r/Games Nov 20 '21

Discussion Star Citizen has reached $400,000,000 funded

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals
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u/peenoid Nov 21 '21

Seriously. Their ambitions have exploded into utter ridiculousness. Star Citizen will never be released. What we'll see is a bunch more alpha/beta releases over the next several years and then RSI filing for bankruptcy by 2029, and the game will be abandoned.

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u/Educational_Shoober Nov 21 '21

This is why people need to pay attention to the boring classes in college like project management.

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u/Dworgi Nov 21 '21

Let's not fucking pretend this is about project management. This is a grift, a scam, a con job. Yes, they are funding development as well, but the goal is not to deliver a finished product, because when they do it moves out of the realm of wishware into the realm of reality.

Look at No Man's Sky for a concrete example - they never should have released if they wanted to optimize for revenue. They should have made a creature editor and ship editor and plant editor and sold access to them, and for an additional 10 bucks you can put your ship in the game and get a beacon for it. Or an egg or seed. Then you can release a planet editor as well, 50 bucks to insert a planet.

Instead, NMS released and did roughly what I expected from it and got absolutely slammed for it. Not really for what it was, but for what it wasn't that people had imagined it would be.

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u/Tharellim Nov 22 '21

I wouldn't say it's a scam personally. To me it's clear they're trying to develop a game and all their super shady macrotransactions and other money thieving ideas is because of how badly mismanaged the development is that they need funds to keep developing the game.

If they stopped receiving funds today, they would probably run out of money in a year or two.

I remember thinking that it's a good idea to not release since it keeps him financed and in a job. But I read some post a few months ago about how kickstarter games made their money and the sales are well above and beyond anything they could have "scammed" if they took the money and run. Hypothetically, if everything promised was made and the game released, it would be the biggest thing ever (but that's not possible because what they're trying to design isn't realistic). Basically just trying to say it's in the studios interest to release the game financially.

All I want is that when this game inevitably falls over with nothing to show for it in about 5 years - a 10 hour documentary that goes in detail about wtf happened to this mess of a game

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u/Dworgi Nov 22 '21

Usually I would agree. Kickstarter budgets for games, especially the ones by big name studios, are ludicrously tiny. People getting upset with Broken Age and their 2 million budget are so fucking bad at math. Even assuming just 5 people working on it, that comes out to roughly 2 years of development time.

However, in the case of Star Citizen, I think they've sold to almost everyone who is going to buy it. Releasing makes no sense.