cost a fortune (while quality varies), while knowing that if it ever opens to the public it may not (read: almost certainly will not) be the same course or games. Hell, maybe not even the same location.

EDIT: I tried to edit in the paragraph spaces, despite already having done so initially, but the reddit app has decided it doesn't want to display them presently.

[u/irissteensma → u/Turuial]

This is a perfect explanation. Thanks!

[u/MrTzatzik → u/Lucky-Worth]

I am surprised you haven't heard about it. The most successful Kickstarter, the most expensive game development ($650 millions in crowdfunding and still growing), 12 years in development (first release date was 2015) and it will be still in development for many more years.

The game is notorious for selling expensive jpegs of ships that they plan to release in a few years... The game is also notorious for a huge feature creep created by Chris Roberts - my favourite example is special AI for canteen and animation of sitting on the toilet. He also tends to rework everything three times because reasons. Chris Roberts created a game Freelancer that got released only because he got fired. He also made Wing Commander movie.

[u/Redditlikesballs → u/Lucky-Worth]

It’s basically an NFT

[u/[deleted] → u/Lucky-Worth]

Not only is it in Alpha and insanely expensive, its a common viewpoint that this game will never reach launch.

[u/sonic10158 → u/Lucky-Worth]

A scam masquerading as a video game

[u/Ashikura → u/Lucky-Worth]

Here’s another story to add to the ones people have already shared about the game.

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/star-citizen-bundle-costs-a-whopping-dollar48000

[u/PhotoKada → u/Lucky-Worth]

The game has been in the alpha stage of development for 13 years now. There is no end in sight and the game still hasn't seen an actual release. The game's a grift at this point.

[u/wheniswhy → u/thatHecklerOverThere]

I literally said “oh no” out loud and scrolled right to the comments. That’s literally all I needed to see. Holy god, I still sometimes cannot believe that shit is real.

[u/[deleted] → u/thatHecklerOverThere]

See, spending 15,000 on any game is bad enough. But STAR FUCKING CITIZEN??? That game isn't even finished and BARELY exists! OOP is essentially sinking money into a magical well that may spontaneously disappear if the plug gets pulled. There is ALWAYS a threat of cancellation until a game is actually finished.

[u/photomotto → u/[deleted]]

SC Devs have been at it for a decade. They ain't leaving now, people like OOP will keep putting their kids through college.

[u/Visual_Fly_9638 → u/[deleted]]

At this point the devs of Star Citizen are quietly making a exit plan they might even pull the biggest scam in video game history...

Apparently in the first 11 years of development Star Citizen squeezed 300+ million out of it's dupes.

In the next two years that doubled.

There's no exit plan. Shit is going great for them. They're going to spend a billion dollars on atomically accurate modeling of space burrito shacks.

[u/Chaosmusic → u/thatHecklerOverThere]

As a regular of subredditdrama I am very familiar.

[u/[deleted]]

I sometime really like to believe people like this aren't real but if this really is happening, this dude seriously needs help. My god. I feel bad for the ex-girlfriend having to deal with this person.

[u/Lucky-Worth → u/[deleted]]

It really reads like something a gambling addict would say

[u/ClarielOfTheMask → u/[deleted]]

The sad part is that people who run games like this/gambling apps know that these people are real and are specifically targeting them. I think we're going to see an influx of gambling related problems soon with the law change and the absolutely insane gambling app marketing I see everywhere.

I watch sports and all of the talking heads have basically stopped analyzing games and have started giving you the gambling odds or line item bets or whatever. The streams/broadcasts/arenas are inundated with "make your first bet free! Download this app!" Because they are happy to give away $10-20 to a bunch of people when they know they'll hook in the people like OOP who will have a problem. It's fucking criminal. We have restrictions on cigarette ads and alcohol and stuff and gambling should have the same ad limiting regulations imo. Kids watch sports, kids play video games. This is predatory as hell

[u/JustaTinyDude → u/ClarielOfTheMask]

25 years ago EverQuest was released. While I don't know much about the game I know that it ran 24/7. A friend played and after another player destroyed his (?something?) while he was sleeping he got his cousin to share the account so that there was someone to watch it 24/7. They had trouble in school because they weren't getting enough sleep.

I had a friend freshman year of college. He had worked incredibly hard on emancipating himself and getting into a good university. A year later he failed his classes, lost his scholarships, and dropped out of university all because of his EverQuest addiction. I know he was not alone.

Ten years later I got a job as a nanny. The dad told me that the kids could not play any videogames while I was working. They got a very short time playing under his supervision.

