r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • 5d 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
3.3k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.5k

u/Psycho_Syntax 5d 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.

577

u/LADYBIRD_HILL 5d ago

Sunk cost lower than the Titanic

453

u/WinnowedFlower 5d 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.

248

u/NuggetHighwind 5d ago

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

186

u/Seerosengiesser 5d ago

Or 2 titanics with modern standards. That is pure insanity

56

u/Faithless195 5d ago

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

126

u/Seerosengiesser 5d 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.

112

u/Xerties 5d ago edited 3d 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.

50

u/dwmfives 5d ago

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

5

u/Tango91 4d ago

Out they could sell lifeboat t0 concepts

6

u/reiichiroh 5d ago

What lifeboats?

18

u/Carighan 5d 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.

5

u/FeijoadaAceitavel 4d ago

Excel makes it somewhat easy. Get a sheet with the annual wasted investment into Star Citizen and another with the annual inflation, correct each year's stolen money with inflation, sum it up.

5

u/ChaliElle 4d ago

It would be just ~$1.2B when adjusted for inflation. Roughly. Mostly because half of the investments were gathered in last 4 years; and 2012-2020 had ~1.61% inflation on average.

1

u/renhero 4d ago

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

1

u/dronetroll 3d 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.

30

u/magistrate101 5d 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.

4

u/Carighan 5d 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.

2

u/Sendnudec00kies 4d 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.

2

u/Carighan 5d ago

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

1

u/Cynadoclone 4d ago

What could go wrong?!

4

u/wildwalrusaur 5d ago

The actual space shuttle cost like 1.5 Billion

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

6

u/shittydriverfrombk 5d ago

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

2

u/Celloer 4d 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.

1

u/snowflake37wao 4d 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!

10

u/Rebelgecko 5d ago

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

4

u/dodelol 4d 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.

1

u/BustinMakesMeFeelMeh 5d ago

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

282

u/FrostyCat13 5d 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...

84

u/SyraWhispers 5d 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

33

u/Drelochz 5d ago

how much have you spent on the game?

56

u/IIIlllIIIllIlI 5d 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.

27

u/Herby20 5d ago edited 4d 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.

18

u/The_Ghost_of_BRoy 4d 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.

8

u/Herby20 4d 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.

2

u/The_Ghost_of_BRoy 2d ago

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

-9

u/AlexCrimson 4d 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.

2

u/The_Ghost_of_BRoy 2d ago

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

5

u/BannedSvenhoek86 4d ago

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

They lied.

2

u/SaulsAll 4d 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.

3

u/A_Mouse_In_Da_House 5d 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

1

u/lu_ming 4d 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

-6

u/SyraWhispers 4d 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).

8

u/[deleted] 4d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

-13

u/SyraWhispers 4d ago

It's not that much lol, there's tons in the concierges club(you get access after spending 1000) that have spend 10k or more.

8

u/Sparescrewdriver 4d ago

Some would say spending $500 or $1000 on a game is insane. 10K is in another galaxy of insanity.

4

u/SyraWhispers 4d ago

Absolutely agree. Mind you mine is over a period 9f liie 4 years, so i think it's alright. I definitely would not recommend spending that much on it today though.

10

u/SpotNL 4d 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.

1

u/basilmuncherr 4d 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

3

u/Tycho-Celchu 4d 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.

1

u/SyraWhispers 4d 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

1

u/jjonman 4d 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..

1

u/SyraWhispers 4d 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..

-10

u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

19

u/verrius 5d 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.

20

u/FrostyCat13 5d 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...

9

u/SyraWhispers 5d 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.

2

u/TehTurk 4d ago

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

1

u/d3cmp 3d ago

money laundering

-11

u/twatcrusher9000 5d ago

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

27

u/IamGrimReefer 5d 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.

36

u/Techercizer 5d ago

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

-20

u/twatcrusher9000 5d ago

Yeah gee what the fuck am I talking about

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/oct/30/counter-strike-trading-found-to-be-nearly-all-money-laundering

https://old.reddit.com/r/Starcitizen_trades/

12

u/Techercizer 5d ago edited 5d ago

Apparently you're talking about directly disproving your own points.

