Shekeling citizens - security hole with Star citizen servers show odd numbers with backers

[dizmo]

I was interested in this game when it was first talked about, and almost bought into it. I didn't though, and instead bought something else. Glad I did, as I don't think this game will ever truly come out. I don't, however, believe in any way shape or form that it's a scam. It's definitely gotten feature creep, and I think that's what's holding up the games progress. That blame can be solely laid at the feet of Chris Roberts, and I believe it was known to be an issue of his with previous titles as well. At the beginning I don't think there was any reference to VR, something that they've been trying to add. This is the problem when you don't have a publisher. There's no one standing over you, telling you to drop features and stretch goals and just get the product out the door. As much as we all like to lament them, they do have a very real purpose in game development, and this is what we get when there isn't one.

 

What I find funny is No Man's Sky came out years after, and has improved drastically since it's launch with a team of....17. Or, to put another way, a team that's 27x smaller than RSI. They even have similar elements to what RSI wants to put out. Sure, they're not quite on the same level, but you have 27x more people working on it, you shouldn't have such a hard time getting it done in a span of 8 years.

 

This game is exactly what I'd want to play. Too bad it'll likely never come out. At least there's always Freelancer and its mods, which have the core elements aside from a likely janky FPS aspect.

 

9 hours ago, straight_stewie said:

I'm not sure of a rigorous definition, but a release version would certainly be a good start.

In six years they are only on Alpha 3.8.x

Charging money for an Alpha build is also an indicator of a scam.

If they'd kept to the original plan they probably would have completed it by now, but they've expanded the scope again and again. 6 years isn't completely unrealistic though, considering you had to build the company and then start production of the game.

5 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

Oof, can't wait to see response about this. Though, I'm not a backer, I follow the game from start, I like the setting and well ambition with the project. Played it few times, but it needs more work for sure to get the feel of it being fleshed out and complete, not just separate gameplay modules. 

The scam or not, some people need to realize few things, in general a game of such scope and detailed systems they work on, takes time. You see way simpler games taking years and get released with not enough content also broken. This is supposed to be a MMO flight sim, RPG and shooter. Another thing, they had goals they met over time and people wanted them to add and work more further, thus creating higher goals over time. So all of that, obviously it will take years and years to make it even beta though. 

Either way, I look forward to it eventually for both the SP and MP parts. 

It was never meant to have the shooter element though, was it? IIRC that was added as a stretch goal after the campaign ended...just like a lot of the other features they keep adding to the game. That's a huge part of what's preventing it's launch. They need to stop adding things and just push it out.

5 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

In the time since this game was first announced as a kickstarter Rockstar games have released both GTA V & RDR 2 and Rockstar are currently getting shit from the community for not releasing enough games.

 

Its also, apparently at least, had more money spent on it than Rockstar spent on GTA V.

 

Its very close to 8 years since they announced it, its had well over $100 million in revenue and all they have to show is a VERY early Alpha build and a store rammed with ships that cost up to thousands of dollars. 8 years and a hundred million plus for an early prototype and a store.

That's not exactly an apples to apples comparison though. It cost Rockstar roughly $265 million to make GTA V....but, unlike RSI, they already had a lot of staff in place, they already had company structure and equipment, and, most importantly, they already had seven design studios in place. Those are all huge expenses. They also had, during GTA V development, more than twice the number of employees working on the title.

3 hours ago, StDragon said:

I'm an early backer. And yes, I feel conned. The hype was real. There was real creativity and a community backing it.

 

Somewhere along the line it all fell apart. Hope and dreams that never materialized the way it was supposed too. It's just a zombie of a project. Even if it finishes, I've lost all interest frankly. Way too late into this to care anymore.

To be fair, you should have gone into this with realistic expectations. Crowd funded games are always a gamble, and honestly rarely pay off.

2 hours ago, JZStudios said:

Star Citizens scope isn't nearly as big as they'd like to lead you to believe. They have randomly generated planets, which takes far less time than procedural or handmade maps like R* does. R* also did a new game engine, but we'll ignore that.

The base point is that SC was set on a kickstarter with a clearly laid out goal that people bought into, set to release in what? 2012? 2014?. Somehow along the way people got it into their heads that a company with the largest amount of funding for a game ever releasing what they initially sold would be an incomplete product.

