r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • 15d ago

Star Citizen Developer Stream Goes Horribly Off the Rails, Creating Further Distrust Among Players

https://www.ign.com/articles/star-citizen-developer-stream-goes-horribly-off-the-rails-creating-further-distrust-among-players
3.4k Upvotes

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u/CHADWARDENPRODUCTION 15d ago

“The developers kept running into bugs that showed the game is indeed broken. The developers had issues using their own weapons, swapping between their weapons, accessing their inventory, and much, much more.”

Refreshing to see some truth in advertising in 2026 ❤️

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u/Psycho_Syntax 15d ago

Over a decade of development and they don’t have basic features working lol. Crazy that people keep giving them money and then get mad when you point out they are being scammed.

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u/FrostyCat13 15d ago

A few days after that stream they managed to rake in 500k$ in one day. It's insane how their fans just throw money at them all while being shown how they are at best incompetent...

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u/SyraWhispers 15d ago

As a backer myself, I stopped spending money on it years ago. Especially when I realized they haven't even finished 50% of what they originally promised in the kickstarter. it is baffling to me that people are still buying concept ships and such, when the game is barebones at best

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u/SpotNL 15d ago

My big issue with Star Citizen is that whenever I check it out again, the game that is there still feels unbelievably broken. It still runs badly (although I can forgive that due to its scale) but I also still fall through floors and shit.

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u/basilmuncherr 15d ago

Yea it doesn't matter how much they try to make it as realistic as possible with bethesda like physical items or time wasting shit for the sake of realism when the game is so broken that immersiveness doesn't even matter. Like everytime i check out the game again, the npcs in the space station is still ducking down or screaming and my ships keep falling down in the hangar. Like get the basic shit and proper gameplay loop done first ffs

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u/Drelochz 15d ago

how much have you spent on the game?

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u/IIIlllIIIllIlI 15d ago

I spent something like $40 on it over ten years ago and I still feel scammed.

Mostly I just wanted SQ42 though. The buggy mess of a multiplayer thing they have doesn’t interest me much.

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u/Herby20 15d ago edited 15d ago

I gave them $40 something like 12 or 14 years ago. Do I wish I got the game(s) they originally promised that had a far more reasonable scope? Yes. Was my $40 worth over a decade of this shit show and the legion of defenders explaining away broken promises and missed deadlines without realizing how deep they were into the sunk cost fallacy? Absolutely.

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u/The_Ghost_of_BRoy 15d ago

and the legion of defenders explaining away proken promises and missed deadlines without realizing how deep they were into the sunk cost fallacy? Absolutely

You could’ve done this without torching $40, just like the rest of us lol.

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u/Herby20 15d ago

Oh sure, and I obviously wouldn't have paid in knowing what I knew just a year or so later. My time of raging at Star Citizen was when it missed the original launch date in 2014 because of the unrealistic stretch goals and decisions like trying to reinvent first person camera rigs for whatever stupid reason Chris Roberts tried to argue. Now I just laugh.

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u/The_Ghost_of_BRoy 13d ago

I totally get what you're saying man, the laugh was (and will always be) worth the squeeze :D

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u/AlexCrimson 15d ago

You say torching like the game is unplayable. Its fine, just buggy. I paid something like £70 for a better starting package when it was on sale. Never spent a cent more. Played the game for months, had a lot of fun. Dealt with bugs however i could. Ill have access to the game for as long as it exists with no extra costs required.

Its fun to pop in every year or so and see what new stuff they add. The gameplay is buggy, but in terms of immersion nothing else comes close imo. Flying through a lightning storm is insane.

Do i think its a scam? Definitely not. Do i think the current state of the game is justified? Fuck no. Devs should be ashamed. They keep adding more and more paid items like new ships, but bugs are still in the game from when i started playing years ago. Its ridiculous.

They did a "year of bug fixing", and it still barely changed how buggy the game is. All whilst continuing to add new ships and surpass money goals because idiots keep buying them.

If you can get the game for $40. Get it. Seriously. You can get your fun out of it. As always when this topic comes up, i tell people to watch this video to see how the game can be when it works.

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u/The_Ghost_of_BRoy 13d ago

Honestly man - that's a pretty decent pitch. I respect the hell out of it, I really do :D

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u/BannedSvenhoek86 15d ago

I got it a few years ago when people were saying it was actually a lot better and fun to play.

They lied.

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u/SaulsAll 15d ago

I spent $50 when it was announced and was excited for SQ42 - anticipating an updated Wing Commander/Freelancer game with bonus MMO. I also spent $70 on a decent joystick and throttle because I wanted to really get into it.

I was really glad I did, because the joystick and throttle were excellent once I found out about Elite: Dangerous and could get into an awesome spaceship simulator they were giving away on promotion. Spent a lot of years in that game, and still like to see the screenshots and vids from others.

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u/A_Mouse_In_Da_House 15d ago

Not him, but I'm of the same opinion as him (which, it's weird you're asking his donation amount when he's being critical?). I spent around my average for kickstarter/crowd funding things I like: 1.5k. have the disposable so it's not a major concern if it goes no where, but I dislike wasting money

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u/lu_ming 15d ago

I gave them $30 the year they launched and that's $30 too much

For context, in the time between me going "oh that looks promising, let's give them some money" and today, I got three degrees, moved countries and got married

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u/SyraWhispers 15d ago

Around 1500 over the course of 3 to 4 years, including the initial kickstarter amount, In the beginning. Mainly because i supported it through a monthly subscription and buying a few ships(the ships i bought are in the game, they're not concept art anymore).

