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Star Citizen has raised over $300 million now

Mista

Banned
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Almost seven years after its original Kickstarter, Star Citizen has now raised over $300 million in funding from its players. 2,711,428 people have pledged a total of $300,145,173, mostly through buying expensive digital spaceships for amounts that might make an ordinary person question their life choices.

Back in December, Cloud Imperium Games crossed the $250 million mark with a particularly good month netting them roughly $11 million, but player investment dropped to a "mere" five or six million each month following that. Until May, when their monthly total suddenly soared to over $15 million. As Altchar.com points out, this is probably due to the release of the Drake Complete Pack 2950, a bundle of 14 ships which sold for $4,600.

Right now it's Alien Week in Star Citizen, with a focus on the extraterrestrials of its setting, and their ships, which are on sale.

 

KungFucius

King Snowflake
I did the base package on Kickstarter forever ago. I think it was 25 bucks. I will play the game when it actually launches if it doesn't get panned. I cannot fathom blowing $4600 on ships and I almost don't want to play something from a company that would manipulate people into blowing that much money. At least they are adults and not kids whose parents didn't lock their accounts.
 

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Back in December, Cloud Imperium Games crossed the $250 million mark with a particularly good month netting them roughly $11 million, but player investment dropped to a "mere" five or six million each month following that. Until May, when their monthly total suddenly soared to over $15 million. As Altchar.com points out, this is probably due to the release of the Drake Complete Pack 2950, a bundle of 14 ships which sold for $4,600.

What the hell? That amount can't possibly be real ...
 

Rikkori

Member
Looking forward to SQ42. This is without a doubt the most ambitious game in gaming history, hope they make it. It's all on that server mesh tech to make or break it.
 

BRZBlue

Member
what's the latest with this game?

what kind of state is it in? both gameplay/performance?
Its buggy, but playable.

Basically they've been developing the single-player portion of the game and anything applicable to the multi-player aspect they've trickled in, but releasing single player has been their main focus. After that they can divert a lot more resources towards the rest of the game.

The biggest hurdles that everyone said would never accomplish (walking to your ship, getting into your ship, piloting your ship to another planet, landing on said planet, then leaving your ship and walking around said planet with no loads in-between) are working. Have been for years.

The game as it exists currently is very sandbox. The current big hurdle is the server tech, since they have some larger capital ships already completed, but can't really implement them since the interim server architecture isn't a priority.

The scuttlebutt is that Squadron 42 is very close to beta.

That being said, SC players view any sort of ship purchase as a fun time waster more than anything else.

Most people start with say, a small ship. Then a few months later might drop another 60 and upgrade. Etc. Etc. Throughout the course of several years. Not a lot beyond whales are dropping $20k in one go.

When the game works, it can be very awe inspiring. When it crashes or bugs, it can be rage inducing.
 

Abriael_GN

RSI Employee of the Year
Every time a thread or article about Star Citizen's funding comes up, it's not the money that makes me facepalm, but the comments.

Some people simply aren't able to understand that people will spend money on what makes them happy. For some it's a car, for some it's a pool, for some it's a cruise in the Caribbeans, for some it's fancy dining, for some it's big collector's editions of their favorite media, and for some, it's a starship in the video game they have wanted since they were kids. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of that.

And then there's the fact that money has a different value for different people. For me, buying a single heavy fighter in Star Citizen when heavily discounted (which costed less than the FFVII Remake's 1st class edition) is something that took several days of deliberation and giving up something else (which incidentally is exactly the aforementioned 1st class edition):

For others, spending over $1000 for a Carrack is a drop in the ocean of their income, and maybe they'll just skip a couple of fancy dinners to make it up. If that's what makes them happy, more power to them.
 
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Every time a thread or article about Star Citizen's funding comes up, it's not the money that makes me facepalm, but the comments.

Some people simply aren't able to understand that people will spend money on what makes them happy. For some it's a car, for some it's a pool, for some it's a cruise in the Caribbeans, for some it's fancy dining, for some it's big collector's editions of their favorite media, and for some, it's a starship in the video game they have wanted since they were kids. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of that.

And then there's the fact that money has a different value for different people. For me, buying a single heavy fighter in Star Citizen when heavily discounted (which costed less than the FFVII Remake's 1st class edition) is something that took several days of deliberation and giving up something else (which incidentally is exactly the aforementioned 1st class edition):

For others, spending over $1000 for a Carrack is a drop in the ocean of their income, and maybe they'll just skip a couple of fancy dinners to make it up. If that's what makes them happy, more power to them.