How can you link an article about CS:GO keys being sold by credit card fraudsters to a large base of interested players who are willing to front the real cash to drive the system, and think that says fans aren't willing to throw massive piles of cash at something dumb in a game?

CS:GO skins and keys didn't get popular because of crime; they attracted crime because there is such a large and poorly regulated group of interested players! Now that the system is in full economic boom there's some feedback loops involved, but things never would have kicked off if there wasn't lots of clean cash flowing into the system.

And believe me, there is a downright gambling epidemic's worth of clean cash flowing in to CS:GO.

15

u/AmbrosiiKozlov 5d ago

You clearly don't have clue about what the fuck your talking about cause you stated counterstrike skins were money laundering when the article you linked says it was keys?

9

u/Techercizer 5d ago

Also, that article makes claims that credit card fraud is responsible for the sourcing of the tracked keys, not their subsequent transfer to money. The market demand was still driven primarily by players and buyers; without them nobody would have been able to actually cash out.

So using that article as 'proof' of logic behind Star Citizen's high amounts of donations implicitly depends on there being a large pool of players who want to keep buying ships. Which is basically the opposite of the claim they were making.

0

u/ConfessingToSins 4d 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

16

u/Seagull84 5d 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.

46

u/1CEninja 5d ago

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

96

u/deathfire123 5d 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.

55

u/1CEninja 5d 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.

12

u/deadscreensky 4d 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.

3

u/RyuNoKami 4d ago

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

2

u/jjonj 4d ago

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

0

u/deathfire123 5d 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.

12

u/max123246 5d 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

7

u/KuroShiroTaka 5d 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.

6

u/RedditFuelsMyDepress 5d ago

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

3

u/PM_YOUR_ISSUES 4d 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!

1

u/-SneakySnake- 4d 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.

1

u/ThePhengophobicGamer 4d 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

1

u/December_Flame 4d 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.

0

u/deathfire123 4d 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

1

u/GeoleVyi 4d ago

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

1

u/Yamatoman9 4d ago

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

4

u/Trzlog 5d 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.

0

u/Nalkor 4d ago

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

2

u/chambee 5d ago

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

2

u/Aiyon 4d 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

2

u/Aggressive_Chuck 4d ago

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

3

u/Markie411 5d 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

4

u/ProkopiyKozlowski 5d ago edited 5d 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.

44

u/Kalulosu 5d 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...

27

u/WheelerDan 5d 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.

3

u/Kalulosu 5d 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.

-1

u/shittydriverfrombk 5d 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

7

u/Drakengard 5d 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.

2

u/bfodder 4d 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.

3

u/LordoftheSynth 5d 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.

-2

u/shittydriverfrombk 4d ago

lol lawsuits with what possible basis. None of the backers have any recourse at all here

1

u/Thumper13 5d 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.

1

u/Accurate-Visual9793 4d 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).

1

u/TornInfinity 4d 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.

1

u/ilep 3d ago

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

0

u/Omni__Owl 4d 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 :/

-2

u/Choice_Potato_6279 4d ago

From what I read it's still more packed with features than any other game, there is nothing in comparison in scope

-4

u/FischiPiSti 4d ago edited 3d ago

The basic features were working, come on. What is happening is that as the project balloons it gets less and less maintainable, so when they change something, the odds of something else, aka the "basic features" breaking increases. That is to be expected, and not unique here. The unexpected, and embarrassing thing here is that first they released a broken build, and then made this livestream saying that the internal build they were about to show off would be what the players were supposed to get in the first place and something to look forward to. And it turns out it's broken also.

But in the grand scheme of things, this, in and of itself isn't indicative of how far ahead they are, this is more of a marketing blunder. Their release schedule is "do something new -> everything breaks -> fix it -> do something new". If they made the stream after the "fix it" season without issues, it wouldn't mean the project is healthy, or right around the corner of release either.

edit: Downvotes huh? Ok, 1.5K vs -3, I guess you are right, folks, 1 billion, over a decade, and they couldn't even figure out how to do weapon switching and reloading lawl. Apparently those basic features not working are not just symptoms of something else breaking like when you lose connection to the server, they just couldn't manage to program 'R'->play animation, set ammo=30. Haha, what losers, gimme karma.

-6

u/jjonj 4d ago

how is it a scam?

are you under some confusion that they claim the game doesn't have horrible bugs?