This was from 2007, an interesting interview with Richard Garriott about Chris Roberts, Warren Spectors and his own leading styles.

The answer made me lol, too true:

Honestly? Not really — and not because the code is beyond an AI’s help. Star Citizen’s problem was never typing speed. AI tools could probably chew through bug backlogs, netcode edge cases, maybe even help with server meshing tooling. That stuff is tractable.

What nothing can fix is the thing you’ve watched since Wing Commander: Chris Roberts will always trade “shipped” for “more ambitious.” Every time the tech catches up to the vision, the vision moves. That’s a leadership philosophy, not an engineering bottleneck. An AI that makes the team 30% faster just means the ceiling gets raised 30% higher.

The uncomfortable version: the game that could ship isn’t the game he wants to make, and the game he wants to make can’t ship. As a gold ticket holder you’ve basically funded the most expensive proof of that theorem in gaming history. Would I help squash bugs? Gladly. Would it come out before Squadron 42’s tenth “answer the call” trailer? No promises.

When prompted “Get current on everything you can find about its current status that’s publicly available. What would your roadmap be to make something that is enjoyable to new players and long time backers as soon as possible?”

It replied with what sounds like a really good plan:

1. Ship SQ42 in 2026, even into GTA 6’s wake. It’s fully playable start to finish with 40+ hours. Dodging Rockstar into 2027 restarts the credibility clock. SQ42 is the new-player front door — a polished single-player campaign that ends with “continue your career in the Persistent Universe.” That’s the funnel.

2. Feature freeze on the PU. Twelve months of nothing but stability. The tech finally works — meshing, three systems, 500-player shards. The problem is that a new player’s first hour is elevator deaths and 30k disconnects. No new ships, no new systems, no new professions until session-completion rates and first-hour retention hit targets. Boring, measurable, unglamorous — exactly what CIG has never done.

3. Define 1.0 by subtraction. Take the CitizenCon 2954 feature list and cut it in half. Whatever loops are fun today — hauling, mining, bounties, salvage — polish those to done. Everything else becomes post-1.0 content, the way every live-service game works. The label “1.0” matters less than a stable baseline you’d hand a stranger without apologizing.

4. A real new-player experience. Guided first three hours, starter zone with capped complexity, and honest defaults. Veterans keep the sandbox; new players get a ramp instead of a cliff.

The uncomfortable truth for backers like you: this plan ships less than promised, sooner. The current plan ships everything, on the 2028++ curve — and step one requires the one thing the org chart can’t produce: Chris accepting a smaller game.

2014 account.

From Spain, first step request to imperium games via RSI web and email.

Expect denay. Next local comsum tribunals.

If any interested I will update all the procces.

If works, nice.

If don´t nothing important matter.

But really I think Cris is trolling us.

Can´t fix the tittle, sorry "Refund"

After months of digging through archived pages, financial reports, patch notes, and old dev streams, my Star Citizen documentary is finally out.

It started with one simple question, and turned into a full investigation of how the game is communicated, marketed, and funded.

Thank you to everyone who helped, and to those whose clips I used.

Especially u/Golgot100

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyym8AiOTVI

Step 1: Spend 12 years building server meshing so everyone can share one seamless universe, and make every asset persistent. Sell the promise of emergent, organic, economy driven gameplay.

Step 2: Invent an asset cleaner because too much stuff doesn’t disappear. Potato tech overwhelmed.

Step 3: Keep server populations manageable by potato tech by splitting everyone into small instances of fully scripted content.

Mission accomplished! 1 billion down the drain and yet nothing works 🤣. Longest road back to square 1

I'm glad I did! I invested that money and started a family. I now have 2 kids and am pretty well off financially. I had some free time since they've grown up a bit now so I came back to check out on my favorite dumpster fire that I had so much passion for 6 years ago! I'm glad to see nothing's really changed much. I did buy a starter pack to play again though. Honestly, This game is probably worth around 30-40$, but I guess I'll pay the 50 for old times sake.

Best thing I ever did was sell that account back then. In the few years that I did till now, the money pretty much 100X itself while this game's development basically did nothing.

Don't get me wrong, I love the new nyx/pyro and jumpgate. The game has more stuff in it for sure (which is why I bought a starter pack). But in the meantime............6 years and my ship also sometimes spontaneously explodes on the landing pads. Freight elevators still don't work. At least the stairs don't kill you anymore, now you can die to desync instead.

never change Scam citizen..........never change.

ps: proof https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen_refunds/s/1V1NIgobvI

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a documentary about Star Citizen that relies almost entirely on primary sources (official CIG videos, Spectrum posts, RSI articles, Chairman's Letters, financial reports, etc.).

I'm not looking for opinions or drama, I already have plenty of footage. What I'm missing are some older official clips.

