Star Citizen hits 400 million USD in funding!

Honesy

Because it's true? There is no reason to release it when it keeps making money. The funniest thing is they would probably be better off starting over
I don't understand. Just random thoughts:
Game is of a great scope, takes a lot of time to develop. Much more than previously thought but it's about normal for the online game of such scope.
Game has top-notch graphical and open-world features and many of them never existed (at least) in online-game.
Game will always evolve - "release date" is just one ordinary date for such game. There is much more of those "releases" ahead in form of big updates.
Also you can play it at this state - so it's out or not? Did you played it? Because I'm playing it for 3 years and happy with my 50-60$ of investment.

This is how MMO works, no?
 
People are playing the game right now.

Ok, so when does it come out then if it's complete? Oh wait it's not and you can't even get a ballpark date that anyone trusts.....

And "playing it" right now doesn't really prove anything, I could code a 2d game of tic tac toe and promise it will be 3d eventually, and call it an alpha or a beta and people could be "playing it", doesn't mean I will ever finish the 3d version.
 
I don't understand. Just random thoughts:
Game is of a great scope, takes a lot of time to develop. Much more than previously thought but it's about normal for the online game of such scope.
Game has top-notch graphical and open-world features and many of them never existed (at least) in online-game.
Game will always evolve - "release date" is just one ordinary date for such game. There is much more of those "releases" ahead in form of big updates.
Also you can play it at this state - so it's out or not? Did you played it? Because I'm playing it for 3 years and happy with my 50-60$ of investment.

This is how MMO works, no?
The problem with the scope is that it was literally never defined. No I take that back, it was defined, but once they realized they couldnt make half of it and that they could keep getting more money, it became the exact opposite of the norm and became a money making scheme.

The game had top notch graphics, but it's getting worse and worse literally every year. That's the problem. Think of all the cutscenes they had made and motion capture they did. That stuff is getting better and better every year. Are they gonna redo the stuff that was supposedly finished 5 years ago? The game is impressive for it's scope but the longer it takes the worse it looks.

You can stick your head in the sand all you want. Yes, I did in fact follow Star Citizen but I fell off wagon a few years ago because it was obvious that Chris Roberts lied about S42. Literally played everyone for suckers. It's been years and all I see are excuses as to why they couldnt get it done.
 
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Ok, so when does it come out then if it's complete? Oh wait it's not and you can't even get a ballpark date that anyone trusts.....

And "playing it" right now doesn't really prove anything, I could code a 2d game of tic tac toe and promise it will be 3d eventually, and call it an alpha or a beta and people could be "playing it", doesn't mean I will ever finish the 3d version.

Not the point I was making. I was making sure you were not under the impression that not being "complete" meant nothing had been delivered. I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole discussion that is inevitable when it comes to Star Citizen though.

Buster Keaton The Blacksmith GIF by Maudit
 
The problem with the scope is that it was literally never defined. No I take that back, it was defined, but once they realized they couldnt make half of it and that they could keep getting more money, it became the exact opposite of the norm and became a money making scheme.

The game had top notch graphics, but it's getting worse and worse literally every year. That's the problem. Think of all the cutscenes they had made and motion capture they did. That stuff is getting better and better every year. Are they gonna redo the stuff that was supposedly finished 5 years ago? The game is impressive for it's scope but the longer it takes the worse it looks.

You can stick your head in the sand all you want. Yes, I did in fact follow Star Citizen but I fell off wagon a few years ago because it was obvious that Chris Roberts lied about S42. Literally played everyone for suckers. It's been years and all I see are excuses as to why they couldnt get it done.
That's all very nice but I'm out of all of those discussions because they are pointless. My approach is much easer and simpler - you see the game - that's how it is and what it is now. I just got into the game completely blind in late 2018 and I liked what I've seen. I check it every 1 or 2 updates as everyone - and it's interesting and worth the money just to see what the game is about. But it's my personal opinion - I just don't mind all those promises, money or controversy regarding this game.
 
