Star Citizen reaches $600 million raised but the game future is really worrying
Cloud Imperium has been working on Star Citizen since 2011, which has already raised more than $600 million. When will its final version be released?
I was an original backer, I've played various iterations over the years and it really takes a lot of rose tint to find the game as it is enjoyable. The core loop isn't even in place yet. The systems that do exist and work are interesting, the graphics and aesthetics are top notch, in parts, and at times it feels like we're going to get something revolutionary. But then you play for a while and the unfinished jank gets to you, it's not very fun. It's cool, it's impressive, the scope is insane and you can get lost in the vastness of space in ways that other games just can't even approach. But it's not fun. You can make it fun with friends or by setting up your own goals disjoined from the gameplay loop. Like try and jump a vehicle into the cargo bay mid flight or see how tightly you can race around asteroids. But if you just play the existing little loops it sucks. This is of course my subjective opinion. You might love the bounty system and the combat. You might love the salvage runs and transport missions but to me it's like Euro Truck Simulator which is about the most boring shit I can imagine. And both the space and ground combat just isn't even remotely as good as other games that just focus on that, which is understandable but I'm always left with this feeling of "will I really enjoy the finished product?" And I'm not sure. The game they said they were going to make in the Kickstarter, that game I would've enjoyed. I loved Chris Roberts games as a kid, but this monstrosity it has become? I just don't know.
That said I really do believe they're trying to make the best game ever. They just don't fundamentally understand why we need deadlines and a fixed scope to get things out the door.
I feel the same way. For the 30 or so dollars I spent as an early backer I've actually had some fun times in the game, and I don't actually think it's quite the total loss that people make it out to be, but it certainly should be far, far better than it is after a decade and 600m dollars invested in it.
That number is mind boggling. I can’t believe how much some are willing to spend on this “game”.
They cater to a special subset of "core gamers" and those people have ample funds to blow on their hobby.
It costs 35 bucks. Don't listen to the liars.
Is this article written by AI? It has all sorts of strange errors and repeated words. Like the sentence at the end of this paragraph. I know it is popular to call out everything as AI right now but this article is suspicous.
There is a wierd amount of generative-learning articles on game/tech Lemmy. I keep seeing these articles from publications that I've never heard of and I get excited because "Oo new people in the space" then halfway through the article I feel duped.
Came in to criticise the writing too. Got AI or at least bad translation vibes. Really hard to follow.
Anyone who has donated to that in the last 5 years is an idiot.
I bought it for a short time. They have a 30 day policy.
I returned it within the week. Its just way too buggy. I dont even care about the pay to play ships, whatever.
But the bugs with missions was awful. The NPC/AI fighting is nonexistant. The flight characteristics were better with n64's star fox 64. Its just not even close to being there.
Im a sucker for space games. If i want a flight sim ill play elite. If i want a space legs discovery game, ill play starfield. If i want to get stoned and look at weird animals with small heads and cool colors, ill fire up no mans sky.
Idiot here. Put in 40€. Skeptical before I put in the money. But I liked the vision and had some friends that liked the game. Played for maybe 40 hours. Had a lot of fun with it. And a bit less fun when it crashed right in a mission. That was 3 years ago. Haven't touched it since. Maybe I'll get into it again to check it out. But no hopes for it being completed
Of I understand you right that's 1 € per hour. If you enjoyed those hours then that's a pretty good return. Enjoy
The first (and last) time I put in money was in the crowdfunding days. In fact, I did it so early they weren't even using Kickstarter for funding.
Even though the current alpha is very buggy, I also more than got my money's worth over the many, many years. I really would like to see the game get finished. But, what's already there is really impressive.
The game has missed every possible deadline, and there's every chance it will never be finished. But, the one comforting fact is that it's missing the deadlines because they're being too ambitious. Like, they redid the game engine to use 64 bit precision instead of 32 bit because they want it to be possible to drop a wrench at some random spot on the surface of a planet, and have another player fly across the solar system, go to the right spot, and see a wrench sitting there.
I wouldn't put any more money in today, but I'm still glad I helped fund the game, and because I've been able to keep from adding more money, I actually consider my money well spent.
I bought the cheapest version a few years ago. Turns out that the game was a tech demo, but a very glorious tech demo. Flying near the cities, to the atmosphere, in space, all were very beautifully done.
As a game, pretty much a failure though. As a money vacuum, pretty good.
I think it was a positive experience as a whole, though. Never experienced anything similar since or before.
If you need $600m to make a genre defining game over the course of decades, maybe it isn't worth it.
600$ million for TWO games. Cyberpunk cost 200$ mill and didn't even work on official release.
Squadron 42 is the primary development focus.
Star citizen is built by a small portion of staff using leftover parts from SQ42.
When SQ42 is finished, star citizen will be tho main focus.
Stop giving them attention. Seriously.
Freelancer, to this day, remains one of my all-time favorite games for capturing the magic of space exploration. If Freelancer was born from this dude's mind, I will happily wait for Star Citizen.
Daikatana was born from the same mind from which Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake were born...
That was a rollercoaster of a comment.
