Star Citizen costs exceed Cyberpunk 2077, GTA 5, and RDR2 combined

I remember when Star Citizen first started being talked about I was worried I wouldn't be able to run it on my GTX 770 lol. Both that gpu and any desire to play star citizen have been gone for years.

I scoped my PC build in 2013 with a GTX 770 with Star Citizen in mind. Even then SC becoming a reality was a coin flip - I was (and still am) a huge fan of Freelancer so I knew what I was in for on a Chris Roberts project before I backed. Built the PC, popped $25 down on an Aurora, and figured we'd see how it played out.
I'm still using that PC as a daily driver, granted with an upgrade to a GTX 980 and some extra ram in the time since. It's long in the tooth and is probably going to be retired by years' end, but I laugh a little thinking about how that computer had a whole life in the time SC has been in development.
I did run the hangar module when it first came out, so at the very least I did get to see my ship using that machine.

Absolutely no way Star Citizen isn't a massive scam. I mean, people can be incompetent, but

over $580 million

...seems like it has to be some kind of upper limit of incompetence?

It's subject to absurd feature creep and overambition, in addition to regular ol incompetence.
The design goals for Star Citizen are kinda absurd. It's like how the No Man's Sky devs claimed at one point they'd individually simulate air molecules and a unique periodic table, except the difference is that NMS axed that (or more accurately, were never actually doing it) instead of spending the next decade trying to make it work.
At the same time, it helps that their supporters have essentially given them a financial incentive to keep adding feature creep instead of releasing, because if they release a game they can't keep asking for more donations for increasingly lofty goals.
- This game is going to be No Man's Sky 2.0. I'm calling it now. Watching that whole demo the other day, all I could think of was, yep, no man's sky of 2023.
  No disrespect to No Man's Sky, because they got that game pretty much sorted. Not sure Bethesda will ever throw that much resources, especially with this news, at Star Citizen. I'll be waiting for the first Steam Sale, and only if they have it mostly sorted by that point. Their track record isn't awesome, in that regard.
- Like a fission reaction between cope, capitalism and hypetrain grease. Compels me though 🤔
To have spent that much money and yet not have anything really resembling a game, just a glorified tech demo, is pretty sad.
- I have a friend who just got into Star citizen and I just don't understand why. There are actual games to play.
- What do you mean, just a glorified tech demo? I thought it's almost done??
I dunno, seems incredibly competent to me.
People are that incompetent. Just look at some of these comments, and the comments on any thread talking about it. These people giving away their life savings will defend it with every breath. Almost cult like devotion.

This game is a scam at this point. Half a billion dollars and all people have gotten is a glorified tech demo. Yet they continue to sell ships for hundreds of dollars a pop.

I used to be a believer, one of my worst purchases ever.

I was so excited 10 years ago for star citizen. I played eve online and was in a corporation there with my best friends at the time, I couldn't wait until the day we'd all be standing together on the bridge of a ship and actually fly together for a change.
It's just been a downhill disappointment since then, with CR seeming more of a scam artist with every lie he'd make over the years and SC getting further away from that initial dream. I tried it a year or two ago and it's barely functioning, and even less of a game. I thought that by 2020 we'd have at least SQ42 for sure, but not it looks like they can't complete even that.
And the community still eats it up and defends the project vehemently. I've never seen such a fanatical fanbase that can't see what's in front of their eyes. And I'm still not even angry about it... just sad and disappointed.
- I always wondered if Star Citizen became something that, in an effort to fulfill the ridiculous laundry list of Kickstarter promises, just got away from CR. It seems like an impossible project that was doomed from the beginning.
Almost bought it when they posted the first Squadron 42 trailer in... 2019? The one with all those great actors. I thought it was almost ready at that point, at least the story part.
Then I remembered to never preorder anything, when it comes out, it comes out, and if it's good, then great, I'll get it then.
- I got in pretty deep for a teen without a day job, 375 bucks or so. I eventually saw the writing on the wall and sold my account on the grey market, but even then part of me was saying "what if it finished and I regret the stuff I have up?". We're years later now and I'm glad I played it safe.
Same.
I wasn't convinced at the very beginning, but once they had the hangar demo out, with that insanely detailed, intractable spaceship, I was so impressed I spend about a hundred dollars on it to "help development".
At this point I've long since given up hope this mess will be finished in a reasonable timeframe. I'm just glad Starfield is coming up and from the trailers and interviews it's looking like a suitable replacement.
And since it's the creation engine again, any major or minor mistakes will have a mod that fixes them sooner or later.

The development of this game makes construction of a nuclear power plant look timely and cheap.

