While no-one can confirm it's a scam (until it's proven to be a scam, duh) you have to at least be a little skeptical at this point? It's been what, 8+ years at this point, with numerous changes/upgrades/additions being added pushing things back further and further.
From what I gather, for a game in development (with a/multiple community managers at that) there is little communication to users, with some/majority of said users have also funded the thing.
The very little I have followed in the past 2 days, it seems like they like to release these sizzle reels to keep people interested when, at this point in time, these sizzle reels should be almost fully-fledged gameplay videos. It's been 8+ years of development!
So they said something along the lines of the last sizzle reel they wanted to release wasn't coming out well (or something to that affect) so they scrapped it and their roadmap sucks, so they are working on releasing a roadmap of the original roadmap.
When you take all of this, and even the broader industry as a whole are making fun of you for making a "roadmap of a roadmap"... it doesn't look good. Scam? To be determined? A laughing stock of the industry, that can't seem to produce anything worthwhile after 8+ years of development? Absolutely.
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Unsure if you are referring to AoC or SC, either way neither may expect that many people to pay the crazy alpha fees, but they (in the case of SC) sure did bring in over $300 Million to-date.