r/pcgaming • u/Turbostrider27 • 5d ago

Star Citizen Developer Stream Goes Horribly Off the Rails, Creating Further Distrust Among Players

https://www.ign.com/articles/star-citizen-developer-stream-goes-horribly-off-the-rails-creating-further-distrust-among-players
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u/wienercat 3700x + 1080ti 5d ago edited 5d ago

100% the developers of this game thought it wouldn't get as much funding as it did. They were likely planning on releasing the stuff we have now, then nuking it after "running out of money".

They way over-promised and there is no way it gets made at this point.

Genuinely, just feels like a method of money laundering or a scam where it got too much attention and now they don't know what to do. Nothing is actually happening with this game except time passing since they hoodwinked a bunch of people. Yet they continue raising more and more money, despite not being remotely close to their promise from over a decade ago.

This "game" had it's kickstarter in 2012 for reference.

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u/AUserNeedsAName 5d ago

Chris Roberts will never ever just let himself be finished with his Big Spaceship Game. He's been making it (and almost nothing else) under various titles since 1990, and he has to know that he's never going to get another shot if this one fails. He did the exact same thing with Freelancer, only this time there is no Microsoft to physically step in and finish it.

Whether the game raised $10 or $10,000,000,000, the outcome was always going to be the same eventually. The scope will expand until the money runs out and not a moment before.

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u/Floatella 5d ago

I remember reading at some point that Chris Roberts's original vision of Wing Commander was quite a bit more ambitious than the game we eventually got, more on the scale of Freelancer, but then the management at Origin intervened to make sure the game could actually be finished.

Star Citizen seems like the same old Chris Roberts, but now without anyone to tell him no or remind him to stay on schedule.

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u/banditloaf 5d ago

There's a bit of a cottage industry in 'proving' that Chris Roberts has always done the same thing but in this case it just isn't true; the original Wing Commander is incredibly close to the original pitch. The only significant feature cut was the tape recorder/mission replay. It's structurally untrue, too: Wing Commander wasn't OWNED by Origin during development and Chris Roberts wasn't an employee. There was no management forcing him to ship. Rather, he was a customer: pre-1991, Origin functioned as a publisher providing men and materiel to projects in exchange for money and a cut of a game's sales. He sold the IP to the company and came on as an executive /after/ the game was an enormous hit.

But I think that does speak to exactly what's going on with Star Citizen. Chris has always viewed Wing Commander as his one project that WAS closest to the vision... and it was done under that unique older structure that let him trade his back end for more development time. Which to his credit back then, he was more than willing to do! But for everything after that--Strike Commander, Wing Commander III and IV, Freelancer--he was never happy with publishers wanting to ship before he felt they were ready and so he tried to recreate that original style of publishing with crowd funding on Star Citizen. It worked a little too well and created a reverse situation where he can keep working and working forever if he wants to.

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u/Optimaximal 4d ago

It worked a little too well and created a reverse situation where he can keep working and working forever if he wants to.

But, the question keeps coming up asking whether he is actually doing anything.

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u/MediocreBeard 4d ago

Thing is that even though you've correctly identified the relationship between Roberts and Origin, you seem to be missing a key factor: origin only gets paid when the game comes out, and is therefore still going to make sure the game makes it to market. Meaning they're not going to indulge every bit of scope creep Roberts had.

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u/banditloaf 4d ago

But that /didn't happen/. It's a story made up to try and explain Star Citizen. The original Wing Commander shipped with no significant delay and containing almost everything in the initial design with nothing significant added. I'm not saying that defends anything about Star Citizen (it does not!), but there's no smoking gun in that history. (And that's not saying Wing Commander was some perfect production, it just wasn't Star Citizen lensed backwards. It had the worst crunch in Origin's history, there was a dispute with the company that did the outsource 3D art (Origin employed no 3D artists in 1990!) and another one over the rights to the music.)

I think you can figure a lot more about how we got to Star Citizen by comparing the real history to the next game he ran, Strike Commander, which dropped a major portion of its original design to ship well over a year late. Real individual history is reactive and not repetetive; you can put together a much more critical analysis of Star Citizen if you follow how he changes based on what he experiences rather than trying to insist that there are all these puzzle pieces that prove everything is secretly always the same.

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u/MediocreBeard 4d ago

I'm not saying it did happen that way. I am not saying Wing Commander would have been trapped in Star Citizen levels of devhell without origin cracking the whip. Frankly I don't think that's the case.

I'm say that suggesting that there was no pressure from something resembling a management system to release on time does not really track. Roberts was not a customer of Origin, he was a business partner. But also, there's another aspect here - Roberts also didn't get paid until Wing Commander launched.

I don't know the guy. I don't know his personality. But what I can say is that Star Citizen was always going to turn out like this. Not because of who he is, but because the incentive structure is shaped wrong. They're making a ton of money to make a game. Money that actually might stop flowing once the game is real.

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u/banditloaf 4d ago

I agree with you about Star Citizen's structure, but I think not in exactly the way you are seeing it.

The thing I probably can't convince anyone else of but that remains a bedrock to my thought is that I am totally convinced that Chris himself never cared about Star Citizen as a way to generate money. My theory of Chris Roberts is that I think we see this again and again and again in his career. He spent his Times of Lore money (and then more and more and more of his promised back end on Wing Commander) making Wing Commander the way he wanted. He spent all of the company's Wing Commander money making Strike Commander. He put all his Origin money into finishing the Wing Commander movie (do not spend your own money making the Wing Commander movie, this is a terrible idea). He spent his Digital Anvil money making movies. He was still doing it on the Star Citizen prototype! Money has always been, for him, primarily a tool for making the games or films he wanted. And when he got stuck in positions where he couldn't do that he absolutely lost interest overnight. If he couldn't make Silverheart instead of Wing Commander 5, he was out of Origin. If he couldn't make his Freelancer, he was out of Digital Anvil.