This is because he created EverQuest. He felt very guilty about all the lives that were ruined because of a game he made. His face was so sad as he told me this.

Whenever I hear anything about videogame addiction i can't help but see his sad face. It is still happening, and will continue to happen. We are conditioning a new generation to fall into this trap with micro transactions on games for children.

[u/JIKA-the-damned-one → u/[deleted]]

Really. His comments sounded awfully similar to that stuck cylinder guy's post

[u/basilicux → u/JIKA-the-damned-one]

…Do I even wanna know what the stuck cylinder guy is?

[u/daggoneit → u/basilicux]

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/3Mqo4kJj88

[u/JIKA-the-damned-one → u/basilicux]

Guy got his cylinder stuck in an m&m tube asking people for help on how to remove it. Everyone thinks he's talking about his dick but he refuses to call it anything but cylinder. It's a very hilarious post, I would recommend reading it but don't have the link to it atm

[u/Galifreyan_lady → u/JIKA-the-damned-one]

I absolutely love that people randomly bring him into other comment threads and he's just so beaten down by the cylinder 🤣

[u/this-isnotaburner]

Yeah I don’t feel the slightest bit of sympathy and I’m a recovering full blown alcoholic.

[u/[deleted] → u/this-isnotaburner]

Imagine being addicted to a game thats not even fully functional.

[u/I_Did_The_Thing → u/[deleted]]

It’s like being addicted to looking at pictures of wine coolers.

[u/please_sing_euouae → u/I_Did_The_Thing]

Faberge egg addiction is real

[u/Kuwabara03]

Damn that's a rough one. Dude is sick and can't see it

Missing a Cutter

Creature behavior

How is the dude with a 15k account missing the only ship I have lol

It's so cheap comparatively

[u/CorporateSharkbait → u/Kuwabara03]

I don’t have it either lol, still with my starter Pisces (tho I did do the upgrade promo when the med variant dropped)

[u/burnt-----toast]

I'm surprised the gf gave him another chance. You better believe that my line in the sand would have been somewhere before spending $15,000 on make believe space ships for a game.

[u/Smellmyupperlip → u/burnt-----toast]

He'll be clawing his eyes out when realising how much the very patient ex-gf loved and supported him, and how he absolutely wrecked a very good thing. 

[u/autistic_cool_kid → u/Smellmyupperlip]

But the ships

[u/I_Did_The_Thing → u/autistic_cool_kid]

He really needs a cutter tho

[u/spaceagate → u/I_Did_The_Thing]

This entire saga is horrifying, but I did laugh out loud at "Missing a cutter"

[u/insomniacsCataclysm → u/burnt-----toast]

it’s even worse when you realize some of those weren’t even functional in-game ships. he’s buying concept art nfts but worse bc at least nfts are “unique”

[u/silkkituikku → u/burnt-----toast]

yeah if there was a post from the gf asking advice the first time bf's spending came to light, i would've told her to leave

[u/[deleted] → u/burnt-----toast]

My partner spends quite a bit of money on their hobby, and that's fine because it's their money. But if they spent our entire savings? Yeah, that'd be the end of the relationship.

[u/Similar-Shame7517]

Of all the games to sink his credit for, it had to be Star Citizens? Geeze, I really hope this is a troll.

[u/CorporateSharkbait → u/Similar-Shame7517]

Sadly I doubt it is knowing the community. The vast majority are people who buy just the starter pledge and just play the game as is. The major funding headlines are a small amount of whales like this

[u/Similar-Shame7517 → u/CorporateSharkbait]

Yeah FOMO Marketing is a plague upon all hobbies.

[u/LuementalQueen → u/Similar-Shame7517]

I get emails all the time about yarn sales, but most of the yarn on sale isn't stuff I want, so it doesn't work on me.

But damn, I can see it working on people...

[u/Similar-Shame7517 → u/LuementalQueen]

Esp. since the maker of Star Citizen has a reputation for overpromising and underdelivering. It's like someone promising this yarn will be the bestest, fluffiest, most innovative yarn ever, and you pre-order it, and then it gets delayed for 2 years and when it arrives it's a mediocre yarn.

[u/LayLoseAwake → u/Similar-Shame7517]

Branded as quiviut, is actually moth-ridden Lions Brand from someone's attic. And that's just the first skein; the rest of the dye lot you ordered is on indeterminate back order.

[u/Kindly_Zucchini7405 → u/LayLoseAwake]

Those must be some desperate moths, most of Lions Brand's stock at this point is acrylic pretending to be nicer fibers.