I don't understand. Just random thoughts:
Game is of a great scope, takes a lot of time to develop. Much more than previously thought but it's about normal for the online game of such scope.
Game has top-notch graphical and open-world features and many of them never existed (at least) in online-game.
Game will always evolve - "release date" is just one ordinary date for such game. There is much more of those "releases" ahead in form of big updates.
Also you can play it at this state - so it's out or not? Did you played it? Because I'm playing it for 3 years and happy with my 50-60$ of investment.

This is how MMO works, no?
No, it is not normal for a game to have an original release date in 2014, then still be nowhere near release in 2021 and still working on basic gameplay loops and fundamental tech that make the original vision viable.
 
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I'm interested in the game but for now I'm glad I spent my time in No Man's Sky instead even though some would say it's a waste of time too. Squadron 42 will be played though, some day.
 
I've seen the promises, and I have seen CIG become more and more unreliable over time. However, I don't hold that against them. I play the game . I have a lot of fun. Despite unreliability, updates are frequent and add more and more and I don't ever expect that to change. It keeps the game fresh for me, and it always feels new when I find the time to play it.
 
The problem with the scope is that it was literally never defined. No I take that back, it was defined, but once they realized they couldnt make half of it and that they could keep getting more money, it became the exact opposite of the norm and became a money making scheme.

The game had top notch graphics, but it's getting worse and worse literally every year. That's the problem. Think of all the cutscenes they had made and motion capture they did. That stuff is getting better and better every year. Are they gonna redo the stuff that was supposedly finished 5 years ago? The game is impressive for it's scope but the longer it takes the worse it looks.

You can stick your head in the sand all you want. Yes, I did in fact follow Star Citizen but I fell off wagon a few years ago because it was obvious that Chris Roberts lied about S42. Literally played everyone for suckers. It's been years and all I see are excuses as to why they couldnt get it done.
They need Shigeru Miyamoto to whoop their asses into working in a normal schedule and to set a clear project objective without adding any unnecessary features than what has been promised before.

This project is in deplorable state because of many unnecessary features are being added without being properly integrated within the main game system.

Every times they presented a new features during the conference it looked pretty janky and choppy. This is what happened when your base game is incapable of supporting many bullshits at the same time.
 
on one hand, the available product IS rather impressive looking and I don't mind giving it a try. but on the other hand, after all this time in development hell, the whole thing just seems like a huge mismanagement case at best, and a scam at worst.

Wait until you see how poorly optimized it is, how almost nothing in the world functions correctly, the NPC scripting that is obviously either not complete or broken, etc, etc. It looked good back in 2018 or so, so long as one wasn't moving around but rather taking screen shots. It's really fucking bad man, I am being 100% genuine as someone with no financial or emotional stakes in this, just an observer with access to the "game".
 
I'm in SysOps / DevOps, and I felt the cold sweats when they were discussing their instancing and real-time containerisation architecture.

Their server-meshing implementation plan is incredibly complex and ambitious. If they can pull it off then that's one huge roadblock out of the way, and one hell of a GDC presentation.

edit: this was the presentation I was referring to:

 
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I spent 45 Euro two years ago and player for a total of 60 hours… actually looking forward to try the latest patch.

The second system, Pyro, is not far in time and the two latest patch are really good in terms of contents and polishing
 
I used to be one of the 'Scam Citizen' clan, until i signed up for their weekly news letter and updates, and finding a streamer who basically only streams SC, and goes in depth on stream all the changes with each new update.

The game certainly is NOT a scam, but it is going to take years to finish. I think part of the problem is that no one has the balls to tell Chris Roberts that he needs to wind it in a bit. They keep getting more money, and new things keep being promised because of it.
 