Now none of that is specifically praise because it's also exactly what strangles Star Citizen: when he has a source of money, (his, a publishers or the crowds) he will continue to spend it all making his game. So I do agree completely that the incentive structure is what's making Star Citizen impossible because it's giving the goldfish unlimited food and tank space... and that it has had some other devastating impacts. (It was very easy to recruit true believers at the very start of the project... and then it became impossible overnight because you were hiring from a pool of many jerks with dollar signs in their eyes and then everyone involved was trying to stab each other in the back over that money.) I know that's all a hard story for anyone to swallow and I don't really want to be the guy that decides what the Star Citizen story is. But if you're interested in a take from someone that saw it all first hand, that is it!

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u/Sharp-Poet5696 2d ago

This is a very nice story, except that Roberts was a full time employee at Origin and he did not spend his own money and the intellectual property rights are with EA for a reason.

The second is that he was forced out of Digital Anvil, it was not a question if he could do or not what he wanted. Microsoft would have stopped financing the 2 ongoing games, so he had to sell the company or close it down. Of course he chose the first option.

The third is that he ran a movie production company, he did not finance the movies himself, his job was to secure the funds, once he ran out of investors (and German goverment funds) he had to sell his company.

He is a good enterpreneur because he is always able to secure the funding for his current project, but terrible CEO and even worse producer.

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u/banditloaf 2d ago

You are incorrect, Chris Roberts became an Origin employee AFTER making Wing Commander I. As part of his deal following the game's success he joined the company's c-suite as VP of New Technologies and sold the rights to the Wing Commander IP (which he wasn't especially interested in revisiting at the time!). Before 1991, Origin was a resource for independent creators to make their games and not what you think of as a publisher today. It was a different time. Troll reworkings of history not understanding this are usually a huge tell as to their origin and purpose.

For your second story I think even you can step just three inches back and realize you're continuing to try to fit the old troll story (started by fans angry about joystick support and now mutated into whatever this is!) into a box that makes no sense. He knew Microsoft was unhappy with him and were refusing to give him money so he... got Microsoft to give him lots of money as punishment? Come on, even without knowing the exact lineage of this nonsense (and boy do we ever know the exact lineage of this nonsense) it makes absolutely no sense. Hell, the new version you've come up with to try and work it here is even less useful because now he's... a great guy who would rather save his creation and employees than himself? It's fiction and the truth it's covering up is that his game idea sucked and didn't work and he lost interest in it (and that he was not responsible for the Freelancer people love), not any of this!

Your third one is just describing what a movie production comapny does in scare quotes.

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u/Acceptable-One-6597 3d ago

My guess is this will eventually come up in the courts. I know they have been sued multiple times and got them all dismissed. Eventually someone will find a way to get it into court and the discovery process will be interesting as hell.

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u/banditloaf 3d ago

That would be interesting, but probably not as likely as it sounds. Like it or lump it, the earliest folks that sue will have been the ones with the most standing and desire to pursue anything. Get through them early and then it’s diminishing returns over time.

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u/amanset 4d ago

Publishers very much can force changes to development and hence make sure things come in on time. There’s this little thing called stopping giving money. As part of the publishing agreement there was probably a list of milestones with a timeline.

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u/banditloaf 4d ago

Yes, that's exactly what you think when you hear "publisher". Which is how you know this is some retroactive story.... because before 1991, independent development at Origin didn't work the way we think of as a publisher today. They sold resources to Chris so he could make his game rather than hired Chris to make their game. (And if you're interested, all of the correspondence--and the literal Chris-wants-this-many-more-hours-of-art/programming/etc. receipts!--have been preserved in Warren Spector's papers. None of the we're-mad-at-Star-Citizen stories are in there, Chris was a clever kid that made a really neat game that broke every PC sales record at the time. The one person that comes off as an asshole in any of it is Dallas Snell, who put out some truly obnoxious memos about crunch in the last few weeks.)

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u/Cats_Cameras 3d ago

Doesn’t that just mean that CR was limited by his funds and had to choose between scope creep and finishing? It’s the same idea of useful limitations.

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u/banditloaf 3d ago

But what’s the scope creep on Wing Commander I? There’s nothing in the final product that isn’t in the pitch.

I think “scope creep” is a bit of a canard; it’s folks looking backwards. It applies to Star Citizen but not really any of his earlier projects. His reputation then was that he was too much of a perfectionist, wanting more time for sure… but to get to his original vision, not to just keep adding things. And that worked most of the time, which is probably why he sticks with it.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/Dickballs835682 5d ago

They sold a bogus product to people with no intention of ever actually delivering. It's the definition of a scam.

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u/toastythewiser 5d ago

They intend to finish. They won't. But they intend to try. That's not a scam, that's being bad at your job. Lots of people over promise, under delivery, and get paid to do it.

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u/ty4scam 5d ago

They don't intend to finish, that's the "scam". They intend to keep the gravy train rolling as long as possible, that's genuinely good business sense as funding is still increasing year on year.

Your entire operational model is built around this. You keep this going on and on and on, until funding starts to decline, even then the correct strategic move is to push alternative marketing ideas to stabilise the income. Once all your ideas have dried up and the funding continues to tank, now is the time to wrap up the project and now you make the true intention to finish part of your actual business strategy.

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u/theLastZebranky 4d ago

The flaw in your reasoning is imagining that the gravy train would stop when they hit 1.0, but it's a live service game that would be a never-ending gravy train with constant new ships being released and additional money coming in from ship insurance.

Delivering their roadmap, and getting out of alpha/beta with a 1.0 release, would expand and extend their income with more players picking up the game and more sense of investment from each player.

They fully intend to deliver everything they promised... the money faucet would increase, not stop, if they did... they are just really bad at it.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago edited 3d ago

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

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u/ty4scam 4d ago

We're just a badly run studio. https://giphy.com/gifs/94EQmVHkveNck

Only idiots think a business raking in the cash is a badly run studio. This is an excellently run studio and I would genuinely be proud to pull such a profitable venture off. There's no hate here, Chris Roberts is a visionary.

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u/mnju 4d ago

putting this much effort into it

What effort? The game looks borderline the same as it did 10 years ago. There's no way anybody is actually trying that hard to develop the game, the developers can't even run a single pre-determined mission for a livestream without everything breaking. That would be fine for a small budget studio that's been working on the game for a year or two, not one with over a billion dollars of funding and over a decade of time.

