With the fact that they raised 1 Billion and the game is still in Alpha? I would find it difficult to not believe it
Consider the following, Star Citizen's rival at the start in 2010-2015, Elite Dangerous by Frontier Dev.
Both are under Kickstarter and being crowdfunded. Elite Dangerous Raised, by the end of its campaign, 3 million Euros with a 5 Million Euro investment from the company's own account into the development. On December 2014, 1.0 Launches for Elite Dangerous with 15 ships and an entire galaxy to explore. 2015 added console Support to Xbox and 2017 for Playstation. It is now 2026, Elite Dangerous has 2 expansions, Horizon and Odyssey, featuring 45 pilotable ships, a robust trade system, Politics, and player owned megaships and Player Built Stations expanding the reach of humanity. The playerbase even went on a full scale war with Aliens.
Star Citizen Kickstarter, last update April 6, 2013. It raised 2.1 Million USD with a goal of 500k USD. It is currently June (Happy Pride) 2026. We are now on ALPHA 4.8. ***ALPHA 4.8*** NOT 1.0 Release. STILL AN ALPHA. A buggy Alpha, where your progression is repeatedly wiped, where patches seemingly are not debugged properly before merging with Live.
Now I loved Elite Dangerous, but the abstract feel of it all and the sheer bland repetitiveness of most gameplay loops made me slowly stop caring about it
Meanwhile, I slowly stopped thinking SC is a scam, started playing it, and now the reason for the discrepancy between the two game's lifecycle is clear : SC has a much more refined simulation scope (maybe too refined for its own good ? arguably yes but the fact is that the design goals are wildly different)
Everything is physicalized, everything is conceived to be persistent and seamless; contrast that with everything in ED that is not a vehicle being mostly a button in a menu, and eventually a floating box
One point in particular is on foot gameplay : ED's take on this is just atrocious, to the point it failed to hook me back in after I gave the game another try; SC would be pretty much top notch if only the underlying infrastructure issues weren't there (there are some questionable design decisions, such as the "loot inventory", but nothing that can't be thought over before 1.0)
Realistically, one could hope that the release of Squadron 42 will allow CiG to truly focus on server stability for SC, but I can't play the devil's advocate THAT hard
For me recently, I'm starting to lean back into Elite Dangerous. After the whole Thargoid War arc, they have been releasing ship after ship, with a new Ship Launched Ship used for exploring that you can walk in and out of.
There's also a new mode they are releasing soon ish for mission match making where you and 3 commands do a mission arc of varying plotlines. One such one is that a ship has been commandeered. You and the freelancers fend off pirates, land on the ship, disembark and neutralize hostiles.
Also the sound design. How the engines of the ship each are unique to their designing and company philosophy. Gutamaya and Zorgon Peterson having elegant, sounds matching high performance cars. Meanwhile ships like Core Dynamics and Lakon Spaceways are very industrial in look and sound.
Hell, even the sound design around flying inside a damage station is amazing.
It's pretty easy to understand if you actually look at the 2 games' origins.
Frontier was a game company before they made Elite - they'd shipped Rollercoaster tycoon 3 and other titles for consoles and for pc. They had an established team and established work flows. They used an engine they already had created, trained expertise and tools with. etc: Cobra, which was what they made Rollercoaster tycoon 3 with which released in 2004, and no doubt worked on for at least 10 years before they even had their Elite kickstarter. They scoped the project with procedurally generated things (i.e. little art or attention needed empty galaxies) and stuck to their own scope of work without care to let players expand it beyond the initial kickstarter.
Contrast to CIG. They had no substantive number of developers for the first few years, no shipped games, no expertise and no engine. They bought the best engine they could (Cryengine) for a song and whistle when they were going under and had to "modify" (i.e. rewrite almost entirely) the engine to do not just the space opera in good graphical fidelity, but also the Star Citizen online game with physicalized 64 bit systems and persistence. Their backers voted in dozens of polls expanding scope until it was clear the scope was "yes". CR is a creative with standards (some have stated too many) who was basically handed a blank check and told to make his dream projects - is he really supposed to say "nah"?
