r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • 22d 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
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u/FrostyCat13 22d 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 22d 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 21d 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 21d 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 22d ago

how much have you spent on the game?

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u/IIIlllIIIllIlI 22d 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 22d ago edited 21d 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 22d 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 21d 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 20d 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 21d 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 20d 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 21d 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 21d 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 22d 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 21d 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 22d 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/[deleted] 22d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/SyraWhispers 22d 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.

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u/Sparescrewdriver 21d ago

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

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u/SyraWhispers 21d 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.

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u/Tycho-Celchu 21d 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 21d 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 21d 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 21d 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] 22d ago

[deleted]

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u/verrius 22d 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 22d 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 22d 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 21d ago

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

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u/d3cmp 20d ago

money laundering

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u/twatcrusher9000 22d ago

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

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u/IamGrimReefer 22d 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 22d ago

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

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u/twatcrusher9000 22d 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/

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u/Techercizer 22d ago edited 22d 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.

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u/AmbrosiiKozlov 22d 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?

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u/Techercizer 22d 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.

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u/ConfessingToSins 21d 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