You don’t need to justify the money you spent to Gaf but at the same time people calling this a scam have legit reasons.
 
Every time a thread or article about Star Citizen's funding comes up, it's not the money that makes me facepalm, but the comments.

Some people simply aren't able to understand that people will spend money on what makes them happy. For some it's a car, for some it's a pool, for some it's a cruise in the Caribbeans, for some it's fancy dining, for some it's big collector's editions of their favorite media, and for some, it's a starship in the video game they have wanted since they were kids. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of that.

And then there's the fact that money has a different value for different people. For me, buying a single heavy fighter in Star Citizen when heavily discounted (which costed less than the FFVII Remake's 1st class edition) is something that took several days of deliberation and giving up something else (which incidentally is exactly the aforementioned 1st class edition):

For others, spending over $1000 for a Carrack is a drop in the ocean of their income, and maybe they'll just skip a couple of fancy dinners to make it up. If that's what makes them happy, more power to them.
If people want to blow $4,600 on 14 ships in a stupidly overpriced M A C R O T R A N S A C T I O N then they are absolutely free to do so...but I am also free to think they're complete and utter retards with absolutely no concept of the value of money.
 

BRZBlue

Member
If people want to blow $4,600 on 14 ships in a stupidly overpriced M A C R O T R A N S A C T I O N then they are absolutely free to do so...but I am also free to think they're complete and utter retards with absolutely no concept of the value of money.
I mean, the people spending that much are basically spending pocket change to them. There's a big SC streamer who bought a $14k bundle, but he also just bought a new Corvette. That should put it in perspective.

Isn't the average spent per player something like $108.30? Thats also including the price of the game itself.
 
I get it, the game is huuuuuge and the tech behind it is amazing, but... did they really need all that? This is kinda nuts.

$300M would be enough to make at least like 5 big budget games... and God knows how many other medium or small budget games...
 

Abriael_GN

RSI Employee of the Year
You don’t need to justify the money you spent to Gaf but at the same time people calling this a scam have legit reasons.

1: I indeed don't need to justify how I spend my hard-earned money to anyone, nor I am trying to. I'm simply making a basic point. Anyone who thinks I (or anyone else) do something wrong for having spent a fraction of the money I make in a month on something that brings me a lot of fun and has done so for years is frankly a nincompoop.

2: No. There are no legitimate reasons for calling it a scam, besides not having the slightest idea of what a scam is and wanting to use a catchword to irrationally bash something one doesn't understand. There is literally nothing fraudulent in Star Citizen (which is what would be required to call this a "scam"). The crowdfunded money is demonstrably reinvested in the operation of multiple studios and in the employment of about 500 game developers that are demonstrably working on providing a product that is regularly updated and regularly delivers demonstrable progress with its customers kept in the loop on said progress.


If people want to blow $4,600 on 14 ships in a stupidly overpriced M A C R O T R A N S A C T I O N then they are absolutely free to do so...but I am also free to think they're complete and utter retards with absolutely no concept of the value of money.

The concept of the value of money is subjective. Not realizing that means that you're the one who doesn't know what it is. YOUR concept of the value of money isn't absolute, and you have no right to impose it on anyone else.

Also, the concept of "overpriced" is just as subjective and depends on the amount of enjoyment you get from what you paid for.

Normally this kind of discourse is simply driven by envy for the fact that those people can afford spending that kind of money over something others may consider frivolous.
 
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Abriael_GN

RSI Employee of the Year
I get it, the game is huuuuuge and the tech behind it is amazing, but... did they really need all that? This is kinda nuts.

$300M would be enough to make at least like 5 big budget games... and God knows how many other medium or small budget games...

It would be enough to make big-budget games relying on proven tech without delivering anything much beyond what's already in the market. That's not what Star Citizen aims to do.
 
It would be enough to make big-budget games relying on proven tech without delivering anything much beyond what's already in the market. That's not what Star Citizen aims to do.
Considering the game runs like shit on HDDs, I'm guessing their engine and everything else they learn while developing it will benefit next gen/next GPU development hugely.
 

Abriael_GN

RSI Employee of the Year
Considering the game runs like shit on HDDs, I'm guessing their engine and everything else they learn while developing it will benefit next gen/next GPU development hugely.