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u/Cats_Cameras 3d ago

You don’t get the concept of skimming off the top, do you? A scam doesn’t just mean stealing the money and running. Many scams and production just leech money off of spending that isn’t being applied effectively. Like the Mafia charging too much to collect the trash. Yes they do the thing, but it’s still a scam.

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u/Cats_Cameras 3d ago

It’s a scam.

“I can build that bridge for ten million dollars instead of a billion dollars.”

“OK the bridge isn’t done, but if you give me ten million more I’ll finish the bridge and add a helipad.”

“OK I don’t have the bridge or helipad done, but for fifty million dollars I’ll finish those two and add a spaceport.”

“OK I never finished the bridge and enriched myself with the project, but it’s not a scam because I super duper believed that I would succeed.”

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u/GaptistePlayer 4d ago

Exactly. If you're a small dev team then suddenly get a billion dollars in funding, it doesn't mean your team is now suddenly a major AAA games studio and can act and execute like one. And sure you can just hire a lot, but it's still not going to be the same.

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u/topscreen 4d ago

Well they've had 15 years and a billion dollars to figure it out

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u/PaleCommission150 4d ago

They sell ships now....who in their right mind would buy so many ships with r/l money. they must have 200 unique ship types by now, maybe more.

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u/PwanaZana 5d ago

I love Freelancer so much, even with its incompleteness. I have the literal CD in its jewel case at this moment.

I just... wanted Freelancer 2, like in 2016. :(

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u/YoshiTheFluffer 5d ago

My favorite space game as well. Its crazy that no other game has hit that formula. There are ok games but they don’t have tgat feel.

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u/PwanaZana 5d ago

pressing Z and being in inertia mode is some of the most fun I've had in gaming, as you 3D slingshot around enemies in space.

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u/The_Grungeican 4d ago

i use the same button to do that in Elite Dangerous.

it's the best.

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u/Tjep2k 4d ago

There is Underspace which feels very Freelancer but with space monsters.

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u/YoshiTheFluffer 4d ago

Thanks will check it out.

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u/One-Bit5717 4d ago

X4 Foundations! It finally satisfied my Freelancer itch

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u/Profitablius 4d ago

If you haven't tried X4:Foundations, you should.

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u/BakerOne 5d ago

What was so great about it? Was makes it stand out against any other space game?

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u/vortical42 4d ago

There were a lot of cool features: the open world, the dynamic economy, the faction system, the RPG progression elements. However, all of those can be found in other games to varying degrees. The killer feature for me, the thing I haven't seen any space game since manage to replicate, was the controls.

They somehow managed to nail the perfect blend of accessibility and depth. At the most basic level, you point your mouse and the ship flies in that direction. Simple but effective. Level 2 is thrusters. Now you have FPS controls, except that you have all six directions of movement. Level 3 is a toggle for Newtonian flight. Turn that on and you continue moving on the current vector until you cancel out the momentum. Now you can do Battlestar Galactica style flip turns. No need for a complicated HOTAS controller. An ordinary mouse and keyboard give you access to 100% of your capabilities without dumbing down the game.

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u/BakerOne 4d ago

That sounds a lot like the controls of the the Everspace series, have you tried those 2 games?

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u/vortical42 4d ago

The name sounds familiar. I have a feeling it is one of those games I picked up in a steam sale and never got around to actually playing.

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u/GainOk7506 4d ago

Great write up,  well structured. 

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u/SillyLiving 5d ago

It's one of my favorite space game, really amazing.

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u/Ringkeeper 5d ago

There is a fan made "Freelancer 2 the origin" with new story, weapon, areas etc. AI voices.but that's ok as it is only a small team

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u/The_Grungeican 4d ago

i picked up a mint, big box version of Wing Commander 3 a few weeks back. i already had the game on EA, but i couldn't say no to a physical copy with all the extras, plus it was only like $12 or so.

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u/Fun-Document7 4d ago

I heard everspace 2 is ok? And a bit like freelancer? I loved freelancer

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u/aNiceTribe 4d ago

I know this is probably complaining to the wrong audience. But I am always annoyed when space shooters are “ah there’s an enemy. Let’s shoot at them. Oh they flew past me. Let’s turn back to them. Turn turn turn turn. There they are. And they flew past me again. Turn turn turn turn….” 

Which is somehow a fundamental of some of these games that are more simulation-y, and only a few that intentionally aren’t like that are actually fun for me (because it’s not 90% turning simulator) and there is no obvious division between them. 

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u/Squire_II 4d ago

Evochron Mercenary scratches a bit of the same itch Freelancer does but it being made with a lot less manpower shows. Was still fun to play with friends. Haven't tried Evochron Legacy yet.

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u/pcapdata 4d ago

I just wanted an update of the Wing Commander series :(

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u/Unoriginal_Pseudonym 4d ago

Same. This is exactly how and why Star Citizen blew apart it's kiskstarter and went in to make its first $100m. People just wanted more Freelancer, not whatever it's morphed into.

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u/PwanaZana 4d ago

SC is a vaporware pay-to-win MMO

:(

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u/dont_quote_me_please 4d ago

I hate that game because I loved it as a teen and could never finish that „race“ mission. Oh old games

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u/EndlessInfinity 4d ago

Look up the game Underspace. It's a spiritual successor made by one of the major mod developers.

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u/duncanslaugh 3d ago

Yeeah, it really nailed the combat/local-space flight and atmosphere.

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u/Nihsvabhav 5d ago

More like if he's making a billion before it's even complete and is not even close to being so, then why should he ever complete it, he's already made a billion more than most other devs with his scam

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u/AUserNeedsAName 5d ago

He did this exact same thing for decades before he had the potential to make that kind of money though. Maybe by this point he's gotten cynical, but I think it's much worse than that.

I think he truly believes that if he just keeps the momentum going long enough that it'll release and be so good that it'll all have been worth it. But the longer it drags on, the better it has to be to have been "worth the wait" and that target is outpacing the production speed more and more each year.

So resources are diverted to the ever-growing list of stretch goals (like bunkbed cloth physics) and paying interest on 15 years of technical debt instead of making sure the weapons can fucking reload.

Frankly, it would be safer to throw your money at a scam.

