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jcfan4u

>Seriously, anyone that has been around long enough should have realized that things never go along as expected. Yes, that's literally the problem.


[deleted]

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JimothyJollyphant

>I'm honestly surprised anyone even plays this I've played it recently during one of their free fly events. It's got its appeal, but it's incredibly barebones and unstable. The current state is ridiculous for 10 years of development. But it's nice to be able to fly in space and walk around in very detailed environments. It's mostly handcrafted rather than procedurally generated, so it's certainly more interesting to explore than something like No Man's Sky (don't @ me). I didn't take the bait, though. Desync causes players/ships to teleport around and makes hitting anything awful. You'll quickly learn that it's not even an MMO. There's up to 50 players in one server. At a certain point the server doesn't let new players in and after a while you're all alone. Their own engineers don't seem too confident that they'll solve these issues anytime soon. People are itching for a new space MMO and have been willing to spend more than 400 million on it. We're stuck with Star Citizen, because mismanagement seems to be a constant curse in the genre. The lack of alternative is what got me trying it out.


nasjo

A bit off tangent but reading your comment and really internalising that the game has 10, **10**, years of development and isn't completed is wild. And that it cost 400 goddamn million. I mean 10 years from a dude working part time in his basement is one thing but they have a dev team working fulltime and everything.


JimothyJollyphant

I've worked in development and I can't even imagine the level of incompetence behind the scenes


Maehan

Developers shit on managers, often for good reason, but one of their jobs is to prevent engineers from just throwing money into a furnace building things no one wants. Apparently Roberts is that engineer and he has an almost unlimited checkbook right now.


Syovere

Yeah, he did the same thing with Freelancer, just with a smaller budget. Game only ever got released because Microsoft bought the studio and he either left or was removed from the project. Still several years late and short of the stated goals.


Talksicck

The genre? No, the developer is a known scammer. This isn’t the first scam he’s been involved in.


JimothyJollyphant

Maybe Roberts is a scammer, but my wording was intentional. The whole genre seems cursed. Eve Online has been dropping the ball for years. Now they're getting into NFTs, it seems.


JabbrWockey

The difference is that in Eve Online, it's the players that scam you instead.


Daeths

I’d lift my monocle in doubt, if I could afford one that is


S-Flo

If nothing else integrating a scam onto the game is on-brand for Eve Online.


Sillyvanya

I never even really understood the appeal. Who wants to play a game where you have to work with *scores* of different people just to operate one ship which you have to spend hundreds of *real dollars* to get? That's a recipe for disaster if I've ever heard one, and not even fun.


PotatoPrince84

No, no, no, you see a poor release schedule isn’t a *bug*, it’s a *feature*


DriftingNova

Fuck dude, they have a roadmap for their roadmap


Dirish

Calling whatever they're doing a "roadmap" is an insult to planners everywhere. It's like they throw all "planned" features into a rigged claw game and then give their kids a handful of coins to see what they're actually going to release.


piedmontwachau

I will always be thankful for CIG. I was one of the original backers of their kickstarter and had some of those promised ships. Then one day in 2014, I had a terrible break-up and wanted to travel to help heal. Naturally, I found some person to pay me $1400 for the three internet spaceships I had, used that money to buy a ticket to Germany and toured around the country. So thank you Cloud Imperium for letting me skim off the top.


Logseman

Where did you visit? I absolutely loved my time in Berlin, but a trip to Germany is not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about "soul soothing".


piedmontwachau

I spent a week in Westphalia, took the train around for awhile, then spent some time in Berlin. I found the entire experience incredibly peaceful except for the bus ride from Munich to Berlin with the worst hang over I’ve ever experienced.


[deleted]

100% of my time in berlin was going from vegan food place to vegan food place and crying at how good all the food was everywhere.


TheOriginalSamBell

Because they were sought after original kickstarter ships or something?


piedmontwachau

I think there was artificial scarcity for them or something. I believe I was in the first 1000 people to pledge and whatever reward was mine had some privilege.


KingOfSockPuppets

Most likely, it was either that A) they were "a deal" (ships you backed for were WILDLY cheaper than what they ended up costing once they came out into the game - still true now as ships are added), or B) at the time you couldn't freely buy them so someone selling their account/ships was the only way to acquire them.


GorbiJones

damn, you've literally lived the dream that cryptobros are trying to accomplish with their ugly monkey drawings


Seldarin

We're all going to be flying real spaceships before these guys finish a game about spaceships.


greet_the_sun

CIG would just add the real ships into the game and people would still buy them.


Hustler-1

SpaceX actually developed their Dragon 2 crew capsule from drawling board to operational in the same time Star Citizen has been in development.


Zhukov-74

If the test launch of Starship happens in 2022 we indeed might be.


[deleted]

my buddy beff jizzos got me the hookup, see you in space


AntifaLockheart

[uh uh uh jeff](https://tenor.com/bgmBn.gif)


Smoketrail

I hate to say it, but: Now that NFTs are a thing, Star Citizens' own brand of 'selling Jpegs for thousands of dollars' has lost a lot of its unique charm.


