[Megathread] Star Citizen

[MrAnderson]

Estimates are just that, estimates. The only promise made was to make the best space sim ever, which is exactly what they are doing.
It doesn't matter how much some have trouble with waiting for a video-game that's just the way it was before and will continue to be.

Star Citizen will keep on being developed and being playable by anyone who chooses to do so while receiving updates every quarter.
Squadron 42 will be officially released when it's ready.

No amount of crying by the inpatient ones will ever change that. The release of Cyberpunk 2077 should be in the back of the minds of everyone who keeps asking to developers to rush up to release.

[banmebaby]

Its like a donation.

If you're not pledging

A pledge and a donation are two different things my dude. I believe the point here is that CiG failed to uphold their end to the deal by miles...

Estimates are just that, estimates.

If you miss an "estimated date" by 8 years, then that date wasn't much of an estimation.

[MrAnderson]

A pledge and a donation are two different things my dude. I believe the point here is that CiG failed to uphold their end to the deal by miles...
If you miss an "estimated date" by 8 years, then that date wasn't much of an estimation.

They keep upholding their end of the deal by developing Star Citizen and Squadron 42.

Estimates are done with the information known at the time they are made. As things change along the process so do estimates.

This is part of the process of game development and specially observed in crowdfunded mmo's due to the usual complexity and unpredictability of the genre and it's tech problems, along with normal the growing pains of building a game company from nothing and having to run and maintain live builds (to keep the community engaged) while actively developing engine/tools/pipelines to make the proposed game as true to the main core vision as possible.

[Afrospinach]

A pledge and a donation are two different things my dude. I believe the point here is that CiG failed to uphold their end to the deal by miles...

RSI is conducting a crowdfunding campaign to support the development of the Game and the related RSI Services. You do not purchase anything, you make a pledge towards the development of the Game and the other RSI Services. Your pledge entitles you to receive the selected in-game items when they are developed and introduced into the Alpha releases of Star Citizen and/or to receive the game Squadron 42, as selected. Please read this clause carefully to understand the differences between crowdfunding and a purchase.

Congrats on dictionary though?

The Pledge Funds will be earned by RSI at the earlier of:
when the Pledge Item becomes functional in Star Citizen’s Alpha Persistent Universe (or is delivered separately, such as the game Squadron 42), or
when your Pledge Funds have been expended for the Game Cost.

This is a TOS though, it can be legally challenged. However, if you want to break it down for the simpler people out there, you are making a "donation" and have very little recourse after their 14 day period. Generally that is how crowd funding works, you are shouldering the risk. If the project fails you get nothing unless you can actually prove fraud.

[banmebaby]

They keep upholding their end of the deal by developing Star Citizen and Squadron 42.

Estimates are done with the information known at the time they are made. As things change along the process so do estimates.

This is part of the process of game development and specially observed in crowdfunded mmo's due to the usual complexity and unpredictability of the genre and it's tech problems, along with normal the growing pains of building a game company from nothing and having to run and maintain live builds (to keep the community engaged) while actively developing engine/tools/pipelines to make the proposed game as true to the main core vision as possible.

True, but “developing” it wasn’t the only thing they committed into when they started accepting people’s money, right? I understand that’s impossible for them to give an exact date, I understand that problems do show up, but again, first it was “estimated” for 2014, then 2015, then 2016, then 2017… we are now at 2022’s doors and there barely any information on it, what was the purpose of all those “estimations” then? Why not just stick with the “it will be ready when it’s ready”? I mean, other than generating extra hype which leads to extra funding, which is something you often brag about…

Also, is it a problem with the “information known” at the time, or is it that he just can’t control himself when it comes to adding extra random shit into the project? Like, NPC’s using toilets and farting noises…

Your pledge entitles you

Glad if it was useful to you.

I’ll say it again, a donation and a pledge are two different things.

I do understand where you coming from in a legal point of view.

Although by addressing to it as a “donation”, you are not “breaking it down”, you are just attempting to lift any sort of responsibility that comes with the pledge.

… and do prey that is something to change in the future, crowdfunding being in such a grey area and rarely leading to legal consequences when failing to uphold their end of the pledge is the reason why you keep getting projects like Trials of Ascension, Greed Monger, Earth 2, Dream World, and while I totally agree with Anderson (I know, I know...) that the people pledging need have some fucking common sense and do a little research before throwing their cash at shit (for example, what’s happening to Star Citizen isn’t exactly new to Chris, he did exactly the same with Freelancer), it’s still something that none of us should want to see stumbling around in video gaming.

