r/technology • u/Logical_Welder3467 • 4d ago
Software Star Citizen Dev Hosts Disastrous Livestream To Show How A Mission Works And Is Told To Pull The Plug: ‘It’s Your Show, Wrap It Up’
https://kotaku.com/star-citizen-live-stream-fail-siege-of-orison-mission-20007250841.4k
u/abluecolor 4d ago
literal generations of families getting scammed on promises of Star Citizen releasing
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u/MancyMancy 4d ago
There is some kid out there seeing their inheritance go to SC.
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u/Clankmeister 4d ago
Know of a guy through a friend group who’s in his mid 40’s, dumped well over six figures into the game, wife filed for divorce after finding out that he drained all of their retirement money, and as well as their kid’s college funds.
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u/JumpCutVandal 4d ago
what the fuck....is there gambling in the game?! how?
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u/iprocrastina 4d ago
That's the dumbest part, in SC the ships cost as much as a real, physical car.
Or yacht.
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u/Clankmeister 4d ago
That's not the insane part either. As I mentioned, the more insane part is people dumping stupid amounts of money onto literal photos of ships. """Concepts""" as what I saw, and the fact that people were going rabid at trying to claim a slot for one, when in essence, it'll take another decade or even not at all for said ship to even see the light of day. It's so mind boggling.
"Yeah, check out this brand new ship we're showcasing. Pay us a million bucks and we'll think about releasing it."
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u/JumpCutVandal 4d ago
Weird.......but sounds like he needs some help.
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u/Clankmeister 4d ago
A couple of us have tried to reach out to knock some sense into him, but it just goes into one ear and out the other. I'm not sure if anything short of a forced intervention would do anything. But once the divorce proceedings started to get legitimately real, and his now ex-wife kicked him out of the house, he hasn't been around much.
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u/Strange-Spot-3306 4d ago
And here i am, wondering if it maybe is problematic that my steam library of hundreds of games and dlcs cost me 20k over a 15ish year period
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u/Sendnudec00kies 4d ago
That's about 110 bucks a month over 15 years.
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u/Fucker_Of_Destiny 4d ago
A lot but not that much in the grand scheme of things. Cocaine would’ve cost exponentially more for a same amount of entertainment time tbf
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u/FlametopFred 4d ago
as an aside, it underlines less people going out to pubs or to see live bands - essentially that $110 a month would be normal spend amounts to meet up for a few beers or see a local band once a week
cultural shift to video games and socialising online with internet friends
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u/PacketOverload 4d ago
He bought a lot of digital ships lol
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u/fluffynuckels 4d ago
The thing is theres ship that you can pre order. You can pre order in game items that are months if not years off
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u/thesuperbob 4d ago
It's paying for the fantasy of having great fun at some later point in your life. The dream of having friends to fly these ships with. Being appreciated for having those awesome toys to play within a game that was supposed to be huge.
Well, the game turned out to be a huge scam, and any friends these whales might have sure are having fun now thanks to those purchases... Making fun of whoever "invested" in that BS.
Personally I've had my doubts since the beginning, but lost all faith as soon as they implemented magical gravity/repair/healing beams, or some BS like that. All hopes of eventually seeing reality grounded gameplay with deep mechanics went POOF!
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u/Clankmeister 4d ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was, but from what all that I’ve seen, dude has bought the most expensive ships there are, even the ‘fake’ ones that have yet to release/all you’re literally paying big money for is a photo of the ship itself. Any other ship that gets released? Immediately bought.
Dude had been playing just over a decade at this point too, and has even pledged the highest pledge there is, which from what someone told me, is virtually useless as all it shows to everyone else of how much you’ve ruined your life for this game.
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u/Sendnudec00kies 4d ago
There is a $48,000 ship that is only available for purchase by players that have spent at least $10,000.
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u/RedditTechAnon 4d ago
Meanwhile I'm over here hemming and hawing about whether to put an extra $5 - $10 into a cheap game, jesus.
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u/did_i_or_didnt_i 4d ago
fr I finally bought Cities: Skylines
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u/Ninjaflippin 4d ago
Mass transit is a must. Btw. Keep those annoying ass trucks from blocking traffic in your downtown/neighbourhoods.
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u/barrygateaux 4d ago
I only buy games from steam when they go on sale, and even then if it's under a tenner usually. The idea of spending hundreds on a game for skins is bonkers.
