OK. Never played SC so honest question here; What is wrong if the game is technically not complete? I mean the way I thought is that this means that it keeps evolving and expanding so new content and features become available as the game development progresses. What am I missing? Is this a similar situation to the Eve Online BitterVets?
It was kickstarted a decade ago with release dates which they’ve never kept thanks to a constant modification of what a release looks like - namely splitting the MMO-like Star Citizen out from the single-player blockbuster Squadron 42 - as well as scope bloat. A lot of people originally kickstarted the game (mostly for what we now call Squadron 42 + some multiplayer thing) but now a decade on, the MMO-like Star Citizen is seemingly the priority project and most of the people who are currently funding the game are primarily interested in that.
After hundreds of millions of dollars of funding, it seems clear that Squadron 42 in particular is in development hell as it still can’t seem to make it to market. Star Citizen, while playable, teeters back and forth from basically unplayable to playable and all “progress” is subject to wipes.
Just some context: from 2017 until last year they had the majority of the development staff working on SQ42, which they declared feature complete last year and now we have a planned release of 2026. Most of the development staff has been moved back to Star Citizen which is finally seeing a lot of tech come online that was promised years ago. Definitely has a ton of scope creep, and it’ll probably never have an official release, but it’s definitely a cool tech demo that you can play.
Instead of focussing on getting the core of the game finished and THEN expanding it they do it the other way around.
For example the mining loop now is broken again, people bought mining ships and vehicles with $$ and they are completely unusable. Not to mention all the bugs and instability. I hope they succeed but right now things are not pointing to something enjoyable within the foreseeable future at all.
They consistently make promises for things that will exist in the future, which then takes them years beyond their expected timeframe to achieve, or just never do them because some other past promise or promise they will make later makes an original promise either totally unworkable or wildly different.
So, so many missed deadlines, which uh, actually were just aspirational.
And… this is a game that sells you ships, gear, for hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of real world dollars.
Some crazy promise will be made and oh, turns out that means we have to rework something like half the game’s systems to support that, but also they’re adding new content constantly that is always in some limbo state between following the old system’s paradigms and attempting to follow the new system’s paradigm.
What you end up with is a constant state of everything being a bit broken, and a lot of stuff being completely broken.
Its less like a released game getting DLCs and more like an alpha test that just never ends.
Which, again, costs hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Long story short, they severely fail to deliver on their promises and also mismanaged their development incentives so that they are not financially interested to ever release, or even make the game fully playable.
SC is a scam. They sell ships for real money that only half work. The game is riddled with bugs, quests don’t complete. Users state is regularly wiped so there’s no point on progressing in it and instead of finishing the game they ask players for much more money to work on tiny niche technical problems that sound super important on presentations but don’t move the needle even a little bit towards a finished game. At best, it is video game history most expensive physics toy. In reality, when you scrutinize their finances executives have pocketed most of the money raised and devs have been paid poor wages and overworked to a constantly moving target. They have never finished a single roadmap item, but they have announced to fanfare at least 5 different development roadmaps that are the very definition of scope creep. Lots of announcements but never a release. Any competent studio would’ve delivered at least three completed games in the same timeframe for that amount of money. They’re an online asset store that sometimes let’s you fiddle with the digital models, not a video game.
Don’t listen anyone here, positive or negative. Try the next free fly and see for yourself. Too many feelings for an honest answer.
But here’s my 2 cents anyway, ha ha:
I enjoy it, they are pushing out regular massive updates that make it more and more fun every quarter. They grew a studio from 8 people to over 1000, which takes years to do, so complaints that they have taken 10 years of full scale development are incorrect. Some people don’t like the idea it may never be the full game they set out to make, which is fair, it’s possibly the most ambitious game to date. But it’s being made in good faith, reports of a scam are about as reliable as moon landing conspiracy theories for many of the same reasons. In the meantime, what they do have is already a lot of fun. You only need to spend $50 to get in, people spending more are doing so voluntarily and generally without regrets. They have more players and revenue every year than the year before, this wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t already a fun game for many.
Gameplay is like a second life in space. It’s very spaceship centric, but there’s lots to do besides pilot. It’s slow paced, the design does prefer immersion over convenience a lot of the time.
If you like big, slow (with moments of high intensity), immersive, cinematic games, or if you like sci fi it’s definitely worth a try. Lone wolf play is doable, but taking a role on a crew is more fun (at least for me).