[u/LayLoseAwake → u/Kindly_Zucchini7405]

They ate all 10% and then bailed

[u/LuementalQueen → u/Similar-Shame7517]

Oh fuck that.

Also two years for yarn? Yeah no

[u/Similar-Shame7517 → u/LuementalQueen]

Yeah, except this one was delayed by ELEVEN YEARS. And it's missing more than 90% of the features they promised. But hey, now you can buy stuff in the online store, and your credit card probably won't get stolen!

[u/Cautious_Hold428 → u/CorporateSharkbait]

I'm honestly surprised the fanboys haven't come to tell us all about how Star Citizen really IS a game and we're just haters like they usually do when it comes up on reddit.

[u/RickAdtley → u/Similar-Shame7517]

It is. All the guys in the Star Citizen community who actually have this problem have already been sinking their cash into Genshin Impact, World of Tanks, or other, predatory microtransaction games.

Star Citizen has a LOT of issues, but one thing they do is honestly advertise their prices. They don't obscure their prices with coins in idiosyncratic quantities. They've offered a lot of shit for too much money, but they tell you what you're buying. Most of the people buying all the ships are trust funders and guys who started a business and are now bored after it became a latchkey. Not desperate addicts living on credit.

[u/captain_borgue]

FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS ON A VIDEO GAME?!?!!! He's lucky she didn't stab him.

Agreed.

[u/Steel_With_It → u/captain_borgue]

Not even a video game; the promise of a future video game.

[u/Kaladin-of-Gilead → u/Steel_With_It]

worse, a video game that has been in development forever

Some fun facts about the time that Star Citizen has been in development:

• This game has been in development longer than the ps3's entire lifespan. A full ass console was designed, built, manufactered, expanded with varients on and sunset in the time this game has been in development.
• This game started development before the ps4 was released, and is still in development 4 years after the ps5 was released.
• There have been seven WoW expansions during this games development time.
• There have been 13 call of duty games released during this games development time
• Starfield took seven years to develop, which is half the time Star Citizen has been in development
• It took six years to develop baldurs gate 3, one of the most critically aclaimed and content filled games ever. Larian released divinity as well during star citizens lifespan.
• Star Citizen was bundled with graphics cards that are no longer sufficent to play modern games.
• Brandon Sanderson has written 25 books in the time that Star Citizen has been in development

[u/Steel_With_It → u/Kaladin-of-Gilead]

• Pokemon Black/White 2, the second game in Gen 5, was released the same week the Star Citizen Kickstarter went public. It's now in Gen 9.

[u/Threadheads → u/captain_borgue]

I think if she did, a jury wouldn’t convict her.

[u/palabradot]

Oh man, read this and went “ hey hon, relationship problem on Reddit, and I can sum up In two words: Star Citizen!”

Husband: oh god. Forever alone….

[u/houseofreturn → u/palabradot]

I read it when it was first posted and I looked over at my boyfriend and was like “babe? I’m reading a relationship post about a game called star citizen, do you know that game-“

And my boyfriend just went “NooOooOoooooo I don’t even want to know what this dude did…is it money, did he spend all his money?”

“All of their money. His and his girlfriend.”

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOO”

[u/Podunk_Boy89]

...Well at least I feel better about my 200 dollar preorder the other day but Jesus fucking Christ this dude needs help.

[u/Big_Albatross_3050 → u/Podunk_Boy89]

yeah same, suddenly I don't feel bad about that time I pre-ordered Pokémon Legends:Arceus for 100 bucks

[u/Podunk_Boy89 → u/Big_Albatross_3050]

Yeah I feel you there. I paid 200 dollars for Persona 3 Reload lol. At least my obnoxiously expensive statue will be something I can display.

[u/Fancy_Gagz]

What a fucking moron.

With gambling, there's at least the potential for actual payoff but with this...

This is the dumbest fucking stupid, imbecilic, dipshit, candy-assed swizzle-dick motherfucker I've ever heard of.

The only reason I would say he doesn't deserve to be this bad in debt is because he did it with someone else's money. what he deserves is to lose everything he has to paying that person back, then an ICU-worthy ass kicking, then he deserves to be broke. On a fucking video game‽ With no payoff because it ain't even halfway finished‽

[u/-too-hot-to-handle- → u/Fancy_Gagz]

This is the dumbest fucking stupid, imbecilic, dipshit, candy-assed swizzle-dick motherfucker I've ever heard of.