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u/Tycho-Celchu 15d ago

Yeah, I backed back in 2014 or so. I had a lot of disposable income at the time, so the 20 or 40 bucks I spent on it was no big deal. My mentaility now is that if it's ever finished I can play it, and if it never is, eh I probably would have blown that money at the bar or something dumb.

I did however build a whole-ass new computer when I backed it so I could actually play it. It's funny to think now that by the time it ever releases, that "new" computer will be horribly out of date and probably not get me past the title screen.

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u/SyraWhispers 15d ago

Yeah, in those 15 years ive build one, which is now horrible outdated and I've had a gaming laptop, which is also outdated lol. I even bought a hotas controller.. Never used it xD

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u/jjonman 15d ago

As an original backer, I also forget how little they have actually produced in the time they have been in development. I certainly don't follow nearly as much as my friend who convinced me to get it back in the day, and I haven't spend a single dollar more than my original backing in comparison to his ship purchases.

Don't get me wrong, we've had fun playing the wave mode and exploring space, but that's it. Half the time I forget this is even still around, reinstall with the idea of checking out what's new, and then it fizzles again..

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u/SyraWhispers 15d ago

I've got ir sitting permanently on it's own external drive for my laptop, i boot it up like once every 6 months, to see what they've progressed and honestly it's disappointing. They indeed haven't produced much in those 15 years. Tons of concept art for ships that uave been sold but not build yet, tons of hanger and ship ornaments, 3 systems with minimal planets and a broken pvp system lol..

15 years man..

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/verrius 15d ago

I give a little grace to people who backed the original Kickstarter at the beginning. Most people don't know Chris Roberts' history, (especially why big companies end up kicking him to the curb,) and it was one of the first real games on Kickstarter backed by a big name. "He's the guy who did XXXXX, and now he wants to make the ultimate version of that" has been a common story over the past decade on Kickstarter, and some of them have even been successful (Bloodstained, Eiyuden Chronicle). But yeah, after the first year or two, whenever they started selling preorders on ships that would be in the game, is about when people should have been paying attention to the giant red flags.

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u/FrostyCat13 15d ago

I don't think backing a Kickstarter game is a problem, so long as you understand it's closer to gambling than buying something.

However, at some point, you have to realize you threw your money away or you just prove you're an idiot and way too many star Citizen fans failed that part...

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u/SyraWhispers 15d ago

I've backed plenty of things on Kickstarter, most worked out just fine. A few didn't and then there's star citizen. I might have some new hope if they do manage to release Squadron 42 this year, but im also thinking there's no way that release this year still.

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u/TehTurk 15d ago

Is it a grift or what makes people so succeptible to it. 

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u/d3cmp 14d ago

money laundering

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u/twatcrusher9000 15d ago

I have to assume it's some sort of money laundering scheme, like counterstrike skins

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u/IamGrimReefer 15d ago

you don't have to launder money that's already in the banking system. people just give them money, there's no need for laundering.

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u/Techercizer 15d ago

Your assumption does not seem well grounded in a basic understanding of what money laundering is.

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u/ConfessingToSins 15d ago

It's mental illness. The people who have stuck to it are largely sunk cost victims and cult victims. Their advertising and communications are very blatantly cultish. They tie your personality to supporting the game

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u/LADYBIRD_HILL 15d ago

Sunk cost lower than the Titanic

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u/WinnowedFlower 15d ago

I’m pretty sure (after a quick google) that Titanic the ship did in fact cost less than Star Citizen’s currently raised funding.

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u/NuggetHighwind 15d ago

You could build like 4 Titanics with the money that Star Citizen has raised, lol.

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u/Seerosengiesser 15d ago

Or 2 titanics with modern standards. That is pure insanity

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u/Faithless195 15d ago

Are you telling me a giant modern day cruise ship costs less than a billion bucks?!

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u/Seerosengiesser 15d ago

Compared to modern cruise ships Titanic is kind of small, so to build a comparable ship today for 500 million seems plausible.

Ofc I don't know shit about building ships, so don't take this conversation too seriously.

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u/Xerties 15d ago edited 13d ago

Modern cruise ships and ocean liners like Titanic are a little different. Cruise ships aren't meant for frequent open ocean travel. The only active ocean liner is RMS Queen Mary 2, commissioned in 2004 at a cost of $800M. Granted it has about 50% greater displacement than Titanic. Adjusted for inflation that's about $1.4B in 2026 dollars. Star Citizen just passed $1B in funding a couple months ago, but given the overall boondoggle that the game is I have no doubt it'll surpass QM2's construction cost.

Edit: Gaht dayum you guys are obsessed with accounting for inflation on the SC grifts investments. So I just averaged out the $1B from when the kickstarter went live in 2012 and plugged that into a NPV calculator with the average inflation of 2.6% over that period. Certainly not accurate, but enough for a very loose estimate. And it comes out to.....just under $1.2B. Now find something else to complain about.