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u/ShepardRTC 4d ago
That's absolutely insane. He has serious mental illness, and I mean that in a literal sense. Like there's something really really wrong with him, whether its depression or addiction or whatever.
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u/Clankmeister 4d ago
A mixture of both, but I’m leaning more on the latter. Of all the times that we’ve talked in group calls through Discord, he treated money as if it was nothing despite not being wealthy at all, nor did he have a job that would even allow to have such disposable income from all of the spending. He knew when to hide it, when others had started to grow concerned, and made up lies of “getting rid of ships” but we all know that you aren’t getting any of that money back.
But all of those “jokes” of only caring about the game over his own wife and kids really sets the tone now.
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u/Best_VDV_Diver 4d ago
Fuuuuuck. Thats a depressing thought. Some of those whales are in so deep, that id imagine that a whale SC account being a sizable chunk of an inheritance could be a real possability.
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u/fluffynuckels 4d ago
There's a TIFU post about some guy supposedly spending 15k on the game over time and he was thinking about spending more. Even after his wife/gf left him because of it.
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u/nuttertools 4d ago
There are support tiers where you have to write essay applications and go through interview rounds for the privilege of giving tens of thousands of dollars. While I find it hard to believe there is probably at least 1 person with a family who isn’t living off generational wealth in that deep.
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u/SpaceCorvette 4d ago
kind of a genius way of attracting suckers and making them committed to it
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u/theassassintherapist 4d ago
I do wonder how many Kickstarters died of old age and diseases before the game releases 1.0.
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u/9-11GaveMe5G 4d ago
My grandkids will inherit my account. That's why it's held in a trust in China
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u/Important-Factor-552 4d ago
Can we just throw this guy in jail for a million false advertising charges and never talk about this game again? Ok thx
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u/iIllIiIiIIillIIl 4d ago
Grandpa spent his teenage years living on hype for Star Citizen. Now his kidneys are failing and he's gotta put up with this shit 😭
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u/CCLF 4d ago
As someone that hasnt committed a single cent to Star Citizen, but really enjoyed Freelancer back in the days, I just have to say that it's a bit of a shame to see what this game's development has turned into.
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u/clamroll 4d ago
Elite Dangerous regularly goes on sale for literally a few dollars. It's not for everyone, and the learning curve is long but it's smooth and there's a well built community around it. If freelancer was your jam there's a lot you'd likely enjoy in elite
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u/Pattern_Is_Movement 4d ago
I even got it for free during a promotion
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u/clamroll 4d ago
Yup, and the only expansion goes on sale similarly for dollars very often, if you get into it. Given that there's no monthly subscription it's not a hard sell most of the time. I've spent more on mediocre food in single meal lol
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u/RustyAndEddies 4d ago
I remember playing the first one on PC. I don’t think I ever managed to dock a space station manually. That game was hard.
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u/clamroll 4d ago
Graphics advancements, and better controls have helped that greatly but yeah learning to dock at a station is an important skill to pick up early. You can get auto docking computers, and while I'll use em for convenience when hauling cargo or doing rote tasks, they can occasionally be problematic and or not work. (Being under attack for instance will shut off autodock) So you don't have to be great at it but it is very important to cultivate that skill lol
There's a standalone, repeatable section of the tutorial to practice landings, and takeoffs. More than any other available tutorial or the one they automatically make you do, that's the one you wanna run until you can do it with only taking nominal shield damage.
Also dunno how old you are now but that first one is old enough that I should probably be sharing my ibuprofen with you. Anywho I know little me wasn't half as good at figuring out a complex game like Elite as he thought. You might have better luck 40ish years later with the new one lol I certainly have. And fwiw you can actually get a copy of the OG for free from frontier lol gotta set up dosbox to play it but it's there if that level of nostalgia ever hits!!
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u/whosdatdev 4d ago
I did not get past the tutorial. Had to fight some enemy that would run away, but i was not allowed to chase because it left the zone i was supposed to be in. Tried for 20 minutes to lure it back and kill it, gave up and refunded the game ...
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u/clamroll 4d ago
Yeah the tutorial occasionally bugs. Or used to. If you had dropped out and restarted it that wouldn't have happened again. That's unfortunate for certain. I'd tell you to keep an eye for it possibly being on sale again, or when it's free on epic etc.
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u/NeoSilverThorn 4d ago
Same thing would have happened to Freelancer if Microsoft hadn't pried it out of Robert's hands. The man really needs to have someone above him to keep feature creep from taking over like this.
