Star Citizen Introducing a $48,000 Ship Bundle, but Only for Players Who Have Already Spent $10,000::Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games is releasing a ship bundle for its controversial space simulator that costs an eye-watering $48,000.
Because there are lots of people in this thread who paint whales as “rich schmucks” who can afford to spend $48k without thinking twic. This is a myth that lots of the gaming industry itself loves to perpetuate, because it absolves them of taking responsibility for ruining lives.
Research has shown repeatedly that whales are much more likely to be people with mental health problems and/or gambling addicts. That Star Citizen isn’t a freemium game with loot boxes makes it marginally better than - let’s say - Genshin Impact, but offers like the bundle in the article is still predatory.
And yet? Nothing will be done. This is a target market that is more than acceptable to disdain, abuse, and otherwise fuck over.
It might be “cool” to be a nerd now, my fellows, but only on the surface. Don’t get suckered into believing they accept you. They’re just commodifying our interests for their gains. They are not us and they don’t want to be. They just want us to like them enough to pay them more than we otherwise would.
Fuck the poseurs.
What is one supposed to do about this? Genuine question.
Stop acting like they’re doing us all a favor by paying attention to our collective interests? It’s all marketing.
Only for Players Who Have Already Spent $10,000
This is so predatory in itself.
Just being eligible for it is a sign that you need to make some life changes.
If you can blow 50000+ on a video game they are doing something I’m not.
A good portion of them are just making bad decisions and ruining their finances.
Like: shower, touch grass, rekindle an interest in humanity as a whole.
Meh my sympathy only runs so far.
You don’t have sympathy for people with addictive personality disorders?
On the one hand, my gut says “if they have 50k to blow and do so on a game, fuck em”
On the other hand, my experience with addictive personalities knows they almost certainly don’t have that money to blow, but they will do so anyway, fucking their life (and possibly their families lives) over even more in the process, and no amount of lecturing them will change, because they need therapy.
My gut isn’t as sympathetic as my brain is.
There was a guy that posted on reddit about how he spent thousands of dollars on loot boxes. The way he totally wrecked his finances and his relationship with his wife was harrowing. Everytime he would get the latest and greatest item, character, whatever, they would come out with something new and he would start all over again.
I have to wonder if this is a video game problem, or if it’s a sort of financial self-destructiveness expressed through a video game rather than through some other means.
Like, for every person who spends money they don’t have on video games, how many people spend money they don’t have on fancy cars, or clothing, or expensive pets, other luxury possessions? How many people spend the rent money on sneakers, or the kids’ college fund on fancy vacations, or the utility bill money on anime figurines, or their whole paycheck on partying, or their retirement fund on too much house?
Financial self-destructiveness seems to be a problem that some people have. It gets reported heavily when it’s expressed through video games, in part because much of the reporter’s audience thinks all video games are fundamentally pointless and evil to begin with.
The difference with in-game spending is that they use all the same shady techniques as casinos to exploit those people.
You don’t see sneakers shops offering time limited loot boxes for a chance to obtain limited edition sneakers, they also don’t show you a big grid of their catalog with holes for the sneakers you don’t own. “Just buy those 2 pairs to complete the collection of running sneakers!”
You clearly have no idea what “sneakerheads” are, as these tactics and more DO exist and have for decades. Hell, little kids were getting murdered for their Air Jordans not 30 years ago, walking home from fucking school, son.
Empathetic, to be fair. Sympathetic is to mirror their emotional state, etc. Empathy is to understand it without inhabiting that space/experiencing it yourself.
Nah, if you’re going to hide your bad choices behind clinical language, then you need therapy. If you’re not getting therapy and you have 50k to spend, then that’s a you problem.
Some people don’t realize they have a problem. I feel bad for those people.
The problem isn’t that they “have 50k to spend”, it’s literally the exact opposite AND that they don’t know it’s a problem that they spend out on stupid shit like this grift.
If they spend 50k on a videogame, then they have 50k to spend by definition, whether or not it’s actually their money. If it’s not actually their money, then I have even less sympathy.
I’ll give another example. I have a lot of sympathy for opiate addicts. I have zero sympathy for opiate addicts who steal from their friends and family.
It’s like the scammers who include spelling mistakes, to make sure they only attract the real dipshits.