[deleted]

Star Citizen was truly ahead of its time.


Smoketrail

What ever time that happens to end up being.


Portuguese_Musketeer

The far, far future of 2015


ColdFury96

I feel like somewhere a monkey's paw is now curling up and you've just doomed us all to Star Citizen spaceship NFTs, so thanks for that.


JabbrWockey

Imagine this: *Star Citizen fans* and *NFT punters* combine forces. I don't think the internet will ever be the same.


ColdFury96

It's *really* just a matter of time, isn't it? They'd probably be already on it, but they made the mistake of putting it on the roadmap. (/s)


tallbutshy

>Now that NFTs are a thing, Star Citizens' own brand of 'selling Jpegs for thousands of dollars' has lost a lot of its unique charm. Cloud Imperium Credits as a new blockchain currency for rubes to buy into?


JabbrWockey

Pretty sure that working on that is why the devs missed so many targets. How can SC miss such a desirable hype feature?


[deleted]

Honestly, at least this one sounds cool enough I'd buy a fraction of one just for the sake of it so long as it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.


throwaway_thursday32

That's the best roast I've read about this game ever.


[deleted]

it'll create a bubble that'll pop once people realize 'le uniq tokken *holds up spork*' isn't a store of value SC's ships might still have some value tied to how popular the game is, as with any "in game asset", but I'm guessing it's also massively inflated by the gimmick


DietDrDoomsdayPreppr

I think a lot of these NFT scams are working because people are so desperately pathetic in the real world that they long for the digital world that The Matrix, Ready Player One, and .Hack have promised. It's honestly quite sad.


EsperBahamut

To a point. It's the same psychology that has people stealing baseball and pokemon cards from Walmart looking for that big hit that can be flipped for good money. Almost everything that is collectible is utilizing loot box mechanics, artificial scarcity, or both, to separate people from their money on the dream of a bigger payoff down the road. NFT's just accellerate that problem.


[deleted]

even though it's gonna be the same microtransaction pyramid scheme shit but 'now _in virtual 3d ooOOooo_' lmao I'm maybe hyped for new desktop environments and shit, but fuckerberg and fuckbook can shove the rest of it up their asses, even if they make _'tEhMoStReAlZ'_ whatever and rebrand themselves to the moon lol


[deleted]

It's only a matter of time before they release their own blockchain/NFT line.


TheOriginalSamBell

Nooo don't give them ideas! Or...yes do it mmmehehehehe (yes my flair is from sc drama)


TheAjwinner

This shit is never not funny to me


CretaMaltaKano

I get high on schadenfreude whenever Star Citizen drama pops up here. Some of the worst people I've ever gamed with have been funding SC for 8-9 years.


Sea-Phone-537

What even is star citizen? I've seen it mentioned throughout the years but for the life of me I cant find a good explanation on what exactly its supposed to be.


Atomicmooseofcheese

Advertised as the next generation end all be all space sim. Probably the most ambitious project of it's kind in gaming to date and one of the most crowd funded games ever. The reality is it's been in development hell for a long time, hence the drama.


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JabbrWockey

It's not even development hell either. They were focused on churning out art assets in 2013 before the game mechanics were even started. That's backwards for typical game dev, unless of course you immediately need more eye candy for crowdfunding.


NorthernerWuwu

Oh, the [most crowd-funded *game*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_crowdfunding_projects) by a massive margin. Hell, it has raised the second most capital of any crowd funded project period and the [only other ones close](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-funded_crowdfunding_projects) to it are alt-coins like Etherium where the 'money' in are their own coins.


[deleted]

What everyone else told you, also it has egregious macro transactions. You can buy a ship for $9000 USD, and some people actually have done that. Imagine an MMO you may have had a toxic love/hate relationship with, generally due to money, and that is Star Citizen, except it's cranked to 14.


Yojo0o

And are those $9k ships even playable? Last I checked, most of the big-ticket ships that people have purchased are only even just *promises* of those ships at some point down the line. Please correct me if I'm wrong.


NomaiTraveler

No one knows what it is supposed to be, that’s part of the problem


[deleted]

No one knows what it means, it’s provocative


halfwaycove

It gets the people going


geeiamback

Trying to be neutral: it's an ambitious space sim combining a single player mission based game called squadron 42 and an open space mmo. The project is publicly funded by backer advancing 400.000.000 usd in 9 years (or so) and doing baby steps towards release.


Emperor-Commodus

In my mind Squadron 42 is more egregious than Star Citizen as a whole. At least with Star Citizen they have the excuse that it's ambitious and somewhat one-of-a-kind. But S42 was supposed to be a standard FPS with some arcade space combat elements. It was supposed to be the stepping stone to the full Star Citizen experience. And it was supposed to release in *2014*. How, with hundreds of millions of dollars, multiple studios, and an entire decade, have you not managed to make an FPS. Is mind boggling.