I still feel screwed over with my funding, but I've learned a lifelong lesson. I also met my wife in the SC chat roll so that was worth 1000 times over what I crowdfunded.
Somehow the fact that someone managed to hook up and get married in the time it took these developers to work on this game makes the whole thing even more hilarious.

I bet that by the time you guy will be sending your kids to school they're still gonna be working on an unfinished roadmap.
 
SQ42 was officially stated to be in a beta state in 2020.
Before that it was in a "when it's done" status, having already missed multiple release estimates and goal projections explicitly coming from Roberts, and being almost the butt of the joke. It was also their project for which, having missed the beta target, they made a roadmap for... the roadmap and releasing a... trailer for it?

And guess where that's at today?

Scam.
 
I work in a start up and can give you guys some perspective that you might not be aware of.

It's actually not difficult to blow $100m on a badly managed project. My team is only half a dozen in size, and with all the management layers and corporate expenses, we've already spent about $20m working on our product (over 4 years).

It's very, very plausible for that $400m to get blown - not as a scam - but in terms of actual development costs, even with very little to show for (a few unpublicized restarts would be enough). If they have big teams working away on a vague objective, I can see it.

If this ends up collapsing on itself, I wouldn't be surprised - in a non-cynical way.

When you hear of companies like Rockstar walking away from an abandoned project, incurring fees of $50-100m, it's actually not that surprising to me. I've seen first hand how expensive dev teams are. A few bad managers and poof, $100m down the shitter.
 
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I mean, if you mismanage the project it's the expected thing to blow the money and have little to show for it.

Also if you embrace scope creep.

Both of this have arguable happened in this project.

But instead of taking a hard look at its unacceptable state and several (all) missed deadlines and release targets for the only product(s) this company is working on and had pre-sold, they tried to milk backers with trinkets, concept ships, larger ships, virtual land. They threw referral contests to sucker more people into the thing.

The bottom line is, this as a crowd funded project, broken trust and promises with many of its backers. It's still in pre-alpha, and SQ42 has no release date.

I don't understand the mentality with sticking to it and still supporting it, but I can see there are people that still do that, and have some fun of the pre-alpha. On the one hand good for them. On the other, I can definitely see how this is encouraging what I would agree is one of the biggest scams in crowd funded projects.
 
People will have a real groundbreaking space opera that actually delivers next November, and hopefully no more money is poured into this Black Whole.
 
This game had early production in 2010-2011. When 360/PS3/Wii were in their prime and Kinect just launched. Xbox One/PS4 hadnt released, and even leaked specs probably werent even out yet. Wii U wasnt out either. Skyrim, Minecraft and Portal 2 launched. That's how long ago this game started dev.

It's now 10 years later, skipped through the entire Xbox One/PS4 era (including mid gen systems), and Series SX/PS5 have been out a year already. In 2010-2011, Sony and MS probably hadnt even started R&D on Series SX and PS5 yet.

Wiki.

Star Citizen is a multiplayer space trading and combat simulation game that is in development. The game is being developed and published by Cloud Imperium Games for Microsoft Windows. A spiritual successor to 2003's Freelancer, Star Citizen is being led by director Chris Roberts. The game was announced on October 18, 2012 through a successful Kickstarter campaign which drew in over US$2 million.[3] Pre-production of the game began in 2010, with production starting in 2011.
 
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And various improvements to flight mechanics and space combat, player trading, two planets, criminal gameplay, prisons, and jailbreaks, ore refining, a whole new factional reputation system, tractor beams, a new mining system, planetary caves, ship docking, plenty of new missions, live dynamic events, the new power management system, the new inventory system, medical gameplay and hospitals, player looting, dynamic NPC loot, infiltration and defense missions, bombing...

Do I need to humiliate you a little more or we're done here? 🤔
How much of that, honestly, is done and refined in a shippable state and not the equivalent of a working spike? You have a list but a lot of that is "various improvements to…" and then you quote Hospitals (which seems huge and odd to focus on at this point in time, unless you are just monetising development and closing down the game for a 1.0 is not something you really want to rush to anytime soon, or sometime much less grandiose than you let it be).

