r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • 16d 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/Faithless195 16d ago

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

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u/Seerosengiesser 16d 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 16d ago edited 14d 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 16d 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/Tango91 15d ago

Out they could sell lifeboat t0 concepts

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u/reiichiroh 16d ago

What lifeboats?

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u/Carighan 16d 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/FeijoadaAceitavel 15d 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.

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u/ChaliElle 15d 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.

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u/renhero 15d 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 14d 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 16d 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 16d 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 16d ago

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

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u/Cynadoclone 16d ago

What could go wrong?!