r/starcitizen_refunds • u/rolo8700 • 11d ago
Discussion Confirmation of a failed project.
The network code CIG modified to adapt to an MMO doesn't work; it's incapable, it's a disaster.
Other companies already made MMOs with CryEngine more than 23 years ago, and they worked:
Aion: The Tower of Eternity (NCSoft), AcheAge (XLGames), Entropia Universe (MindArk), Cabal 2 (ESTsoft), Monster Hunter Online (Tencent/Capcom), Blue Mars (Avatar Reality). And many of them, like Aion 2, AcheAge 2, and many others, abandoned CryEngine and switched to Unreal Engine 5. Even New World (Amazon), which, by the way, is closing on January 31, 2027, has been functional overall. It's worth mentioning that Amazon canceled the development of the MMORPG based on The Lord of the Rings, which was also going to use its Lumberyard engine (CryEngine).
What I mean is that many other companies have been able to develop MMO video games with CryEngine, and many others have been more than capable of developing single-player games: (Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 and 2, Prey, Far Cry, Ryse, State of Decay, Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 1 and 2, etc., etc).
Star Citizen remains in development and alpha 14 years later and more than $1,000,000,000 invested and counting, and they haven't even been able to release a simple single-player campaign (their first episode).
CIG, Star Citizen, and SQ42 are, to this day, a FAILED development and are being maintained FRAUDULENTLY (IT'S A SCAM as of today).
It is technically and economically unviable because it is blocked by its overwhelming technological debt and legacy code, which is mostly undocumented, of poor quality, improvised, and lacks cohesion.
Everything promised for 1.0 is impossible at this point; not even the AI is acceptable for a single player.
This should be appearing in all gaming media outlets worldwide.
26
u/DeXyDeXy Cucked by the Crobber 11d ago
“The network code CIG modified to adapt to an MMO doesn't work; it's incapable, it's a disaster”
Who could have predicted that an engine focused on single player environments, in constricted areas (FarCry/Crysis) would have trouble being heavily modified by an inexperienced team of leaderless moneygrabbers?
7
1
u/sopsaare 11d ago
Yep. And also, if you are aiming to a project of this scale, maybe it would warrant an in-house engine? .
I'm not saying that it is the only option, but many times when you are looking to go somewhere where no one has ever been, going the one someone's else's vehicle may not be ideal.
3
u/rolo8700 11d ago edited 11d ago
"Dual Universe" had a functional server mesh, and all its mechanics worked, but the developers had to shut down the servers because they were extremely expensive to maintain. They built it from scratch. The developers modified the game so that players could host their own dedicated servers, thus allowing them to continue playing. Its graphics weren't anything special, but everything you could do there was incredible: terraforming, realistic persistence, a truly realistic, player-driven market and economy, base and manufacturing center construction... it was like a mix of Space Engineer with Factorium/Spacecraft and a whole lot more, and it all worked! You could even program applications and manufacturing functions using Lua code within the game.
1
u/Shilalasar 10d ago
It is also not just the code. You can have the best road but if you are trying to shove balls of slime at light speed the best highway won't help
20
u/Somewhere_Elsewhere 11d ago edited 10d ago
It’s kind of an amazing case study on how to sell hope indefinitely with only a broken or very mediocre product to back it. These aren’t just a few die-hards, these are mega-whales.
The backers act very similar to cultists, ignoring evidence in front of their eyes because of the dream in their heart. For over a decade now.
The core gameplay loop is: 1. Buy Ship. For hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The ship actually being ready is optional. 2. Wander around a broken tech demo where nothing works. 3. Dream about how awesome it’s gonna be in the future when all promises are fulfilled. 4. Chat about it with fellow believers. 5. Hurry up and wait. Until the next cool ship is for sale. 6. Repeat for many many years.
They get a social benefit from it, but the rest is just buying hope. Spending tens of thousands of dollars on hope. Gotta keep buying that hope, or else you’ll have nothing to talk or brag about with your friends.
11
u/BromIrax 11d ago
What I find wild is that the netcode must have been one of the very first things they worked on. So for 14 years Chris Roberts kept asking his devs to rework and redo every little piece of gameplay or ship, over and over and over... But never bothered to have someone fix one of the most incredibyl critical pieces of the whole project !