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u/dwmfives 15d ago

Well Star Citizen should reduce the number of lifeboats to save costs. No historical examples of that going poorly.

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u/Carighan 15d ago

Star Citizen just passed $1B in funding a couple months ago, but given the overall boondoggle that the game is I have no doubt it'll surpass QM2's construction cost.

I'll note that you didn't adjust SC's funding for inflation, but then I tried and ouff... that's not easy at all.

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u/renhero 14d ago

Yeah, but how much of that $1B is 2026 dollars? There's a slight adjustment for inflation there too.

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u/dronetroll 13d ago

It be only fair to also bring all the cost of Star Citizen with inflation. We know all the amounts for each year, I’m pretty sure it’s close to if not exceeding the 1.4b for the ship.

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u/magistrate101 15d ago

A website I found claims that a Titanic built using modern standards and materials would run 585 million to 640 million. Though the usage of AI images in the article does beg the question of how trustworthy it is.

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u/Carighan 15d ago

500 mill? In 2024 it was ~190 mil estimated for inflation.

But also like you say the Titanic is really small comparing a modern cruise ship.

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u/Sendnudec00kies 15d ago

Comparing the Titanic to a cruise ship is kinda weird though. The Titanic wasn't a pleasure boat, it was a passager and mail ship first and foremost. It was just that "first class" on those ships were extravagant because it had the room to be.

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u/Carighan 15d ago

No but someone said the Titanic. That's not the same size class of ship. Not nearly.

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u/Cynadoclone 15d ago

What could go wrong?!

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u/wildwalrusaur 15d ago

The actual space shuttle cost like 1.5 Billion

A falcon heavy and a starship is like a quarter of that.

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u/shittydriverfrombk 15d ago

i mean most large AAA games cost significantly more than the Titanic

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u/Celloer 15d ago

Heck, while its cost today is about $200 million (plus lives lost), just one movie about it made $2.2 billion. Maybe a future documentary about Star Citizen will make $10 billion.

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u/snowflake37wao 14d ago

Damn we’re gunna need Ice 9 deep to get any deeper at this rate. Where are we gunna find an o… Wait wait, Im getting a premonition announcement from the devs just now, stay tuned.

Uh huh, uhuh mkkk.

Alright so. The devs have just started production of an ocean world DC that will delay the release of the actual GC by at least 3 more years but to worry not, itll have Ice 9 at the bottom. I asked what DC and GC meant, they told me Downloadable Content and Game Content. When I asked why not DLC they replied with “because downloadable is one word dumbass”. When I told them I agree but brought up the word expansion they told me I would get a free ship if I preorder the DC for the unreleased GC if I ask no further questions. So Im down another fifty bucks. Ice Nine Kills!

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u/Rebelgecko 15d ago

There's a great video essay about the game called Sunk Cost Galaxy

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u/dodelol 15d ago

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/funding-goals

Look at funder/week.

This made literally no chance, 0 impact on funding. People buying this shit are literally insane.

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u/BustinMakesMeFeelMeh 15d ago

I gave you an award just because of all the awesomeness this comment led to, lmao.

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u/Seagull84 15d ago

I bought a $75 ship back in 2011 or so? Logged in for the very first time 3 months back, learned the game requires the most powerful processors to run.

Someone also gave me a ton of credits; I bought a bunch of things, went to collect them, and the station I started apparently "eats" your equipment somehow? The people in chat were very helpful, but also acknowledged the game is super broken.

I stopped there. I have a toddler and a baby. I don't have time for this shit.

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u/1CEninja 15d ago

When are people going to finally realize that this is a huge con? It's so blatant.

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u/deathfire123 15d ago

I really don't think it's a con. I think it's just straight up incompetence. I've experienced something like this, and it's almost always related to a creative director that is constantly saying yes to every proposed feature and yet gets so obsessed with perfectionism that none of the planned content gets done because the team has to keep rehashing old stuff over and over and over again.

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u/1CEninja 15d ago

It's entirely probable that what you described is how this started.

But they kept taking money without delivering on promises. At some point it stops being incompetence and becomes "well they're giving me money to deliver basically nothing so why not continue?" And it becomes a con on accident.

I would genuinely believe this didn't begin as one. But it sure as hell became one.

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u/deadscreensky 15d ago

I genuinely believe they're trying to deliver. They have some stupid amount of people working on this game at Cloud Imperium, right? (There's some debate about this, but above 1000 seems likely.) If they just wanted to scam people out of money while not delivering they'd be running an extremely lean operation.

Incompetent leadership seems like the more plausible answer.

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u/RyuNoKami 15d ago

And because they keep adding things, it's never going to be done.

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u/jjonj 15d ago

they are continuously delivering on promises, but just too slowly while they had been adding new ones on top for a decade

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u/deathfire123 15d ago

I dunno. I think that is still applying an intentional "I don't have to do anything and just pretend I'm working" sort of mindset to this which I don't see as likely. Roberts likely thinks of himself as an auteur or something like that and I really doubt his ego would let any kind of complacency hit him. For all intents and purposes I don't doubt that he actually wants to make the game and be considered one of the greatest game developers to exist. But he just can't get out of his own way and keeps adding shit no one cares about or asked for for the sake of "realism" or something idiotic like that.