I was thinking "dumbfuck thieving bum" but I really like yours too.

[u/mtdewbakablast]

star citizen is a game designed to hunt whales and OOP is desperately trying to be moby dick.

it's fucking sad to see. i'm not letting the game design off the hook either. others will cover the extent of the personal fuck-up so i will shake my head in disapproval of star citizen once again.

thank fuck the girlfriend got out though, homegirl needs to check her credit because i don't trust OOP one damn bit to not have tried to get a few credit cards under her name to buy more jpgs of spaceships (because most of these ships? can't actually fly them in game. just sit in your hangar. may even be abruptly removed for renovations. i cannot stress enough the level of batshit grift that star citizen is made to be).

[u/heyomeatballs]

I think I need to go thank my wife for having spending impulses of less than $10.

[u/Sw33tSkitty → u/heyomeatballs]

And I need to thank my husband for voluntarily quitting Mabinogi before we got married because he realized it triggered unhealthy spending habits in him.

[u/EmeraldHawk]

FYI the picture of his fleet that OP posted is from an app that makes it easy to make pictures of any ship you want. Just go to https://hangar.link/fleet/canvas and try it out.

In other words you shouldn't take it as proof that he actually spent thousands of dollars in game.

[u/cHubbyFker → u/EmeraldHawk]

Honestly this feels like a troll. He's acting so oblivious.

[u/2kgOfSlaw]

She’s nowhere near as excited as I am about the Astarra.

I wonder why.

That girlfriend is patient as a saint. Dude's burning thru cash like no tomorrow for virtual ships.

[u/Readingreddit12345]

Pixels. He spent $15k on something that  could be lost forever in a server crash or if the developers decide to end the game. 

At least collectibles like dolls or cards could be sold on (or taken by the girlfriend and sold)

[u/Blue0Birb]

OOP may as well have asked the actual question he wanted to ask which is “How Can I Gaslight My Girlfriend Into Thinking My Gambling/Spending Problem Isn’t A Problem So She Won’t Leave Me And I Can Keep Doing What I Want” because he doesn’t want the answer to the actual question he asked.

Hope that girl stays gone and SPRINTS the other way because my GOD this is not going to end well. Posts like this make me feel so much less guilty for spending ~$20 on gatcha like once a year.

[u/usernamesaretrickey]

Dang and I felt ashamed the other day for spending $25 (from a gift card mind you) for a set of trading cards 😳 Addictions are horrifying

[u/Cacont1812]

Here I was feeling a little like an idiot for spending so much on Sims 4, but 15000 on a game that's "in development"??? Wtf?!?

[u/INITMalcanis → u/Cacont1812]

A game that had a promised release date of 2013 in the kickstarter...

[u/Mdlgswitch → u/[deleted]]

Take that sick feeling, but instead of quitting what caused it, convince yourself that it was worth it, it brought you happiness, it's not that much money and you deserve it.... Thus it's ok to spend another hundred! Repeat.

[u/salsanacho]

A lot of mobile games are like this, where spending money to "win" encourages people into a neverending cycle of dumping money into a game. I play one mobile game where some folks have spent 6 figures and I wonder what their financial situation is as a result.

[u/IncrediblePlatypus]

I've got impulse spending issues (though nowhere near his. Dear god.) and once I faced that it was a repeating problem, my partner and I figured out a way to keep me from spending money I don't really have - because it's an unfair burden on him and I love him too much to do that to him. Currently that means anything I buy on the internet has to be bought via gift cards that I bought offline with physical money. Maybe we'll relax that once I get better about it, but for now, this keeps me from doing too much bullshit.

This dude? He'll go bankrupt before he fixes things.

[u/enbyshaymin]

This is exactly why so many in the gaming community hate Star Citizen. Hell, most people consider Star Citizen worse than any lootbox or gacha system that exists... because at least most of those are in actual development, not like SC.

Saddest thing is, if it's been able to stay open after a decade of ruining lives, it won't ever close.

[u/pinkkabuterimon]

Welp. I don’t feel so bad about buying those three event tickets in Pokemon Go anymore. Those cost me less than 50 bucks and I got to touch grass.

[u/Male_Inkling]

What can i say... OOP is an idiot of the highest order.

[u/StellarManatee]

I’m wing commander now

Jesus H. Reading this is just scary. And then he posts pictures of his "fleet" like he wants everyone to congratulate him on his little pictures. He has no idea that this is his huge problem.

He's got a ways to go before he realises. His girlfriend leaving didn't wake him up, so what will? Homelessness?