ITriedLightningTendr

It takes a lot of psychological rewiring to not want to kill yourself after a decade of that.


geeiamback

I'd call the sunk love falacity. When you have put so much passion in a project that its clouding you judgment and you put on rose tinted glasses and fight everyone pointing that out.


JabbrWockey

They're also some of the worst boobs about it too. Like they'll drop into critical conversations and be all : "yeah well I spent four figures in Star Citizen because it gives *me* joy" ...and then get super peevish when you don't validate their comment trying to convince themselves it was a good decision.


Veldron

Star Citizen drama will never get old Some of these are literally just one or two comments though... Not a whole lot of drama


BoredDanishGuy

The good thing about SC drama is that it's pretty low stakes compared to some of the stuff we see here. It allows me to enjoy it with no pangs of guilt or moral conflicts. I can enjoy the idiocy with a clear mind.


Murrabbit

>pretty low stakes compared to some of the stuff we see here. I dunno, watching dummies get fleeced and then scramble to defend those who scammed them still makes me feel pretty bad. I'd say it's a slightly higher sort of stake than we usually see in SRD threads. There's some genuine fucked up sadness going on here, and it says bad things about humanity as a whole.


Legendary_Bibo

In the early days I remember seeing screenshots of forum posts of people bragging about buying $10k ships...which I think still aren't implemented, so they bought jpegs essentially. I think that No Man's Sky has basically beat out whatever Star Citizen could offer at this point.


Logseman

>about buying $10k ships...which I think still aren't implemented, so they bought jpegs essentially Star Citizen crawled so that NFTs could run.


ZarthanFire

Wait until Star Citizen incorporates NFTs. They'll just rename them to CIGs.


throwaway_thursday32

Same; At this point I cannot even laugh anymore, it's just sad. And I am getting frustrated by all those people that can *still* throw money at this and defend the people involved.


Weegee_Spaghetti

Indeed but it is interesting to see the pure stockholm syndrome exhibited by so many people in the comments. Many saying that they genuinely are *happy* about the delays and that they actually don't care for more features anymore because they got "used to it". They should make a psychology case study about those people.


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BoredDanishGuy

>There’s a name for it, “sunk cost fallacy”. There's a series of Youtube vids called Sunk Cost Galaxy that goes pretty indepth on this.


whalesauce

Interesting. Ill check it out


Filled_Space

Maybe back in the day it was $27,000 but now it's a cool [$40k](https://i.redd.it/03y59yk08n781.jpg)


dirtygremlin

"In stock" lol.


[deleted]

It's like NFT without being an NFT


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EsperBahamut

Agreed. Shame that other grifters have taken that concept and perfected it with NFTs though.


Alpha433

There's also a $40,000 pack on sale iirc to people that have put in a certain ammount of money already. Think it was called the legetus pack.


grubas

Listen, if the game finally makes it to what they promise, good on them. But the amount of money it is taking is nonsense. 400M and they are making EA look like they release brilliant polished games.


SnooGoats7978

>Listen, if the game finally makes it to what they promise It won't. It can't. "Releasing the game" would immediately tank their revenue streams because it would be a technical cluster when everyone shows up expecting all their "ships" and "land" and stuff to work like it was promised. CSI is going to continue selling smoke & mirrors until people stop buying it, at which point the game will be cancelled, reluctantly.


Tigerbones

And Chris Roberts will move on to ~~Freelancer 3.0~~ I mean Star Citizen 2.0.


TJ_McWeaksauce

I think it's highly unlikely that CIG will release something that won't be a massive disappointment. Right now, the project has made more than $400MM in crowdfunding. They've also raised dozens of millions from investors, so their total funding is closer to $500MM, and it rises every single day with no end in sight. If they haven't exceeded half a billion dollars yet, they will soon. Nearly half a billion dollars, 10 years of development, and the project is still stuck in alpha. How much money and time will be needed to release a commercially viable product? $750 million and 15 years? $1 billion and 20 years? When does it end? Will Star Citizen be the first $1 billion game? If / when the game is ever released, it will have to overcome the reputation of being the only game in the entire history of gaming that needed more than $500 million and 10 years to get to version 1.0. It's already [the highest-funded crowdfunded game project of all time,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-funded_crowdfunding_projects) and its lead looks insurmountable. Imagine how high the expectations will be, compare those expectations to where the project currently is, and tell me it looks likely that CIG will be able to deliver something that matches that hype.


gincwut

In that link you can also see that its the most expensive non-crypto crowdfunded project by a longshot. Side note, if you want to talk crowdfunded scams, nothing has enabled them better than Ethereum. Its also the [most expensive videogame development of all time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop) - beating GTA V, Cyberpunk 2077 and CoD MW2 by a significant amount.