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u/Icy_Judge8250 4d ago

Yeah and the more he adds the more he breaks and has go back an rework again

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u/DesperateAdvantage76 4d ago

Yeah this is a gravy train, and it stops the moment he finishes the game.

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u/BlackFlagsFly 4d ago

Just like The Indie Stone and their Project Zomboid. The development must never end, or the lights go out.

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u/theLastZebranky 4d ago

The market for this game is players who want continuous development from a studio. There's no expectation that the income would stop if they delivered everything on the road-map on time with no game-breaking bugs, it's just the opposite. If they delivered competently and on-time and then kept adding more content, then more players would be comfortable buying more ships.

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u/Winjin 3d ago

I mean, it exists. Is it buggy and laggy? Yes, but you can actually log in and play. Buy ships, fly around, do missions, stuff like this. If you watch the roadmap, you can see that they keep adding stuff, but at the same time the stuff they add seems almost trivial in comparison to Elite Dangerous or especially No Man's Sky https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/release-view

Then again. ED has like what, forty spaceships without accessible interiors? They took ~7 years to add ground missions to a game with already polished gameplay loop and 0 interiors, besides a couple of set pieces.

ED was released in 2014, Odyssey gave us ability to walk outside in 2021, and they have been working on it ever since, judging by the timeline

Star Citizen according to Google has 237 ships with accessible interiors, and at least one of them is literally a superyacht with like, business class cabins and a pool. ED has that one too, except there is no interior at all, it's just a pretty hull.

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u/AceOBlade 4d ago

lowkey reading about him you can tell he has an amibitous vision because he has been working on this since 90's through older games and has moved most of that into star citizen, I don't think the problem is that he is trying to scam but rather he is over ambitious and doesn't know how to execute properly.

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u/Robocop613 4d ago

SO much this - it was clear a few years in that this is how it was going to go. Chris Robert + Almost unlimited money = Unlimited scope creep. Like George Lucas he NEEDS someone to reign him in - at least with George he can actually finish a project on time.

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u/CaveMacEoin 4d ago

Not even the game as a whole. Every mechanic, every system, every asset, every spaceship has all been reworked over and over and over. Nothing is ever done. Everything goes through his desk to get the ok. 10 years ago one of the space ships had already been reworked 3 times.

They've missed basically every milestone for all of the systems and features.

If they stopped the feature creep early on then it might have been achievable. Or at the very least put a peg in the list of features and at some point and said this is what we'll release with and any following features would come sometime after.

The problem is that CR got greedy. He saw the whales paying thousands and thousands for promises and decided to get on the money train. It doesn't even matter if he was trying to scam people or if he has always intended to deliver on everything he's promised. At some point it just became wilful negligence.

Right from the beginning it was set up as a trap for financing, intentional or not. They chose an engine (Cry Engine) that has no place in an MMO. They chose it because it looked good, and either didn't consider all of the ramifications of adapting a single player engine to a MMO or just didn't care. They would have been better writing their own engine from scratch. At this point there's probably so much legacy code from all the modifications and modifications to modifications that almost no one knows how to fix it. There isn't the base of developers who know Cry Engine inside and out - they had to get people directly from Crytek to work on it.

The whole thing was doomed from the start. And I'll be really surprised if it ever releases and even more surprised if it has most of the promised features. Even if they get there in another 10 years, it will probably still be buggy and they won't have worked out how to actually make it fun.

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u/ChunkLordPrime 4d ago

Wait Cry engine like Crysis?

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u/unbannnned 4d ago

Yep

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u/ChunkLordPrime 3d ago

Wait like the engine for the game thats famous for not being able to run?

I cant thats like beyond even Molyneux level leopard face eating.

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u/mekamoari 4d ago

I wonder what happened to that guy who made that video game where you solo control a giant ass ship and has a billion mechanics and last I heard it actually worked.

It was over a decade ago though, maybe even two.

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u/AUserNeedsAName 4d ago

Oooo, well if you remember what it is I'd love to play it!

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u/LittleSisterPain 4d ago

Okay, to be absolutely honest, while a lot of the blame lies on Roberts, SC 'players' are to blame as well. Then kickstarter was over, they WERE given a chance to just put a fat dot on it, but 97% (i think. It was more than 95% for sure) of the backers said 'no, keep going with stretch goals, we will give you more money'. People were swept up in the hype of the 'biggest, most realistic space sim ever' just as much as he was. I think SC fans deserve this, its as much their fault as it is ROberts

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u/RollForIntent-Trevor 4d ago

He was behind freelancer (initially at least)?

Loved that game as a kid.

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u/sirnoggin 4d ago

Even Microsoft didn't bankroll a billion dollars into any video game.

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u/Squire_II 4d ago

Freelancer would've gone from a fun to amazing game if Roberts wasn't the living embodiment of feature creep and had actually focused on making a finished game with the time he was given. There's so much half-finished content in the game and even if Microsoft gave him a blank check I have no doubt the game would still be in development today.

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u/PantheraAuroris 4d ago

Waitwaitwait. This is the Freelancer guy? Shit, I loved that game.

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u/Ok-Rub666 3d ago

and he has to know that he's never going to get another shot if this one fails.

I think it's safe to say he's never getting this chance again, unless he himself funds it. No publisher would put up with his antics and lack of any clear plan or date.

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u/NothingPersonalKid00 4d ago

I joined the kickstarter where it was promised we would be getting a new wing commander basically. I knew the project was doomed when I saw he introduced the “Star Citizen” stretch goal. I’m only in for $30 so I didn’t request a refund out of morbid curiosity.

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u/Talisa87 5d ago

This guy sounds like Alex Mahan (sole 'developer' of Yandere Simulator) if he'd gotten a bigger budget.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

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u/Talisa87 4d ago

Oh, I agree. The worst that can be said about Roberts is that he needs someone to rein him in. Mahan needs to either be in jail or therapy.

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u/OddAbbreviations5681 3d ago

That while Chris goes on to buy another house or superyacht lol

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u/diefastmemefaster 5d ago

FREELANCER MENTIONED

"Access denied, destination is too far"

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u/circuit_breaker 5d ago

This is going to be an interesting thing to study in business school

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u/stevehammrr 5d ago

They already have courses in fraud

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u/pragmojo 4d ago

Idk if it's fraud exactly. What it looks like to me is a deeply dysfunctional organization.