[Mamut]

Not much, as I just quoted him.



For the record, If all you care about is the finished product just wait for it to officially release.
If you're not pledging to support the game's development through crowdfunding but treat it like some kind of pre-order it's your own fault.

I don't think so anyone on this forum will live long enough to see this game released

[Otaka]

See this post.

In 2012, when the project began, the game was supposed to come out in 2014. Then 2014 came and it was supposed to come out in 2015. Then that year came and it was supposed to come out in 2016. Then Chris said "it's just around the corner, coming 2017".

Each time a date was missed it caused a lot of drama. A few years ago they figured out to just stop giving dates and to stop having Chris be the face of the project, so the lapsed release dates and roadnaps for roadmaps don't make the news unless we make enough of a stir on the official forums, but the last time that happened in summer 2020 Chris went on a massive banwave so there aren't anywhere near enough as many vocal dissenters on his echochamber forums left and we might just never be qble to he vocal enough to get news outlets to pick it up and get Chris pronise us another roadmap to a roadmap or make more empty statements again.

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Inb4 "nuh uh, the promised release dates weren't acksually release dates".

I think at this point in time weve learned alot about whining about games not releasing asap (or too early) and it clearly isnt a good thing for anyone involved... do we really want to repeat no man's sky, anthem, cyberpunk 2077 etc?

All of those games promised more than they delivered... big ambitions but too little time and just rushed out the door half-finished.
If all of them had taken their time they would all have been phenomenal in their own right.

Atleast Star Citizen IS taking their time... the only reason people are so whiny about it nowadays is because its taking so long, however GTA 6 and Elder Scrolls 6 has taken their sweet time aswell and people arent whining about those because they have no clue about their development. (what about Beyond Good and Evil 2?)

Its the one downside of open development, gamers can criticise your development speed on a monthly basis. And most gamers have no clue how development even works... but also Star Citizen is in a very unique position, it is by far the biggest crowdfunding videogame in history so theres nothing to compare it to... except ofcourse the games that people perceive to be very similar to it. (by funding style or by gameplay)
They look at Elite Dangerous for example and think if that game is already out then why isnt SC. Same genre but vastly different games regardless.

[XDurionX]

Estimates are just that, estimates. The only promise made was to make the best space sim ever, which is exactly what they are doing.
It doesn't matter how much some have trouble with waiting for a video-game that's just the way it was before and will continue to be.

Star Citizen will keep on being developed and being playable by anyone who chooses to do so while receiving updates every quarter.
Squadron 42 will be officially released when it's ready.

No amount of crying by the inpatient ones will ever change that. The release of Cyberpunk 2077 should be in the back of the minds of everyone who keeps asking to developers to rush up to release.

Except Cyberpunk was an enjoyable game, something that Star Citizen never will be.

[Kyanion]

Atleast Star Citizen IS taking their time... the only reason people are so whiny about it nowadays is because its taking so long, however GTA 6 and Elder Scrolls 6 has taken their sweet time aswell

I think there is something different between SC, GTA 6 and Elder Scrolls.. I wonder what it could be. Maybe one has been crowdfunded and put out dates. Maybe one of them has a fully functional cash shop. Maybe one of them is an 'open' Alpha state to siphon more money. Maybe one of those games isn't like the other two after all.

[Littlechamp]

You are not buying a game. Its like a donation.

I don't pay taxes when i donate so please stay quiet. Its not anything like a donation.

[Edge-]

I don't pay taxes when i donate so please stay quiet. Its not anything like a donation.

That's only for charitable donations, which not all donations are.

[Littlechamp]

Atleast Star Citizen IS taking their time... the only reason people are so whiny about it nowadays is because its taking so long, however GTA 6 and Elder Scrolls 6 has taken their sweet time aswell and people arent whining about those because they have no clue about their development. (what about Beyond Good and Evil 2?)

You are missing that those games are developed with investor money.
Also you are missing that those companies do not give away fake dates to sell more copies(they also refund if they miss the release while star citizen does not).

Anyways, lets put lies of Chris Roberts of Turbulent who gets paid twice by backer money, such greed...

https://youtu.be/lwjcY5AjOPE

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That's only for charitable donations, which not all donations are.

Where i live only donations like land or a house is taxed afaik. You can't donate to a company for a product, sorry i dunno how it's in rest of world so please don't think it general.