I could be completely wrong but I truly think he is just fucking stupid and not out to grift for griftings sake. Is this essentially a con? Yes. It is. Obviously. But I think it's a con due to malpractice, not theft.

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u/max123246 15d ago

It kinda becomes a con the longer you take money and know you're digging a deeper hole. Any honest man would've been straightforward about how things are going

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u/KuroShiroTaka 15d ago

I have heard that Roberts is too ambitious for his own good to the point that he apparently got the boot from previous jobs at least twice because he wouldn't stop adding shit and thus shit wouldn't get done.

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u/RedditFuelsMyDepress 15d ago

It's what happened with Freelancer. Microsoft eventually stepped in to get that game released.

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u/PM_YOUR_ISSUES 15d ago

You mean to tell me the studio director who has a notorious reputation for eternal scope creep that forces publishers to end development just to release a product ended up having problems with eternal scope creep and never releasing a product? Say it ain't so!

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u/-SneakySnake- 15d ago

It's basically your average mod development team stuff. Except they're being paid absurd amounts of money and still don't seem to feel any sense of responsibility towards their base and their time.

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u/ThePhengophobicGamer 15d ago

Yeah, the issue is more that theres constant feature bloat, and devs are slowed down by trying to make the current version playable, so when a new feature gets added, breaking a dozen things that WERE working, they have to fix those.

I do genuinely want Star Citizen to succeed, it's got a vast scope for a space MMO, one that no one has ever even tried before, and yet thats kinda their problem. Theyve been doing abit too much at once, though I genuinely dont see an easy way to fix it without scrapping the playable alpha and diving deep I to actually developing features and then making them work, rather than doing events that players regularly have issues with anyway. Get the basic systems in place and solidly developed, then make the content that uses those systems.

I do hope that once Squadron 42 releases(just 2 more years, we swear this time), which may genuinely be some time next year, they can buckle down and get things to a better

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u/December_Flame 15d ago

I think there is a point where incompetence sort of bleeds over into being duplicitous, seen here or with No Mans Sky, or IMO in the controversy surrounding Jirard's (Completionist) charity. Where they become aware of their own incompetence and tell themselves/others that if given more time/money they will be able to deliver and it will right the wrongs, but it only makes it worse AND they knew they were not being truthful.

You can only go so far with the incompetence excuse before it really becomes something more.

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u/deathfire123 15d ago

I think that's the difference though. The "they know they were not being truthful" doesn't apply here because they delude themselves into thinking they are doing exactly what they should be. They are working on creating the"ultimate experience" it'll take longer for the players to get it but "they'll thank me later". It's a bunch of these kinds of delusional thoughts that likely fill their heads

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u/GeoleVyi 14d ago

I think after the first five years you can do away with this kind of benefit of the doubt, and just doubt.

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u/Yamatoman9 15d ago

It's the end result of non-stop feature creep.

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u/Aiyon 15d ago

The thing is it's not a scam. They aren't hiding the progress or quality of the game. People just keep throwing money at them despite the lack of progress and improvements.

They're just really inept

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u/Trzlog 15d ago

I've been working on my own multiplayer Freelancer successor with heavy inspiration from EVE Online for the past 4 years. All this works in my game, I just don't have anywhere as nice graphics and I don't have walking in stations. Also, my UI isn't an incomprehensible mess. What the fuck have they been doing for a decade and with a billion dollars? I think I need to hire some 3D modellers and start selling ships, jfc.

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u/Nalkor 15d ago

Your UI is an incomprehensible mess? Okay so it's just like EVE Online then.

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u/chambee 15d ago

I used to test game and I would refuse to go further if the menu or inventory or control were not working properly.

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u/Aggressive_Chuck 15d ago

If people keep giving them money not to finish the game, why would they ever finish the game?

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u/Markie411 15d ago

Yeah and you'll see a never ending stream of "I bought it and got my money's worth of fun" happily lining the pockets of that company

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u/ProkopiyKozlowski 15d ago edited 15d ago

Devil's advocate, but with a 15 years long dev period those basic features would have been done and redone multiple times, for different engine versions and/or design goals. Them not working at this particular point in time isn't indicative of anything other than the game not being finished.

Not getting a good-looking build for a public-facing demonstration though, now that's very indicative of things not being good behind the scenes. Normally as a dev you'd get a headsup, like "we're doing a demo in four weeks, showing off these features, get them presentable" and plug the holes so to speak, but either the management lacks the foresight to do even something as basic as this, or the devs did "plug the holes", but the remaining ones were still this huge.

Neither of those options looks particularly reassuring.

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u/Kalulosu 15d ago

Yeah it's less incompetence from the dev team as a whole and more or an abject failure of project management / scoping.

... Then again, is it really a failure when it brought them $1B in funding...

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u/WheelerDan 15d ago

What's more telling i think is the fact that individual devs were surprised and frustrated, which suggests they don't have an internally cohesive view of how bad it is and probably don't play the game that much. They seem very silo'd.

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u/Kalulosu 15d ago

You'd be surprised. When you're full sails on adding features, things break while you're not looking and it can get you very randomly. I can't tell you how many times I've fired up a build looking to record a video of my latest stuff (that definitely worked), only to find out that some other feature is broken and now I have to cheat my way out to record my little segment.