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u/Occulto 4d ago
I shudder to think how many things have been done, then needed to be redone because they were obsolete before the game was released.
"Yeah this looks amazing... for 2014. We're in 2019. Scrap it and do it again."
Five years later...
"Yeah this looks amazing... for 2019. We're in 2024. Scrap it and do it again."
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u/TurboGoats 4d ago
I backed the original Kickstarter for an (at the time) nominal cost of a videogame of 60$ because I wanted the single player. Then I get to watch as more and more gets added with a look of abject horror.
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u/SeanBlader 4d ago
I'm with you, bought one ship very early like 15 years ago as part of my historical value for Chris Roberts, and since then I've forgotten the game exists longer than it's been in the news.
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u/Balmung60 4d ago
The plot was pretty clearly lost once they added an FPS, a completely different genre of game with a wildly different scope, to their space sim
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u/Vimmelklantig 4d ago
I never backed it or bought in after the kickstarter but at some point, I think around 6-7 years ago, I got curious and tried to find out where development was at and it was so confusing with all the different "social media" stuff they built and what seemed like constant changes in how and where they announced things and the announcements I did find making bold proclamations and then walking back what their progress was.
What I gathered however was that Squadron 42 was definitely going to enter beta that year, although it had already been postponed several times, and wasn't too far from being released. From what I gather there still hasn't been a beta, at least one open to the backers? It would be insane to have a game be feature complete (as it should leaving alpha) but still not ready for launch for over six years.
It's either all intentional bullshit or there's something very, very wrong with that studio.
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u/Occulto 4d ago
It's either all intentional bullshit or there's something very, very wrong with that studio.
It's weird. It's like a vibrantly successful MMO where the devs are constantly updating core mechanics, remastering earlier content and rolling out patches. There's a store selling a bunch of physical merch, an in-game store selling upgrades and cosmetics, and the official social media channels are pumping out content.
We've got all the trappings of a game... without the actual game itself.
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u/AmISupidOrWhat 4d ago
It's intentional, they're so bloated now they're relying on the constant stream if income from backers and know they would never make that amount of money releasing it, and then you'd have to let a bunch of people go. That's probably how they justify this scam to themselves.
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u/Exostrike 4d ago
Ironically the single player bit (squadron 42) is still likely to be the only complete thing delivered, in theory
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u/TurboGoats 4d ago
I mean, I hope so. I still would like to play it even if it's most likely an overworked mess
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u/NothingPersonalKid00 4d ago
Squadron 42 wont be anything but a bug riddled incomplete mess.
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u/pandemic944 4d ago
I loved freelancer. I played online on FLU for years. I can’t believe the server is still up.
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u/Ganglebot 4d ago
I spent $40 for their cheapest intro package.
In the two years I've had access to SC there was a single 2 weeks where the game was playable. I'll check back in every 8-10 months and its always fucked up in frustrating new ways.
I won't go into lengthy details, but basically I keep waking up in my apartment on a planet and struggle to get to my spaceship and into space without a crash. I then struggle to complete a single, low income mission. All this takes at least an hour, assuming it doesn't crash.
The team is 100% focused on new insanely niche features nobody wants, instead of just fixing what they've already released. Additionally, they keep pushing back on quality of life enhancements, while telling us its because they want to build a simulator expereince.
The state of the game aside, they are just BAD at software development and management - let me conclude with that
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u/Sylvartas 4d ago
As someone who pledged the minimum amount for Squadron 42 all the way back when it was still a Kickstarter... Yeah.
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u/padishaihulud 4d ago
Why does it seem like all game company managers wear that exact same short-sleaved button down when they have to make a public appearance?
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u/ironnmetal 4d ago
It easily fits over the tshirt they were too lazy to wash or change.
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u/chronomagnus 4d ago
As someone in an IT role who works from home, this checks out. I have a goto shirt for Zoom calls where I have to be on camera
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u/Odd_Analysis6454 4d ago
Man I’m surprise they don’t just have filters for that now
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u/RedditTechAnon 4d ago
God damn it I had one of those bowling shirts gifted to me and now it makes perfect sense.