They rewrote their engine and framework multiple times, this kind of stuff is stupidly complicated to do. I think they originally went with Cryengine, Amazon Lumberyard, and whatever else by now. So yeah, the problem is, they are rewriting everything from scratch multiple times that they fail to make any deliverable. They basically netscape themselves to hell.

Lumberyard was just a fork of cryengine, that's not what required a rewrite. They threw away all the FPS work that they hired a company to make for them, and redid that from scratch, and then also just rewrite systems all the time because they have no plan.
- But even that was like 5+ years ago, ancient history by software dev standards. It's hardly an excuse for the state it's in today.
- Well honestly, I remember they did mentioned that it require a rewrite on various parts for transition from Cryengine to Lumberyard though it been years.
That's a great article.
Star Citizen Forever.

Remember when they released their roadmap…for their roadmap? Lol

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/07/star-citizen-dev-offers-roadmap-for-development-of-new-development-roadmap/

this is worse than announcement of announcement of teaser trailer

So it'll be better than all those games combined right?

... right?
- :(

Does anyone realistically expect this game to come out?

Its supporters bounce between “It’s already out!” and “Developing such a huge game takes time.” depending on which stance is more convenient in an argument.
- I mean, I wonder how much time is wasted refactoring with software and hardware that has been invented post the start of their development. Considering how long their development has been.

Star Citizen is a scam plain and simple. It's "stolen" thousands of dollars (probably more) at this point and has nothing to show for it but a very pretty buggy mess.

I was a $20 Kickstarter backer of this complete disaster.

Though, at this point, it's been a decade of absolutely hilarious drama, so I really do feel like I got my money's worth out of it even though I literally have never installed nor played any of the "betas".

Star Citizen will go down in history as the biggest gaming scam ever.

I wanted Star Citizen to work out so badly. In 2012(ish? I don't remember exactly) when I first heard of the game I backed it because a space game where you weren't just your ship but could move around and board other ships sounded like my perfect space game. Now it looks like Starfield may fill that want perfectly. Who knows though maybe one day in the future Star Citizen will actually release.

I've been playing Star Citizen pretty regularly for years, and still do. While it's not progressing as quickly as I want it to, it's definitely progressing... and so long as their current funding model keeps the game evolving, I'm happy with that.
The thing that concerns me about Starfield right now is how little they've shown of flight mechanics. I'm starting to get the feeling that space flight is going to be a half-baked afterthought and atmospheric flight might not be a thing at all. We'll know soon enough, but I am still not going to let myself expect anything more than "Fallout/Elder Scrolls in Space".

It's just revenue, the game is never being finished.

Sing with me, Momma don't let your developers try to be project managers...

I think people kind of just like laughing at how ridiculous Star Citizen is, and kind of right so. Over half a billion dollars and a decade in development for what they've got is pretty wild.
- To be clear, what they've got right now with sharded persistance and asset streaming is extremely novel on a technical level, but there's no real substance to it yet as a game, just an impressive engine with an absurdly large scale and a tech demo running on it.
  If they ever actually stop fiddling and make the damn game it'll be impressive, I'm sure, but so will the earthshattering cost and scale of waste getting there. Then 2 years later someone else will put out something 90% as impressive for 1/100th the cost.

Vaporware.

Yes and no. There's a sort of playable game there. But Chris Roberts is sort of infamous for his feature creep.
So more and more gets added to the game and then parts of the base code have to be rewritten to support the new additions, and then you get a 13 year development cycle with no actual end in sight. I think that the feature creep is currently under control, but with everything that's been planned, it's still going to be a couple of years before the game releases.
I am assuming that it will eventually release... Which is a large assumption at this point.
But until then, you can play a game that feels a bit like a first person shooter, and has some ship to ship combat, and some missions, and some other stuff, but isn't as fleshed out as any of those things could be if the focus was strictly on that one thing. Basically it's too many things at once to be really good at ony one of them.

All I want is that kinda standalone side 'campaign' which has Mark Hamill involved. How they could make that and sit on it is beyond me!

There was a time in something like 2016 (or 18? I dunno at this point) when they were hyping a Vertical Slice of it being just around the corner. Then it was quietly cancelled, communication on the project has been extremely thin ever since.
I eagerly await investigative journalism efforts to one day learn what's been going on behind the scenes these last few years!

the biggest example of sunk cost fallacy

i need to explain it away that way cause i refuse to accept people are this desperate for this

I think my favorite use of Star Citizen has been from folks like PolarityDnb who use it to create backdrops for ambient electronica compositions.

wow this game has cool raindrops. they should have released this in VR that would at least make it comparable to elite dangerous in it's anemic state

I'm so glad I never spent any money on this game and just got a free ship with my old AMD graphics card.

Ohhh boi I remember when I tried out the game when the free fly was active. Did not stay for long.

Someone call Derek Smart here, lol