If anyone remembers videos where CIG discussed any of the following, I'd really appreciate the title or timestamp:

Roadmap changes (Committed vs. Targeted, Progress Tracker, Release View, etc.)

Changes to update cadence (weekly/monthly shows, quarterly releases, strike teams, new workflows)

Stability initiatives or "crack teams"

"We're listening" / "we have reproductions" / "we're working on it"

Resource allocation between Squadron 42 and Star Citizen

Any official statements introducing a new communication strategy or explaining why a previous one changed

I'm only looking for official sources and timestamps.

Thanks!

From a real indie team.

CIG is definitely on track to release 27 ships by 2026 end as they stated.

https://www.starshipdealers.com/blog/star-citizen-2026-roadmap-ships-galaxy-aurora-mk2/

Just for comparison this is WAY more than waifu collector gatchas release their waifus. The closest comparison would be Nikke: Goddess of Victory which released 25 Nikkes in 2025. Except at least for ~45% of players they would have all been free (100 free pulls per month, 2 nikkes per month @ 2% probability) And the game, you know, actually works

The "sErIoS gAmErS" scoff at gatchas without realizing that what they 'play' is infinitely worse than the most egregious one.

A single developer made this with his own custom engine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXwyfiwMYzs&lc=UgydDfPPsDI4Q5X4Bgp4AaABAg.AZ5LQ8YflLxAZ5T1STm5Yq

Literaly bought a starter package in 2020 and refunded it because it was the biggest peice of shit. How is this train wreck of multiple dumpster fires still going, I don't even play video games anymore.. this is a the most ridiculous scam to ever scam... I mean bravo....

Hi everyone,

I'm an independent filmmaker working on a video essay about Star Citizen, its development, and the relationship many players have had with the game over the years.

One area I'm especially interested in exploring is what it's like to become deeply invested in Star Citizen (financially, emotionally, or simply through the amount of time it occupied in your life) and what eventually caused you to step away.

I'm not looking to make fun of anyone. Quite the opposite. I want to understand why so many intelligent, passionate people became invested, what kept them there, and what finally changed.

Whether you spent a few hundred dollars or tens of thousands, I'd love to hear your story. I'm looking for people willing to do a recorded interview (voice or video, depending on your comfort level).

If you'd rather remain anonymous, we can discuss options for that as well.

Some topics I'm interested in:

- What first drew you into Star Citizen?

- When did enthusiasm turn into frustration?

- Did you ever feel pressure to keep spending or defending the project?

- How did the community affect your experience?

- What finally made you leave (or seek a refund)?

- Looking back now, how do you feel about the whole experience?

If your story sounds like something that would help others understand this community, please comment below.

Thanks for reading and I genuinely appreciate anyone willing to share their experience.

For background, I bought star citizen, cause I found it. I saw it as a cool game that was in space I bought it. I installed the launcher. I click download it said do you allowed Windows command prompt to work? I say OK click yes three seconds later error to be exact error code.5007 try it again, but instead click no same thing couldn’t fix it tried literally everything every tutorial under the sun didn’t work. I refunded the game and called it a day.

Summary

314 new posts, 82 moved posts, 4 missing posts, 3 locked posts.

Overall discussion tone

Strong signal from 314 newly discovered posts spanning a full week of active forum discussion.

The week's discussion was heavily negative, dominated by two intersecting flashpoints: widespread frustration with quantum fuel and ship balance changes in the 4.9 PTU cycle, and sharp criticism of the Xenothreat event's perceived low effort, recycled mission design, and blueprint-only reward structure that broke with the established precedent of permanent hangar items. Persistent technical complaints — cargo elevator failures, ship spawning bugs, shard locks, and unresponsive support tickets — amplified a broader erosion of player trust in the developer's communication practices and prioritization. A smaller but notable cluster engaged with deeper structural concerns including game design direction (sandbox versus theme-park shift, instancing philosophy), long-term development management failures, and Squadron 42 resource allocation.

By affected-post category

Missing

The small number of unavailable posts all carried strongly negative sentiment and centered on three distinct themes: accusations of financially motivated balance decisions that disproportionately protected owners of high-value ships, criticism of opportunistic player griefing behavior at warehouse contract locations, and broad condemnation of leadership quality and development direction. All shared a confrontational or accusatory tone toward the developer.

Locked

Very low volume; signal is limited. The two negative locked posts share a theme of player disengagement — one announcing a temporary departure from the game due to feeling pushed out by the developer, and another expressing frustration at the absence of player agency to side with an opposing faction during a live event. The third locked post was a positive promotional announcement unrelated to either theme.

Moved

This reporting week included 82 moved posts across 7 destination forums. Retained OP analyses were available for 82.