I have given a chance to stuff sketchier than this, graphically it looks nice overall (although characters look off to me) and it could have promise, and if it came out on consoles I would give it a try then if it performed decently there, but 🤷‍♂️ something keep feeing off about it. Constantly producing new roadmaps once the previous one cannot be defended any longer is not a good sign.
 
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I dont have anything positive to say about this game, so im just going to post this picture of a space kitten and be on my way.

4ruBmNf.jpg
 
I am pretty sure Squadron 42 have been finished already a while ago, but why should they release it now when they still get a ton of donations and from microtransactions. Once Squadron 42 have been released, it will become much quieter and their income will be much smaller. It will continue to shrink until they are forced to start on a new project.

So honestly why not keep squadron 42 back and earn shitloads of money and don't have too work much at all (only making some small additions and modifications when they feel like it).
 
I am pretty sure Squadron 42 have been finished already a while ago, but why should they release it now when they still get a ton of donations and from microtransactions. Once Squadron 42 have been released, it will become much quieter and their income will be much smaller. It will continue to shrink until they are forced to start on a new project.

So honestly why not keep squadron 42 back and earn shitloads of money and don't have too work much at all (only making some small additions and modifications when they feel like it).
The "cutscene" content probably so. Voiceovers too.
Gameplay, no. Mechanics, no. Planets, locations, quests, AI, no.

Why release? To have one actually finished product, as a company, released. To debunk the "scam" impression. To show professionalism. To show capacity to deliver an end product. To stop being the joke in the industry. To gather more interest for the MMO (although if SQ42 is crap this would backfire).

SQ42 won't release, not in a complete state anyway, not for a long time, not in any form that would satisfy expectations they raised. People can't even agree on what a SQ42 release would entail probably. CIG threw so much mud into that pool too (they spoke for prologue, prelude, DLCs, chapters).
 
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I am pretty sure Squadron 42 have been finished already a while ago, but why should they release it now when they still get a ton of donations and from microtransactions. Once Squadron 42 have been released, it will become much quieter and their income will be much smaller. It will continue to shrink until they are forced to start on a new project.

So honestly why not keep squadron 42 back and earn shitloads of money and don't have too work much at all (only making some small additions and modifications when they feel like it).
This is a fun theory but counter to how CIG operate. They are desperate to show they are making progress, so if they have *anything* worth showing they will. Did you see how much damn concept art we had to sit through last Citizen Con?
 
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And various improvements to flight mechanics and space combat, player trading, two planets, criminal gameplay, prisons, and jailbreaks, ore refining, a whole new factional reputation system, tractor beams, a new mining system, planetary caves, ship docking, plenty of new missions, live dynamic events, the new power management system, the new inventory system, medical gameplay and hospitals, player looting, dynamic NPC loot, infiltration and defense missions, bombing...

Do I need to humiliate you a little more or we're done here? 🤔
I have to ask. If it's that complete why has it not had an official release?
 
Cue thread full of bile and anger from people who believe that other people should not like what they like and should not be allowed to spend their money to support whatever they want. 😂



Also, completely and factually false information. Because can't have a thread about Star Citizen without false information. 😂

SC threads always gold, same people are stuck with the same misinformation for year, acting they are watching the development "very very closely".

Look at all those whales. I feel sorry for their families, having all this money wasted on a product that will never release.

Get over it dude, it's not your money. worry about people who smoke all day or drink all day and spend their money on shit like that.
 
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SC threads always gold, same people are stuck with the same misinformation for year, acting they are watching the development "very very closely".



Get over it dude, it's not your money. worry about people who smoke all day or drink all day and spend their money on shit like that.
Dude, I have to ask, have you increased your pledge from the $5k you spent in 2019? Or was that the limit for you?
 