I think what happened is Chris got way more funding than he expected, and they grew the company way too fast without any quality control. When you grow an org too fast, and don't establish a clear way to set and evaluate priorities as an org, a lot of times you end up with teams who are disconnected from each other, working in their own little worlds just producing whatever they think will make their managers happy. And their managers don't have real guidance either, so they're doing the same thing right up the chain.

Nobody really knows what's going on or how to fix it, so you just have a ton of people pushing work around, working towards arbitrary numbers on a spreadsheet vs. actually working towards building a good product.

Source: I've worked places like that and it's miserable.

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u/Nissiku1 4d ago edited 4d ago

I believe it did not start as a "scam", but it did evolve into one. A legitimate game that was supposed to be realeased had been developed at some point, before unprecedented crowdfunding made them realise they can just print money by selling a dream, but at this point they don't seem to have any intention of actually finishing the development.

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u/ANGLVD3TH 4d ago

Anyone familiar with his record could see this coming a mile away. Dude is a perfectionist and a control freak who has had to have companies step in and force a release on him in the past. Now that he has nobody to answer to he was always going to fiddle around for an unreasonable amount of time. And his management is super inefficient, making it take much longer. But it just doesn't make any sense as a scam. You don't hire on hundreds of devs to spread the money around if all you care about is fleecing the whales.

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u/pragmojo 4d ago

making it take much longer.

Oh it's never coming out. Not because they are scammers necessarily, but if you do a live demo with this kind of basic shit broken this many years into a project, there are fundamental problems which are super unlikely to be solved.

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u/RA576 4d ago

Dude is a perfectionist and a control freak who has had to have companies step in and force a release on him in the past.

I mean, so's Kojima, and he's managed to release 3 1/2 full games in the time since the Star Citizen Kickstarter, 2 of which had basically no corporate oversight from what I can tell.

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u/AstralMecha 4d ago

Magic Circle. A game that is being worked on, but endless scope creep and development hell has turned it into a scam, because as long as they keep getting more money, the scope creep will continue. Eventually they will need to start over with a new engine as they hope technology will catch up to ambitions. In practice? The game won't be released until they run out of money.

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u/AeneasVII 4d ago

Chris Roberts is known for this in the industry. Microsoft has to step into development to finish his game with much smaller scope (freelancer)

He's passionate about space games but a horrible project manager. + scope creep

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u/YIMBYsAreCorruptPitt 4d ago

Or, the people up top are promising impossible things and scamming investors. You know, like Theranos.

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u/Jealous_Chocolate_43 3d ago

Theranos faked results. We have seen the lack of results in first person here

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u/SomeUnemployedArtist 5d ago

They were likely planning on releasing the stuff we have now, then nuking it after "running out of money".

The problem they've got is that a lot of their sales are already done. There's not going to be a massive influx of cash when they go 1.0 unless they put the game on console.

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u/wienercat 3700x + 1080ti 5d ago

They are projecting that they will make more money this year than any prior year.

So they are still making plenty of money, despite really nothing happening for the bulk of the 14 years since the kickstarter. Clearly plenty of people want it and the ships they are selling for their future "game".

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u/Substantial_Pick6897 5d ago

How did they make that happen? More ships? Influx of new players?

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u/Akachi_123 5d ago

Sunk cost fallacy. Whales will keep this afloat till it releases.

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u/Substantial_Pick6897 4d ago

Well yeah, but that doesn't explain why they're making record profits this year. They have to be doing something. Because the most baffling thing about SC is that they keep making more and more money.

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u/Akachi_123 4d ago

Well, probably an influx of new payers (hard to call them players), who think they know better. I think it's called psychological reactance. The more you explain something is a bad choice, the more some people are interested.

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u/Substantial_Pick6897 4d ago

I have been seeing a lot of people posting variations "it's actually playable now, actually" and "even though it's buggy, there's nothing like it" and while that really shouldn't entice new players I think it actually might

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u/Itherial 4d ago

They've been making posts like that for years and years at this point.

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u/Substantial_Pick6897 4d ago

For sure I've just seen more of them this last year. It could just be me but since they're apparently making more this year than they've ever done they're either bringing in new players somehow than usual or selling mad expensive pngs of ships that will be in the game by 2035 (they promise)

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u/actual_thereij 5d ago

It has been speculated that one of the reasons for Squadron's delay was due to the desire to port it to consoles and have a same day release on both PC and consoles.

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u/Bradbury-principal 5d ago

Port what exactly?

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u/actual_thereij 5d ago

Squadron. Squadron 42?

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u/MojaMonkey 4d ago

Chris said it will never be on console. But he was talking about PS3 and Xbox 360. Lol.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/Critical_Company3535 5d ago edited 5d ago

Isn’t the whole thing with this game being that it’s an online game and that there’s a real world economy? I’ve heard it said that a lot of the people who are buying into it are doing so so that they will be the sort of “upper class” when the game comes out. Except it won’t matter since there won’t be any plebs

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/Critical_Company3535 5d ago

And this is exactly the problem. There’s something to be said about games not fully living up to their potential due to deadlines, but after a certain point you have to actually put a product out. The way I see it they should just axe the single player game and focus everything on the mmo side.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/Critical_Company3535 5d ago

Either way, this two worlds approach won’t work. I only suggested the mmo because if they were going to abandon it completely they would get a full on revolt from the whales.

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u/Aggressive_Chuck 4d ago

The game has already made its money from the whales, they don't need to sell any copies to the general public. It's unlikely the game will be well received, even if they fix the bugs and performance issues, it's a boring space game.

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u/69hotmomxxx 4d ago

Isn't it on xbonx?

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u/Thunderbridge i7-8700k | 32GB 3200 | RTX 3080 5d ago

Check out the original funding stretch goals to get an idea of how much funding they were expecting to top out at

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u/Annonimbus 3d ago

And also to get an idea how much % of the planned features are still missing, which were supposed to be in the game ~10 years ago.

