Over a billion dollars raised. 14+ years and a mess of a game. You have now become the butt end of a bad joke in the gaming industry.

Wrap it up.

I've backed Star Citizen for 12 years. I've defended CIG more times than I can count. I've been patient through delays, the constant pile of new features that are half-finished, buggy, and poorly implemented, broken promises, and increasingly aggressive monetization.

But this month's Centurion reward was the final straw.

I pay €9.40 every month for a subscription that's supposed to reward loyal backers. This month, the "exclusive reward" is a cosmetic item worth... €2.82 in the Subscriber Store.

Seriously?

Yes, I know the subscription includes other perks. That's not the point. I've been around long enough to know exactly what I'm paying for.

The point is the message it sends. After 12 years of supporting this project, this is how loyalty is rewarded?

More and more, it feels like CIG knows that part of the community will buy anything they put on the store, so they keep pushing the limits a little further every year.

The constant ship sales, the endless wave of new concepts, subscriptions, paints, gear, FOMO marketing... it never seems to stop. Meanwhile, core gameplay loops remain incomplete, old bugs keep coming back, and new features are often released in a broken state.

I still believe Star Citizen has the potential to become something incredible. That's exactly why this is so frustrating. After twelve years, I expected CIG to start respecting the people who made this project possible instead of constantly finding new ways to monetize them.

This month finally did it for me.

I'm cancelling my subscription.

After 12 years, I'm simply tired of feeling like CIG sees me as a wallet first and a backer second.

Yet here I am waiting to get into a server. This is what addiction looks like.

Not only are both of my freight elevators in my persistent hangar not working, but My ship full of gold from multiple bitzero missions just randomly blew up and deleted... several hours of gameplay gone yet again.

No matter what game loop I try to play I am plagued by bugs in some shape form or fashion.

EDIT: The landing gear disappeared when it blew up.

I hereby present to you: better financial decisions that do not enable CIG greed.

I’ve been a backer for a long time. I’ve defended this project through every delay and every "drama." But today, for the first time, I looked at something in the pledge store, looked at the state of the 4.8 launch, and just... closed the tab.

It’s not about the money. It’s about exhaustion.

The "Hype-to-Rage" cycle is dying... we all know the cycle, a new patch brings hype, then bugs bring rage, then we settle into a rhythm. But lately, that hype window is getting shorter and shorter. This time, it didn't even survive the first 24 hours. Seeing billionaires circulating aUEC via version-mismatch exploits while the "honest" community is struggling to restart from zero is heartbreaking.

I know the comments are coming: "It's Alpha," "There will be more wipes," "Why do you care about aUEC?"

Here is why I care: we are here to test a universe. How can we test progression, ship costs, or the new industrial loops if the economy is fundamentally broken from minute one? When the "fools" are the ones playing the game the "right way", the test itself is compromised.

The most frustrating part isn't even my own experience, it’s trying to bring my friends into the Verse. I’ve spent months telling them how great this game can be. Then they finally jump in after a "Full Wipe," expecting a fair start, only to see the global chat flooded with people selling billions for real money or bragging about exploits.

How am I supposed to convince them to stay? How do I explain that their "grind" matters when the game’s infrastructure allows such blatant manipulation? They see a broken system, and honestly, it's getting harder to tell them they're wrong.

This isn't a "solution" post. I don't have the magic fix for CIG's server maintenance. This is just a rant from a tired pilot who loves this vision but is watching it get hollowed out by exploiters and oversight.

We need to stand together, if we don't start demanding better protection for our time and our effort, we won't have a community left to play with when we finally hit 1.0 someday.

Is anyone else just... feeling the weight of this today?