Dude, I have to ask, have you increased your pledge from the $5k you spent in 2019? Or was that the limit for you?

I'm over 8k atm, not putting any new money in it if it is not necessary, only store credits if i want to change stuff around.

This game had early production in 2010-2011. When 360/PS3/Wii were in their prime and Kinect just launched. Xbox One/PS4 hadnt released, and even leaked specs probably werent even out yet. Wii U wasnt out either. Skyrim, Minecraft and Portal 2 launched. That's how long ago this game started dev.

It's now 10 years later, skipped through the entire Xbox One/PS4 era (including mid gen systems), and Series SX/PS5 have been out a year already. In 2010-2011, Sony and MS probably hadnt even started R&D on Series SX and PS5 yet.

Wiki.

Star Citizen is a multiplayer space trading and combat simulation game that is in development. The game is being developed and published by Cloud Imperium Games for Microsoft Windows. A spiritual successor to 2003's Freelancer, Star Citizen is being led by director Chris Roberts. The game was announced on October 18, 2012 through a successful Kickstarter campaign which drew in over US$2 million.[3] Pre-production of the game began in 2010, with production starting in 2011.

In that time, there was no development team. Just a few people flashing out the concept of this kickstarter, nothing more then that. There was no studio at that time...everything was build from the ground up, from tools to studios and they had to hire a lot of people. Atm they have 6 studio's around the world developing both Star Citizen and Squadron 42.

People always forget that there was no foundation at that time. They never had to promise a release back then, but just "this will be a project in development for a long time, so stay with us if you're interested".
 
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Squadron 42 looked cool about 3 years ago and I almost pledge money for that but I'm glad I didn't cause I doubt they are ever releasing an actual product seeing as they get monetary support to stay in development forever.
 
I was one of the original Kickstarter backers on this. I don't think it is, or ever was, actually a scam - but it's certainly one of the worst managed projects I've ever heard of. My biggest issue with it (and, honestly, the reason I feel it will quite possibly never release) is that the funding model provides a powerful perverse incentive to keep the game in permanent alpha. My experience with it is that pretty much everything is at that annoying "90% implemented" state where working on it stops being fun and becomes really tiresome. One of the primary purposes of PMs is to ensure people actually get that last 10% done rather than working on some feature that's still in the fun phase - and I don't see that happening here at all, with the result that the mountain of 90% complete alpha-quality code just gets larger and larger.
 
I work in a start up and can give you guys some perspective that you might not be aware of.

It's actually not difficult to blow $100m on a badly managed project. My team is only half a dozen in size, and with all the management layers and corporate expenses, we've already spent about $20m working on our product (over 4 years).

It's very, very plausible for that $400m to get blown - not as a scam - but in terms of actual development costs, even with very little to show for (a few unpublicized restarts would be enough). If they have big teams working away on a vague objective, I can see it.

If this ends up collapsing on itself, I wouldn't be surprised - in a non-cynical way.

When you hear of companies like Rockstar walking away from an abandoned project, incurring fees of $50-100m, it's actually not that surprising to me. I've seen first hand how expensive dev teams are. A few bad managers and poof, $100m down the shitter.
Rigid hierarchical structures are the "best"... but for who? Maybe someone should write a book titled: "how to bleed out the creatives".
 
It's always the bloody same when a SC thread pops up, same old it's a scam, it'll never be out bla bla bla... We get it now fuck off and create a SC Is a Scam thread and keep all the bollocks in there.

I come into these threads not as a player but as someone who is genuinely interested in what they're doing and how the game is progressing (albeit slow as fuck) but still the "Premise" to me sounds cool as all hell and it still looks incredible so sifting through the shite to get the snippets of info that interests me is becoming a chore especially when some of the genuinely interesting posters are too busy arguing and defending themselves from attacks.