 

In the meantime, Tesla and SpaceX have launched and taken off, there's been at least 4 other galaxy spanning space games that have released since SC inception, in my personal experience have started up an engineering shop, worked with a scammy customer eerily similar, since left the company that's continued to grow, Rockstar released a new game, and will re-release GTAV...

1. I'd really like to know why people think it takes 8 years and half a billion dollars to make a company.
2. Not that hard. It's randomly generated and even if it wasn't, it's been done dozens of times before.
3. ?
4. Why? If anything a series of point lights would work, and ray tracing also isn't new. Unless you mean system suns, in which case, why? Direct lighting would be fine.
5. From what I've seen the barren wastelands of planet surfaces are repeating textures. The city planet they showed off was repeating buildings. That by definition means it has very little to actually load. Otherwise it's primarily space, which... is 99.99% empty.
6. Sure? But every MMO does that?
7. 8 years into production and still talking about character design is fucking mind boggling. Or planning a roadmap for a roadmap.

As time and radio silence go on I'm not sure I'm convinced it's not a scam anymore. There's at minimum a massive mishandling of management and constantly shifting goal posts. If they had stuck to the original pitch and sold it, it would've been fine and they could've built from there. Instead it's years beyond initial release date and there's not even an alpha for the initial product pitch, meanwhile they're selling $15,000 ships. A lot of it is from "letting the community decide" because the internet is a rational place that understands what's realistic. If SC set up clearly impossible goals in the first place knowing the community would vote for it, and then pour money into it it's pretty.... "ambitious" if not altogether scammy. After 8 years though they barely have anything to show for it, even with needing to work out these "massive systems."

I don't see what Tesla, SpaceX, or starting an engineering shop has to do with this at all.

As for point #1, check my reply to Master Disaster, as well as feature creep. Not an excuse, but it's a reason.

RSI's main problem is not having a publisher. They need someone setting them clear goals, and a strict release date. Without that I think we'll just see them adding more and more and more. At this point I really wouldn't be surprised if we hear an announcement about how they're redoing the game to use Unreal Engine 5.

 

[Doobeedoo]

1 hour ago, dizmo said:

It was never meant to have the shooter element though, was it? IIRC that was added as a stretch goal after the campaign ended...just like a lot of the other features they keep adding to the game. That's a huge part of what's preventing it's launch. They need to stop adding things and just push it out.

Maybe not in the start, but just a space sim, though people wanted more, not just one dimensional game. Personally I also wanted to see it go more then just a space ship sim, so making it MMO like and shooter, with hubs is what eventually is getting made to be. While still staying true to space ship flight sim too. Really the shooter part and such was already realized long time ago. I'm in no rush, not impatient, when they release it we'll see it.

[dizmo]

3 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

Maybe not in the start, but just a space sim, though people wanted more, not just one dimensional game. Personally I also wanted to see it go more then just a space ship sim, so making it MMO like and shooter, with hubs is what eventually is getting made to be. While still staying true to space ship flight sim too. Really the shooter part and such was already realized long time ago. I'm in no rush, not impatient, when they release it we'll see it.

A smarter way to go about it would have been to release the game with what they promised at launch, and release the rest in modules. Instead they have way too much on their plate, and they're going to go very, very far past any expected release dates. I don't think, at this rate, they'll ever fully release the game.

[NumLock21]

SC is a scam and a good one at it, when people are in denial, and  kept giving them their hard earn money.

 

[Letgomyleghoe.]

I think this sums it up pretty well

 

[Helly]

On 9/14/2020 at 11:17 AM, Master Disaster said:

Squadron 42 is not an MMO and was promised to be released in 2014 so its now 6 years late. Plus after the third or fourth delay they promised it would be out in the second half of 2020, its now September 2020 and all they have done is gone total radio silence.

The release was never promised, certainly not in 2014. Old info people keep digging up, please stop. It was to go into BETA before the end of 2020. They can still make that. If you backed you should get updates by mail regularly (monthly i think). I got one on SQ42 on September 2nd. They go into every detail on what they have been working on so the radio silence you mention, i have not noticed and as far as i'm concerned doesn't exist.