Probably a way to avoid costly charge backs for when regular users purchase that by mistake
It is the Ferrari model. You want a new Ferrari? Well you have to prove you have already owned several other Ferraris. Make people feel special while they hand over stupid money to you
I know it’s not the same, but you could just play elite dangerous which is an actual game, and you can get new ships through a crazy new innovative mechanic called “playing the game”
I like elite dangerous but I don’t like that you have to spend hundreds of hours grinding just to accomplish even the most minor gameplay advancement. No Man’s Sky and Starfield are more playable space games that that grindfest. I wish someone would just remake elite dangerous for normal people.
I want someone to make Elite dangerous but with single player progression. You get to pew pew in a bunch of increasingly fancy ships and at the end you fight an alien ship or something. 200 hours to complete and then go play something else with a nice experience.
Have you played the X series?
No,but I am definitely checking it out.
The learning curve is annoying, but it scratches the itch.
That’s the toughest balance to strike:
Make me feel like I’ve gained a skill to become a competent pilot/trader/whatever in a complex world…
…But also in a way that feels rewarding in the context of having a real mortal life to live, because in the end it’s still a videogame.
Tangent example: I hate how badly I want to try and grokk Dwarf Fortress, but I can’t make more time from nowhere lol.
But thankfully Rimworld is really cool. :)
Just wish we could have an eighth day of the week nobody else was allowed to know about!
200 hours to complete… you never finish an x game. I generally finish when my computer can’t keep up anymore.
One of the best economic systems in a single player space game that I have come across.
Evochron, Dark Star One,X series (you may bounce off a few times but they’re extremely unique and deep games), older Elite titles, Freelancer!
To a lesser extent and a bit more survival crafty: Space Engineers or Empyrion with mods. Both have some additional community made content that adds stations/factions to progress against or for and are pretty good if a little janky.
It really depends on what you want from your game. I happily spent hours in my lil hauler playing space trucker, and the only real thing that’s changed since then is I have access to bigger space trucks. I’ve been on a big exploration run for the last 80 or so hours of playtime and I’m enjoying being able to just relax and exist in my lil virtual spaceship. I don’t need to feel like a number goes up every session, but I’m a weirdo.
I used to hunt griefers in my Black Friday skinned Mur-de-Lance w/ a Huge Particle Cannon and tuned yaw slip to kite and atomize those assclowns for profit. Hit my first Elite that way. The second was Void Diamonds, grinding for those “gonna be SO cool” flagships. I nearly made it the full trip with the whole gang doing the massive trek to the edge and back, but RL got in the way, so I’m not Triple Elite, and you know what? If it weren’t for the Silverbacks group (OGs, chill and welcoming, no pressure, from for RP and what TF ever, but always got your back), I don’t even know if I’d have played as long as I did.
You keep truckin’, space cowboy. 🤙🏼
Too bad NMS is boring and Starfield is even more boring
As someone who logged an unhealthy amount of hours in E:D, tricked out the computer chair with vesa mounts for a Warthog HOTAS and coded hundreds of macros and voice attack triggers (and a whole set up for an Index) only to give it all up when Frontier dropped the ball on atmospheric landings (their initial offering was complete shite as they thought that the “community” wanted political intrigue and inter-factional complexity — which we did, honestly, but they delivered shit there, too). Hell, I even came back for a minute, hoping the flagship update was gonna be The One… But, they locked that into a fucking grind with specialized fuel, etc., too.
Shame on E:D, but fuck Star Citizen.
I can’t overstate how disappointed I am in Frontier for completely abandoning Elite in the name of making more zoo simulators. Such a fucking cop out and I hate it.
Mile wide and an inch deep. That’s Elite. Beautiful game, huge grind.
How is elite dangerous these days? I was playing no man’s sky which has been continually updated since release yesterday and my bf was badgering me that I could play that instead. I was trying to explain to him that I was having fun playing this and want to play this and he was insisting that elite dangerous has been updated and is so much better. Honestly it was so annoying but I wanted another opinion on how it is as a game lol
Honestly I haven’t played in quite a while and was just a space trucker so my opinion really probably doesn’t count for much but if you already own it I would definitely boot it up and give it a few hours and see if it works for you
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My man. We live in the age of OnlyFans, TicTok, and Twitch. People out here getting money for feet pics, doing stupid pranks, and pretending to be NPCs. You should know that people will spend money on everything. Just go with the flow and figure out how to make some money.
Gramps, did you just spell that “TicTok”? 🤦🏽♂️
To be fair, who gives a fuck how that shitty platform is spelled
Ikr? He clearly never ate tictacs
It’s not even comparable to Star Citizen, and I feel bad for anyone who gets suckered into believing otherwise.
