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Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done'

⁨450⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩

https://wccftech.com/star-citizen-expose-paints-a-fairly-bleak-picture-theres-no-actual-focus-on-getting-the-game-done/

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Comments

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  • Rottcodd@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Do people just not know who and what Chris Roberts is?

    This is what he’s done throughout his career - the only thing that’s notable about Star Citizen really is the scale of it and thus the opportunities he has to find ever more things to obsessively tinker with.

    It’s entirely possible that if Microsoft hadn’t bought out Digital Anvil and given him the boot, this wouldn’t even be Star Citizen - it would be Freelancer, coming into its 25th year of delays.

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    • p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Chris Roberts is still rich, and could probably retire right now without worrying about anything. He could tank the company, and he wouldn’t care.

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      • Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        When has any really rich person ever gone “you know what? I actually have enough now…”?

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    • morrowind@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I don’t, what else has he procrastinated on?

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      • lime@feddit.nu ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        the wing commander series was famous for inflated development costs, freelancer was repeatedly delayed and eventually released like five years after it’s announcement, and since then… he’s been working on star citizen

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    • Shadywack@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I mean, some people called this back in fucking 2012, but the dreamers bought into his vision. He’s always been real great about vision and lofty ambitions, but shit on execution. He sells dreams, but doesn’t know how to finish anything. Every project he was attached to that executed on deliverables, was due to control being outside of his purview and accountability enforced.

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  • peopleproblems@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    And then, compare it to No Man’s Sky, who gave us lofty expectations, failed to deliver on launch, but actually kept with it despite no new revenue flowing into the game from existing buyers. And now we have something incredible. We have a universe that is unfathomably large. We have multiplayer, we have all sorts of events and quests. Freighters! You can piece together your own ships now.

    I hope we can eventually build space stations or pilot Capital Ships. No Man’s Sky came out in 2016. In 8 years it has done far more than SC has done with far less of a budget.

    Do I wish we could have everything that Roberts promised? Sure. But I also have a bridge to sell that you can at least walk over.

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    • ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      NMS certainly evolved a lot, but I wouldn’t call it incredible. Also, despite the game universe being absurdly large, you can see everything there is to see visiting less than 20 star systems

      All the daily quicksilver quests are a fucking chore, too.

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    • ms_lane@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Also to be fair (and critical), while Sean lied to both Sony and us about the state of the game-

      They also probably did have most of everything they promised at once point, then the Christmas Flood happened. That’s when the lies started and but those lies were likely more for Sony rather than us, as it’s entirely possible Sony would have outright cancelled the game if they’d known how much was actually lost in the flood.

      Instead they released what they could in the time they had left then just kept plugging away at it post release.

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      • Hadriscus@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        the christmas flood ?

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  • Allero@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That was my concern long ago when I entered the game.

    The problem is, CIG have financially incentivised themselves, knowingly or not, to never finish the game.

    Being alpha game means you can wipe everything again and again. And they do! One thing they do not touch, however, are ships purchased with real world money. And players do buy those ships in order to not start the game from scratch over and over again, and pay a lot for it, in hundreds and often thousands of dollars!

    Upon release, on the other hand, no wipes are planned, and this means one thing: revenue will absolutely plummet as players just buy ships for in-game currency instead of actual cash. Releasing the game now is a suicide move, as CIG won’t be able to blatantly extort players for their money anymore.

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    • Astronauticaldb@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Not to mention that they also incentivise players to spend real-world money by having their website have a secret club for whales (I think you need to spend either $1K or $5K in order to have the button appear) to spend even more money then they did to even gain access.

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      • Allero@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yes, of you spend over $1k on the game you gain access to beta-testing etc.

        And the most scary part? Plenty of people do spend this much money - I know many Carrack owners, for example, and this ship costed, when I remember it, $1200. Yes, $1200 for an in-game ship, and there’s plenty of buyers.

        Heck, I know a person in Ukraine - not a high-income country by any standards, GDP per capita sitting at ~$5000 - who spent about $6000 on the game by hiding huge portion of his income from his family for years.

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  • Zahille7@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Who’d a thunk

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  • shadowedcross@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah, Star Citizen is the world’s most expensive tech demo, that is the picture book definition of scope creep. It’ll just keep getting more and more complicated, but never get to any kind of a “complete game” state.

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    • slaacaa@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I work as project manager, just spent the entire week fighting a client on a new project’s scope, because he wanted more things done by the team than we agreed.