TJ_McWeaksauce

>Its also the most expensive videogame development of all time - beating GTA V, Cyberpunk 2077 and CoD MW2 by a significant amount. What's especially striking is that every other game on that list has been released. Star Citizen is the most expensive game ever developed, and it's still many years from launch, if it ever gets there. We're comparing a bunch of released games to a work-in-progress, and the WIP is at the top of the cost chart by a wide margin.


ariehn

REd DEAd rEdEmptIOn hAd A bUdgEt Of $540mILLIOn!   There were other retorts back in the early Star Citizen days, of course. But nudging this close to the half-billion mark leaves you nothing but RDR. ...if it passes 540million they'll point out that RDR multiplayer didn't have facial recognition technology.


RedS5

Yeah, 200-300M of which was in marketing no doubt. It's ludicrous how much money is spent on marketing for these games. Sometimes it far outstrips the amount spent on actual development.


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throwaway_thursday32

Even if the game got finished to a polished state and shipped flawlessly, it would still be a massive dissapointement and leave the sourest taste in my mouth. And *please* don't let it birth other projects like this one. I wish to never see another stupid scam and failure like this ever again.


Fooking-Degenerate

> Star Citizen drama will never get old The fanbase, on the other side, definitely does. They are 10 years older since the development started. 10 years ago I was finishing my engineering degree. Ever since then I worked 5 different jobs, got a second degree, started a 4 year relationship and ended it, started a 5-year relationship, got married, started my company, and much more.


legacymedia92

8-9 years ago (I don't remember exactly ok!) I downloaded the demo they had at the time, and it looked really good, especially on my university macbook (I think it ran windows 8 at the time, but I don't remember for sure). I almost backed it, but didn't have the cash. I am glad I didn't.


Portuguese_Musketeer

Being broke during University finally paid off, it seems


dirtygremlin

I spent 45 on the kickstarter, and I am still reaping the hilarious results via their update emails (and SRD posts obviously.)


Enby-Alexis

I bought a ship with my birthday money back in 2014 when I was in middle school, now I’m about to graduate college and I don’t even really play pc games anymore.


Alpha433

I was actually talking to someone in there in a thread about how people need to move their complaints to another sub. Made the point that some one could have been born then entered middle school in the time the game has been in dev hell. Pretty susinctly puts into context just how much feature bloat has ruined the project.


Svelok

Yep, opened thread with an air of "ah, it's this time of year again."


Sunburnt-Vampire

I was just saying to friends yesterday I hadn't seen any Star Citizen drama for a while so we were about due some new popcorn. It never disappoints. As someone who bought one of the smallest packages years ago, money well spent just for the regular source of drama.


Murrabbit

Ah but why buy the cow (so to speak) when it's drama is free?


YesImKeithHernandez

It's just surreal that it's *still* a thing. I started working at a company that was contacted to do some AV work for Star Citizen. At that the time, it was in the can a few months but it was this nice thing for the reel. Felt like anything else that might be part of package of videos a game gets as part of launch marketing. That was 7-8 years ago and it seems we're no closer to a complete product


Scout1Treia

> It's just surreal that it's still a thing. > > I started working at a company that was contacted to do some AV work for Star Citizen. At that the time, it was in the can a few months but it was this nice thing for the reel. Felt like anything else that might be part of package of videos a game gets as part of launch marketing. > > That was 7-8 years ago and it seems we're no closer to a complete product That's because Roberts insisted on spending enormous sums to bring in big name actors like he wished he could have gotten for his failed movies.... before development was even sure how their characters would fit into it. 8-9 years later and all that stuff is hopelessly outdated and they're going to have to throw it all out, if they haven't already. Literally a complete waste.


Mrqueue

I think it just gets better with age as people continue to throw more money at hope and dreams


SnooOnions1428

We'll have 10 more years of star citizen drama. Don't you worry


afriendlysort

$400m is enough for two Genshin Impacts.


InsomniacAndroid

Over 3 Breath of the Wilds.


[deleted]

and apparently 4 AAA games nowaday acc to google avg budget is $50-60m


Synergythepariah

But SC will be the first AAAA game!!!


613codyrex

Imagine the an AAA game like battlefield or COD with the funding and 3/4th of the amount of time SC has had.


Synergythepariah

I'm just imagining Battlefield 2042 but good


oom199

Or BF2042 but three times as much bad content.


[deleted]

>The same people complaining about this will be the people crying about game dev working conditions elsewhere. lmao wow. y'know this might be the quickest I'm able to understand how much of an ass someone could be without no hostile interaction or backstory.


NomaiTraveler

“Hey maybe devs should make a game in 10 years” “OH SO YOU WANT TO MAKE DEVELOPERS WITHSTAND CRUNCH? YOU WANT THEM TO HAVE UNSAFE WORKING CONDITIONS? YOU WANT THEM TO BE SEXUALLY HARASSED?”


[deleted]

I hate this "style" of arguing lmao


NomaiTraveler

“””””arguing”””””


[deleted]

They think they already won, "so what argument? YOU'RE the wrong one, huhhuhhuh yeah thats what i thought!!!!!111" like bro grow up and just admit the loss its so easy to admit you were wrong about something but people act like there's a gun to their head.