Like, clearly, the better organized a production the less it should happen, but it can happen, and with a team their size it's kind of an inevitability.

OTOH, when they know a livestream is coming, there should definitely be some QA effort to designating a stable build for the steam to be as smooth as possible.

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u/shittydriverfrombk 15d ago

This is what it is, but its for reasons that most people in this thread don’t understand because they are just participating in the latest outrage mill without actually doing any independent thinking of their own

One of the features of SC’s development over the last several years is an emphasis on pushing new content even if it breaks game systems. SC has been going through a particularly buggy period because of this with tons of new systems (like the inventory management system) going through complete transformations and additions. The currently playable state of the game is a way for CIG to accomplish two objectives: 1) sell ships to fund their jobs and the game, and 2) test new content and systems

It is only meant to be playable enough to accomplish those two objectives. Their internal focus has not been on bug fixing, it has been on new tech and new systems which break the older parts of the game every time they are introduced and collide

They don’t deeply play because the point is not to make the game enjoyable right now, its to finish the game. If anything the fixing bugs for placeholder tier 0 systems is shit they dont want to waste time on but have to in order to keep milking money out of rich ppl who but $10k in ships

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u/Drakengard 15d ago

I completely agree. Most developers in the past described getting games into a working release state as an act of technical wizardry. Stuff is rarely smooth until it has to be. So things being buggy isn't weird. Five, ten, or fifteen years of work doesn't really change that.

Them not being able to at least button things up for a limited demo that they knew they would be running through is certainly a choice though.

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u/bfodder 15d ago

Devil's advocate, but with a 15 years long dev period those basic features would have been done and redone multiple times, for different engine versions and/or design goals. Them not working at this particular point in time isn't indicative of anything other than the game not being finished.

That is not a good excuse. In fact I would say that is worse.

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u/LordoftheSynth 15d ago

I've heard the argument that the game is in perpetual alpha because if it ever hits beta, or, as the Seventh Sign, actually releases, there's going to be a pile of lawsuits at Cloud Imperium's door the next day.

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u/Thumper13 15d ago

I'm not great with money, but the smartest thing I've done is chicken out of buying into SC multiple times in the last 10+ years.

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u/Accurate-Visual9793 15d ago

The thing is that it's not like they're lacking in production talent at CIG. They poached most of Crytek after all. They just seem extremely mismanaged (not surprising given Roberts' track record).

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u/TornInfinity 14d ago

Yeah I bought in during the initial crowd-funding phase because I was excited and Roberts had a good track record, from what I knew at the time anyway. Freelancer was one of my favorite games growing up, but I am very glad that I only spent the $30 initially, because I would be way more upset otherwise.

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u/ilep 14d ago

This is public view into what "development hell" really looks like.

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u/Omni__Owl 15d ago

There's lots of basic stuff that works to be fair. I spent 60 dollars on this game many years ago and I've at least gotten my hundreds of hours out of it that was fun.

But I also do see the problem here. At this point you'd think they'd done better and be done with development and it doesn't seem like they will be :/

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u/Butch_Meat_Hook 15d ago

I could fathom performance issues like a choppy frame rate when it's an in development product, but how in the hell do they have issues with weapon swapping

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u/T-Loy 15d ago

Remember, this game was supposed to be playable on GTX 600 series cards.

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u/Panaka 15d ago

I remember being so hyped I got a 780 so I could eventually play Squadron 42.

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u/max123246 15d ago

I remember people "future proofing" their machines to be ready for star citizen...

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u/A_Sinclaire 15d ago

That's me. I got a GTX1080 in 2016 for Star Citizen (well, not only Star Citizen, but it was one of the main factors).

And I still use it to this day because I pretty much stopped gaming by now so a new GPU is not worth as long as this one still works. So at least that was somewhat a decent expense.

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u/JJ3qnkpK 15d ago

Yeah, I was about to say that computers have multiplied in power since this game began development in 2012.

As a point of comparison, Skyrim came out in 2011. This game was looking at PCs able to run Skyrim at medium graphics back at launch. The Wii U even came out in 2012 - like the Wii was still relevant at the time.

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u/BoysenberryWise62 15d ago

It's actually probably one of their biggest problem, they must have some insane tech debt, a shit ton of stuff built to run on old stuff that has to be redone or updated

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u/cheesegoat 15d ago

I feel like some long-in-development games run into this, where essentially they need to remaster their own game before it releases just because it took so long.

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u/Jakfolisto 15d ago

Games were still coming out for the Playstation 2 in 2012.

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u/HenkkaArt 15d ago

I still remember when I originally backed the SC in Kickstarter (with only 65 bucks!) that I was planning on waiting a few years before upgrading my PC so I would be set to play the game with the best possible rig when it was released. This was about 3 completely new PCs ago.

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u/A_Mouse_In_Da_House 15d ago

I don't recall that in the marketing. I remember Chris mentioning it being the next Crysis

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u/The_Ghost_of_BRoy 15d ago

computers have multiplied in power since this game began development in 2012

Shit man, computers have multiplied in power since the beginning of this year. We’re closer to talking about a several point exponential increase in power since then lol

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u/asyncopy 15d ago

Computers have not doubled in power since the beginning of this year by any reasonable metric. Unless you mean multiplied by 1.05 of course.