OK. Never played SC so honest question here; What is wrong if the game is technically not complete? I mean the way I thought is that this means that it keeps evolving and expanding so new content and features become available as the game development progresses. What am I missing? Is this a similar situation to the Eve Online BitterVets?
It was kickstarted a decade ago with release dates which they’ve never kept thanks to a constant modification of what a release looks like - namely splitting the MMO-like Star Citizen out from the single-player blockbuster Squadron 42 - as well as scope bloat. A lot of people originally kickstarted the game (mostly for what we now call Squadron 42 + some multiplayer thing) but now a decade on, the MMO-like Star Citizen is seemingly the priority project and most of the people who are currently funding the game are primarily interested in that.
After hundreds of millions of dollars of funding, it seems clear that Squadron 42 in particular is in development hell as it still can’t seem to make it to market. Star Citizen, while playable, teeters back and forth from basically unplayable to playable and all “progress” is subject to wipes.
Just some context: from 2017 until last year they had the majority of the development staff working on SQ42, which they declared feature complete last year and now we have a planned release of 2026. Most of the development staff has been moved back to Star Citizen which is finally seeing a lot of tech come online that was promised years ago. Definitely has a ton of scope creep, and it’ll probably never have an official release, but it’s definitely a cool tech demo that you can play.
All that and you get:
hahahahahahahahahahaha
Instead of focussing on getting the core of the game finished and THEN expanding it they do it the other way around.
For example the mining loop now is broken again, people bought mining ships and vehicles with $$ and they are completely unusable. Not to mention all the bugs and instability. I hope they succeed but right now things are not pointing to something enjoyable within the foreseeable future at all.
They consistently make promises for things that will exist in the future, which then takes them years beyond their expected timeframe to achieve, or just never do them because some other past promise or promise they will make later makes an original promise either totally unworkable or wildly different.
So, so many missed deadlines, which uh, actually were just aspirational.
And… this is a game that sells you ships, gear, for hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of real world dollars.
Some crazy promise will be made and oh, turns out that means we have to rework something like half the game’s systems to support that, but also they’re adding new content constantly that is always in some limbo state between following the old system’s paradigms and attempting to follow the new system’s paradigm.
What you end up with is a constant state of everything being a bit broken, and a lot of stuff being completely broken.
Its less like a released game getting DLCs and more like an alpha test that just never ends.
Which, again, costs hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Long story short, they severely fail to deliver on their promises and also mismanaged their development incentives so that they are not financially interested to ever release, or even make the game fully playable.
Game keeps wiping players inventories including the in-game money used to buy ships. You can’t progress in the game, they just wipe you.
SC is a scam. They sell ships for real money that only half work. The game is riddled with bugs, quests don’t complete. Users state is regularly wiped so there’s no point on progressing in it and instead of finishing the game they ask players for much more money to work on tiny niche technical problems that sound super important on presentations but don’t move the needle even a little bit towards a finished game. At best, it is video game history most expensive physics toy. In reality, when you scrutinize their finances executives have pocketed most of the money raised and devs have been paid poor wages and overworked to a constantly moving target. They have never finished a single roadmap item, but they have announced to fanfare at least 5 different development roadmaps that are the very definition of scope creep. Lots of announcements but never a release. Any competent studio would’ve delivered at least three completed games in the same timeframe for that amount of money. They’re an online asset store that sometimes let’s you fiddle with the digital models, not a video game.
The game is exactly the same as it was the first time I played it except now the lift always shows up.
Don’t listen anyone here, positive or negative. Try the next free fly and see for yourself. Too many feelings for an honest answer.
But here’s my 2 cents anyway, ha ha: I enjoy it, they are pushing out regular massive updates that make it more and more fun every quarter. They grew a studio from 8 people to over 1000, which takes years to do, so complaints that they have taken 10 years of full scale development are incorrect. Some people don’t like the idea it may never be the full game they set out to make, which is fair, it’s possibly the most ambitious game to date. But it’s being made in good faith, reports of a scam are about as reliable as moon landing conspiracy theories for many of the same reasons. In the meantime, what they do have is already a lot of fun. You only need to spend $50 to get in, people spending more are doing so voluntarily and generally without regrets. They have more players and revenue every year than the year before, this wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t already a fun game for many.
Gameplay is like a second life in space. It’s very spaceship centric, but there’s lots to do besides pilot. It’s slow paced, the design does prefer immersion over convenience a lot of the time.
If you like big, slow (with moments of high intensity), immersive, cinematic games, or if you like sci fi it’s definitely worth a try. Lone wolf play is doable, but taking a role on a crew is more fun (at least for me).