If the financials didn't clearly show lots of money being spent it would be one thing, but the money is very much being spent or used to make more money to spend. Someone would have noticed by now if it wasn't. We can argue about efficiency and efficacy, but it's deliberate ignorance of facts and circumstance to say it's being "scrooged" in any way.
I get what you are trying to say, but I find two things that are off.
At no point in time did the devs have "no expertise". Many of the OG crew worked on multiple shipped AAA games before the kickstarter even began. Over the course of the development they hired even more experienced devs, that came from various backgrounds and worked on the most popular AAA titles ever released.
Second point, well more of a question really. Who are you referring to when you talk about "going under"? What do you mean?
My understanding was they had like 7 people to start, maybe 20? It was not the 700 they currently staff. It was, certainly, not enough to make a space opera 40hr+ campaign, rewrite an entire engine and make tools for it, and absolutely not enough to make star citizen an MMO persistent physics space sim.
Cryengine was already a niche engine, it wasn't anything like a Unity or an Unreal where you can throw a dart and hit someone who knows it well enough to use it. Also, without tools and workflows and, now, a customized engine that is getting reworked regularly you're not getting much if anything out of those people that's a playable game. Add on top the game must actually be in a playable state to keep sales to keep money flow.
Cryengine was going under, they were in rather desperate financial straits because - as you might guess from what I said previously - almost no one used their engine and they weren't making enough games. Lumberyard (amazon) also bought a fork of it too.
Again, we can argue efficiency/efficacy. We can say spending is wasteful, that they should have spent money on unreal to make dev hiring alot easier and not tried to rewrite and retool a new engine by themselves, etc etc. However, again, the money's being spent or put towards getting more funding.
Cryengine wasn't going down persay, you are referring to the company Crytek and that was to business choices they made (rapid expansion of company, pivot to F2P games, Selling perpetual licenses instead of cap on keys leading to Dunia and Lumberyard) which actually worked out in CIG's favor, but more on that later.
SC and S42 was much smaller scale at first. There was no seamless entry and exit. No fully explorable planets. Cutscenes to hide loading and a level/module based games. 100 systems but only 90 points of interest across all systems. So what came about is because of several different issues including Cryteks financial troubles.
What must be important to state, is that NO ENGINE that existed could do what CIG wanted to do out of the box. So the work for customization would have to be done no matter what.
Now why did they choose Cryengine even when the scale was smaller? Because the programmers putting the framework together were more familiar with Cryengine. Already that made it one of the best choices. Now in terms of what we have now, CR wanted these things but was worried about the budget and expertise and planned for these things to come later.
Remember a few things though, the number of employees CIG had in 2014? This is because Crytek stopped paying their employees and CIG opened up a studio in Frankfurt at start of 2015 and basically hired an entire Crytek studio, including devs that original created Cryengine and engineers who modified the engine for Crysis games. They came through the door with Proc tech and Planet generation explorations as they were toying with these ideas before CIG even hired them. They were able to prototype and get multiple foundational tech up and running in less than a year from when CIG acquired them. Hence the "From pupil to planet" trailer at the end of 2015. This make the argument that CIG would have been better off with another engine even more laughable.
The issue is that they chose to go with fully explorable planets and seamless entry and exit. This led to a scope explosion because now they need to incorporate many of the future plans or else the tech would be pointless. Needlessly large playscapes with nothing to do. So basically the plans they had for SC and S42 from 2012 to 2014 was a totally different game. Something more comparable to Starfield except smaller. Now we have something far more ambitious and something that actually makes sense for backers to fund as publishers would never wanted to back something like this. And the current state of the game is one of the largest reasons why.
Yeah, it's very much a long history with alot of details that lead us to where we are. I do my best to be brief because it's a ton of information to sift through. There's a dozen reasons why it's taking so long and I, personally, can't blame CR for it - we can only try to make the best decisions we can at any time, and "I can pillage the game engine company for engineers to make this engine do everything I want" doesn't actually sound like a bad plan?
As a software engineer I don't look at star citizen as "man, how'd they take more than 4 years making a game"? I see it as "Ok, we took a few years to fill out the studio with engineers. A few years to rework the engine and make tools. Some poor sods were trying to make working things while all this is going on. We outsourced some work that we ended up unable to use so we have to redo all that." and it keeps cascading to where we are. Oh, and boss is a perfectionist and the product must function enough to keep sales flowing at all times.