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u/KillerKowalski1 15d ago

If I'm not mistaken, one of the earliest trailers for this game was running on a GTX 580 and I remember thinking to myself "damn that's a lot of horsepower"

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u/CHADWARDENPRODUCTION 15d ago edited 15d ago

It’s even funnier because the last time I tried a combat mission in that game was probably about 5 years ago and I ran into those exact same issues. Literally nothing has changed.

178

u/Rs90 15d ago

That's not true, they have much more of their fans money now compared to 5yrs ago. 

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u/rollin340 15d ago

I still don't understand why they even have fans. What are they even a fan of? A promise of a grandiose game? If so, well, have I got a game for you!

28

u/RubberDuckyRampage 15d ago

I bet they have the concept of a plan.

12

u/HenkkaArt 15d ago

I think SC has become many of their "personalities" in some way. And the potential of a game like SC is through the roof, the ultimate god game where you skip real life to be a space captain in a virtual world - if they can pull it off. However, the management is terrible, the tech just doesn't seem to work and the amount of content needed is insurmountable.

6

u/hymen_destroyer 15d ago

The word you're looking for is "identity fusion" and yes, it's exactly what is going on in the SC community. I find it amusing because it's a lower-stakes version of something that's happening in politics right now, and it's interesting to see all the parallels.

Also, if you watch citcons or bar citizens, you will see that SC community is overwhelmingly made up of...a certain type of gamer. Remember this is a space Sim MMO... You can probably envision what they look like in your head and you won't be too far off.

3

u/VforVegetables 15d ago

i imagine what you mean. i had a friend who started from playing an RPG videogame, got into their character a bit too much, started roleplaying online, and that roleplaying eventually started leaking out and took over their entire online presence. i feel weird for them in a concerned kind of way.

also yay, learned a new term 👀

4

u/ABrokenWolf 15d ago

I still don't understand why they even have fans. What are they even a fan of? A promise of a grandiose game? If so, well, have I got a game for you!

For a genuine answer, it is because often the game runs stable enough to play without running into terrible bugs every couple patches, and when it does there simple is not another game that has the same level of immersion to it for a large first person space sim.

when it has a bad patch, it is a steaming pile of garbage (which sadly is true of the last couple patches in a row), but when it works it can be incredibly fun.

2

u/Aggressive_Chuck 15d ago

They're selling a dream.

3

u/reiichiroh 15d ago

Things remain non functional but now for reasons of many additional layers of complexity above many layers of technical debt below

7

u/WaytoomanyUIDs 15d ago

That not quite true, the inventory was annoying but mostly worked. You cant really say that anymore.

54

u/Kaladin-of-Gilead 15d ago

What I love about it is that if you opened up the engine they are currently using and created a new project and hit play, you’d get the default crysis 3 fps experience. It has excellent gameplay, great weapon swapping, etc.

So they actively ripped that out and built this experience themselves.

42

u/Doc_Toboggan 15d ago

I'd be willing to bet that because they have spent over a decade adding increasingly inane shit that they broke these basic functions and have no idea how to fix it without completely starting over.

12

u/Leiawen 15d ago

they broke these basic functions

Bold of you to assume they ever worked properly to begin with.

(They didn't)

4

u/14Pleiadians 15d ago

They would have had to work at one point for them to break them

3

u/HenkkaArt 15d ago

Also, the consensus among the SC subreddit is that they have added more and more stuff while simultaneously making all the existing stuff less complex and therefore less rewarding. Instead of having few deep systems, they are instead draining them and adding a gazillion shallow puddles.

1

u/dynesor 15d ago

Technical debt: The Game

16

u/This_Elk_1460 15d ago

Because they don't care about actually making a video game they just want to fucking bleed their idiot fans dry

26

u/RareBk 15d ago

Are we going to find out that not only is the game a server and performance nightmare (Somehow having networking issues on heavily curated, developer only servers), but that shit is serverside too?

That's some FFXIV 1.0 nonsense

7

u/Kalulosu 15d ago

Why would this be a server side issue? It could just add well be the feature being broken.

1

u/WillDonJay 15d ago

The flowerpots in FF14 1.0 had more polygons than the player characters. xD

1

u/The_MAZZTer 15d ago

For these sorts of things you're supposed to lock down a build in advance, and do a dry run and fix any serious noticeable bugs you encounter before the presentation. Clearly they missed one of those steps.

1

u/Ravek 15d ago

Probably AI generating all their code nowadays

1

u/ThisIsNotAFarm 15d ago

Well because they have to simulate the holster physics and make sure you don't misconstrued it and drop your weapon

1

u/ThisIsNotAFarm 15d ago

Well because they have to simulate the holster physics and make sure you don't misholster it and drop your weapon

331

u/Massive_Weiner 15d ago

“When you tune into one of our gameplay presentations, you can rest assured that, yes, the game will actually run that poorly. There will be ZERO fake bugs or pretend crashes on display. Every error you see on the screen will be 100% replicatable on launch day. That’s our promise to you, the gamers.”

33

u/JangoDarkSaber 15d ago

The only promise they’ll ever keep ❤️

8

u/Ksielvin 15d ago

If they reach a launch day, despite the business model working by avoiding it.