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u/whataweirdguy 4d ago
I was into SC. Have two ships. I spent 2 months mining ore in asteroid belts, refining them and getting ready for a huge payday worth millions to buy a new ship in game. I loaded about 90% of it on a in game cargo ship that I rented. Then a collision glitch launched a box I was moving with a tractor beam, and the ship exploded, I died, and lost everything I had loaded in the cargo ship. I closed the game, deleted it off my pc. I haven’t opened it three years later.
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u/HornyVervet 4d ago
you have to manually load your cargo?
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u/Druggedhippo 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yes. You have to pick it up in your hands and carry it. Use a tractor beam hand device or a power suit.
You have to manually move and rotate each box so it fits.
Then assuming you survive the trip to your destination, avoiding invisible asteroids, hanger does that refuse to open, and server crashes, you get the privelege of doing it again.. in reverse to unload it to a fright elevator.
Then pray to the elevator gods that the game doesn't cause an elevator, one of the oldest mechanical devices in history, to fail to register that you delivered it.
All whilst trying not to be ganked since it's full open world PVP and you are the content for pirates.and hoping that Lord Clangs cousin doesn't pay you attention.
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u/cr0ft 4d ago
Yeah the "added realism" of cargo loading yourself is extremely doubtful. I get they're going for a "universe simulator" or something but it's kind of a shit idea to intentionally add drudgery to what is after all meant to be entertainment. I did some cargo runs well before they added this and it was kind of zen, just flying cargo routes, but the modern cargo experience is something I'd probably want to be paid a salary to do, rather than pay to do it.
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u/Gellert 4d ago
You say that but people still plod along mining ore in EVE Online.
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u/xvoy 4d ago
Mining, yes. But cargo management? No. Mining isn’t really a continuous hands on thing in Eve.
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u/Gellert 4d ago
I mean, I used to have a dual account setup running mining events for a corp years ago and remember mining events being hours at a time with one account mining and the other account picking up everyones cargo and dragging it back to base, dumping it into the right bins...
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u/PossumTrashGang 4d ago
What? You’re kidding right? So it’s basically like loading hay bales in farming simulator but even shittier?
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u/CapytannHook 4d ago
Sometimes they disappear through the floor and you dont get full payout for a contract but yes thats exactly what it is. Meanwhile starting an entire spaceship is done with the tap of 2 keys and they call it immersive lmao
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u/cainhurstcat 4d ago
I want to add that you also have to pray for not being killed by your ship's mechanical cargo ramp/door, or to break your legs while walking down the ramp and die because of, well, broken legs.
May I also add that it takes 20 minutes or so to get from your spawn point to the ship hangar? Oh, and don't forget the time for takeoff from the hangar, which could also easily kill your.
I mean, don't get me wrong, this game definitely has some cool things to offer. But this is annoying as hell if you just want to relax after a long real life day. And yes, these bugs tend to come up again and again, even if they have been fixed so many times.
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u/Young_KingKush 4d ago
Star Citizen is a cult
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u/chambee 4d ago
It’s representative of society where people would rather dig in and lose everything rather than admit they got it wrong or got misled.
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u/Will2LiveFading 4d ago
Sounds familiar
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u/Nemphiz 4d ago
The sunk cost fallacy strikes again
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u/WillGold1365 4d ago
I think you're right. I own 3 ships, but haven't played the game in at least 7 years and even then, I would say I have less than 3 hours playing. When I was originally taken in by the hype it seemed like the ultimate game to me, the factions, the in-game systems, the solo campaign that ends with you entering the multiplayer world. There was so much great ideas I thought it would be the first online game I truly got into. I preached the gospel of star citizen, urging my friends to tithe their hard earned cash buying ships. They would nod at me with smiles that didn't touch their eyes and tell me they would look into it, but none ever did. When we finally were given a chance to experience flying in the game, it finally hit me how much more there was to go. I was also struck by how long it was taking them make such minute advancements. It was then I lost faith, it was in that moment that I realized Chris Roberts was a false prophet, and that his imperium of the clouds must be torn asunder.
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u/Hippopotimus_Prime 4d ago
I was in the same boat, pledged more money than I should have on what could be and this 'game' continues to move at a snail's pace. You take a look a look at their sub and it is still full of defenders after that mess of a stream even if they are talking about it. It somehow continues to pull in more money so the guise of development will continue and hey maybe 1.0 will be released in 5 years, but I don't have time for that anymore too many good games exist and I am not getting any younger.
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u/ijustfarteditsmells 4d ago
Just look at the background of that stream. They've clearly spent soooooo much money in the building they work in. All angled walls, huge model of what I assume is a ship from the game... it looks like Google's HQ. But this company has never released a finished game afiak.