I know right, they’ll never those 2 hours back
They could have spent it mindlessly doomscrolling.
But they DIDN’T KNOW! They just didn’t know…
Never play Star Citizen, even if it somehow becomes playable. Got it.
The game costs $45, for the record. For an MMO. With no subscription fees.
WOW costs $155 per year.
Yeah, this is what I keep telling people but nobody wants to listen.
Once the snowball effect has taken hold, it’s next to impossible to reverse.
I fully expect us to see SC detractors to vanish into thin air like those who voted for George Bush Jr. once the game launches and everyone is playing it.
It’s fucking Stockholm syndrome with you people and that game. I tried it for a few weeks. You constantly run into huge game breaking bugs that, when you google it, people say ‘yeah its been like that for years here is the 20 minute work around’.
ITS ALPHA OF COURSE THERE ARE BUGS GAWD DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND GAMES?!
There. I got that argument from you out of the way. Games aren’t in alpha for over a decade and rake in half a billion dollars and not manage to crank out a working product. Thats not how this works. There are 2 options. Its a scam or they are morons.
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This game could be the second coming of Jesus, Robin Williams, and Mr. Rogers all in one and it still wouldn’t excuse the shit the devs have pulled. This isn’t a case where its reputation will be fixed with an amazing final product. The moment you charge thousands of dollars for fictional video game ships in an unfinished video game that has been in development for more than a decade is the moment you cross a moral event horizon as developers and can never recover your reputation as anything other than leeches. This game will never have a good reputation, it could jerk you off to the tune of the Imperial March and it would still be worth less than a glamorous prostitute. At least a prostitute would charge more appropriately for their services.
WoW works.
That’s a incorrect comparison. You’re treating WoW and Star Citizen to be similar games. When WoW for more than a decade has been in its own premium bucket.
The average MMO today is free. Then the small percentages of MMOs that require the core game purchased.
No MMO is free. The question is just how you’re paying.
Servers cost money no matter what.
GW2 is free and FFXIV is also free up to storm blood or shadowbringers expansion. How much content is there in Star citizen again?
I don’t like WoW, but that’s at least an actual game. SC is still nothing but a glorified tech demo. And I say that as one of the earliest backers.
Yes, it is nothing but a glorified tech demo right now. You’re absolutely correct.
That $45 price (or whatever you choose to spend on the game) is a pre-order.
If you don’t like owning incomplete products, don’t buy incomplete products. This seems pretty simple.
That’s all cool and dandy but they blew several release dates over the past decade already and can’t even get their second system out while waiting for that glorified network tech and magical performance increases.
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$45 plus a rig that can play it, I have a decent one and it nearly melted
If it’s $45, how are people spending $10,000 on it?
Same way people spend thousands on games that are “free to play”. What kind of a rock have you been living under? People routinely spend $10,000 on mobile games.
Yes, you can buy spaceships for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. You can also buy those same ships using money earned in game. This is not the first or last game to do this, and it’s really weird how every time a pointless article gets written about it for cheap clicks, a bunch of people suddenly want to pretend that they’re only just just encountering this phenomenon for the first time.
Free to play games with even a sliver of integrity only charge money for stuff like cosmetics, not for important shit or equipment, and I have never ever seen a free to play game charge over 1k for anything ever, let alone fucking 48k, so spare me the “pretending this is unusual” crap. I sure other games that pull this shit exist, but don’t act like it isn’t ridiculous or fucked up or like it’s somehow completely normal. It’s predatory leeching is what it is.
Please learn the difference between “Stupidly expensive” and “Predatory.”
Lamborghinis aren’t predatory. They’re a dumb purchase for rich people to blow their money on, but they’ve got the money to blow.
Now Lotto Max? Those little one dollar tickets? That’s predatory.
The most blatantly exploitative free to play games are often full of dirt cheap purchases. A dollar here, a dollar there, because when the numbers are small you lose track.
When SC charges you $200 for a ship that you could just unlock by playing the game, that purchase is an informed decision. You know up front exactly what you’re getting, and exactly what it will cost. There’s no loot boxes, no random rolls, no gambling. Just a simple transaction.
Whether or not the person on the receiving end of that transaction is getting a good deal is for them to decide. We could just as easily argue over whether or not spending $250 to go to a fancy restaurant is a good deal; it’s largely down your personal preferences.