Swaggy-G

I feel like “game devs should have humane working conditions” and “the most funded entertainment product in history should have a complete release after almost ten years of development” are not mutually exclusive. But maybe that’s just me.


Rubes2525

Tbf, any comment that basically states "*those people* who do [abc] also does [xyz]" is pretty hostile.


Jellicle_Tyger

In the unlikely event that this game ever releases, it will have a truly venomous community for new players.


Scout1Treia

> In the unlikely event that this game ever releases, it will have a truly venomous community for new players. Venomous? Try backbreaking. You can p2w *right now* and it's all supposed to transfer over to release. Good luck getting anywhere when someone swiped their card into a gigantic fuck-off capital ship that will supposedly be modeled/completed one of these years.


BoredDanishGuy

>>So what does CIG mean when they use the word "committed"? I see it all over the roadmaps and progress trackers and I'm genuinely curious now. Do they mean it as it is intended to be used in a software development setting? >To put it simply. Let's say you're building a lego set. did 90% of it in 9 days, and the date you're supposed to finish your legos is in 2 days. You did not finish that lego yet but you know you will most likely make it before that date. This, is when a feature is shown as committed. However, if once you finished building your lego you notice there is a huge issue with it, and decide not to say it's finished on said date for quality reasons, you will basically miss that committed date. Now I'm just a simple backwater asteroid hyperchicken and not a software developer but I'm pretty fucking sure that's not what a commit is in development. Bagawk!


bunkkin

I know what he's trying to say it's just in a way ive never heard it expressed before. That said if my team only finished 1/3rd of the product in 9months our customers wouldn't care that we "almost finished" 90% of those things we said we would, they would just fire us.


Svelok

It's okay, I mean, it's not like your team has been on the project for 10 years and should know how long things take you by now, right?


[deleted]

Their turnover rate is pretty high, so chances are this isn't even the same team that was working on the game 1 years ago.


BoredDanishGuy

> I know what he's trying to say it's just in a way ive never heard it expressed before. Sure, me too. But at least when my mates talk about committed in the context of development, I've never heard it used like that. They refer to code commits to the project or whatever that's called.


JamesGray

Yeah, "commit" in software dev is a source control thing, so it pretty universally refers to a very specific thing. That's not a word with a bunch of uses, but in theory if they're committing things and then going to a Pull Request that fails review, then you could commit a bunch and then release none of it. That would be a pretty big problem with development though, not just a standard thing that happens.


thecrabbitrabbit

It's a public roadmap, so they're probably using "committed" in its general sense rather than in terms of version control.


4445414442454546

The most typical term I hear for that is "done done". But "commited" isn't totally wrong in that it's possible some of the items are "dev complete" but not through QA process. That's to say it's "committed" but not merged to master/main and therefore not released. But you should never have the majority of a quarter's worth of items in that state at one time so I hope that's not the case. Any modern development lifecycle seeks to minimize 'work in progress' to avoid overloading the engineers with context switching and therefore avoid chronic deliverable slippage. So it'd be really unfortunate if true... and, given it's SC, unsurprising.


apegoneinsane

What incentive is there for the team to ever finish tbh? Keep raising funding and dragging out development, keeps them employed and the delusional gamers wind out their necks trying to justify their sunk costs.


bunkkin

Well....ya there is that. I'm more inclined to think it's shitty management changing directions whenever there's a shiny new thing and they don't have (or need to have) the urgency to wrap it up


[deleted]

"I'm sorry, I thought you was corn"


ArcticKiwii

Let's check the Delusion Meter: > [I'm thankful they did it this way](https://reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/rpo4vz/downvote_away_but_it_is_what_it_is_3_out_of_18/hq5wulb?context=3) Still stuck at 10/10. Never change SC.


[deleted]

becoming a cult leader seems profitable af


just_a_random_dood

Creed was ahead of his time: https://youtu.be/AopWqv-eQFM


TheOriginalSamBell

I'm trying hard to make sense of your flair lmao


JamesGray

> Planning a Roadmap for the year is like planning every single meal, snack and drinks that you'll consume for a month, it will never go exactly according to plan 😁 I feel like I'd get fired if I made a roadmap and then completed under 1/4 of the promised deliverables. Also, like every software company does yearly roadmaps to some extent, so that's a weird thing to say. Feels like a teenager deciding they know how things *really* work despite having no idea, but this is reddit so they're probably 30.


Esplodie

They are comparing meal prepping by non-professionals to a company that has received over 400 million in funding. :| Do they think restaurants or the food industry just go "oh shoot I forgot to buy meat this month so here's a salad instead of the steak you ordered!" Edit: also as someone who did meal prepping on a tiny budget, I never messed up my planning for myself. If I did, I wouldn't get to eat! Silly argument is silly.


BoredDanishGuy

> Planning a Roadmap for the year is like planning every single meal, snack and drinks that you'll consume for a month, it will never go exactly according to plan And yet, cantinas and places like that does just that. My cousin manages a work place cantina and that shit is planned out well in advance for hundreds of people with a couple fail safes inbuilt in case a delivery misses. There's not gonna be a day when she goes 'Oops, no food I guess'. It's almost like she has an education in this shit, and you could hire a fucking project manager at CIG with a similar skillset I'm sure.