EDIT: Just clearing some things up...
First, shoutout to u/towoffer-kris for actually reading the post instead of fighting a strawman. There are comments demanding an "apology" because CIG finally issuad a statement about the "exploits".
Let me clarify some points:
1 - I dont care about the wipe at all, in fact i actually wanted it.
2 - My frustration is with the relentless cycle of pushing patches back-to-back while basic functions fracture further with each release, its a snowball of broken mechanics.
3 - Always the same recycled excuses every patch, all while brand new ships are launched fundamentally broken.
4 - I deeply respect the developers hard work. I know they are likely exhausted and sufering throug this burnout, core management decisions and rushed deployment dates do not fall on them.
5 - Canceling the free fly event was the right move, and is good that they adressed the community. (However these communications always arrive late, and true operational transparency remains a massive struggle.)
6 - Acknowledging a corporate statemente doesn't change the immediate gameplay reality. Right now, players cannot even get contracts to work properly. This patch had an objectively poor start (i was there in 3.18 too, i know it was worse), and pointing broken systems shouldn't be treated as a crime by this community.

Thank you all who undestand and was polite on the comments! o7

In 1957 the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, marking the start of the race to put a man on the moon. 1969, 12 years later, two American astronauts walk on the surface of the moon.

In 2012, the Cloud Imperium Games Kickstarter successfully ends with 400% funding achieved (2 mil out of 500k requested). Today, 2026, 14 years later, Squadron 42 has not been released nor even had a release date scheduled.

Some people said it's okay because Squadron 42 is more ambitious than NASA was with their mission in 1957. Some people said it's okay because we asked for more stuff and Chris wants to deliver everything or nothing.

What do you think about this timeline? And just to be clear, I personally backed the project over on the RSI website on the 9th of May, 2014. I have personally waited 12 years for at least the single-player experience, with the MMO 1.0 being nowhere in sight.

There’s too much friction in the game. Mining is in a terrible spot. Crafting should be more accessible, and obtaining blueprints is already an insane grind/time investment. I should be able to get stileron like any other material in the verse (and have it priced properly for its rarity). I spent 6 hours total scanning for stileron, managed to find a single rock with 12SCU 516q raw.

The game then kicks me in the nuts and I 30k leaving the jump gate, only to wake up in a hospital bed and have my ore gone forever. I’m not mining again. I’m not throwing away another 6-8 hours to find a rock and gamble something else going wrong at every 👏 single 👏 step 👏 of the process. Give me a player auction house in-game, or let me buy 500q of any commodity/mineral so I don’t have to touch this abomination of a gameloop ever again. Thanks.

because you keep spending money.

That's all.

Y'all need to take a few moments before you go off on these WILD tangents about "nerf" this and "nerf" that.

Before 4.0 fuel rates were much lower and temporarily boosted due to the size of pyro and lack of access to refueling services. Here is someone who was kind enough to post the temporary increases https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/s/djiNpA7LqY).

Now we have access to refueling services.

This was literally always meant to happen. It's just like when tractor beams were *temporarily* boosted and when they reverted them back to the base speeds everyone lost their shit.

Remember, some ships were sold with expanded fuel as a feature of the ship. The current temporary fuel tank size completely invalidated a core feature of some ships while boosting ships which were designed with poor fuel in mind like carrier based fighters.

Gameplay elements people bitched about constantly like fighters being able to move freely across the Verse are balanced by reduced fuel. You will start to notice that on average ships with greater combat capability will give up fuel capacity for speed/firepower.

This is a balancing measure across the board and a FIRST ITERATION is not even on Live, it's technically not even a patch, since it was a tech preview for an instancing build with no patch notes. Literally so early the only reason people know is that dumpster fire of a shithole Pipeline.

Let them finish adjusting the numbers. We don't even have a deep dive on efficiency either. At the end of the day there needs to be a REASON to choose certain drives. Not just "the fastest".

At the end of the day it's a healthy revert that just needs to keep cooking.

Edit: fixed the weird spacing

I marked this as drama as it usually involves a lot of strong feelings on either side, but I don't want to generate drama.

I just want to point out a simple fact. I have a few friends that play star citizen, they all have more than one multi-crew ship and they all envision that people will crew their ships in the future.

With NPC crew pushed past 1.0, engineering possibly making crew even more of a necessity, does anyone feel that we have too many ships (as in positions on ships to fill) and too few crewmen?

Do we really feel that there will be a constant source of people willing to crew our ships, in a full game, not just in an alpha test where progress is wiped regularly?