Bro just because something is expensive that doesn’t mean it can’t be predatory. The game has been “in development” for more than a decade and yet is charging thousands of dollars for equipment, if you can’t see the issue with how they’re operating then you are either blind or delusional.
Genshin and league of legends are both free, how do you think people (collectively) spend millions on them year over year?
To be fair, WoW is an actual complete game, while SC is very, very unfinished. And I say this as someone who occasionally plays it and gets some enjoyment out of it.
Apparently it costs up to 48k to get certain ships, so that means absolutely fucking nothing.
You can buy them in game. honestly i dont know why these people even want to buy all these ships with real money, a big part of these games is working your way up and upgrading your ship or buying new better ones. These people are paying to remove that part of the game which blows my mind
The fact that you can buy any ship in the game with real world money at all is the problem.
These people are paying to remove that part of the game which blows my mind
Yeah for people who actually enjoy putting the work in it doesn’t make much sense, but for some people who play video games it’s not about the getting it’s about the having. The problem is that in this case they can use real world money to have better stuff without having to work for it, giving them an advantage over other players who are poor or don’t want to pay for their ships. If this was 48k for just ship skins and it didn’t affect gameplay at all then it’d be pretty stupid still, but I would at least concede that the average person doesn’t have any disadvantages if they only pay the 45$ for the main game and don’t need to pay thousands of dollars to reasonably compete with players who have bigger wallets and less impulse control. But that doesn’t seem to be the case here since different ships have different stats and abilities afaik. This essentially means that rich people (or gambling addicts which are their own can of worms) can unlock more of the game and perform better faster than people who only pay for the base game.
It costs 48k for every ship in the game. The most expensive single ship that I’ve seen was about 1.2k.
1.2k … for some bits and bytes.
I know professional software licenses that are cheaper.
Dude that’s like a month of any Autodesk software! :O
And yes it’s utterly ridiculous, and I just wanted to take a shot at Autodesk because screw them lol.
No ship should cost any real world money to buy. If the stuff you can buy in a game with real world money can give you an advantage over other players or unlock parts of the game faster than players who don’t pay real money for it, then it’s meaningless to say the game itself is “only 45$”. The ships make up a huge chunk of the game and you can pay 48k to obtain them all immediately, or rather, not you because statistically speaking you’re probably poor, so you don’t get the same game for 45 dollars, not unless you want to spend a fucking loooooooooooooong time grinding in-game (based on what I’ve seen the time needed to grind for enough money to buy even one high class ship is ridiculous). Meanwhile richer players get to fly in circles around you in their better more expensive ships from the start. You get access to less of the game than them.
Also, 1.2k for a single video game spaceship in a game that hasn’t even been officially released yet is disgustingly predatory enough on its own.
Some poor fuckers are getting fleeced.
Kinda hard to consider them poor if they can afford the $10k it costs to whale out $48k more :-\
Apparently they only pay the difference to 48k for the missing items.
Meaning they’re getting fleeced continually.
They might not be poor, but they could be middle class sinking all their savings and getting credit to fuel their addiction.
Kinda hard to even feel sorry for them
If you can afford to spend $48,000 on a video game, how is that getting fleeced?
Like, OK, maybe some idiot mortgages their house for this. Bad spending decision. More likely, anyone who looks at that ticket price and thinks “fair deal” is already a millionaire, and quite welcome to do whatever the fuck they want with their money.
Virtual ships certainly cost a lot less to operate than a Lambo or a boat.
It’s like any amount, there’s people that can properly afford it, and others that will beg, borrow and steal to buy it for the prestige and hurt themselves and others to do it. It’s the latter where the harm lies.
Just like leasing a fancy Mercedes to keep up with the Joneses when you’re already approaching six figures of credit card debt.
They’re being scammed. They are getting next to nothing for inordinate amounts of money. They might not be financially poor, but they’re being taken advantage of. Like NFTs, just because the fraud is mainly being bought by millionaires you don’t stop calling it a fraud. And just like NFTs and gambling there will be a percentage of people who can’t afford it who will hurt themselves and their innocent loved ones because con men are willing to abuse their addictive personalities to make them fall into debt and have them pay for nothing.
According to a friend of mine that plays, the whales were asking for this feature so they didn’t have to go through the purchase process for each ship
Fucking billionaries… :)
I wonder if games that require such farfetched amounts of money should be included in the Luxury tax?