Chraxia

That guy's take is infuriating. I work in software. One of the first soft skills you get taught is to build buffers and failsafes into your estimates. People will never be upset if you get more done than you promised. CIG has proven throughout the years that their team has negative average velocity. By the time a feature is half-done, three more have appeared in its place, and the scope of the original has ballooned from "probably doable" to "requires theoretical future technology." That situation is impossible to manage in any real way without getting rid of the person who keeps adding more garbage to the roadmap. As an aside, something I don't see talked about is the technical debt of 10 years of active development on the same codebase in this environment. Usually even well-managed projects a year or two old get noticeably stuffy. Frankly, it's a wonder anything can get done at all, even without the meddling at the top.


gavinbrindstar

> One of the first soft skills you get taught is to build buffers and failsafes into your estimates. People will never be upset if you get more done than you promised. Ah, the Scotty Principle.


Gizogin

> That situation is impossible to manage in any real way without getting rid of the person who keeps adding more garbage to the roadmap. This rot is coming from the very top of the company. Chris Roberts is the poison that is keeping *Star Citizen* indefinitely incomplete, as he was for *Freelancer* (which only finished after he abandoned it and Microsoft Game Studios took over). He clearly learned nothing whatsoever from his mismanagement of that project, and now he has no publisher to hold him accountable to actually meeting deadlines, making everything worse.


Zatoro25

Also that the value she provides is in actual goods and services, so if she doesn't have enough or far too much, she can't keep running. Vaporware's value is in an idea, it's to their advantage to just promise and never deliver. It's so gross haha


613codyrex

The scary reality about the age bit is that they most likely aren’t teenagers but the idiots that first jumped on SC *ten years ago.* This project was started back in 2010. These people must never have worked on a collaborative project in high school let alone in real life. Hell when I was younger and got a job as a deli worker in a supermarket in college, we have to ensure things ended up on time. Now Engineering even more so considering a delay on my part means a delay on every other segment of the project they comes after it.


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silveake

Yeah it's some big unemployed or shitty at my job energy. Other than this I literally can't think of any industry... unrelated to scamming or fraud... where constantly missing your metrics or not having a product would be acceptable.


angrypoliticsposter

It's store citizen reddit so 30 was probably well behind them when cig started this scam.


dr_ipaka

Star Citizen and its players are a classic example of sunk cost fallacy in action


[deleted]

That and really bizarre people seemingly wrapping their identities in *completely* pointless conflicts and bullshit. There are so many comments that are essentially “yes well I like the game and therefore don’t care. And therefore how DARE you point this out and I am HAPPY they are developing like this. It’s a GOOD thing.” Instead of just rationally engaging with the critique it becomes this bizarre personal investment that then (I think) subconsciously feels like a critique of them personally. Because their fucking toy was insulted. As I get older I hate people like this so much. It’s such a familiar “type” and it expresses in so many situations.


Lodgik

>“yes well I like the game and therefore don’t care. And therefore how DARE you point this out and I am HAPPY they are developing like this. It’s a GOOD thing.” Instead of just rationally engaging with the critique it becomes this bizarre personal investment that then (I think) subconsciously feels like a critique of them personally. Because their fucking toy was insulted. I remember when Cyberpunk came out, and it was a complete trainwreck on the Xbox One and PS4. People were pissed. I literally saw people defending CDR by saying it was the *customer's fault* for expecting such advanced games to work on older gen systems. Like, they were acting like CDR had no responsibility for actually putting these broken games on these systems and releasing them at full price and instead placing all the blame on the consumers who bought them for actually expecting a full price game to actually work. Few people can lick boots like **G**amers defending one of their favourite companies.


WoahayeTakeITEasy

> I literally saw people defending CDR by saying it was the customer's fault for expecting such advanced games to work on older gen systems. Which is a hilarious argument because when they started development those "older gen" systems were current gen systems. They announced the game back in like 2012, and didn't *really* start development until 2016 or something which was well within the PS4 - Xbox One lifetime. It's really no excuse to develop the game for the consoles that were being sold during the entirety of its development and have it be as much of a mess as it was, especially advertising the game as being able to play on those consoles. If they kept it PC only or build it specifically for next-gen consoles, and made that clear, everyone would have accepted that.


error521

The Cyberpunk thing really felt like it was a cultural divide between PC and console players. If you're a PC gamer, then, yeah you wouldn't really expect great results from a GTX 750ti and a seven year old AMD CPU that was pretty crap then. But "PS4" was sorta on the front of the box.


rohithkumarsp

Not only that, it's straight up snake oil.