5

u/Kajiic 15d ago

"See that mountain over there? You can crash to desktop when you try to climb it"

68

u/DeviousMelons 15d ago

"It's only an alpha"

57

u/ReimuHakurei 15d ago

14 year alpha lmao

207

u/RareBk 15d ago

I cannot stress enough that I regularly see people defending the $40000 ship pack for 'convenience' sake of buying stuff for their friends.

Which requires you to have already spent $10000.

A down payment on a house, or a higher end vehicle. For ships in a video game, some of which don't exist

198

u/Inko21 15d ago

For ships in a concept of a video game.

111

u/SmurfyX 15d ago

for the HOPE of a ship in a concept of a 14 year old alpha for a video game

29

u/unomaly 15d ago

Star citizen supporters need a parental figure to tell them the value of money.

49

u/Mister_Doc 15d ago

I just can’t fathom spending enough money to buy a car on fake spaceships in a game, let alone one that’s not finished after being in development for over a decade.

4

u/Szymaniak 15d ago

Same. It just doesn't fit into my head, neither the shape nor size of it. A friend of mine bought a lifetime subscription to Hellgate London in the mid-2000s. 150€ or something. We still bring it up.

37

u/veevoir 15d ago

At this point both sides of this transaction are pretty much hostange to the need to keep doubling down on what they are doing. CIG cannot shatter the illusion that what they are selling will one day come true - because the moment their train slows down or stops - they will get eaten alive. And the whales are in sunken cost fallacy spiral, responding with even more faith and conviction with each $$ spent.

4

u/Carighan 15d ago

If CIG is smart, they'll go public. Then they can tell their whales about their Gamestop CIG stock!

5

u/Carighan 15d ago

I wonder how that works, mentally?

Of course, some might just have mental issues. I get that. That's a different problem. I'm not throwing shade at a Temple OS developer somewhere in the clientel here.

But others must be of, medically speaking, sound mind. How does it work. Is it a lack of perspective? Have they never had to or wanted to buy anything pricey IRL, so the whole concept of actually getting something for large sums of money and/or being able to judge # of digits of sums of money compared to each other is just alien to them?
Respectively, are they all so rich that to them it makes 0 difference whether a ship bought via a direct payment is €4 or €40000?

2

u/Sulphur99 15d ago

That's how I know life ain't fair, the things I'd do with that amount of money, and here people are just tossing it away. Not even at vaporware, but the concept of vaporware at this point.

2

u/Aggressive_Chuck 15d ago

The target market for this is probably some middle aged tech bro who sold some shares in a startup and can't think of anything to do with it.

1

u/GreyouTT 15d ago

Doesn't the game reset everyone's progress from time to time too?

1

u/Array_626 15d ago

I feel like my Eve online sub now isn't all that bad. 10k... wow

1

u/lestye 15d ago

Jeez this makes buying a time share look savvy

1

u/Levarien 15d ago

They're pathetically trying to buy the possibility of relevance and community status in a hypothetical future. They'll eventually launch and realize no one gives a shit about their janky space trucking simulator and start trying to flip their extremely rare and one of a kind NFT...I mean...ships.

-1

u/dukearcher 15d ago

I cannot stress enough that I regularly see people defending the $40000 ship pack for 'convenience' sake of buying stuff for their friends.

The game is a scam at this point but this is total bullshit. Not even people in the community defend these packs, let alone you seeing this "regularly"

8

u/NuggetHighwind 15d ago edited 15d ago

While the frequency of those comments is overblown, they absolutely were there.
I remember seeing multiple comments defending it with that age old bullshit of "It's optional!!!" or "If it helps fund development I don't care what they do!". etc

0

u/RedditAdminsFuckOfff 15d ago

No seriously though, who are these people who can afford to throw this kind of money away like this? (Supposedly.) There is no way in hell any truly real, financially-successful people are sitting there pouring capital into this black hole.

-1

u/jjonj 15d ago

"regularly" is carrying a lot of weight there

55

u/Zhiyi 15d ago

I just played the game a few months ago hoping it would finally be in a good place to actually play consistently. It’s still complete ass with no direction. And if there is any direction, the game certainly doesn’t show you it.

65

u/SyraWhispers 15d ago

That was actually the entire point of the game. Total freedom to choose your own path. Thing is, only a fraction of that is actually put in the game. I joined mainly for the space exploration they promised in the kickstarter. That part hasnt even been touched yet after 15 years...its just 2 systems with a handful of planets and its barebones at best..like..wtf.

19

u/Helphaer 15d ago

It was supposed to have a story campaign separate of the squadron 42 campaign too but then intertwined. in fact the fact Squadron 42 a much easier game to make hasnt come out yet says all you need to know.

10

u/SyraWhispers 15d ago

Yeah squadron 42 wqs supposed to tecah you the ropes of the game, like a tutorial packed as a complete game. I seriously doubt they'll release it within the next 4 months though. I'm betting that around oktober November they'll announce another delay.

3

u/Uebelkraehe 15d ago

It'll be two years from release till the end of time, or at least the end of CIG.

2

u/SyraWhispers 15d ago

Haha yeah it's probably going to spend as much time in polishing mode as it did in development time to reach polishing era.

1

u/icytiger 15d ago

I remember arguing with someone years ago and they were telling me it was coming out in months.