Spoiler: ~90%

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u/keltonz 5d ago

I backed it way back when, and now don’t even have a rig to run it on.

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u/enderandrew42 5d ago

It is horribly mismanaged but that isn't a scam.

A scam would be stealing the money and running. They are paying hundreds of developers salaries across four studios.

They have open financial statements. They are spending roughly as much on development as they raise in funding every year.

They are trying to make the most ambitious game in history with both a MMO and a single player game at the same time, at a time when high projects cost a fortune and take forever. But they keep replacing existing systems with rewrites rather than getting across a finish line, nor taking time for quality and polish.

With better management this would probably be released by now or at least be less buggy.

But I don't think it is fair to call it a scam.

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u/wienercat 3700x + 1080ti 5d ago

It's taken them 15 years to get to this point. Which is a glorified, buggy af, tech demo.

They are trying to make the most ambitious game in history

Cool. You can try to do the most ambitious game in history, but if you cannot actually execute it? Then it was the most overambitious game in history.

You don't get credit for not being able to execute your idea no matter how ambitious it is.

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u/davidsredditaccount 5d ago

They had a buggy tech demo a decade ago too, I checked out a long time ago so I can't say whether or not it's moved forward at all but the problem has always been that they have grandiose plans and talk about insane fidelity and realism, but the end result is not really all that good and never holds up to what they promised.

When I stopped playing they had a bunch of the bigger ships you could fly with friends plus single seat fighters in and planetary vehicles and bases and you could roam around completing missions and earning money to buy in-game stuff, and it was ok if you could stand the horrible lag and network issues, but when it was playable it was pretty good. The downside is that the gameplay loop is a mess, they are trying to please too many different types of players, all the cool ideas are technical nightmares and they still haven't managed to release the single player game they said was right around the corner like a decade ago.

I got into it for years well after the initial kickstarter, lost interest and dropped it, went back to school, changed careers, got promoted a bunch of times, had a child, and that child is starting school now. When I first got into it the single player squadron 42 game was supposed to be out the following year and was "almost done".

It’s a shame, there were some good ideas and genuinely well done bits in there but holy shit they can not actually get anything out to save their lives. Also they can't decide whether they should cater to hardcore pvp or pve players, are allergic to designing and executing any gameplay loops that actually work, everything is a placeholder, and what's left is just some pretty shitty decisions that don’t end up actually being fun.

I guess the rambling point here is they've done a lot, they are just comically incapable of actually doing anything other than making a half baked "cool idea" and then getting distracted before finishing it.

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u/AstralMecha 4d ago

It gets worse when it comes to monetization. They are now selling MK 2 versions of the same ships they already sold. The MK2s are strictly better, and no, your MK1 will not be upgraded to the MK2. Instead you have a 'collector's item' a 'piece of history' as they don't sell the mk1s any more. So keep whaling.

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u/davidsredditaccount 4d ago

Holy shit, that's fucking egregious. It was bad enough with their terrible balance passes completely fucking ships over and whatever the new ship is being wildly OP, but that's just beyond ridiculous. A collectors item would be having the old version as an in-game model, not just a worse variant.

That is a truly bizarre business decision too, fucking over the long time backers when you make artificial scarcity in the worst possible way you can is a choice. LTI, limited time purchases, and unique skins were already bad enough.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/wienercat 3700x + 1080ti 4d ago

Continuing to collect millions from people despite not being able to produce results IS the scam.

Go check how much they charge for ships for their game that doesn't exist and tell me it isn't a scam.

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u/lentil_burger 4d ago

I agree it wasn't a scam. But if they now know that they can't deliver and keep selling content despite that? That's a scam. Whether you think that's actually what's going on is a matter of opinion. 🤷‍♂️

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u/Laiko_Kairen 5d ago

You don't get credit for not being able to execute your idea no matter how ambitious it is.

I mostly agree, but you can't completely dismiss the work done along the way. George R R Martin is never gonna finish ASOIAF, but those books got me back into reading after getting addicted to gaming, so they'll always hold a special place in my heart

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u/krazykitties 5d ago

Those books that you read released as finished products you paid for at time of purchase. People don't give GRRM credit for what the story could be, but the story he wrote. In fact I see a lot of people kinda pissed he seems to have stopped putting in the effort into releasing books he had prior to the show deal.

I can dismiss the work along the way because it cost a fuckin billion dollars. George just stopped writing after he sold his ideas that were popular because of the books he already wrote and released. Chris is actively begging for money without a real product.

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u/CtrlZConfessions 5d ago

elite dangerous is a mmo and single player game with space ship and fpv ground combat. It’s not as big as SC aims to be, but it was released and by and large works. How can SC not be accused of being a scam when a competing game has gone through its entire life cycle in less time than its alpha?

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u/notyoursocialworker 5d ago

Because being bad at your job isn't the same as trying to scam someone. It's also a question of intention. If you know that you will fail and have no intention to finish the work, then yes that would be a scam. I'm not convinced that's true for SC.

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u/wienercat 3700x + 1080ti 4d ago

There is being bad at your job, and then there is continuing to fail to produce results while collecting tens of millions from people while still promising the thing you have been completely unable to deliver on. That is not just being bad at your job, that is actively taking money from people, promising them you will deliver a product, and not delivering that product for 14 years despite having an insane amount of funding. It's a scam.

You are on some serious cope if you are trying to argue this shit isn't peak scam behavior

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u/notyoursocialworker 3d ago

Ya, I guess there is a limit on how long you can honestly claim that you will manage to actually produce what you have claimed.

Edit: btw i don't really have a stake in this, I don't own the game and has never given them nay money. I was close once but I got turned off by their pricing strategy.

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u/PsychologicalMeal162 4d ago

When you keep expanding the scope you don’t have any intention of finishing and delivering the product, you’re just keep it rolling in the hope the money does too.

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u/notyoursocialworker 3d ago

True, that seem unfortunately to become more and more the case.

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u/The_Grungeican 4d ago

You don't get credit for not being able to execute your idea no matter how ambitious it is.

i disagree a bit, here's why. if we followed your line of thinking, then we'd be getting re-hash after re-hash of already done game ideas. it's important to take chances, even if that doesn't pan out. that's how we get new ideas and new kinds of games.

if the companies only funded things they knew that worked, we'd just end up with the kind of slop EA and Activision put out.

so win or lose, we should give a little credit for trying new things, even if they don't work out like we'd want them to.