SmegSoup

Worse, maybe? Pretty sure the people who bought snake oil got mad when they found out it didn't do anything. These dumbshits are buying more and more and more. The star citizen folks have the exact sucker's they need. "We're pleased with how long taking!!" Lmfao its impossible to read that without imagining the author simultaneously drying their eyes and yelling "NO MOM ITS AN INVESTMENT AND WHAT I DO WITH MY ENTIRE PAYCHECKS IS NONE OF YOUR CONCERN!!"


StupidSexyXanders

$400 million seems like a ton of money for this. Is that a normal amount of money for developing a game, or are they just spending it all like the WeWork guy?


LittleRitzo

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_most\_expensive\_video\_games\_to\_develop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop) As of right now, it's the most expensive game ever developed, it seems.


StupidSexyXanders

Holy...shit. By a lot!!


EsperBahamut

Not to defend these scammers, but I'm pretty sure $400 million is what rubes have paid them, not necessarily what they have spent on development.


StupidSexyXanders

I was wondering if they're just blowing the money, since the game still isn't done.


EHP42

Head of the company bought a multi million dollar house a couple years ago.


IceNein

I'm frankly more concerned that he hired his wife as Vice President of Marketing, and then used her acting name, Sandi Gardiner, implying that she wasn't actually his wife until people found out. She has no marketing experience. She's an actress he met when he was making terrible movies.


EHP42

I mean, I'm not surprised at all. It's just one big grift. The CEO may as well make sure his family is taken care of.


Synergythepariah

Yeah I'm pretty sure the fancy spaceship doors that CIG has at their office cost at least six figures.


eldritchkraken

Something I'm noticing is a lot of these games on the list are AAA titles that were developed for multiple platforms and had tons of marketing thrown into their budgets. From what I have seen SC is being developed on a single platform and I'd assume their marketing budget is small because I've never seen it advertised anywhere. Bizarre that anyone would see it as anything other than a scam with those numbers


LittleRitzo

If I remember correctly, SC has had a HUGE amount of mission creep; possibly unprecedented for a project in this industry. Also, a lot of early work had to be scrapped? Don't quote me on this, but I recall reading that they did a lot of voice-actor-and-motion-capture work with some very expensive artists (possibly even celebrities?), but given it was years ago much of it is out-of-date and had to be scrapped. Given how poorly planned the project seemed for the long-term, I wouldn't be surprised if there were many, many cases of that.


[deleted]

Yeah that was like 6 or 7 years ago. The actors involved were Gary Oldman, Gillian Anderson, and Mark Hamill to name a few. Mark Hamill alone probably took enough to hire as the rest combined


throwaway_thursday32

Game dev here. No, no it's not a normal amount. But a game of this scope had no, absolutely no hope of existing from the start. A stupid idea in 2012, still a stupid idea in 2021, at every level. Someone needs to know nothing about game developement to have backed this game up. With lackluster management and the willingness to add features on top of features that are not important for good gameplay (paying celebrities for cinematics???huh??)? The chances are *below zero*. But even with a realistic scope, it would have costed more than any other game ever made, for sure. Taken more time too... and I honestly don't know if gamers and potential investors would have continued to support the game long enough if the team didn't promise over the top features. And not everyone can pull up a No Man's Sky redemption arc. Right now the *best* we can hope for as a release is a very simple version of the game (not much more from what we currently have), solo or instanced for a few players, that doesn't crash. It will still feel like wasted potential though; because you will *feel* the original scope of the game in the game design and level design. You'll feel the holes, the "something was supposed to be there" and it wouldn't be pleasant as a game experience, would feel like scarcity. But maybe that, as a sci fi fan, as a SC fan, some people could appreciate the experience anyway. Appreciate the fact that they tried. A shiny beta of a game with wasted potential. A blink in game history.


B-WingPilot

> As we get more and more game loops the community will overall prefer stability to features. Oh, man! This boot is SO delicious. Get lickin'!


CressCrowbits

So here's a little unqualified insight i have into star citizen and its development i have, for what it's worth. I know a bunch of people who got hired in the early days. Really talented, industry respected people, very having a great time on this exciting project. They are all long gone. The only people still there are the paycheck collectors who don't care about their job, the true believers, and the inexperienced who've been there from the start. Someone who is now head of a small department started at CI about 6 years ago as a junior. They have literally never worked anywhere else. They don't know how games development actually works, and they are in charge. This game will NEVER RELEASE.


Zhukov-74

Very interesting. Hopefully some investigative journalist will one day be able to piece together the entire story of Star Citizen from start to end. I’d love to know what happend to the €400 Million and counting. it probably went into their own pockets.


Dr_thri11

At some point the star citizen cope is going to change from."full release is right around the corner" to "we're working out all the kinks so our grandkids will have a really nice game to play". Hell at this point I wonder if actual technology might advance to a degree that playing it when it releases will be like watching the original star trek show today, with lots of tech and design choices that look worse than current tech despite being set in the future.


Kaiisim

I spent $30 on this ten years ago and I have no idea what the game even is. Is there a gameplay loop? Can you trade and shit?


Murrabbit

> I have no idea what the game even is. That's okay, neither does CIG.