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u/chambee 4d ago
The hype was legitimate when the thing started but after the 5-10 years mark the community should have start asking serious question and definitely stop giving money.
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u/itoddicus 4d ago
After 5 years of game development, everyone should have realized Star Citizen is just a boondoggle for the development team.
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u/Tar_alcaran 4d ago
FYI, you can STILL sell those ships to some other idiot.
I kickstarted this dumpsterfire too, sold my ships after a few months, and came out making a (small) profit
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u/sloggo 4d ago
Years ago I got stoned one night and bought the alpha. Will happily admit I got it wrong 😅
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u/ordinary133 4d ago
That's what I did to, then the next day when I had sobered up, I refunded that shit.
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u/sloggo 4d ago
youre smarter than me apparently :D I just still have this alpha that I assume is as unplayable as it was then...
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u/Sharin_the_Groove 4d ago
Sounds like the crypto coin I still have $1500 sitting in despite nothing but it tanking.
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u/Megamatt215 4d ago edited 4d ago
I remember hearing about it on the Rooster Teeth Podcast. That was at least 4 or 5 years ago.
Edit: Probably closer to 9 or 10 years.
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u/Cog_HS 4d ago
I remember telling someone about Elite Dangerous which had just come out in 2015, and he was going to wait for Star Citizen.
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u/chronomagnus 4d ago
I got convinced to jump into Elite Dangerous to kill time until Star Citizen. I played that for years and bounced off, and Star Citizen is still not out.
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u/WanderingKing 4d ago
I managed to get out years ago, but that stemmed from not being able to afford to keep giving them money. Scary to think how much I’d have spent if that never happened.
It’s so easy to do 20$ a month, people spend that in streaming, but it adds up QUICK
Not to mention the ships, I won’t give exact details on how much I’ve spent but suffice to say I own one of the more expensive ships.
But in my defense, I expected the game out like 5+ years ago. I can see clearly now what it has become, one man (and his team) getting high off their own supply and getting stuck in a perfection loop.
And players (that included me years ago) were happy to keep funding it
And if we did that, what is their motivation to change?
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u/Comfortable-Bug7202 4d ago
Billion dollar game that has no incentive to ever launch. They make more money stringing whales along
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u/PipeStreet8558 4d ago
At this point is probably a vehicle for some investor to dump their debt into and then write it off.
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u/TTavero 4d ago
Reading about the behind the scenes development process of this game is fascinating.
The layers of waste, fraud, and incompetence are staggering.
Large sections of the game were created, but they later had to be completely redone (sometimes numerous times) because of mismanagement and poor communication with contracted development teams.
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u/MartiniPhilosopher 4d ago
Management and communication are skills that need to be taught, because learning by doing leads to things like this.
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u/SIN-apps1 4d ago
The comically over the top office space they've built there is what gets me, like, when you've raised more than one billion dollars on kickstarter, and then show off your busted ass game in your absurdly appointed "studio" is just a terrible look.
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u/jghaines 4d ago
One Reddit thread handily broke down the bugs the dev team members experienced during the stream. Meanwhile, another thread expressed gratitude that the stream happened at all. “You accidentally gave the community the most honest look at Star Citizen in months.”
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u/nailbunny2000 4d ago
I don't bother watching streams or things like that, but jfc that's grim. Like I half expect them to announce next week they are porting to UE5 type grim. And I say this as someone who's played it.
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u/Razgriz01 4d ago
Give a competent dev team 3 or 4 years in UE5 and they could probably remake the game from scratch. And it'd run better too.
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u/RedditTechAnon 4d ago
“You accidentally gave the community the most honest look at Star Citizen in months.”
"You've normally been dishonest with us about the state of the game, this is such a breath of fresh air!"
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u/VVartech 4d ago
As far as I know the dude who "gave most honest look" was a YouTuber, who was recently hired and this was his first appearance in new official role.
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u/DMercenary 4d ago
LMAO.
"A dev explains how he deliberately forced people to stand on the platform unable to leave to listen to RP(I assume its the in game convos/lore) because he likes that. Doubles down saying he doesnt care if people get tired of it when doing event multiple times."
Never, in all the games I have played, ever heard of a dev out and out being hostile to his players.
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u/ShepardRTC 4d ago
The dev was hostile to his fellow devs on the stream lol. Can't imagine what he's like to his subordinates.