Likewise, there is a subscription model that allows you to maintain access to the title and is divided into two types: Centurion (€12.22 per month or €134 per year) and Imperator (€24.44 per month or €268 per year). The Imperator offers, unlike the Centurion, exclusive events and an allocation of in-game money per month to rent ships and weapons.
Some pretty sloppy work here. The subscription options have nothing to do with playing the game; it's a buy once product with no subscription system at all. The Centurion and Imperator subscriptions are better thought of as a kind of "backstage pass", they mostly just give you patreon style content and extra in game flair items. Are they worth the money? Unless you're a die hard fan, absolutely not. But it's not like you have to pay up "maintain access" as the article puts it.
It’s because its grift. They’re cashing in on it through donations. If it releases, that stops.
Not a grift.
A grift implies that someone is making bank off of it.
No, Chris Roberts is instead burning money by having devs do work, then redo work to add in some last minute shit that he thought of, then repeat until the feature creep completely overtakes their lives. It's the Chris Roberts way.
Work is being done on the game, but remember that treading water is also a lot of work.
Chris Roberts
This is and always has been the biggest issue.
Hell - if Microsoft hadn't given him the boot when they bought out Digital Anvil, it's entirely possible that he'd still be working on Freelancer.
A grift implies that someone is making bank off of it.
Chris Roberts and the rest of the exec team are making bank off of it.
I mean who would ever suspect that the man who wrote and directed the Wing Commander movie could be incompetent?
Shocked I am, really shocked!
Woah. I got Gary Oldman confused with Alan Rickman. Rickman died back in 2016… and the article STILL made sense.
That alone makes me think they’ve spent way too long on the goddam game.
I supported it but, I stopped playing, not enough to do. Graphics are insane but, little to no actual content aside from ships that you need to pay real money for. The constant dB resets prevent me from ever really grinding the game, what's the point of it will just reset next major update. I personally think the game is going to flop due to this.
I don't think it's possible for the game to flop anymore if we're going off money made. In terms of them making money after they fully "release", well... I don't know if it will ever actually "release".
I haven’t played the game but is it true that the ships cost real money? Do you also have to pay for the base game?
You purchase the base game which comes with a starter ship. In the game, you can do missions or do cargo trading to earn in-game money which you can use to buy ships.
You can absolutely use real world cash to purchase additional ships, which funds the development of the game. You don't have to if you don't want to. Almost all the ships can be purchased with in-game currency.
The main plus point for purchasing ships with real money is they are acvound bound and will stay with you after a database reset.
Same for me. Although I really enjoy just low flying on the planets and enjoy the scenery but what made me quit is the insane amount of bugs. Sometimes it's nigh impossible to even get from the down area to the ship it out of the hangar. Once it's running, it's incredible but the lack of reliability is just to frustrating.
When are we gonna get the single player version of Star Citizen (Squadron 42) with Mark Hamill??
Every month a new report, every month some further indications that they are nowhere near release.
I think it will fully come out in at least a perpetual alpha mode like 7 Days to Die one day.
I also think it will probably flop.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Those who want to get lost in its universe can explore at their leisure a wide variety of space stations, moons and planets of the Stanton System that are home to wildlife, large futuristic cities and that are as beautiful as they are dangerous in equal measure.
In mid-May, Cloud Imperium Games released the Alpha patch build 3.18.0, the most complete and largest update that Star Citizen has received to date, with the intention of calming all those players who had been demanding news for the title for some time.
Today, the relationship between the creators of Star Citizen and some of its patrons is so tense and unstable that there are those who do not hesitate to point out that the video game will never be completed and that it is a scam , while on the other side On the balance we can find players who still believe in the project and support it financially.
The aforementioned former employee of Cloud Imperium Games has commented that the development studio has “incorrectly calculated its trajectory and the players’ expenses” , in addition to the fact that managers should be somewhat more transparent with some decisions and that a significant amount of money has been wasted.
Focusing again on aspects related to the budget, Ryden-55 has highlighted that both Star Citizen and Squadron 42 need a constant flow of money to stay afloat, although he has assured that in recent months income has decreased due to growing distrust of the users.
However, in October, CitizenCon 2953 will take place in Los Angeles, California, a two-day hybrid conference – in-person and online – in which the Star Citizen development teams will gather to discuss their future plans for the title .
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How much of this is from confused people who thought they were buying Starfield?
Probably like zero, that 600 million has been over the past 10 years
The game is playable now, although not perfect and not feature complete. The folks whining have not played it, no matter what they claim.
You must have rock bottom standards to not expect the most expensive game ever made to at the very least be feature complete after 12 years. And we are talking about a very healthy first here, development costs are more than twice as much as second place and growing every day.
Not accurate, most funding goes into squadron 42
Star citizen is an afterthought built from SQ42 spare parts
I don't see a reason why the most expensive game ever should have to be feature complete after 12 years.
But if this particular most expensive game ever was originally announced to be released in 2014, then postponed last minute a couple of times and subsequently split up into two games to allow an earlier release of parts of it...
I played it this year, and it is totally shit, the features that are already in games don't work. Even comparing with other space games like elite dangerous that are way cheaper and already have a decent and less buggy gameplay loop