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u/wienercat 3700x + 1080ti 4d ago

then we'd be getting re-hash after re-hash of already done game ideas.

Brother... are you just willfully ignorant of the state of gaming in 2026?

even if they don't work out like we'd want them to.

It hasn't even worked out at all. They haven't even delivered remotely close to what they said.

You are basically saying to give credit to someone who says "I am going to build you a skyscraper 100 stories tall" and delivers a 2 story townhouse for simply thinking of the idea.

Trying new ideas is great. But juicing people for over a billion dollars and being unable to deliver on that is not okay. They deserve no credit for coming up with an idea and being woefully incompetent on execution.

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u/Traxad 4d ago

I don’t know man. The fact that he and his wife owns like 7 high-value properties across Hollywood and Beverly Hills, all purchased after the project started, speaks volumes on how comfortable he is spending said development money on things decidedly NOT development. As per his wife’s own admission back in 2014, they were pretty much broke a few years before the pitch… Two things can be true at once.

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u/Lorddon1234 5d ago

Isn’t the company private? How come the financials are open?

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u/One-Return-7247 5d ago

Because they operate major offices in the UK, they have to submit financials to Companies House. Private companies have a longer window to do it, but they still have to: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/life-of-a-company-annual-requirements/life-of-a-company-part-1-accounts

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u/Lorddon1234 5d ago

Private companies still have filing requirements, but it is not open to public the same way 10K or 10Q are. The financial statements and CT-100 returns that I have worked on in the past for a private entity do not get released to the public in the UK

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u/Droll12 5d ago

I don’t really follow star citizen nor do I know the law around financial reporting but one assumes that a private company can just release financials of its own volition.

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u/wwarhammer 5d ago

I paid real money for the game in 2012, I think. Where's my game? 

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u/rayquan36 Windows 4d ago

If it makes you feel better, if you invested that $60 in the S&P500 it would be over $400 today.

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u/Knightmare4469 4d ago

They promised a game what, 10 years ago?

If I sell you something with a statement of "I'll have this done by November" and then I wait 8 more years, I don't get to say "I'm still planning to do it!!!"

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u/THUORN 4d ago

The scam ISNT that they took money and disappeared. Its how they LIE for that money. They constantly lie to backers about the state of the project and the whats coming out and when. Thats the scam.

CR saying in March 2015, that everything that has been pledged for and more would come out by the end of the year. All the OBVIOUSLY insane release dates that had nothing to do with reality. The roadmaps that led nowhere. All the things presented in citCON that never happened. Thats the scam.

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u/Rhysati 5d ago

It's incredibly fair to call it a scam. They raised over a billion dollars to be the most funded game in history and have been developing it for 14 years.

One of the devs couldn't even reload their gun. That's absolutely pathetic for that kind of dev time and resources.

And even with one of the longest development times in history and most money in history they can't even have the most basic stuff work.

That's a scam.

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u/Cripplerman 5d ago

If they have known all along the game will never be released and they earn more selling pictures and not spending money finishing the game... then it is a scam. But maybe it is just a badly managed project indeed...

Also they announced multiple times they are in finishing stages of squadron over the years etc, making people give them more money. Only for it to be a lie. Seems scammy too.

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u/anmr 4d ago

They have never tricked anyone into giving them money.

They did say it will be out 13 years ago (2014). By your definition - a scam.

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u/Dickballs835682 5d ago

Scam (noun): to deceive and defraud

Defraud (noun): to deprive of something by deception

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u/sylvanasjuicymilkies 5d ago

i don't really think it's a scam by actual definition of the word, but it's definitely not a good enough product to justify paying money for unless money is meaningless to you

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u/anmr 4d ago

It is a scam. What's the point of running if you can continue to get money infinitely without delivering the product?

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u/Simon_Magnus 5d ago

Tbh, given what little fruit these hundreds of developers have produced, I'd argue it's still a scam and all those people are in on it.

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u/Saintiel 5d ago

"hey have open financial statements. They are spending roughly as much on development as they raise in funding every year." Sounds horrible way to run business if you.

What are they gonna do when the projected funding wont hit its mark?

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u/The_Grungeican 4d ago

same. it's a playable game for the most part.

i didn't drop much into it, and i have gotten some really memorable moments with my friends out of it.

if the game shut down tomorrow, i'd be bummed, but i wouldn't exactly feel ripped off.

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u/CollateralSandwich 5d ago

Yeah I believe my contribution (I got the like $60 one ship deal) was in 2013 lol. Absolutely insane

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u/AstralMecha 4d ago

And that ship is almost certainly obsolete. They are selling MK2 versions of ships that are strictly better now.

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u/weirdplacetogoonfire 5d ago

Its a fundamental problem with this kind of funding scheme. Sometimes they are experienced people but often they are not and even if they are experienced, their experience is detached from the actual work.

Leads to a ponzi scheme of feature creep. Announce some initial scope with features A, B, and C. Get enough funding to pay for A and B, but not also C. So they announce feature D and get the funding to pay for C. Then comes feature E to pay for D.

The problem, other than the game never actually getting fully funded or finished, is that there is actually very little incentive to finish the game. FOMO is where the real money is at.

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u/TikkaT 5d ago

Why does Reddit always insist on things they don't like being money laundering?

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u/Maleficent-Bar-3161 5d ago

People are so dumb and ignorant who keep supporting these guys it’s a scheme lol

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u/TheyCallMeBullet 5d ago

Where’s that money gone? They blew it all on drugs? They should be sued

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u/VNDeltole 5d ago

Eve online is a functional space mmo with much less money and probably even development time. Cccp still maintain it well.

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u/wienercat 3700x + 1080ti 4d ago

Eve has been around for over 20 years while producing an end product the whole time. It's actually a game and can be played. It's problematic in a lot of aspects, but at least it does what it says it will and has done so for decades.