[banmebaby]

-snip-

Okay, hang on, first the problem is not that Star Citizen is taking a lot of time, the problem is that shit is not being delivered by a longshot from the estimated dates given by the lead-developer himself, opening themselves to criticism in doing so… GTA 6 and Elder Scrolls 6 are also taking their own sweet time and people aren’t “whining” about it because they are doing it with their own money and without giving a new “estimated release time” every year or so.

Plus, Star Citizen IS taking their time, because Star Citizen has that luxury, Star Citizen is probably the only gaming company making this sort of cash without even having to release a product, they throw the concept art of a spaceship that they might or not add to the game somewhere in the future for 100-500$ a pop and that’s about it, meanwhile these other companies you are talking about are bond to budgets and timelines if they want to keep going.

Makes no mistake though, it’s still a huge gamble though, because if the project flops, or fails to meet expectations, Chris Roberts is doomed for the rest of his life =/

[Henako]

The release of Cyberpunk 2077 should be in the back of the minds of everyone who keeps asking to developers to rush up to release.

I don't think anyone is calling for a rush of the release. People's concern seems to lie with incompetence on the developer's part, based on just how long development is actually taking and how slow progress actually is.

[Antipathy1018]

Ok first to @Afrospinach you seem to need a vocab refresher, a donation is given freely with nothing expected in return. i.e. Donating to charity. A pledge is a commitment to do something in return for something else.

As for @MrAnderson using Cyberpunk 2077, or as another poster did No Man's Sky as an example of an early release is bad faith at best willful deceit at worst since both those games were in fact playable for the most part upon release, less so on some platforms for 2077, but still playable. More importantly is that they were able to be fixed in only a 1 or 2 at most. If you released SC now it could never be fixed to a playable state.

And finally given the tech that CIG wants to implement it will take a fully functional quantum computing server to realize, especially given Chris Roberts is making the same mistake of Duke Nukem Forever of adding in the latest and greatest tech and mechanics of other games, that caused it to not be released for 15 years.

[Gorsameth]

I think at this point in time weve learned alot about whining about games not releasing asap (or too early) and it clearly isnt a good thing for anyone involved... do we really want to repeat no man's sky, anthem, cyberpunk 2077 etc?

All of those games promised more than they delivered... big ambitions but too little time and just rushed out the door half-finished.
If all of them had taken their time they would all have been phenomenal in their own right.

Atleast Star Citizen IS taking their time... the only reason people are so whiny about it nowadays is because its taking so long, however GTA 6 and Elder Scrolls 6 has taken their sweet time aswell and people arent whining about those because they have no clue about their development. (what about Beyond Good and Evil 2?)

Its the one downside of open development, gamers can criticise your development speed on a monthly basis. And most gamers have no clue how development even works... but also Star Citizen is in a very unique position, it is by far the biggest crowdfunding videogame in history so theres nothing to compare it to... except ofcourse the games that people perceive to be very similar to it. (by funding style or by gameplay)
They look at Elite Dangerous for example and think if that game is already out then why isnt SC. Same genre but vastly different games regardless.

Yeah no one wants games that get released to soon.

Thank god Duke Nukem Forever took the time they needed and released the greatest shooter ever made...

[Edge-]

Where i live only donations like land or a house is taxed afaik. You can't donate to a company for a product, sorry i dunno how it's in rest of world so please don't think it general.

And these contributions towards CIG/SC are taxed. They're functionally donations, but they're treated as transactions for accounting/tax purposes.

[Gorsameth]

At this point the difference between Freelancer and Star Citizen is that one was with a developers money and eventually release after Roberts was fired and the other is with players money and has yet to deliver.

[Afrospinach]

Ok first to @Afrospinach you seem to need a vocab refresher, a donation is given freely with nothing expected in return. i.e. Donating to charity. A pledge is a commitment to do something in return for something else.

Oh, clever, very clever.

Maybe you should do some investigation on where backers stand in failed crowdfunding projects before trying to wave a dictionary at me, again. It is not good reading, actually it is a bit of a wonder the format still exists TBH, but then again hope springs eternal.

Multiple instances of kickstarter projects selling their projects before fulfilling backer orders. Should be easy to understand as the former generates cashflow and the later does not, indeed the backers ever getting anything may hinge on actual sales. It is not even illegal to do this lmao, I think "donation" is very apt to describe the level of RISK people are engaging with. Are we on the same level now or are you still struggling with that dictionary?

[Release]

I find it absolutely astonishing people are actually defending the length of time it has taken SC to get to this point with the amount of money spent. The mentality of the inner workings of a cult on display.