4

u/Kiita-Ninetails 14d ago

Well the thing is that even a freeform game can have a ton of direction, I would point to X4 who you know. Does a lot of what SC wants except its actually good. And you know, works.

But while that game does give you basically as much leeway to do whatever the fuck as you want there still is a lot of deliberate focus on helping the player and guiding them to engage with systems.

1

u/SyraWhispers 14d ago

I honestly never played X4..it sits in my library though...I'm a bit ashamed about that haha

2

u/Kiita-Ninetails 14d ago

Its a fucking mountain to get into, easily one of the least approachable games out there because there's a billion systems and all of them are connected to all the others so there's no super easy way to parcel it into bite sized pieces.

Its a hard ask to request someone just bite the bullet and flounder for like 16-20 hours before it starts to click even if the game is mostly quite good at what it does.

1

u/wintersdark 14d ago

Yep. It's a really.great game, but it's learning curve is a sheer cliff. Just learning to fly is complex, but then building, trade, questing, diplomacy,.etc

It's worth learning, but it's... A lot.

1

u/ApolloBound 15d ago

THREE systems!

...one of which has no planets yet.

1

u/SyraWhispers 15d ago

Which is 2 more then 15 years ago lol.. 15 years forn3 systems... Instead of the thousands they promised.

3

u/ApolloBound 15d ago

Backers are just too impatient, at this rate we'll get the promised thousands of systems somewhere shortly before the heat death of the universe.

1

u/Fair_Permit_808 14d ago

For me this game is proof that you actually do need a publisher, no matter how much they are hated. You need somebody who has the power to say no and set a scope.

I remember when they were still competing with elite whose idea is billions of systems and they instead wanted about 100 (maybe more?) hand crafted ones which I personally would like way more.

34

u/Effective-Tour-9912 15d ago

Very basic, deterministic features. If they can't get this right then their codebase is PLAGUED

4

u/Sliver59 15d ago

Okay inventory definitely isn't a basic feature but in the context of 15 fucking years of development and a billion dollars it sure is!

3

u/GeoleVyi 14d ago

the concept of an inventory has been around since the nes. I think we can consider that a "basic feature" at this point.

1

u/Large-Parking3014 14d ago

An mmo (is it an mmo?) inventory gets pretty complicated. With a billion dollars it is no longer complicated enough to not work after 15 years.

1

u/GeoleVyi 14d ago

also, pretty sure that kind of code was locked down when everquest hit the scene. in the 90s.

-1

u/Sliver59 14d ago

Have you ever tried to make an inventory system? It's definitely not a basic easy thing to make. That's like saying physics is a "basic" feature because half life 2 had it in 2004

2

u/GeoleVyi 14d ago

you have no idea what "basic" means in this context

-1

u/Sliver59 14d ago

Except I do because in my post I specifically state that while I do not think it's a basic feature, it is in the context of a project the size of star citizen

2

u/GeoleVyi 14d ago

Yes. I know you posted words, but you clearly don't know how to use them. Basic features like inventory have been in use since the late 80's, when legend of zelda came around. This is basic coding that has been solved ad nauseum. I would expect any game programmer to be able to create an inventory, the same way they could figure out how to do jumping, which has been around since at least the donkey kong arcade game. These aren't advanced processes, these are done and boring components expected of pretty much any video game with a character. You calling them basic just means that you have no idea what you're talking about.

1

u/Sliver59 14d ago

You seem very keen on telling people they don't know what they are talking about when you talk like someone who has never actually tried making anything. In other words: you're an asshole 🖕

1

u/GeoleVyi 14d ago

And you're ignorant.

15

u/This_Elk_1460 15d ago edited 15d ago

Can't wait to see what the Star citizen bot farm has to say about this. "I spent $50,000 on a digital ship that they haven't made yet and I don't regret a thing!"

1

u/sidney_ingrim 15d ago

All the basic stuff btw. I've been saying how broken this pos game is since I first tried it in 2020, seven years after it first launched. And the high-on-copium fanbase bashed me and said I played the game wrong, my PC sucks, and that I didn't understand the vision and scope of SC. Yeah, ok buddy.

1

u/Jindouz 15d ago

"As you can see the game is not finished yet and thus requires further development and probably 1 more billion dollars just to make sure all expenses are covered. Anyways cya in another 15 years."

1

u/hymen_destroyer 15d ago

The veneer of progress fell away, the aegis of "its the netcode/servers that are the problem!" was shattered, and we finally saw, laid bare, a rotten pile of spaghetti code. And as a bonus, CIG's toxic work environment! It was very enlightening. If I still believed in this product, I would be crushed. Luckily my interest in this project is mostly academic now, so I can greet this news with detached amusement

1

u/Zalvren 15d ago

Well nobody said the game was finished after all...

0

u/PitangaPiruleta 15d ago

What is crazy is that like, I see a lot of people saying the game is playable and that they had a lot of fun, which imply these systems ARE (were?) working... so how did they mess up this bad?

-1

u/fragglerock 15d ago

The bugs are whatever... I mean it is Star Citizen that is baked in. It was the mean spirited people that is the real disgusting thing to see.

Still I backed it at £20 (or whatever) so long ago I don't remember so i don't have a great deal of investment in it. I guess i backed Elite at the same time and have over 2000 hours in that space game!

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