It is certainly one of the prime pieces of evidence of the value of the SSD tech in next-gen consoles when applied to visuals and world size/scope/detail. People who played Star Citizen have no doubt about that.

Pretty positive that having a fast SSD as your main gaming drive is going to become the standard on PC as well, pretty much like the past generation of console pushed the minimum viable RAM on a gaming PC from 4 to 8 gigs.
 
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W

Whataborman

Unconfirmed Member
Will this ever release?


Probably not, at least not with all of the stuff that was originally promised. At this point it's become a joke, sort of like Duke Nukem Forever.

I give it maybe a 5% chance of fully releasing with everything promised. My guess is that it will eventually release as a bug-ridden, unplayable mess. Sort of like the old Battlecruiser games, which is ironic because Derek Smart was one of the first people to openly criticize Star Citizen and their income model.

I crowdfunded with $60 back when the campaign first kicked off because I want to play the single player game. I believe that was supposed to release in 2016 and we clearly haven't even gotten an alpha of it yet.

When their whales are spending $400 on space ships that aren't even in the game yet, they have very little incentive to actually release a game. That said, they have spent (wasted) $300 Million dollars. It might be time for the authorities to start looking at the company and asking some questions.
 
I've actually been impressed with the progress they've made in the past year. The prison system is pretty unique and should make player interaction interesting.
 

near

Gold Member
Unethical practices companies use to leverage the appetite of it's consumers is nothing new, but this is on a ridiculous scale holy fuck.
 

Ribi

Member
Reminder that 300million inst what's been used but what has been acquired. Also SQ42 has over half of the developers working on it to finish it atm so SC development is even slower than normal. And it's been very slow
 

JLMC469

Banned
Unethical practices companies use to leverage the appetite of it's consumers is nothing new, but this is on a ridiculous scale holy fuck.

Unless there’s some sort of regulation in place or cap, do you see it reaching $500?
 
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april6e

Member
You almost have to respect them at this point. Pretty much the most successful gaming fundraiser of all time by a mile, for an early access game that is nowhere close to version 1.0 after almost a decade. Repeatedly tacking on extra features so they can ask for more money instead of focusing on finishing the core game. They also managed to convince a diehard community that Star Citizen is the Crysis of this gen and built a virtual universe where you can literally pay to win by using tens of thousands in real money to obtain elaborate ships and flex on the poverty players.
 
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Klayzer

Member
I just dont see how this will end well. You would think the people that spend that type of money, would eventually realize, what am I really getting out of this. Props to all the people that's enjoying the product.

From an outsider's point of view, it looks like they are selling a dream rather than a game. I just wonder when the remorse starts creeping in with that type of money being pledged.
 

BRZBlue

Member
You almost have to respect them at this point. Pretty much the most successful gaming fundraiser of all time by a mile, for an early access game that is nowhere close to version 1.0 after almost a decade. Repeatedly tacking on extra features so they can ask for more money instead of focusing on finishing the core game. They also managed to convince a diehard community that Star Citizen is the Crysis of this gen and built a virtual universe where you can literally pay to win by using tens of thousands in real money to obtain elaborate ships and flex on the poverty players.

ehhh not really.

The best fighter in the game? You get the ability to purchase it in-game if you beat Squadron 42.

Those big expensive ships? They need to be crewed. One dude in a $1400 Idris is going to be a sitting duck when he can't do anything besides move the ship at its very slow pace. There's no real "spend all the money and be above the plebs" option.

I just dont see how this will end well. You would think the people that spend that type of money, would eventually realize, what am I really getting out of this. Props to all the people that's enjoying the product.

From an outsider's point of view, it looks like they are selling a dream rather than a game. I just wonder when the remorse starts creeping in with that type of money being pledged.

TBH, a lot of people would be fine if the game just upped and turned belly up at this point. Its basically akin to playing in a somewhat buggy MMO that you love, and hey, it may suck if it gets shut down, but you spent your time on it and had fun while you were there.

Like I said before, I think the average money spent on the game is $108 a person, so its not like all these tons of people are spending thousands on ship jpg's. Its a very small group who have a ton of disposable income. The rest spent 65 bucks on a starter pack and maybe upgraded to a different ship, and have been hopping in and out as updates permit. Whats funny is that the number of capital and larger ships is actually limited. They tend to only release a few at a time, so its not like everyone who wants a $1400 ship can get one.
 
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