Star Citizen Has Received $250 Million in Crowdfunding This Year

Tsing

The FPS Review
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For Chris Roberts and Cloud Imperium Games, Star Citizen is the gift that keeps on giving. Nobody has a clue when (if?) the crowdfunded multiplayer space title will be completed, but Star Citizen has managed to make an impressive $250 million in 2019 from backers who evidently can't stop spending big bucks on fancy ships. Its supporters now total 2,447,236.

Most of Star Citizen’s funding since the conclusion of its Kickstarter campaign has been through ‘pledges’ made by backers in exchange for in-game ships. These start out with ‘starter packs’ for ships like the Mustang Alpha and Aurora MR at $45, but CIG offers increasingly pricey packages on larger and more versatile spacecraft designs.
 
When I first heard about it it sounded like fun, but at this point if it ever launches ,it will just be a bunch of pledgers showing off their rare ships, and not any fun for the people who don't want to pay to win.
 
I tried one of the free trial weeks a year or two ago.

It wasn't anything like what I was expecting. Not in a good way, either. I don't usually back pre-release, pre-orders, or kickstart games. This proved to not be an exception to that rule for me. I haven't felt the need to go back on free weeks either.
 
Not only that, but I think the core game play is going to suffer due to the overly complex systems in the game. It's trying to be something for everyone and everything to some and that just doesn't ever work out well. A competent MMO, shooter, space combat simulator, etc. with its own economy, mining, cargo running and all this other bullshit are just going to take away from everything else. The feature creep is insane and the game really needs to be scaled back if the developer ever wants it to see the light of day.
 
I love space games but I'm not paying for a pretend one with a huge price tag.
I havent believed in this since early on they missed targets terribly and it became clear it is a money grab.
Something might get released eventually to try and prevent ending in court, but I have no confidence it will be worth having.
 
I have some $$ in this game. Interested to see how SQ42 turns out. If I like it, I’ll wait for the MMO side. If I don’t, I’ll sell what I’ve got for whatever I can get.
 
Just to give you an idea of how early I got onboard the Star Citizen train, I have a golden ticket!
I don't really go for crowdfunding though, so I've only spent $20 on the original campaign back in the stone ages. And today I am rather convinced the multiplayer game will never become anything worth playing, it's just a nice fluffy dream. But I am cautiously optimistic that, hopefully, Squadron 42 will turn out to be a single player experience worth having.
 
Not only that, but I think the core game play is going to suffer due to the overly complex systems in the game. It's trying to be something for everyone and everything to some and that just doesn't ever work out well. A competent MMO, shooter, space combat simulator, etc. with its own economy, mining, cargo running and all this other bullshit are just going to take away from everything else. The feature creep is insane and the game really needs to be scaled back if the developer ever wants it to see the light of day.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

When I first heard of it I remembered how much I loved Wing Commander Privateer back in the 90's. I remember thinking that if they could just make Privateer, but with modern graphics and online multiplayer and more complex (more ship/engine/weapon/etc combinations) it would be an awesome game.

Then they just went stupid.
 

After what point does 'mismanagement' become fraud? At this rate it may become a question for the courts..
A lot of the stuff he wanted to do could be made procedurally at infinity.. make it more and more complex in time of course, but procedurally, today 5 years ago.
 
The first 5 years I was in SC's camp, I really want them to succeed and was pretty forgiving of their challenges.

But holy ****, they started in 2011.

8 years of development, and what is there to show for it? Not even a beta....not even close. They keep adding garbage and things that they developed early on (like their flight model) is having to be rewritten. I know that they have had a huge challenge ahead of them, but holy **** that's almost an entire console cycle to not even be out of Alpha. Entire generations of graphics cards and CPUs have been released since they started development.

The people who keep giving this game money are nuts, I'm starting to think. It's getting almost cult like....like watching people who advocate for an MLM.
 
The first 5 years I was in SC's camp, I really want them to succeed and was pretty forgiving of their challenges.

But holy ****, they started in 2011.

8 years of development, and what is there to show for it? Not even a beta....not even close. They keep adding garbage and things that they developed early on (like their flight model) is having to be rewritten. I know that they have had a huge challenge ahead of them, but holy **** that's almost an entire console cycle to not even be out of Alpha. Entire generations of graphics cards and CPUs have been released since they started development.

The people who keep giving this game money are nuts, I'm starting to think. It's getting almost cult like....like watching people who advocate for an MLM.

I'm not sure what an MLM is, but I agree with you. I backed the game early during its initial phase because I believed in Squadron 42. At that time, Star Citizen was a stretch goal and all the nonsense that was talked about later on wasn't really on the table. The feature set for that seemed lofty, but not unobtainable. Now, what they advertise seems like its impossible to do or at least do well or within a reasonable amount of time.

Every project starts with lofty goals as they come from dreams of what could be possible. As the project moves forward, features are usually scaled back and the project comes into focus. That's not what we have hear. They never narrowed the scope of it, nor has the project had any focus. They keep adding ships, modules like Star Marine etc. without working on the core game play.

Not only that, but Squadron 42 would have been an easy slam dunk, and 8 years later, there is every reason to believe that it was only actually started recently when CIG got called out for not having delivered on what should have been something Chris Roberts could and should have had no trouble with. We should have seen that after two to three years of development and that's being easy on them.

My personal take on this, is that due to the lack of scrutiny and the mass amount of funding that's gone into this, it seems to me that without accountability, the higher ups, (Chris Roberts specifically) have been dipping into the old piggy bank and living it up while the project's been mismanaged from day one. I don't think this started out as a ponzi scheme but I think that's what its ultimately degenerated into. Parallels with ponzi scheme cases are shockingly similar. Most of what we've seen from CIG over the years is smoke and mirrors.

Even if the game ends up completed in the next few years in some form that's even remotely reminiscent of what's promised, I think it will be safe to say that the game wouldn't have needed the billion dollars it took to finance it. I'll wager allot of that went into catered food, hookers and blow, cars, mansions, watches and whatever else the higher ups wanted.

The thing is, allot of the laws that cover ponzi schemes and other investment fraud is that few if any of them apply to crowd funded projects like Star Citizen. Right from the start backers understand they may not see anything from their contribution in the form of a game.
 
I couldn't agree more.
I backed for $45 back in 2011 so I don't have a significant size dog in this fight but I really wish there was a way to hold them accountable for their actions. There is absolutely no reason a polished single player experience shouldn't exist at this point.

While I'd love to be able to play the game they promised I'm positive we will never see it because the mismanagement and I hope everyone involved in making major financial decisions for this project end up penniless and or in prison.
 
And I thought they made 250 milion total, not this year alone, yikes some crazy people around.
 
Wait it’s this year only? I thought it was total??
 
I was confused too but i think its total .. still an insanely high number for a game not even close to be done..
 
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