A lot of those “whales” have cognitive difficulties and/or gambling addictions issues. Since many if these game developers/publishers have no qualm blindly milking and profiteering. It should be no surprise if some sort of tax is levied to help societies (à-la-tobacco or sugar tax) attenuate the ravages of gambling addictions.
Moreover, Star Citizen has been released over 10 years ago while been continually updated.
At what point is it just senseless greed that has taken over the game?
Released is a strong word, lol. Agreed though, it is completely unprecedented
It’s one thing to drop a few bucks here and there into a game you enjoy but when you start spending 10k on a fuckin game you have a serious issue. Even if you’re ultra wealthy, do you really have nothing else you could waste that money on? I think it’s time for a serious crackdown on predatory gaming.
Luxury tax doesn’t apply to dealers/retailers. It would just get piled on the final user. Which would be fine for the “richer than god” types, but not so great for some poor bastard with an addiction who can’t help themselves.
You’re right, in that the customer would pay the tax. But also its not like they could be charging an extra 20% and be getting more money. They will have put significant effort and research into finding out what the optimal level of pricing is to get the most grift, which means the fall in “sales” from putting things at a higher price would outweigh the increased profit. I’d rather them scam less and let the government get at least a slice of it. Though really, more regulation to stop this kind of exploitation would be better.
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It’s been a demo for over 10 years, not a game.
Games have story, star citizen is a glorified tech demo as far as I am concerned.
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I boufh a ship beginning of 2014 just to test it out, worst $200 (supposed to get a usb ship, bunch of squadron 42 stuff)
And most games have a point, the only point to star citizen is for YOU to spend money
That level of buy-in is not required. You can get a game package with a single starter pack for US$40. The one in the article includes every variant of every vehicle currently in the game or in development or announced as planned. IMO it’s for people who just want to support development because it literally removes a bunch of reasons to even play.
It’s hard to definitively say if greed has taken over or if they’re just trying to fund development as legitimately as possible without a publisher. They have done some groundbreaking things (64 bit coordinate system, object container streaming, etc) and are working in more (replication layer, server meshing, etc). That is why it has been so long and expensive, why the game is still alpha.
Remembering when it was not yet released, thinking “This looks kinda cool, but the business model looks terrible”. Seems it got much worse.
Seems it got much worse.
Seems like it’s going great for the developer.
Not real life money right?
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I can only assume you’ve no idea what Star Citizen is. 🤦🏽♂️
Bless his heart.
Is it that one bad game where you explore random planets?
That’s Star Field from Bethesda and you can say a lot about it but at least it exists.
Too many things with “star” in their names. Star wars, star trek, star field, star citizen
I’d be willing to pay with real life money if they were real life spaceships.
Wrong
Cap’n i see the whale thar she blows
To quote Thor. Star citizen is a storefront pretending to be a game.
The god Thor?
He’s talking about Jason Thor Hall @ https://www.youtube.com/@PirateSoftware
Who’s behind https://store.steampowered.com/app/567380/Heartbound/
His middle name is Thor and that’s what he goes by (who wouldn’t)
He’s recently gotten a lot of attention because his YT Shorts have just exploded.
His shorts are great. Thanks for sharing them.
Oh wow, I’ve seen this guys shorts start popping up constantly. He seems like he understands the algorithm enough to explode
I banish you all for watching YouTube Shorts
Whaaat? C’mon, it keeps us from making TikTok accounts. …and this Thor guy is really cool. Lol
He’s a really good streamer and a great programmer and game developer to boot. He also has ferrets for pets and live streams them. Dude is the whole nerd entertainment package.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/@PirateSoftware
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
You can get some pretty good gaming info during thunderstorms.
Lol might as well be. Thor. The former Blizzard security dude who turned game Dev and live streams now.
That $48K can get you a real plane though, or boat. But maybe someone paying that for ships in Star Citizen has both already 😅
48k for a plane or boat? Good luck with that.
Something like this, there are more selections within that range on that site,
https://www.yachtworld.com/yacht/1991-hunter-35.5-legend-9163237/
Or these
https://hangar.flights/airplanes/affordable-personal-aircraft/
https://www.aerotrader.com/aircraft-for-sale?sort=price%3Aasc
Neat you can get a shitty plane in need of a major overhaul.
So, you’re not accounting for the required training and licensing to operate those, I take it? FYI, even if you “fast track” the training and go straight for the written exam that precedes logged flight hours (sim and real, both), you’re still looking at ~$30k just to be allowed to fly. Then, there’s the routine (& frequent) maintenance, storage, fuel, etc.