      Anytime I read about this game. I have to do breathing excercises in a corner to calm my anxiety.

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    • SplashJackson@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I just hope when it finally releases it has just as many tits as Duke Nukem Forever

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  • Adderbox76@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Well no shit. He figured out that as long as you never “release” a finished game, you’re not going to be blamed for “bugs” while still collecting money on in-game purchases.

    There’s a reason he made sure that the in-game store was perfected and ready to go long before the game was anywhere near completed. It’s been the plan ever since he and his team realized that the ultimate scope was likely out of their reach.

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    • scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If massive universe sums like that were technically feasible all of the other studios would have done it. They were overly ambitious and didn’t understand the limits

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      • Maalus@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I mean Elite Dangerous is right there, finished, playable and fun.

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      • Scolding7300@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        In terms of immersion I think they’ve done a great job. Played during a free weekend. But they need to aim for a gameplay loop, polish, and release. Not this feature creep mentality

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  • kaffiene@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Like, obviously?

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    • nutsack@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      i like to speak in question marks? good?

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      • kaffiene@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Your comprehension issues are a you problem

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  • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Because Crysis looked good, Chris Roberts mandated that Star Citizen would use Cryengine 3.

    To make astronomically large spaces fit in cryengine, they made everything infinitesimally small.

    So now the inaccuracy inherent in floating point calculations, instead of nudging things a few millimeters, teleports people hundreds of feet out of their ships into space if they bump into a physics object, ladder, elevator, etc.

    This is what happens when an ideas guy with no technical knowledge is making technical decisions.

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    • G0ldenSp00n@lemmy.jacaranda.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      This is not even true, they rewrote the engine to support native 64-bit precision to let them fit large spaces, they didn’t just make everything small. They basically employ all the people that used to make Cryengine since Crytek went out of business, so the engine they are building is actually pretty good.

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      • Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I am engine developer, but even to this day you can clearly see Cryengine 3.x issue in star citizen.

        They simulate zero-g areas as a Cryengine underwater map. You routinely see stuff floating as if in water even on planets with gravity.

        You can also witness strange bugs that confirm the size issue (that they made everything extremely small in a Frankenstein version of a Cryengine map); one example would be your footmarks suddenly becoming massive.

        The completely fucked up physics in sc (e.g. tanks bouncing like beachballs) is also a legacy of Cryengine 3.0.

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      • Fades@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Classic, the person who doesn’t know what they’re talking about is SO sure that they know the truth. So much so they’re out here correcting people and handing out false info.

        so the engine they are building is actually pretty good

        Keep living in a false reality pal. I’m sure you k or so much more than the engine dev who replied to you

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    • billiam0202@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      To make astronomically large spaces fit in the game engine from 2009, they made everything infinitesimally small.

      In fairness, when Star Citizen first went in to development CE3 was a modern engine.

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    • sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Jesus fucking christ, that was their fundamental approach?!

      … Did they ever come anywhere close to a dynamic server model, with dynamically sized in game zones being handled by dynamically changing server clusters, dependant on player count in an area?

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      • perslue@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        After 10 years they increased the per server population from 50 to 100, but don’t worry server messing soon TM.

        So no.

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    • nailbar@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      This is what happens when an ideas guy with no technical knowledge is making technical decisions.

      If you’re talking about Chris, he’s a coder too, and wrote some of the entiry container system for the game.

      I’m not sure where you’re getting your info about them scaling everything down and that being the cause for wonky physics, though.

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    • Cris_Color@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Wow… I’m pretty crap at making decisions, but like… not that crap 😅 that’s like an impressively bad choice

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  • MilitantAtheist@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Why would there be? Seems to work really well this way. Just keep milking the idiots of their money.

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    • InFerNo@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The actual news is that the money is starting to run dry

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      • Banzai51@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        And this CitCon didn’t do anything to stem that tide if true.

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  • yamanii@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’ve genuinely been sat in meetings that got derailed for 30 minutes so that the placement of objects that players are likely never to interact with could be discussed in detail. There’s just no actual focus on getting the game done.

    We have a saying here that translates to something like this: “perfect is the enemy of done”. Getting lost in details like this will always delay things a ton.

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    • cmhe@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Also called bikeshedding.

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    • Fades@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      My boss LOVES to throw that out all the time as a defense for when I inform him that he and mgmt are rushing something out the door that isn’t ready

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  • jewbacca117@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Damn. I had really hoped my grandchildren would get to play Star Citizen in their lives.

