Ah, the classic quarterly Star Citizen drama.
It’s really simple. They realized they could make more money by never releasing it. That realization has made them more money than the vast majority of game studios. It’s a glorified ship showcase simulator, that’s about it, not really a game. If they set a release date they’d reduce the amount of money they make, why would they do that?
I really don’t think it’s a conscious choice. Just Chris Roberts’ typical perfectionism and nobody there to say “Ok, this is enough, we must ship something”.
Having said that, I used to think Elite Dangerous had the superior model, but they’ve proven me wrong by going to absolute shit with Odyssey (no VR support, no walkable ships) and pretty much dropped all development thereafter.
Just another $100 million bro. I swear, just another $200 million. Another $300 million and we can finish this!
Oh don’t worry, I’ll pour the exact same scorn on people who pour money into EA’s yearly sports games, Activision’s yearly shooting games, every fucking mobile game ever, and all the nicotine stained gamblers propping up their local bookies.
But lets not pretend it’s “supporting a project” or fundraising in any way, shape or form. It’s throwing money at greedy cunts because they have an addiction problem.
And while gambling becomes ever more heavily regulated, gaming seems to avoid it. It won’t manage it forever, and $1000 pretend spaceships are pushing boundaries that will bring regulations down on the whole industry.
every fucking mobile game ever
Hey now, there are some (very few, but some) mobile games that are quite good. Dawncaster is an excellent deck builder for example.
every fucking mobile game ever
Check ou Dicey Dungeos and Slice and Dice, pretty good and fair mobile games
Oh, if it’s pure “people support”, let’s remove the pledge store and just have donation button. One that doesn’t give you anything in game, but supports the project.
Star Citizen uses clever psychology and social engineering to make people spend obscene amounts of money on in-game ships. I know people who are so catches and addicted to this shit they spend their family savings on the new ships. And that is by design.
They also regularly wipe the Persistent Universe for a reason, and the reason is not this bullshit aUEC farming, but the fact that ships bought for real money do not get wiped, stimulating purchases for your very real cash.
By going to release and having equal persistence for ships bought by all means, they’ll immediately slash their profits so, so bad, and they know it. They don’t want to go release.
I was a kickstarter for this way back in the day. I used to not feel bad about the delay until I realised I bought it a few years after high school. More than once I had completely forgotten about this game and that I had paid for it. Which obviously pretty drastically changed my view on it and the devs, especially after learning a bit more about Chris.
That was years ago and before I learned about shit like the store page for ship pledges that’s hidden and only unlocks when you spend ridiculous amount on ship pledges. The $10,000 ship pre orders…
I’ve gone full circle, now I just want the game to succeed so I can never hear about it again.
But dude, Star Citizen ships are the NFTs of tomorrow!
Think of the fat stacks you’re gonna get when the game drops, the plebs cant buy the pre-order ships and you take them to resale!
The buyers remorse game. Just give them a tiny bit more money and then a bit more and another, then the game will release, eventually, maybe, hopefully. Please release the game, we spend so much money on it. Here, take more money, we hope that helps. What, you need more? Okay, next quarter. We can’t stop spending now guys or the money was all wasted.
Uh-huh, and devs are incentivised to keep that fallacy up, because the release would mean that ships bought for in-game currency will not be wiped every something update.
Yes, right - the only ships that currently persist are the ones bought for real money. And the devs have 0 incentive to change that, because players really end up buying the ships for cash (easily $300, $400, $1000 for a ship) instead of leaving such bullshit for good.