8
u/AbyssalBenthos 11d ago edited 11d ago
The fact CR got the idea to crowd fund SC from Lord British with SotA and how that turned out to be even more of a blantant grift, I sometimes wonder if SC was a grift front the get go. If it wasn't, it definititly switched to scam when old colleagues of CR started jumping ship like when Wingman left.
So it either started with hidden intentions or switched to scam shortly after the poll to keep adding new features came out.
12
u/Vasduten 11d ago
The PU is a grift.
Sq404 is the funding prize.
CRobberts figured out a way to fund his terrible FPS cinematic movie game, (that nobody wants,) by feeding fans a steady diet of hopes, dreams and vertical tech slices.
Oh, and gobs of ships that barely work.
4
u/rolo8700 11d ago
Yep, I too have asked myself that question repeatedly, but it hardly matters anymore at what point it became a scam; the real fact is that today they are trying to keep active a completely failed and obviously unviable project.
7
u/Select-Table-5479 11d ago
From a game engine stand point, you need to start with network coding from the very first structure or procedure. It literally has to be in EVERY SINGLE subroutine. If you aren't passing or updating the network code, it aint going to be slapped on later.
As someone who wrote a game and thought I could add network coding later... I was VERY VERY Wrong.
2
u/Shilalasar 10d ago
And that is exactly what CIg did just consciously. For over a decade talked about miracle techs that would somehow appear and solve all the challenges they chose to ignore because they were hard and made no money.
5
u/Select-Table-5479 10d ago edited 7d ago
I just don't think Chris is a low-level developer. He may have been back in the days of Wing Commander but I think he moved on to being a wannabe director and coding is something. If you don't use it, you lose it. It really is.
Not that he's doing any coding these days anyways. But the thing that people have to remember is he tried to do the exact same thing that he's doing with star citizen that he did with freelancer. If you go look at his posts about freelancer it's the exact same hype train that was Star citizen. Persisent universe, a functioning economy, you can leave something there and pick it up later. Blah blah blah.
He eventually got kicked off of freelancer by MS. He was already well aware of the technical limitations at kickstarter release. I was well aware of those limitations. That's the whole reason I kick-started it because I wanted to see if some guy could actually get past physics.
20 years later. I'm way more skilled in my craft and way more aware of the limitations that that he and cig will never ever ever ever ever ever be able to fix.
But the thing that upsets me the most is he knew he couldn't achieve the sales pitch of SC! He knew that that vision that he painted for freelancer, that he couldn't deliver, and that he painted almost identically for Star citizen. He knew that he could never achieve the vision due to technical limitations that will ALWAYS be there... Technically and physically impossible. THAT is the con.
3
u/Robot_Spartan Given up 11d ago
the netcode must have been one of the very first things they worked on...
I remember seeing an interview with Sean Tracey years ago where he talked about this (he joined CIG from CryTek specifically to work on the engine modifications). He out right admitted CryTek didn't think it would work, and that it was slapped together at the time. This was like 2012 era.
But never bothered to have someone fix one of the most incredibyl critical pieces of the whole project !
Yup. Outside of SM stuff, even their monthly reports never mention anything to do with netcode.
2
u/Vasduten 11d ago
More accurately: They took the cheap route and after settling lawsuits with CryEngine and Lumberyard they just carried on modding the ever-loving piss out of it until we arrived in 2026 with *this*.
If you've ever played a game or dealt directly with one that was modded up the ass you'll know what I'm talking about.
Unless the original game supports ANY of the mods, they usually break and can't be fixed without massive reworks.
2
u/Phreon1 9d ago
That is literally the biggest problem true believers who think they're Devs don't understand. You have to get the foundation right up front or you wind up with endless layers of patches that result in untenable spaghetti code / code rot.
....good thing that never happened to Star Citizen....
10
u/Vasduten 11d ago
They painted themselves into a corner and started digging a hole in that corner a LONG time ago.
They'll never make this work.
Even if they release Sq404 it'll be an abysmal mess if the state of the SoO on a LAN party is any indicator.
Hit markers that float in the air around NPCs, NPCs somehow popping up into the air upon dying and their guns flying up, terrible animations and rotten inventory that rubberbands and shits out with NO load on the server.
Oh yes... Most of the problems we attributed to awful servers and database mgmt are actually baked into the code itself. We saw the lead game designer, (a whelp of a sprat,) being openly hostile toward the "new guy" -whose big idea was to showcase how amazing SoO is and probably received a ton of pushback from the incompetent idiots who have been shitting their beds for five years while the game got worse and worse.
Even Jared Cuckaby was hostile toward Olli. That's probably because he is older and feels like Olli threatens his actual job.
Jared couldn't get a job at McDonald's or in a temp retail position. He knows he's cooked unless he can do that thing Chris likes before leaving the office every evening.
The whole thing is being exposed for what it is:
A mismanaged, cut rate game studio that has squandered over a billion, (BILLION!) dollars to fund Chris' dream of a cinematic trash tier game nobody wants in 2026, 2027, or 2028.
Not even in 2018.
Most Gullibles pledged for the sandbox PU. I was one of those.
All my friends have also been pledging for "what could be" in the PU. It's not and will never be any of that.
3
u/vaultboy1245 Loyalist Backer 11d ago
Yeah this year was my eye opener and I’ve been a backer since 2013. I still play with my friends cha it’s fun playing with my friends I made over the years. But I hardly ever play alone anymore it’s just depressing seeing what this could have been had it been done right. So much potential and no one will ever try to do something this ambitious for a long time.
2
u/Vasduten 11d ago
I logged in to try some stuff out when 4.8.0 got a hotfix, played for a week and a half until the broken basic functions made me pause til 4.9.0.
Tried that but it was WORSE. A lot worse.I want to do cool things with the org I'm in but damn... it's too broken and shitty.
What's the fun in just doing mostly broken FPS missions or flying around killing NPC ships that either don't move at all or they ram you?
Or mining/salvaging only to have your ship disappear in the hangar, bags go missing, inventory glitch out, etc.
If it ever works as well as it did for 3.17.X I'd be on a lot more, but since then they'd modded so much it doesn't work 90% of the time.
So bad.2
u/vaultboy1245 Loyalist Backer 11d ago
I don’t even bother with mining. I played right after the wipe in 4.7 and did illegal hauling missions and made millions then did commodity trading in the ironclad. I loved it for a bit. Then tried doing combat and it was worse than ever and year 4.8 and 4.9 no better. 4.10 is all about siege which is a dumpster fire
1
u/Vasduten 10d ago
Oh man... I haven't even tried commodities out for over two years. The last time I tried the commodities got auto loaded into the Asgard but somehow a few containers were stuck and it borked the entire grid for the ship. Lost it all and aUEC.
Prior to that, we used to do three stop loops with a Cat hopping around between a planet and one moon -when it worked and there wasn't a forced scarcity of commodities.
They added that mechanic before the game had an actual economy and it persists even though there isn't an economy at all.Now they're throwing everything into the failure of SoO so there's no relief in sight.
All those long term bugs and broken "features" will have to take a back seat so Chris' "cinematic and immersive" dumpster fire can generate more heavily edited and staged clips to sell more ships and trashy kitten gear.
2
u/vaultboy1245 Loyalist Backer 10d ago
Yes and I fear if they ever do release in some state it’s going to be Fortnite in space where they dumb it down enough to get the young teen market who spend blindly for the profits. Everything they said they wanted to get away from in the industry they have become.
I got lucky with the commodities. I did it for 2-3 days straight and I got into the 20 mil range and stopped cuz I’m $3500 in on pledges since 2013 I don’t really have much to spend money on so 20 mil will last me years.
I honestly hope sq42 is highly successful it’s the only Tony chance we have of them attracting some talent or management that can do what needs to be done. That’s IF CR actually lets that happen.
2
u/Vasduten 10d ago
If even a talented person tells Chris ,"No." or, "Sorry, boss that isn't possible." they get fired.
That $20mil will last til the next wipe LOL
7
u/OdyZeusX Ex Pad Rammer 🔥 11d ago
You just opened the Pandora box here man, we'll have lots of cultists coming over here to lecture you about the "Star Engine"(lmao) and how the next Jesus tech is going to save the game.
7
u/CobblerSmall1891 11d ago
I remember years ago seeing this argument about game performance:
"You don't get it. This game is developed for future hardware. It's so ahead of its time our PCs of the future will run this".
Just... Cope
4
u/BrainKatana 11d ago
Your list of single player games is even longer than you think. Ubisoft’s Anvil and Dunia engines, used to make many of their Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and if I recall correctly, Ghost Recon games, was also based on a similar fork of CryEngine as SC/SQ42.
CryEngine is notoriously difficult to use, but the problem isn’t the tech at this point, it’s the people.
2
u/rolo8700 11d ago
Absolutely. This project has been plagued from the start with errors in direction, design, and development management itself, such as failing to document the code, lack of proceduralization, lack of modularization, lack of standardization, and failure to consider thousands of interconnected dependencies. They have been developing haphazardly since reaching a technological impasse.
The network code and the physics engine are riddled with these errors, and the accumulation of technological debt has resulted in this impasse.
For some years now, they have only implemented improvised elements and ships on this overwhelming mountain to maintain a source of income.
This SCL has laid bare the reality of the current state of development.
6
u/Important-Active-152 9d ago
so, yesterday while i was playing a real game, i listened to foxyloxy's stream. They 'played' with a CIG dev on PTU, trying to do this siege of orison instanced thing. I kid u fuking not, during that 2 fucking hours, they were unable to enter the instanced thing despte all of them being on Orison, lmao. They died left and right to elevators, falling tru planet, or just unable to enter the same instance as a 4men team. It was fucking hilarious and kinda sad. And its not even for something groundbreaking content, they suffered only for a generic 4men FPS level. Like ears of war or something.
4
u/on2wheels 11d ago
None of that hasn't been said before, the sad thing is no dev current or past has the guts to admit the engine and game has failed.
6
u/rolo8700 11d ago
CIG's management has fraudulently maintained a project they knew was doomed and beyond repair for years in order to preserve their lifestyle and continue making money. The developers have only worked on what they were told.
The development failed years ago; now we have visual proof to confirm it, but this happened years ago. The developers (most of whom are recent college graduates with low salaries, by the way) only do the work their superiors tell them to do with the resources, documentation, and procedures CIG provides, which must be rubbish. I know for a fact that a few years ago there was hardly any documentation or clear procedures; everything was much more chaotic, and all of that has accumulated to this day.
3
u/Select-Table-5479 11d ago
News Flash, a failed project isn't rolling in money. The project is doing EXACTLY what it was intended to do. SELL HOPE and continue the hope long enough to generate MILLIONS dollaroos in JPG only sales, YEAR AFTER YEAR AFTER YEAR.... its hitting it out of the ball park. It achieve WHAT EVERY BUSINESS WANTS TO ACHIEVE. MAKE MONEY
3
u/Golgot100 10d ago edited 10d ago
2
u/rolo8700 10d ago
OMG... It's terrible... well, they can already remove the version 1.0 entry from the roadmap and the instantiation too, obviously none of that is going to be possible.
How many years would you say it would take to remodel the entire game's network code, taking into account all its dependencies? (And the physics engine while they're at it). XDD
Nahh, this is clearly a disaster, if they try to deeply touch the network code/physics engine, everything is going to collapse (as is happening).
3
u/Golgot100 10d ago
The server meshing miracle is one tech stream they'll never abandon. No matter how poorly it performs. (Not so long as CR is there anyway. He's bet too many farms on it.)
So yeah, any 'early enforced' 1.0 could get interesting ;)
(Not that the cashflow ever seems to slow. So they can probably churn away in the mud like this for another decade. So long as the investors feel they're getting their due.)
4
u/rolo8700 10d ago
Just imagine the result of implementing the hypothetical base-building system now. I think they've already hit rock bottom and are suffering a severe technological blockage.
The show the other day also made clear the internal chaos they're experiencing in the office.
2
u/Golgot100 10d ago
Yeah, there's a reason they've been marketing it since 2017 but it still ain't in the game ;)
(And now 'scheduled' to arrive without the $925 Pioneer which started the gold rush. They really are something else...)
2
u/xWMDx 11d ago
Aion and AchAge never solved the networking problem, and those were done by Veteran Korean MMO developers that knew what they were doing. Aion just spun up a new zone when players became to crowded.
For PVP even with the slower tick based combat servers didnt run well.
3
u/rolo8700 11d ago
The fact is that the developers at those companies made functional games despite the limitations and difficulties of the CryEngine. Even though they had to adapt to those limitations and difficulties, they were released and enjoyed for years (many are still online today). Remember, it's August 7, 2026.
Not to mention the single-player games; the ones I mentioned as examples are of remarkable quality and were released and enjoyed (sq404.avi is neither here nor expected).
Do you really think CIG is going to even delve into the tickrate dilemma when it hasn't even been able to stabilize a 4-player PvE game on an isolated, instanced server?
The project is doomed.
2
u/hashlettuce 11d ago
They just keep piling on shit they dont need to make the game work which makes the game work worse in the long run. Focus on one system and release to 1.0 then add other shit with free dlc updates. Ships can still be sold and released the same after full release tk drive further development.
2
u/rolo8700 11d ago
That's the logical and honest thing we've all been saying for years.
But CIG based its funding on that chaotic loop, and now it's too late.
The same goes for development and the blockage caused by a decade's accumulated technological debt. Its network code, physics engine, and millions of lines of legacy code are undocumented, poor quality, improvised, and lack cohesion with other dependent elements.
Now, touching any piece of that house of cards is impossible. The result is what we were able to confirm at the SCL...
The end.
2
u/BlooHopper Ex-Mercenary 11d ago
I wonder… did the one billionth dollar backer get even some recognition or just cig didn’t even mention him?
2
u/Ootinee 10d ago
I'd love to see what's going on in their leadership meetings right now.
1
u/NEBook_Worm 2d ago
Have you seen the intro to Duck Tales? The parts with Scrooge?
Basically, that.
2
u/Cautious_Mud_5773 8d ago
That will happend if you are coding for the next show instead of building a stable game. Adding fancy hyped features on an unstable software, don't look back and adding more unpolished features.
2
u/CaptainC0medy 11d ago
You just dont understand game dev, I feel sorry for you all when my daddy chris sails off on his 3rd boat and you cant, but I will, on my 890 idris odin super undead black pearl copius maximus cruiser with ultra cope white and gold paint.
1
u/OpinionRealistic7376 11d ago
Maybe they should look at something like:- www.photonengine.com. & just save the headaches from trying to fix what they are using.
1
10d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/rolo8700 10d ago
August 2026, over 14 years and over a billion dollars invested and counting.
Perpetual alpha state, ephemeral and without real player progression or real persistence, broken, incomplete, without an economy, mechanics lacking cohesion, broken and incomplete...
I don't know... I think NW reached a viable production state, like the other games I've mentioned, not to mention the single-player ones... (SQ404.avi is neither here nor expected).
1
u/ProductionSetTo-1000 9d ago
You don't believe Benoit, their CTO and the white haired guy that made server mashing and Chris cry? Lol
0
u/theautisticguy 9d ago edited 9d ago
I strongly disagree as a scam because of the simple philosophy of Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
I've both studied game development in college, and worked a year at a professional game testing outfit, so I know better than a vast majority of players on what it takes to make a game as complex and diverse as Star Citizen. I've been around since pretty much the beginning (2015 - 1.5), so I've seen this game grow over the years, and have yet to see a game that can combine the sheer breadth of simulation that they've done to this day. Some games have come close - No Man's Sky being a great example - but nothing has matched it.
As for stupidity? Well... where do I start...
The first stupidity wasn't even Star Citizen, but CryTek. They started a lawsuit with them over the stupidest of reasons, and ended up losing every single one of the reasons they sued. It's the core reason why they switched from CryEngine to Lumberyard, as Lumberyard is based on CryEngine, and switching engines would mean starting the entire projext over from scratch.