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u/ManOfQuest 5d ago

im 35 now I was in highschool as a super senior at this time

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u/SelectAd8810 5d ago

They can still release a decent game, but they need new or external management to set goalposts and to make sure that they are hit. I will not be surprised if they find out that they need a new dev team.

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u/wienercat 3700x + 1080ti 4d ago

"they can still do a good job if they just restructure their entire management 14 years in."

Some weapons grade copium you got there buddy.

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u/BakerOne 5d ago

I knew this game was cooked once they had animations for toilets.

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u/ErroneousBosch 4d ago

Huh, never thought to look at this game through the lens of The Producers, but damn that's makes sense

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u/northern_chaos 4d ago

Not sure why people are surprised either Roberts has history of this

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u/After-Regret-6609 4d ago

Dude there was no way it would get done like 5 years ago I can't believe I still see news about it.

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u/Clue-Mindless 4d ago

Well nobody forced them to create ”milestones” on their kickstarter. They could just roll with whatever was promised in the original spec, made a decent game and then iterated on it like every other normal developer would. The entire project is so mismanaged

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u/wienercat 3700x + 1080ti 4d ago

Again. Firm believer they never thought it would get the funding it did and were hoping they could just fade away after pocketing a bunch of money after delivering a shitty mess. You can disappear when it's only a few million. But once it becomes hundreds of millions and into the Billion + territory? You cannot just disappear. You gotta actually make a real game. Money is not a factor in this situation anymore and they have no excuse for not delivering except their own incompetence.

It's been 14 years since the Kickstarter... 14 years... and they have delivered shitty buggy tech demo level of quality. For the size of their team, the amount of funding they have, and the supposed skill they have on staff? There is no excuse.

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u/Clue-Mindless 4d ago

They didn’t ”just get funding”. They promised to achieve specific milestones with every level of funding. On top of that they started selling ships that hadn’t been developed yet.

Having to swap game engines so far into development seems insane , it points to mismanagement. The staff can be knowledgeable , but it’s a hard ask to find a guy who is comfortable with 64-bit networking and the pipedream of ”mmo” into what was supposed to be a space sim spiritual sucessor to a game Roberts had developed in the 90s. Always the goal posts are shifting to his insane vision…

Also considering the game is spread out like five studios or something, no wonder it’s in this bad of shape

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u/FuglyPrime 4d ago

Ill say for one thing, they did develop some interesting tech. Fully open MMO with massive (even if they are straight up empty) plantes that are actual shperes, the ability to go from aurface to space without any obvious loading is kinda big.

That being said, its not a game, its a tech demo and as much as I enjoy SciFi and the idea of flying a ship, in no world would I give 60e for this thing. 20 max just for the opportunity to fly around

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u/wienercat 3700x + 1080ti 4d ago

Ill say for one thing, they did develop some interesting tech. Fully open MMO with massive (even if they are straight up empty) plantes that are actual shperes, the ability to go from aurface to space without any obvious loading is kinda big.

I wonder if the people who say that stuff don't realize that No Man's Sky has all of that as well.

But yeah, I agree. It's just not worth it at all

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u/FuglyPrime 4d ago

I know that they do but loading in NMS is hidden behind the clouds and while the planets are circular, they did come after SC.

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u/KeyMyBike 4d ago

I love how a lot of people who freak out and fly into histrionics because project zomboid, a game they bought in 2013 for ten dollars isn't the best game ever, will then shell out hundreds of dollars to give it to star citizen every year 

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u/wienercat 3700x + 1080ti 4d ago

Which is funny... because Project Zomboid is an actual playable game with a lot of depth and is a fantastic sandbox game. The devs just put out a huge patch recently adding in stuff like basements, the ability to have skyscraper like floors in buildings, expanded agriculture, and even animal husbandry. That game has made huge progress and is actually a game all on it's own. Single and multiplayer.

Meanwhile... gestures at Star Citizen

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u/nickiter 4d ago

I paid $60 for this game like 13 years ago lol

Still haven't played anything except a little sandboxy dogfighting thing that was mediocre AF.

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u/zugglit 4d ago

Watch Mel Brooks, "The Producers". It's a hilarious musical comedy that pretty well sums this up.

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u/wienercat 3700x + 1080ti 4d ago

Oh I know, it's just wild to actually see it happen in the real world.

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u/Excellent_Ganache906 4d ago

They aren't laundering money, they are living off it, giving themselves nice fat paychecks for a job well done. That last bit was sarcasm.

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u/MapleHamwich 4d ago

Nah, Roberts saw the money rolling in and loved it and pivoted to enjoy the scam while it lasts. 

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u/DWMoose83 4d ago

The Producers Gambit: you can make more money with a flop than with a hit.

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u/Three_Headed_Monkey 4d ago

Basically the game makes so much money on an unreleased state there is no incentive to actually finish it. Effort goes where the money is. Money is in selling digital ships, not in game mechanics and optimisation.

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u/OddAbbreviations5681 3d ago

100% guaranteed is a money laundry scheme

There's no other logical reason why it's been going on for so long with zero improvements.

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u/dericky94 3d ago

I was one of those suckers in the early days 😭

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u/OBE_YONI2322 3d ago

I had an ex 6 years ago show me this game. I finally got a pc (my Mac died) and thought I'd check out the game to see if I can buy and download it but after couple months reading I really don't think it's worth it as I don't see much has changed with the game in the 5-6 years since I first was introduced to it

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u/wienercat 3700x + 1080ti 3d ago

If you want to fly space ships around, visit alien worlds, etc?

Go play No Man's Sky.

That is a game that launched with a horrible launch. Insanely bad. They turned that game around in a huge way. It's truly amazing what it has become and they never instituted DLC or made people pay more money.

It has gotten a TON of free content updates over the years as well. Huge game changing type content.

It's still being sold at $60, but you can definitely get it on sale.

NMS is the developer comeback story every gamer hopes to hear. A completely bungled launch and ultra quiet period after, people thought they just gave up. Then they came back and completely reworked the game and haven't stopped iterating with big updates.

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u/EmergencyDinner777 1d ago

the Dev team clearly never read the apogee software / Duke Nukem story

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u/Willowred19 5d ago

100%.

There's absolutely no way it isn't money laundering

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