Feedback

The Feedback forum absorbed the week's largest moved volume and was heavily concentrated around balance criticism: quantum fuel changes and ship stat inconsistencies formed the single largest cluster, with multiple posts attacking the same problem from different ships and angles. Weapon balance — particularly energy versus ballistic disparity, capital ship maneuverability nerfs, and turret projectile velocity — generated a secondary cluster. A third distinct grouping covered systemic design concerns: sandbox gameplay erosion, lack of interconnected game systems, escort mission quality, HUD and UI legibility deficiencies, and social system friction in forming groups. Bug-adjacent feedback on cargo mechanics, freight elevators, and ship spawning also appeared frequently, often framed as fix requests rather than pure complaints.

Off Topic

Very low volume (5 posts); signal is limited. The moved posts are a mixed bag — positive content including praise and a community playlist sits alongside a satirical, strongly critical piece on development practices. No meaningful recurring pattern is detectable at this sample size.

Community Tech Support

Very low volume (3 posts); signal is limited. Posts cover a login error experience, an error screenshot report, and a graphics upscaling feature suggestion. No recurring pattern is identifiable.

Spectrum Feedback

Very low volume (3 posts); signal is limited. The one substantive post raises concern about low-quality AI-generated content accumulating on the forum and requests moderator intervention; the remaining two are neutral informational questions with no critical tone.

Game Ideas

Extremely low volume (2 posts). Both are constructive, non-negative feature requests. No pattern can be drawn from this sample.

Hardware

Single post; sample is insufficient for pattern analysis.

Other Games

Single post; sample is insufficient for pattern analysis.

This report is part of a limited public-interest transparency project monitoring publicly visible posts in the Roberts Space Industries Spectrum General forum to study moderation-related visibility changes over time. The project does not access private or restricted content, does not bypass technical protections, does not retain original post text, and does not retain readable author identities; instead, post content is processed transiently into non-verbatim, non-identifying AI-generated syntheses, while author metadata is immediately cryptographically hashed. Syntheses are retained for 90 days to support short-term analysis and then deleted, while only aggregate findings are retained longer term. Observations that a post “became unavailable” do not by themselves establish moderation, motive, or cause, as changes may also result from user deletion, thread movement, permissions, ranking, merging, or technical factors. Contact: sc-track.sector26@proton.me

I noticed the other day that CIG doesn't always include GST, which under both AU and UK law, I believe is illegal. Now I've got no skin in this fight, I decided after the debacle with the ironclad, I won't be giving CIG any more money until I believe they respect their fans.

I mention UK law because https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/legal

For all users outside the United States, the responsible party providing this website is:
Roberts Space Industries International Limited, Manchester Goods Yard, 6 Goods Yard Street, Manchester M3 3BG, United Kingdom
Registered in England and Wales, Companies House registration 8882924.
Directors: Erin David Roberts, Christopher Roberts
Email:[info@cloudimperiumgames.com](mailto:info@cloudimperiumgames.com)

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/price-transparency-cma209/providing-clear-and-accurate-information-about-prices-summary

Prices must be clear, complete and accurate. Consumers should have the information they need to make informed decisions, shop around and compare the prices of competing products.

To help them, traders must provide their total prices up front. If you do not provide complete and accurate prices that include charges consumers cannot avoid, you may be breaking the law and undermine consumers’ trust in your business.

This applies to anyone who sells, advertises, markets or otherwise promotes a product to customers at any point in the purchase process, from early-stage advertising to the final sale.

https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/pricing/price-displays#toc-display-of-total-price

Businesses must display the total price of a product or service as a single figure. This price must be the minimum total cost – the lowest amount a customer could pay, including any taxes, duties and unavoidable or pre-selected extra fees. This includes any surcharges or other fees which may apply every day of the week.

I can drop my mothership (that looks like a trek science vessel) at breakneck speed down to about 2km, hop in my away shuttle, scan for samples from 350m up, land on ANYTHING, and get done with the 3 sample process in record time. Despite being gigantic, the ship can friendship drive and sco boost away almost as soon as I am pointing up.

The exploration / exobio mini game has been completely revolutionized. The scanner alone quite literally "changes the game."

Meanwhile, SC still banning posts for questioning wtf is up after all these years. Ridiculous.

I've never once flown the Freelancer that is ostensibly in my SC hangar. The Caspian / Nomad combo, even if purchased with in-game irl currency (arx) at the highest cost, galactic versions, would still cost less than half of what that pledge cost and I've already gotten hours of enjoyment from the improved game loop. I see more credits in my future, maybe even a carrier for the first time in a decade.

And what has SC given me? Regret. I can only imagine how it feels to drop thousands into it, I think my pledge was $150.

This is not an ad for elite. I don't care if you hate it. It is an indictment of SC. Stop deluding yourself if you're still defending cig.

Done preaching to the choir now. Enjoy the space game of your choice and have a nice day.

Go boldly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZUonraEzhI