I backed it right there in the beginning. I don't even have access to my account anymore and I stopped caring. Star Citizen will always live in infamy, as this bizarre project that turned into some cult-like abomination and will just run ad infinitum until either the money runs out or the sun swallows earth.
this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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The scam is eternal. Like taxes.
This is going to turn into a cult at some point
I honestly think at this point, anyone still giving this scam money deserves the loss.
As long as they’re only hurting themselves, I’m all for watching stupid people fail miserably.
They have a management problem. Roberts has had a history with badly managing projects especially where his uberambition is unchecked.
They could've entirely and easily avoided the forever beta tag if they had released the single player early on (even if it wasn't perfect), like they had promised and then continued to work on the persistent universe.
I've spent about $125 on this game, and I would definitely get pissed if I bought in for all the promises they made.
However, I bought just to have a really pretty "Fly around in space while exploring my spaceship and listening to music" experience. It's a vibe game. If they took out all the combat and lofty goals and just focused on making a really dope spaceship sim (with all the ship management, repairs, etc that they've promised) I would probably lose my life to it.
I got the game for free in 2015 as part of a choose-your-own-bundle promo for the AMD R9 270X. Haven't paid a cent for it and I still sorta feel ripped off.
I have a really old account from man years ago (probably payed $50ish for it). I want the same experience - just mostly vibing around in a ship.
Sometime during covid I had time on my hands so I installed it, logged back in. Tried to get into my ship and a glitched basically got me stuck in the door of the ship. Also couldn't die. Just stuck there . Restarted the game and tried again. Got stuck in the same spot.
Closed the game and uninstalled. I'll check back in a few more years lol.
Right there with you. Spent about 45$ on an Aurora, got a free Mustang, and did a CCU into a nomad. I'm not upset with the money I spent on the game. Gotten way more out of it just vibing in universe, flying over each new planet at they add it.
I doubt it'll ever launch though. Those who have invested thousands of dollars into it are bound to be salty when the towel is thrown in.
If it eventually gets outed as being Ponzi scheme, I'll not be remotely surprised.
I don't actually think you can call it that.
I'm pretty sure they've spent every cent, considering how much they have in fact produced.
The part that boggles me to this day, is that they spend the money on making a litany of insanely high quality assets and features, with seemingly no plan for how they'll fit together.
And then they proceed to spend even more money, and time, on trying to fit it all together into something that functions like a complete system.
And that's before you discuss their obsession with "realism". What there is to play, is marred with balancing issues. Better ships are just... Better. Because they insist on weapons and ships functioning "logically" within the game universe, rather than in whatever way is the most fun.
Fighters beat bigger ships because equipping the same weapons, a fighter can hit every shot it takes at a slow moving giant. Meanwhile the travel-time of weapons make the fighter completely unkillable for the big ship, because the fighter can land shots from a range where its own speed allows it to dodge literally everything the big ship might send its way.
They've been buffing the shields and ammo counts on bigger ships, but all that does is make the fight last longer.
The project is real, but it's a mismanaged catastrophe.
The project is real, but it's a mismanaged catastrophe.
It's basically what happens when you have a project with overly understanding financiers, an overly ambitious creative head, and absolutely no concern whatsoever for avoiding scope creep.
Kind of amazing really. I can imagine in centuries past an architect becoming the personal favourite of a king so he just keeps making the palace he's tasked to build more and more extravagant since the king keeps giving him more money endlessly.
Balancing realistic weaponry is always going to be exactly the way things are balanced IRL:
Two of their biggest mistakes were: one, essentially hiding the fact that the single player game Squadron 42 has taken the lions share of the development focus for the last 6+ years. This makes it appear like they just don't know what they're doing at all with star citizen and that's why they're slow (they still don't 100% know what they're doing).
Second, they made their sound design guy who was just interested in being a pilot and eventually learned how, to be their lead ship performance/gameplay director/developer (not sure exactly on the title name.) that has lead to the ships just not flying how people want or expect them to. That and Chris Roberts wants "WWII, star wars, type dogfights" when people want Newtonian physics, excess speed, fighting.
A special third I suppose: they need money to continue, I get that, but there is a special place in hell for their marketing team.
The money is going to salaries, so it's basically just extended development. They're all working and doing something. It's basically just instead of releasing a game 6 years ago that was barebones and okay they're making the sequel and won't release the final game until they're well done.
I'm confident it will release eventually, maybe another 5-8 years. As long as the devs don't die of old age.
I tried it out to see how it was coming along a year or so ago. It made Kenshi look polished.
One of the biggest scams in gaming.
Honestly it has some cool shit going on. Its a real shame they've attached themselves to this business model of exclusivity. It seems it also effects the development of the game heavily.
Pretty sure its the unchained peter molyneux that was the birth and death of star citizen's development :p
At least Molyneux has put out some good games. Yeah, they don't have all the earth shattering features he's promised, but there's some good titles in his portfolio. I'm not convinced Star Citizen is a good game.
Those games had a publisher telling him no to features and needing to finish existing stuff and not have scope creep to begin with. I said unchained peter for a reason :p
That's fair. As far as I know the same was true for Chris Roberts. Well, it wasn't so much that he had a publisher that would edit him as it was that he was fired and Microsoft came in and cobbled together what was there into an actual game (Freelancer).
Everyone can pull a little molyneux, as a treat.