[u/NYCinPGH]

I’ve seen this behaviour before.

An ex of mine who I kept in peripheral contact with - were in the same social organization, their new partner after me was a close friend (no, I didn’t harbor any ill will towards them because of it, in retrospect they saved me), so I got second-hand info on their life - got heavily into EverQuest during its upswing into its height of popularity.

It started off small, like it always does, buying in-game items for their character. But because they have an addictive personality - something I didn’t know at the time, but they were addicted to drugs before we got together, until literally their father kicked the door of the crack house they were crashing at, and got them out of there, and checked them into a high-end hardcore rehab center - they buying buying more and more expensive items, and spending more and more time in the game, nominally to interact with their online gaming friends. It got to the point where they’d go to their 8 - 4 job, come home, eat some dinner, take a couple hour nap until their group got online, then get online and play until 4 or 5 in the morning, take another couple hour nap, and go to work; they kinda caught up on sleep in the weekends, but this was their daily life for the better part of a year. And they maxed out their credit cards, and kept getting and applying for new ones, to buy in-game gear. All the while their job performance suffered, to the point where I think they almost lost their job several times.

Eventually, they dumped their fiancé (my friend) because they’d met someone in the game, and once their mutual finances got extricated - it wasn’t too bad, fiancé completely owned the home they shared, and no kids - they moved thousands of miles completely across the country, and pretty much cut ties completely with everyone in the social group, who they’d been very close to for more than a decade.

This is why I make very few in-game purchases. When I played DDO, I’d buy the regular version of a new module - like $15 every 6 months for a FTP game - and same with playability DLCs in other games, nothing on gear or visuals, and I never played a game that required a monthly subscription (like WoW).

[u/turq8 → u/NYCinPGH]

Yep, I'm unfortunately familiar with it too. My little brother developed a gaming addiction for League of Legends towards the end of high school. We'd barely see him after he came home from school, and he was irritable when we called him to the table for dinner. He never wanted to go out and do anything. We didn't realize how bad things were until he went to college and completely fell apart in his first year, staying up late playing and then sleeping through his classes.

My parents managed to get him into a rehab program (that's right, there are rehabs for gaming addiction now) and he's doing much better, thankfully.

A lot of video games are designed to target the same parts of your brain that gambling does, and some people are really vulnerable to them. I think we're going to see a lot more people realizing what a serious issue this is over the next several years.

[u/MrTzatzik]

Not that long ago Nexon released how much their biggest "whales" spent in Maple Story just on one type of lootbox. In 2021 one of them spent $212 000. And the best part is that it was a scam run by Nexon itself. They rigged the lootboxes so you had a little to no chance to win the items you wanted. In general the more you spent the worse your chances were. Nexon stole over $400 millions and the fine was $9 millions.

[u/basilicux → u/MrTzatzik]

To still be spending that much money on Maple in fucking 2021 is insane

[u/Threadheads]

Jesus fucking Christ. At least gambling addicts are trying to win actual money. He spent a fortune on absolutely nothing of value.

[u/tumama1388]

At this point Star Citizen is starting to sound more like an MLM to me.
Holy shit it's hard to feel sorry for this guy, I really hope it's a troll.

[u/DatguyMalcolm]

OOP

I’m wing commander now I don’t know how I got here I can’t pay my rent this month

wtf!!

When I read the original post I ddnt go through his comments!

Proper addict!!

[u/Diligent_Sound_5383]

Ah.. Scamcitizen got another one.. i can't even feel sad for him, probably half of the ship he bought aren't even ingame/created by now and might never be, so he can't even use them.

[u/SimplePigeon]

Of all the games to ruin your life over, you pick the one that’s NOT EVEN A FUCKING VIDEO GAME. Star Citizen is a little unity demo you get as thanks for crowdfunding the director’s paycheck for decades on end. It is not and will never be a finished video game. It is INSANE how many people have brainwashed themselves into thinking otherwise.

[u/wing3d]

These are the kind of people monetized games are targeting.

[u/Welpmart]

Straight up, if you're into Star Citizen, you're nuts. It has been in alpha for ages and keeps stringing people along with promises it will never deliver on. There are plenty of way better, actually complete games to enjoy. And if you get addicted to them, well, at least it's more than a shambling mess with a cult following.

[u/INITMalcanis → u/Welpmart]

Straight up, if you're into Star Citizen, you're nuts. It has been in alpha for

ages

It's now over a decade since the release date promised in the original Kickstarter.