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  • Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Misguided development at CIG? Why I never!

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    • brey1013@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Shocked I tell you!!! Who could have seen this coming!?!

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  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    yeah they been grifting do long thats all thry care about anymore

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  • Etterra@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I never fell for this, and I’m laughing at you if you did.

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    • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      One of my ex coworkers has spent somewhere in the ballpark of 12k. He sells, flips and trades rare ships to sell back to people after the exclusivity of the ship has expired. He’s made like 4k. I don’t understand gaming anymore.

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      • ours@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        That’s not gaming anymore than people buying toys, leaving them in their boxes as an “investment” are into playing with toys.

        Meanwhile the rest of us are buying games, playing them, enjoying them, moving on to other games and so on.

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      • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        to be fair this kind of expenditure and aftermarket exists in CCGs.

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      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Lol if that game is ever finished, I bet there’s going to be some people who paid way too much for a ship that turns out to completely suck but seemed ok on paper. Kinda like a PT cruiser, except it looked ok on paper.

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    • throbbing_banjo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      They got my $40 in 2012. I absolutely loved the Wing Commander series; Wing Commander II was an embarrassingly important part of my adolescense, I love space sims, and still had fond enough memories of the name Chris Roberts that I didn’t think he’d blatantly lie and steal from me.

      How people are still giving these clowns money I have no idea.

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      • setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        People are buying the dream. There is personal investment now- this isn’t a game, this is their game. Whenever the studio finally folds, I guarantee there will be whales lamenting that if they’d only spent a little more they have kept the game afloat.

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      • Summzashi@lemmy.one ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Same here. It was a much different time. Lots of games that originated in kickstarter became succesful. This just seemed like another one.

        Hindsight is 20/20

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    • reksas@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      i want to fall for it yet i keep waiting for further development, thankfully they occasionally do free flight events so I can actually test the game without having to pay

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    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I used to be like you, laughing and enjoying life.

      The new director of technology we just hired a few months ago flexed about how he’s now hit 6-digit donations to Star Citizen. It’s still early and he hasn’t shown any results, but if he’s following the Star Citizen path of growth, my department is fucked.

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  • limitedduck@awful.systems ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Today was day one of Citizencon and CIG revealed a lot of stuff that shows they’re still working to give players the game they want. Most of it was actually tech to answer the scalability problem for everyone wondering how they’re going to get to 100 star systems when they still only have 1

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    • fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Next it’ll be 1000 star systems while we’re still waiting on Squadron 42.

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      • arudesalad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Fun fact: If you take the year, add two, you’ll get the current planned release date for sq42

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      • limitedduck@awful.systems ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Personally, I don’t think they should be aiming for 100 anymore, even if it was promised. That number was for the original pitch and was arbitrarily high since it was for a much shallower and easier to create game

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  • Thcdenton@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah no shit

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  • FangedWyvern42@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Is anyone really surprised?

    I do think they will at least release Squadron 42, but the main game is never coming out

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    • Banzai51@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m pretty sure Chris Roberts views Squadron 42 as the main game.

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    • rozodru@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I honestly don’t even think they’ll get that far. I mean they’ve announced it now, yet again, for a 2026 release date…two years from now. they’ve been doing this for the past decade. “It’ll release in 2016” then it’s “Squadron 42 coming 2018” and so on and so forth. Mark my words we’ll get to 2026 and at their little convention they have to further milk their userbase of money they’ll announce Squadron 42 for 2028 but please, user, they need more backers and as a reward for backing you’ll get a fancy ship you’ll never get to keep.

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  • Bonesince1997@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    SCAM

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    • slaacaa@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You’re just jelous of my 5k kimited edition spaceship (will be ready next year)

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  • pyre@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    and here I was thinking they always planned to finish the game in about 16 to 30 years.

    sorry I meant durrrr

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  • Cagi@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Squadron 42 is feature complete and is in optimization and polish phase. 30-40 hour campaign. It looks amazing. youtu.be/1H-0x4xk2Xk?si=Q3SmA_skltVVUkiy

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    • mosiacmango@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      They released the game to the public this weekend? That is amazing.

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      • Cagi@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        “Everything that challenges my feelings is a lie!”

        You sound like MAGAs discussing immigration under a Fox News post. Circle jerk of hate based on misinformation, but trying to talk reason to people who love to hate the thing they hate and don’t want to stop is not going to work. Keep on believing gaming journalists from disreputable tabloids who invent controversy for clicks. The engagement on Star Citizen hate posts is massive compared to others. Hating Star Citizen is directly more profitable for these sites. There is no oversight on truthfulness in gaming news.