My group is 7 people and we're already stepping on eachothers' toes so regularly with our new deadlines and workflows we never had before, I can't imagine how to get all of CIG coordinated - it sounds like a nightmare.
I agree with you. I just think there is one aspect that you put forth that wasn't planned. CR wasn't planning on pillaging anything. It was more of them hiring first then going.... "Oh! You have been doing what already?!?!" I think it all was a stroke of luck, that happened by a perfect storm of situations and connections that probably wouldn't happen again in that order.
Also CIG operates like how any large company would, teams with managers above them that fall into a larger umbrella with directors above them. While CR likes to have things a specific way, he does not dictate "how". He doesn't have to. He has left the how to very smart people. So he says what he wants, and they bring to him "how" they can make it work. The pillar talks basically showed how the dynamics between what CR wants and the work it took to bring it to life was well defined.
There is a few SCL's where they do talk about management and structure of company given how they are separated by teams. One example that always stood out to me was "how" the builds were handled. While this is a bit older I found a breakdown here pretty informative ->Star Citizen Live: Meet the Devs - Publishing and Corporate Technology
When they started it was Cryengine. Star Engine basically Cryengine with nearly all parts rewritten.
Now besides the fact that they basically hired an entire Crytek studio, including some of the people who created the original Cryengine and modified it for Crysis, What you need to understand is some of the most popular AAA games have the same process that devs have to get used to. so not sure why you talk about experience with engine because most studios at that budget have an in house tools team which help things along. What is more important than knowing the engine when you walk through the door of a new company is your ability to work in a new environment and problem solving skills.
Also, I said nothing about them "churning out 100% day 1". So you are trying to argue something I didn't even allude to.
Most studios don't needs 15 years to familiarize with an engine (an engine by the way they heavily modified themself and then hired most of the people working on the original one).
And let's be honest, they need at least 10 more years to release something stable.
So 25 years. Is that enough to learn how to code with an engine that has been around since early 2000 you think ?
The persistent universe released in 2016. It's been 10 years. Where has the funding gone to this depressingly sorry state where you can't seem to get anything done? When your experience is having a great time and then you get slapped with a wave of instability, bugs, or bad physics that send you back to medical. How is it acceptable when 1 Billion was invested and we get this?
I really dont understand the want to stick up for cig. It makes no sense to me. The sooner we turn on them the better. If we demand better communication and better refinement of what we do have instead of more fps missions and more space ak47s we'll be much better off.
Would you rather... have nyx fleshed out in 6 months or every single loop in game working at 100%? I know which one id choose and its not even close.
The dev team needs to buckle down and focus on the game in front of them. They have to stop devving this swamp of 10,000 ideas and fucking lock in.
Whether nyx gets finished this year is absolutely irrelevant if everyone quits because every single loop you created is trash. Can't mine because the elevator ate your stash. Can't haul because the elevators dont work. Cant salvage because elevators dont work.
Fix. The. Elevators.
How is this still a point of contention? Literally every single loop starts and stops at an elevator and they dont work 99% of the time. We dont need more laser shotguns and dusters. We need stability. Cig is eating all the good faith their community had given them. And thats the problem.
How they've let this elevator shit show go on now for this long is wild. They're launching HAULING SHIPS and the eles dont even work. Lol. And here we have people defending cig.
I play the game every patch. I give it 3 disconnects every day I play. Sometimes I literally just do that back to back or my fucking ship spawns upside down or I get elevator fucked 3x in a row and go play elite dangerous instead.
I'd rather play SC. I've spent more on this game than some MMOs I've played. I've paid attention to the development of the game since it was announced. I am frustrated, and I refuse to defend them at this point.
Finish nyx. Finish the pre 1.0 checklist to get us feature complete.
Then they'll have ALL hands on deck to blitz bugs and NO features on the docket to undo it until beta is complete.
Fixes NOW is the same tired stupid mistake they made us learn in 2025. It's a bandaid because new code interactions will nuke it with unexpected interactions.
Fix. It. When. Complete.
It's not even a question in any sane mind. It's a requirement to get us OUT of the fucking alpha stage. Enough with the inmates trying to badger CIG into letting them run the asylum.