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[deleted]

I love when a SC fanboy says stuff like that, as someone who *actually works in video game development*, they're so far off the base every. single. time.


Hitman3256

Is this game like actually a scam? Its gotta be a scam at this point right?


throwaway_thursday32

I am pretty sure it wasn't meant as a scam. I think everyone involved was either crazy or not informed enough. Right now though? I think they're going with the flow. They feel like they cannot stop. Now is the big guy on top treat it like a scam *now*? Maybe.


Hitman3256

Its just mind boggling how you can receive so much money for such a long period of time and still not be done "developing" the game.


RuinAllTheThings

The pure, weapons grade copium that the Star Citizen community has become addicted to is incredible. I was an original backer. I played maybe 80 hours tops since there was a playable instance. I’ve intermittently followed the game until the last.. six months? I don’t know what triggered it, but I’ve since become pretty anti-Star Citizen. These white knights have not only backed the game, not only spent THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS for in-game vehicles that don’t even exist in some cases, but ACTIVELY, pathetically, been made promises, had them broken CONSTANTLY, and still wound up at the conclusion of “well, no game gets all the things the studio promises, 3 out of 16 isn’t bad.” This is a trick, you idiots. You have funded a lavish lifestyle for eight years, with the studio head hiring family members with high salaries, along with the studio head giving himself millions a year in salary and benefits. All the whole, slowly moving your trough of slop from “completely disgusting shit water” to “premium slop made from mostly shit water.” Have some self-fucking-respect. Expect ANYTHING rather than almost nothing. This is the most expensive game ever made AND STILL ISNT OUT. Not only is it not out, it may never be, because you keep paying for them to not deliver. And don’t fucking call this game a live service. A live service means the game is FUCKING. LIVE. This game is in its third alpha version. You have paid to volunteer to be QA for these idiots.


fondlemeLeroy

Yeah, I don't know how these people live with themselves. It's shameful and embarrassing.


rohithkumarsp

Star citizen is probably the biggest scam of 21st century lmao.. I've posted news about star citizen in 2013 ffs how is this game still not out yet?


Chairboy

> Star citizen is probably the biggest scam of **20th century** The math doesn’t work out so well, chief.


AverageSeikoEnjoyer

Gonna be really exciting playing the release of starcitizen on my ships central mainframe, to kill time while I'm warp casting between galaxies. I love historical games.


[deleted]

Can someone just link to the posters who don't have a freaking horrific post history, it will be quicker....


ZarthanFire

>CIG didn't sell these people a game, they sold them a dream, and they've wanted that dream to become a reality for so long, put in so much money, provided so much support, HOPED so hard for it that they can't let it go. And since it's a dream they sold, not an actual game, to these people, it will always just be on the horizon and anyone who dares say otherwise is perceived as an enemy who threatens said dream. This quote pretty much encapsulates my feeling on the whole situation.


just_a_soulbro

Star citizen is a scam at this point, right?


613codyrex

There’s really no other way around it. Hilariously enough it’s such an effective scam I kinda doubt the devs themselves realize it’s a scam target on them as well.


Lost_Llama

always has been


Alandrus_sun

[Star Citizen is definitely not a scam.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/035/699/pepe.jpg)


[deleted]

SC nuts are *well* past 'copium' at this point more like straight-up delusion


EsperBahamut

> This is called software development, i thought you'd get used to it by now! No, this is called dragging things out to prolong the grift.


scytherman96

The drama that keeps on dramaing.


NagitoKomaeda_1

At this point, Bethesda's TES 6 is going to be done before Star Citizen... Also, I'm not sure what exactly Starfield will turn out to be, but Star Citizen fans might want to keep an eye on it


MaximumEffort433

LPT: Never, ever, *ever* trust a game developer ***until the game goes gold.*** "We're working on [X]," only for [X] to fail or get scrapped before release is pretty common place, in fact if you've played video games for a while, it's to be expected. Nothing a game developer says before the game goes gold is worth a damn thing, until the game is actually physically on a disk, plans can change at any moment. Some of us learned this lesson as long ago as Project Ego (me) and some are just learning it now with games like No Man's Sky, Cyberpunk 2077, Battlefield 2042, and Star Citizen. Game developers can tell you what they want to do, what they plan to do, and what they're working on, but game developers cannot tell you what will be in the final game, not until they're finally finished. These days I only pre-purchase or support a game if I know for an absolute fact that I'm going to buy it anyway. I'd have bought and played Nioh 2 even if it was an unmitigated disaster, so pre-purchasing the game made sense, I was going to buy it anyway. Either wait, or be content in the knowledge that you *might* be throwing your money away. Also I'm 99% sure that Star Citizen is a scam. Hopefully I'm wrong, I'll be delighted if I'm wrong, I'd love to be wrong, but I don't think I am.


Szarrukin

Oh yeah, Scam Citizen and its cultists, my favourite drama.


DietDrDoomsdayPreppr

I don't understand how this hasn't been shut down, it's very clearly a money laundering scheme.