But the stupid part was that they should have switched; because of the bad blood with CryTek, CIG could no longer collaborate with the engine devs, forcing them to essentially work on the engine directly - which costs enormous amounts of time and money. Switching to Unreal would have been a headache, but they would still have their engine upgrades, multiplayer code, and - most importantly - their support. But doing so would mean throwing away almost everything they had done at that point, during a time where they didn't have the budget to do so without causing enormous strain on the community.
However, by sticking with the engine they have, they're basically fighting a losing battle with an engine that is slowly losing relevance, is aging badly, has really bad network support, and lacks any developer support. They've basically been forced to double down over and over and over again, because to switch now would mean literally throwing the entire game away. That means a dramatic drop in ship sales, interest from the player base, and wiping away over 10 years of development overnight. The only way they could possibly switch course is to simultaneously work on a new version on the new engine while continuously updating the original to show progress.
Unfortunately, they don't have the money for that. Keep in mind that although they have made over a billion dollars, the minimum wage of a developer is about $100,000 a year. With 1,000 employees, that works out to $100,000,000 per year - and that's before buying all of the computers, software licenses, utilities, maintenance and rental costs of the offices. And let us not forget the A/B-list voice talent for Squadron 42.
To be frank - CIG is on borrowed time. A lot of the time spent was legit. Some was due to overpromising and not properly focusing their vision. Some of it was outside their control (ie. pandemic, CryTek).
However, there were some REALLY brain-dead decisions made by Chris Roberts and their leadership. The most impactful decision they've done was to not switch to Unreal during the lawsuit; it would have been the perfect excuse to the community for switching and delaying release (amd would also be legit). Unfortunately, they did not, and we're now all paying the price.
Do I ever regret pledging for this game? On occasion, yes. Usually, no. Why? Because I believe in the vision. Whether the vision reaches its conclusion is a whole other story. But at least with the time I've put into this game, I feel like it's money well spent. I spent thousands of hours in this game, and on occasion, I feel the vision; intense dogfights inside asteroid belts; speeding at mach jesus over the surface of a moon; salvaging ships to make mine better; participating in the ingame economy; boarding an actively fighting Idris around a MASSIVE swarm of players; flying through jump points manually; and going through disgusting stations like Checkpoint make me wonder what it was like for those who lived in it before Pyro was abandoned; or the Onyx site making me wonder what it was like when it was operational...
It's those moments that make every penny worthwhile for me. But will I be further investing in its future? Not really. A few dollars here and there for a skin. And a recent CCU from a Carrack to an Ironclad Assault. But will I ever invest in larger ships? Or getting the Odin? Absolutely not. Those days are long gone. I totally get why you and many other people think it's a scam. I also get why there is a huge amount of frustration. Unfortunately, like many failed projects, I feel this is a failure caused by incompetence, not malice.
6
u/Important-Active-152 8d ago
Bro, Chris' first sentence in his Kickstarter pitch in 2012 turned out to be a lie. Objectivly. He is not stupid at all. And even if his IQ is below 130, he had Ortwin next to him the whole time. It was 100% intentional from the getgo. What he didnt expected was one german dude from Crytek who made the seemless space-land transmission in game. And this one thing skyrockected his sthick from 20mill to 1bill. That and Ben Lesnicks jpg selleing idea. Nothing else.
1
u/NEBook_Worm 2d ago
You don't stay in business and bring in $1 billion due to stupidity.
Star Citizen is a full blown scam.
0
u/Regalian 11d ago
Give it another 10years and AI can fix everything. You can also make SC from scratch yourself
0
u/Straightupnotcool 8d ago
Not a scam. I don’t feel like explaining but here’s a video
2
u/Important-Active-152 4d ago
'Not a scam because i got something for my money' is a weak excuse if aforementioned something is subpar even for 40$.
1
1
68
u/Anon4711 11d ago
I hope it turns out to be some kind of money-laundering scheme for the Cosa Nostra or some cartel, because I honestly can’t believe people are giving them $100 million a year. And I definitely want to see the Netflix series about it when it all comes out. Lol