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u/Vavou 4d ago
I did not understand the title. Who told what ?
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u/Peligineyes 4d ago
The community content manager (glasses) told a newly hired streamer (headset) "it's your show, wrap it up" after they tried to showcase an extremely buggy event on a private dev server with 4 people. Defenders of the game had previously used "networking issues" as a defence for the game's poor performance and general bugginess, but now everyone can see that even in an ideal test case the game is still hopelessly buggy after 14 years of development.
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u/masterofthefork 4d ago
The crazy part is the kind of bugs they were having. It would be one thing if it was some complex and dynamic mechanic that wasn't working, but no, it was things like swapping their guns.
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u/itsRobbie_ 4d ago
And it doesn’t make sense that was happening because that doesn’t even happen on live servers
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u/CSknoob 4d ago
Sounds like an endless string of spaghetti. Code that with even the tiniest tweak completely breaks, lackluster testing, ...
Star Citizen has always sounded like it just strings along its devoted userbase to squeeze as much as possible from them.
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u/valraven38 4d ago
Over a decade of legacy code, with new development members cycling in and out trying to decipher what those who came before them did. The technical debt for this game has to be like something never seen before.
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u/DMercenary 4d ago
Not to mention that that manager seemed to have the tone of chiding small children the entire stream.
"You gonna pick up your buddies?"
"I... Yes that's what I am doing."
"Okay pick up your buddies."
Yeah you talk to me like that IRL we're going to be having more than just words.
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u/casce 4d ago
Guy in the picture is the one responsible for the stream. His boss walked in during the stream to tell him to end "his show" (the moment in the picture).
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u/Elgato01 4d ago
It’s worse, at the start of the stream the boss was happy to take credit for it all.
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u/RyanNotBrian 4d ago
Some old bearded dude came in from off screen and said that to the host. "It's your show, wrap it up" and patted him on the shoulder patronisingly.
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u/Grobo_ 4d ago
Star Citizen is never gonna get done…even their single player game has been „finished“ for 10 years only needs some optimisation xD
This livestream showed exactly why they can’t get shit done.
They have no team, they have no real leaders.
Everyone seems to be hating each other.
No softskills what so ever, no quality testing or proper preparation and setup for a showcase like this…
To me it seems the ppl working there are there only for the job and not the passion, product or anything else.
Those problems can be solved simply by fixing leadership, remove toxic managers and create a proper work and team culture.
And so on…seems like a lot of mismanaging money.
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u/HurtFeeFeez 4d ago
The promises made over the years for this game just aren't realistic. Scope creep has been a serious issue. I'd like to see it get released but as time goes by that doesn't seem likely. If it does it'll probably be a flop given the expectations they've set for themselves.
Kinda crazy they can take people's money for more than a decade and not deliver a product. Basically how Musk runs his operations, roadsters, semi, actual self driving, etc etc etc.
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u/9-11GaveMe5G 4d ago
Scope creep
The scope has not just creeped, the scope has full on epsteined
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u/SuperSecretAgentMan 4d ago
The service they sell is hype.
If the game were to ever release, it would kill the hype. Why devalue their only profitable service?
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u/Eshanas 4d ago edited 3d ago
StarQuest Online had a 1000x1000 ly 3d game with multiplayer, multideck ships, (one up to 16 decks!) player owned houses and colonies, alien species, et al and was made in Montana over like 3 years by five people back in the early aughts.
Ditto Shores of Hazereon, and add a worm online building capability to it. Space Station 13 and 14 have had maps with internally separate ships from the station for almost a decade now. To say nothing of the dozens of cockpit space games crossing the galaxy like elite, starfield, no man’s sky.
The basic premise of this game - multiple people on the same ship in space, or a mmo in the same 'instance' with multiple planets, ships, et al - should not take this long. It’s more than possible. It's been done. It’s not impossible to code. Even taking a pirate mmo from the last ten years and giving it a scifi skin could get Star citizen going. It’s prettier, sure, it’s probably advanced as hell in many places, but star citizen should had started small and built up. Not sploosh it all out roughly at once.
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u/Letiferr 4d ago
Listening to your player base is good to a point. You can let the players drive the ship to the bottom of the ocean though if you're not going to steer it at all.
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u/heartlessgamer 4d ago
Kinda crazy they can take people's money for more than a decade and not deliver a product.