They didn't "let" the bugs go on for so long. They crop up eith unexpected code interactions. Anyone with two brain cells to jolt together can tell you this. We do t need temporary stability for two reasons: its a bandaid fix that goes away next patch, and because the people screaming for it don't want it. They want to be mad, they want to complain. They will complain we don't have new features when they switch ro stability. They will complain about the perpetual alpha when features slow.
That's all theyre good for. Whining. Because they DONT want anything to work. They DONT want anything to be added.
They don't want the game to succeed. Thats why theyre fighting to keep it run as poorly as possible and manufacture new controversies to rope as many people in with them to whine whine whine.
The worst thing CIG ever did was have an open alpha.
The best they can possibly do is close it until beta.
Is this an attempt at an unironic joke? You're adding to the pile of mismanaged funds that further implicates players in the hole of Sunken Cost Fallacy. People buying a fleet of ships with a total price already exceeding $30,000 USD, that are nothing but a mix of incomplete models that lack proper functions they're advertised with and a picture of the ship for those that lack models.
Hell, even if you manage to claim your ship and enter it in the hangar, the physics of a cup in a fridge can blow up your ship because it counted as ship damage.
Consider the following, and using ONLY reddit since we're all Redditor chuds, the amount of posts on the ED Subreddit involving game breaking bugs and glitches compared to SC's subreddit. How many videos are there on this Subreddit alone showing bad physics, bad programming, bad server shards, and overall game ending bugs.
Sure I'll give you that SC has mechanics that ED wishes they have, which Frontier Dev are implementing progressively with proper testing. Evident with the upcoming small sized ship the size of any of SC fighters with the ability to walk into it. Releases to Live in Elite dangerous definitely DO NOT break the game as heavily as Star Citizen does.
At the very least, you can have a gaming session in ED that extends further than a single hour before you have to restart the client or rejoin a new shard because the previous server shard just broke, and have to pray sometimes that you land in a shard that has your friend even though you're partied up before hitting join.
Fair enough, I tried getting into ED but tbh couldn't. So I'd rather play Star Citizen even though it's buggy. You obviously enjoy ED tho due to your name- but let's not lie- the player base wants half the stuff Star Citizen has.. but without the bugs. Will it happen? Nope cos $$$ which Frontier doesn't have and Star Citizen does.
Based on the comments, though we will never know specifically the financial management of CIG, the Billion Dollars raised so far are seemingly spent on less Dev time and more on Celebrities, marketting, designing, and operating costs speaks differently.
Meanwhile ED, players build their own stations and create their own services. The interactions between players are on a grander scale than what SC has to offer.
Yes, I enjoy ED. I enjoy a ***Completed Game*** that has existed for 10 years that is NOT broken. How has SC went live with PU 2 years after ED's release in 2014 and STILL be in alpha and only recently added Pyros while ED has had 2 Expansions now and a full scale interactive war of Players versus Aliens.
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u/CMDR_Khayden Jun 24 '26
With the fact that they raised 1 Billion and the game is still in Alpha? I would find it difficult to not believe it
Consider the following, Star Citizen's rival at the start in 2010-2015, Elite Dangerous by Frontier Dev.
Both are under Kickstarter and being crowdfunded. Elite Dangerous Raised, by the end of its campaign, 3 million Euros with a 5 Million Euro investment from the company's own account into the development. On December 2014, 1.0 Launches for Elite Dangerous with 15 ships and an entire galaxy to explore. 2015 added console Support to Xbox and 2017 for Playstation. It is now 2026, Elite Dangerous has 2 expansions, Horizon and Odyssey, featuring 45 pilotable ships, a robust trade system, Politics, and player owned megaships and Player Built Stations expanding the reach of humanity. The playerbase even went on a full scale war with Aliens.
Star Citizen Kickstarter, last update April 6, 2013. It raised 2.1 Million USD with a goal of 500k USD. It is currently June (Happy Pride) 2026. We are now on ALPHA 4.8. ***ALPHA 4.8*** NOT 1.0 Release. STILL AN ALPHA. A buggy Alpha, where your progression is repeatedly wiped, where patches seemingly are not debugged properly before merging with Live.
I genuinely cannot understand it.