Sure, you can buy a cute li’l death trap for <$50k, but it’s a lawn ornament without licensing.
Don’t get me wrong: fuck Star Citizen sideways with an alien chode tumor. Just, don’t point to garage-tier aviation “solutions” as a fair comparison. 🤗
If you can afford to spend 60k on a video game, you can afford to get a license and a plane, I’m pretty sure…
Inb4 Star Citizen tries to feel more exclusive by instituting spaceship pilot training and licensing that requires logged hours and such…
…you know, so people don’t ruin their “investments”! D:
Don’t forget, you gotta pay for those licenses and classes
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To be fair, I’m uncertain whether you can actually complete that purchase legally without being licensed yourself or a licensed pilot under current contract. 🤓
You can, you just need to hire a pilot if you want to fly in it. How do you think rich people fly around in their jets? Do you really think the pilots own the planes?
Did you even read my comment? 🤦🏽♂️
To be fair…
If you are rich enough to afford to pay for this, you’re too rich.
A few of the most broke-assed people I know in my gaming circles are all in on this game. The rest of us tried to gently prod them away but it’s like a cult.
It is 100% a multi-level-marketing feeling I get from the active players that keep trying to reach out and get us in on it. I’m talkin late 90s Quixtar MLM pyramid scam feels.
The most scary part is, it’s not only the rich. I knew people who have put their life savings into the game.
Landowner class spends that kind of money on larks its nuts but like those people should be seperated from their money imo
Either you’re too rich or bad at investing.
Wait, in real money? Or like video game money?
If this is a genuine question you have some epic story to treat yourself to about how the bestest game of all times was
madepromisedGenuine question my friend lmao
You’re up for a ride if you have a read.
Game is 11 years in alpha development, still a buggy mess that requires a supercomputer to work smoothly, only recently got a second star system (dozens more are pinky promised, and hundreds promised since beginning of development), is constantly exploited in all ways possible, barely has any actual content…
…which absolutely didn’t stop it from earning over half a billion dollars (yes, billion) by selling in-game ships for hundreds and sometimes thousands of very absolutely real dollars, as well as such monstrous packs.
It’s weird, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone actually playing this game. Hell, I don’t even know what gameplay looks like, and honestly I’m happy keeping it that way
It’s an ethically shitty and exploitative funding model, but if you look at the gameplay, you’ll see the appeal of buying the $45 game package. Very few people stop at though. No matter how much you hear that spending more is unnecessary, they’ve built a system of incremental spending and incentives that draw people ever deeper.
The insane thing is that the supposed final vision sounds incredibly tedious in a way that I doubt most people would ever actually play it. For the sake of immersion, you will have to physically move every item from spare sets of armour to bulk cargo for transport jobs. There is a light survival mechanic of hydration and nutrition, but personal hygiene is also planned. Upgrading ships will mean physically pulling components and replacing them, but the real gains will be in the subcomponents!
Maybe that sounds fun as a vision statement, but I assure you, after losing that hand loaded, hand upgraded ship to bugs or exploits for the third time, the joy will all be gone.
I suppose it’s lucky that none of their vision or promises ever come to pass. Anyway. You want my referral code?
real money
Real cash.
WTF!
At the time of this article’s publication, Star Citizen had raised $658,161,596 from more than five million accounts.
The game has not even officially been released!!
Yeah, Star Citizen is world renowned master of squeezing immense amounts of cash from its userbase.
First, they have many ship tiers, and as the most basic ones cost $40+, they feel comfortable charging more for bigger ships, with some ships costing well over $1000.
Second, they commonly introduce wipes in updates, and those wipes only affect everything players accrued in-game, not purchases made with real cash. So you either accept having your entire progress wiped again and again, or you give up and buy your fleet for cash (and any meaningfully gamechanging ship costs hundreds of dollars). The developers claim that this is due to bugs and exploits being found, and that eventually everything will stay forever, no matter how you bought it, but they are obviously aware of the situation and will probably make sure this never happens.
Third, the game does a good job at immersing you into the universe, so some players really go for a second life there. For them, it is the successful counterpart of the Metaverse.
And just like that we end up with people spending insane amounts of money on in-game ships. Half of the players I know spent over $300 on the game, and I personally know people who spent upwards to $8000.
Scary part is that many of them aren’t rich, and one of the people I know literally saved for years and hid $8000 from their family to buy a ship pack. He is living in Ukraine, a country with GDP per capita of $4350.