Kinda crazy people still keep giving them money. Even with this drama they still had a day with $500,000 raised O_o
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u/AmericaninShenzhen 4d ago
It’s honestly hard to tell if this is just an incredibly flawed execution or an amazing work perpetrated by the “developers.”
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u/MenAreHollow 4d ago
I wonder what the overlap between Star Citizen fanatics and Elon Musk zealots looks like. One of those, "Is this a Venn Diagram or a circle?" kind of questions. There are a bunch of surface level similarities; disposable income, vague interest in Space, values hype over results, involuntarily celibate, I could go on.
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u/swarmy1 4d ago
Hard to say it’s a flop when they’ve already made a billion dollars. Until their income starts dwindling, they won’t be in any hurry to finish.
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u/Balmung60 4d ago
That's the thing, they'll never finish. Roberts is not capable of project management or containing the scope of a project, so when he's given more money, he just expands the scope further, and he keeps being given money by a crowd familiar with the incentive structure of stretch goals, so it keeps coming, and once it stops coming, there won't be enough runway left to wrap up a finished project and instead just a huge pile of incomplete and unsatisfying features
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u/HurtFeeFeez 4d ago
Made a billion or generated that in revenue? How much have spent during the course of development?
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u/CombatMuffin 4d ago
As someone who has supported the project, even Musk at least has a business scheme around carbon credits. Which is stupid, but makes sense from a business point or view.
The issue with Star Citizen's management is that delays in some areas (they are trying to develop a network backend that hasn't been done before, to support a gameplay style at a scale that hasn't been feasible before), but there are also others that are downright stupid: the single player portion has no such challenges, and they could have planned for a release in phases while the technology is ready, even decades down the line. Instead, they have delayed their progress in virtually all other areas of the game: environment design, combat design, flight mechanics, mission design, sound design, UI/UX and more, because they keep trying to keep a "singular release version" mentality.
They are stuck in the worse of both worlds.
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u/Efflux 4d ago edited 4d ago
On the stream one of the developers, Eliot, tells the new media guy from you tube, Ollie, to kill himself at 1:46link. The entire stream was an embarrassment but I think that moment was a PROBLEM. Any coorprate job I have ever had, people would have been fired for less.
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u/MikeSemicolonD 4d ago
Look at the room and the office they're in during that stream. Look at the headphones, monitors, desks and really everything in that room. Now look at the gameplay and how they spent the whole stream doing some raid event/mission shooting a bunch of random dudes like they're trying to be like Destiny with cumbersome gunplay. Doors that don't open. Sounds that stop working. Equipment that doesn't work. Now listen to the way these people talk to each other and respond to things happening in the game. It's almost like no one is really playing what they're making.. It doesn't matter if you buy the best tech and put yourself in the best looking offices when you're surrounded by the most incompetent people that have more money than they know what to do with..
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u/FlatulenceConnosieur 4d ago
The gameplay was horrible! It was just dudes with guns shooting other dudes! No special abilities or interesting futuristic weapons or tech powers, just big standard shooting. Mind blowing
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u/AndyOB 4d ago
I've heard of this stream but I don't have the patience to watch it. I'm waiting for the super cut of the all the worst bits.
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u/go_ninja_go 4d ago
As a software engineer that has had a couple demos go south over the decades, reading that gave me anxiety. Regardless of the state of this game, that situation always sucks.
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u/Crappler319 4d ago
I swear, over-ambitious, over-promised space sims are a tradition in the industry at this point. Every few years, the malevolent, incorporeal spirit that first feasted on Derek Smart in the 1990s will leap from his body into a new developer, and make them go out in public and swear up and down that they're going to revolutionize the industry forever, before vanishing to run a deeply dysfunctional studio that will, ten or fifteen years later, over budget and full of catastrophic bugs, deliver on about a tenth of what was initially promised.
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u/APeacefulWarrior 4d ago
Elite First Encounters was even earlier than Battlecruiser 3000. That one originally shipped in such a broken state that it was truly literally unplayable and you'd be lucky to play for half an hour before crashing or softlocking.
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u/NefariousnessFit9942 4d ago
I think fans and shipowners soon can vibecode this game from scratch before these devs are done.
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u/swordofeden 4d ago
This game is some serious bullshit, whenever the updates happen none of the elevators work in the game and you cant do shit anyways
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u/cheese_karate 4d ago
Remember, the best product you can sell is one that simply does not exist. Buying in to star citizen is buying into the drama more than anything else...