So what if there are players out there throwing $$$ at digital spaceships theres other people throwing $$$ at Japanese denim or $$$ on bloody pushbikes, everyone has different interests and hobbies and therefore likes to blow disposable income on said hobbies, I don't judge you cunts buying expensive hentai pillows or little anime dolls so leave these cunts alone with their little expensive starships and let the rest of us read about how the fecking game is, as the bloody game changes almost daily..

/Bog rant over, now I've just taken delivery of a rather nice new Alienware Laptop with 3070 and all the bells and whistles and rather coincidentally SC have release a free trial for a week or so, now as a complete and utter newbie, is it just a case of signing up, downloading and away you go or do I need to watch some YouTube's first? I.e. have they got a fully fleshed tutorial/starter section sorted or is it straight into the game kinda thing?
 
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I grew up with Chris Roberts` games and would love a single player Wing Commander successor.
-> The game promised in the 2014 kickstarter with a release day of November 2014.

Without commitment to a deadline or a publisher or any pressure to finish the project, it will never be finished.
There will always be a new big thing, a new technology, a new game system, a new engine, a new hardware system.
I don´t assume bad will but there is also no incentive to finish the game.
It´s done when it`s done means never!

This innovative funding scheme provided more fun and entertainment than a fully fledged out game could ever provide and I`m thankful for that.
 
You know what could be a win-win for gamers waiting patiently for this game?

Have another studio who can fund the game themselves start making a similar space sim game on the scale that Cloud is trying to do.

Then it will become a race. We win regardless.
 
I'm in SysOps / DevOps, and I felt the cold sweats when they were discussing their instancing and real-time containerisation architecture.

Their server-meshing implementation plan is incredibly complex and ambitious. If they can pull it off then that's one huge roadblock out of the way, and one hell of a GDC presentation.

edit: this was the presentation I was referring to:


Hmm...honestly I just started coding databases recently, but watching this video...was this project even possible until recently (assuming it is possible)? What do you think as someone in SysOps? Because they seriously need to partner or poach the big cloud developers to pull this off

Edit: Did some research and it appears leakers have claimed it was not possible and they are aiming for 50-100 players in each zone but telling people they plan to scale it with no intention to. Which was leaked before they initially made this video .

I suspect the pipe dream they have wont even be feasible for 10 years
 
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You know what could be a win-win for gamers waiting patiently for this game?

Have another studio who can fund the game themselves start making a similar space sim game on the scale that Cloud is trying to do.

Then it will become a race. We win regardless.
The games biggest issue is the insistence of the free flight large scale mmo stuff. Nobody could make it besides Microsoft and even then it might not even be possible
 
You know what could be a win-win for gamers waiting patiently for this game?

Have another studio who can fund the game themselves start making a similar space sim game on the scale that Cloud is trying to do.

Then it will become a race. We win regardless.
They tried it with elite .. it didn't go well. In fact some players from Odyssey even jumped ship to SC lol
 
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I was one of the original Kickstarter backers on this. I don't think it is, or ever was, actually a scam - but it's certainly one of the worst managed projects I've ever heard of. My biggest issue with it (and, honestly, the reason I feel it will quite possibly never release) is that the funding model provides a powerful perverse incentive to keep the game in permanent alpha. My experience with it is that pretty much everything is at that annoying "90% implemented" state where working on it stops being fun and becomes really tiresome. One of the primary purposes of PMs is to ensure people actually get that last 10% done rather than working on some feature that's still in the fun phase - and I don't see that happening here at all, with the result that the mountain of 90% complete alpha-quality code just gets larger and larger.

I think you hit the nail on the head.
It's kind of the Google developer model syndrome: new tech and new projects lets you progress in the corporate hiearchy, but after launch no one really plans on polishing and supporting their projects.

I wonder if the dev team is going into some kind of similar spiral here, where all this funding will "enbale us to do all kinds of incredible things!", but when the time comes for the boring part of the technology (polish, bugfix, implementation, actual gameplay design) it all falls apart in favour of the next big tech project implementation.
 
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