        No, it’s not an FPS. It’s 99% a space sim like Wing Commander with a few FPS parts. It is a full AAA game, maximum fidelity, 30-40 hour campaign. You don’t even know what you’re talking about. You could a tally watch the video you have so many opinions about, but oh that’s right, it’s a conspiracy if it’s good.

        Not released? I have hundreds of hours in Star Citizen and have enjoyed them all. That’s not very much compared to many, many others. They are growing in players and revenue for 10 years. That doesn’t happen to bad games. They release massive updates every quarter. They just bought a new campus in Manchester so they can hire more devs, on top of the existing thousand. It’s a genuinely fun game, right now, enjoyed by many. You don’t have to be one of them, but your tinfoil hat nonsense is just vitriolic skepticism from reading these tabloids, not critical thinking.

        We’re out there, flying around, having a great time wanting y’all to join our space shenanigans. Just try it the next free-fly with an open mind. Even if you tried it before, try it now, it is improving every quarter, it’s a different beast now than a few years ago.

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      • EchoCT@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        “didn’t show anyone playing it live.” Uh. Clive was literally playing on stage during the showcase. Complete with yearly CTD and all.

        I’m all for shitting on CIGs trash practices, but you don’t need to lie to get there.

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    • Banzai51@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      They claimed it was feature complete in 2023. And now they claim it is two years away from release. You really think polish and optimization takes three years? Of course, they’ve claimed it is just two years away every year since 2016.

      They are lying to you.

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      • Cagi@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Lol, one of us certainly has been lied to. Your Las post is blatantly false, your first is basedon how your guess about how AAA game design works. I’ll trust the many, many game devs who actually play the game and roll their eyes at comments like yours.

        I’ve actually played the game, bought it and have no regrets. Hundreds of hours, new friends, new experiences. You passively absorbed the groupthink. I don’t care if it ever finishes, I’ve gotten more than enough fun per dollar out this game already. Cry about it if you want, just do it quietly.

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    • Fades@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Hey look, it’s one of those gullible marks.

      “Feature complete” but they can’t release it for another two years? Hmmm…… 🤔

      As a dev myself this shit is hilarious

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  • WhyFlip@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Star Citizen sounds right up my alley in terms of game content and play, but I will never touch it due to the business model they’ve chosen.

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    • Psythik@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      All I want is a space pirate game that doesn’t require me to quit my job and dedicate my life to it in order to acquire a good enough ship to actually be competitive.

      That, or a street racing MMO with realistic physics and a true-to-life level of customization and tuning, that has a map the size of small country. Like The Crew except no arcade physics and more than 5 players in a server. And also not shit.

      Somebody, please make one of these two games already. I need this so badly in my lifetime before I die.

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      • Randomgal@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        You want that online? If you’re okay with single player, the first one does exist: Check out the X series of games, the latest one is X:4 Foundations.

        Idk about racing lmao

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      • barryamelton@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        For racing, you have Fly Dangerous. It is also a successful FOSS game!

        store.steampowered.com/app/…/Fly_Dangerous/

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      • bbuez@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        My dream is to make or at least be a part of the former

        It is very hard

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  • draneceusrex@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Dull surprise.

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  • deegeese@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If they finished it they’d have to find a new revenue stream.

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  • immutable@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Why would you complete a game when you can make a constant stream of income and increase that income stream with announcements and drip feeds.

    Look at this madness robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals

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  • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    What’s the latest build weight in at?

    It’s so many gigs, it’s not even worth trying every so often. Every time you load it, gigs to download.

    Glad I only ever spent the initial $60

    The first big disappointment was the end of the funding rewards. Is any of those original rewards even noticable? Oh yay a fish! And a 42 towel to look at!

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  • Seditious_Delicious@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    OK. Never played SC so honest question here; What is wrong if the game is technically not complete? I mean the way I thought is that this means that it keeps evolving and expanding so new content and features become available as the game development progresses. What am I missing? Is this a similar situation to the Eve Online BitterVets?

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  • brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s still around?

    I remember when Star Citizen first popped up, and it makes me feel old.

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  • RangerJosie@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s called Store Citizen for a reason.

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  • And009@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I was hoping there to be a conspiracy story behind it but the crux is they don’t understand the concept of MVP or made anything before.

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