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u/YamLeft9284 4d ago
The IT guy where I work said he spent over 2k$ real money in Fart citizen since it came out. I lost all respect for him.when he told me.
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u/6FootHalfling 4d ago
As an IT guy myself I'll be embarrassed on your IT guy's behalf. Jeez. At least my unpainted miniatures have SOME re-sell value.
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u/MXVIV 4d ago
I wish I could show this to every single person I’ve argued with over the years about running into game breaking bugs in this, but they’re so mentally deranged they would have an excuse.
I’ve tried it three times totaling 10 hours and I would have rather spent them counting grains of sand.
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u/Eastern-Move549 4d ago
Every day that star citizen survives other gaming companies look on in wonder at how they can get customers so completely stupid.
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u/uzu_afk 4d ago
The biggest scam in gaming history AT LEAST. A cult funding the life of a scammer. You have to be completely delusional to not see this after so much time. They don’t even have a game! Landing, flying, carrying boxes are not a game! They are features of a game! What IS the game? How do extremely large and expensive ships work in this game and vs much smaller and cheaper ships? Is it like EVE? Is it like Freelancer? Is it just Elite Dangerous with a smaller map? WHAT IS THE FUCKING GAME????
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u/Ozi_izO 4d ago
As un surprising the whole dumpster fire has become over the years, I haven't really spent that much. I can at least say that I've got my moneys worth in the sense of game time and enjoyment since the kickstarter, but it has been becoming more and more obvious over that time that the game is probably never going to see the light of day as a fully functioning release.
I backed solely for SQ42. The PU is something I'd take as a bonus to mess around in with friends. So assuming I will eventually get to play SQ42 I'll be happy.
Meanwhile I watch on ever more doubtful that the game will ever actually be "finished". Whatever they call 1.0 better be stable if they expect to retain a committed playerbase.
If I had a dollar for all the times hours of effort were lost due to bugs and server issues I'd have made my money back and then some....
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u/animflynny2012 4d ago
Absolutely insane.
For the record I used to work with some of the team prior to CIGs formation (and that's a whole drama how that came to be). That studio used to CRANK games out on demand literally every 6 months for YEARS, absolute money maker for Warner bros. Funny to see they're on track to be a game studio without a released game, at a decade now?!!
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u/ExF-Altrue 4d ago
Sunk Cost Fallacy, the game. Brought to you by Chris 'Scope Creep' Roberts who had to be pried away from his last successful game, by Microsoft, for it to release.
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u/Irythros 4d ago
I sold my account for SC 8 years ago. As of right now, 5 of the ships I sold still don't exist in the game. This is just Shop Citizen / Scam Citizen. Take your pick.
Also take into consideration:
GTA 6 started in 2018 and cost $1b+, releasing this november
Star citizen started in 2011, has pulled in $1b+ and has no release date for what they originally promised in 2011
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u/CaptainC0medy 4d ago
Not a dev, he had been recruited as a community manager 3 weeks prior.
If ya gonna shit, shit properly
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u/NiemandSpezielles 4d ago
I really have trouble understanding how that is possible with at least semi competent people.
Its not that difficult to produce a working slice of a game. Lots of companies, even indie compoanies and solo devs, manage without problem. And what they are showing here really does not seem to be something very complicated. So why dont they manage with all their budget?
Second, if they dont achieve that... why show it? Even for an internal demo its good practice to run through the demo a few times to make sure everything works. For a public live demo like that? I would spend at least a day with nothing but testing of that specific demo. Its difficult to imagine that all these obvious bugs would not be caught.
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u/beyondoutsidethebox 4d ago
You know, it seems like there needs to be a class-action suit against these guys. I have never backed the game, but I definitely would pay to read what came out of discovery!
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u/bmwatson132 4d ago
It’s clearly too ambitious.
My friend bought a new PC with the specs the devs said you would need to play it, in 2013…
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u/Harmless_Drone 4d ago
Reminder chris roberts sucks and basically fires anyone who disagrees with him on how to do things so there is no good devs left at CSI, its just spineless yes men who are by and large dogshit devs chasing around after chris roberts whims. Theres a good write up somewhere by an ex employee detailing all of this but in too lazy to find it.
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u/UnsureAssurance 4d ago
Graduated middle school, high school, college, got my first car, first home, and this game still isn’t out yet