17 hours ago, dizmo said:

It was never meant to have the shooter element though, was it? IIRC that was added as a stretch goal after the campaign ended...just like a lot of the other features they keep adding to the game. That's a huge part of what's preventing it's launch. They need to stop adding things and just push it out

Was no stretch goal. The game was announced as having "a rich universe focused on epic space adventure, trading and dogfighting in first person.". The first person implies that you gotta have shooting as well. Maybe it was added with a stretch goal, but it would have been among the first 10. I just checked and actually adding FPS is never mentioned. However they do mention EVA Combat in the 9th goal @ $5m. So the normal walking around combat would have already been planned from the start.

 

They are also only adding features to the game already promised years ago. They are not announcing much (if any) new ones AFAIK. Been months since i paid any attention though, MMO's aren't really my thing, i only backed it for the single player story.

 

10 hours ago, dizmo said:

A smarter way to go about it would have been to release the game with what they promised at launch, and release the rest in modules. Instead they have way too much on their plate, and they're going to go very, very far past any expected release dates. I don't think, at this rate, they'll ever fully release the game.

What launch? The very first announcement of the game? I can't find the amount of systems promised at the initial announcement but at the 8th stretch goal (that's at $4.5m) they mention it will launch with 60 systems. Last time i checked they already said that systems will be released in stages and the beta version will launch with only 2 or maybe that has increased already. Like i said, i don't really keep in touch with it anymore. Either way, what they promised at launch is not all in the game atm.

 

17 hours ago, dizmo said:

That's not exactly an apples to apples comparison though. It cost Rockstar roughly $265 million to make GTA V....but, unlike RSI, they already had a lot of staff in place, they already had company structure and equipment, and, most importantly, they already had seven design studios in place. Those are all huge expenses. They also had, during GTA V development, more than twice the number of employees working on the title

Let's get this straightened out once and for all here. THERE IS NO APPLES TO APPLES COMPARISON POSSIBLE AT ALL WITH SC. There is no game like this AT ALL. If Rockstar made GTAV the same way as SC was made then it would have taken them twice as long AT LEAST.

If you are a serious software developer you should know that when you are creating a test version for your customer, which you have to constantly keep updating and be usable, it will take you A LOT longer to create the product.

Because your customer(s) (the backers in the case of SC) are using the product, they have comments and requests etc. They report bugs and problems, give you idea's to make it better. Some (if not most) of the time you will find them to be right about the changes and improvements and want to implement them. Bugs you of course want to fix as well. But at the same time a different part of your team is working on features and stuff to add to the eventual release version. Your bugfixes might create problems for them. Sometimes the other way around as well. They might find bugs users never noticed which you want to implement in the live version to make it better.

All this going back and forth to keep the backers playing takes a lot of time and resources which Rockstar NEVER has to do. They just keep building and building until they have a complete game, throw it into alpha and start testing and bug fixing. They got everything they want in the game and can just iron it out and fix everything. WAY easier to create a game that way, but it takes 5 or 6 years for a game like GTA to get there. If you have to let your backers wait 5 or 6 years and only let them see a video here and there and some screenshots, they're backing out and ur money stops coming in and ur game is dead. If you have a publisher like rockstar has that gives you money to keep going, its not a problem.

Let's also no forget that when it doesn't work out for rockstar, they have the advantage that no a soul on earth knows they we're working on anything, so they can just throw it out and start over. Imagine the shitstorm RSI gets when they do that. So there is also an insane amount of pressure on them to make this thing work and not fail.

 

And i've just decided to just give up on trying to convince people of all this... no point really, hopefully i shut up a few of you, if not.. meh, whatever.

[Hawx]

This is a real yikes of a thread. We've got an editorized /r/pcgaming repost further editorized by the OP of this thread. It's not even a "Security Hole", it's just a normal REST endpoint that the platform uses for loading users.

 

After NightNord posted the original thread, a number of accounts were identified that definitely exist but didn't appear on that endpoint. It was theorized that the endpoint was just a cache for active accounts that have been interacted with recently (ie a redis cache for performance), but even after poking two missing accounts within Spectrum, neither showed up:

It's looking pretty likely that the endpoint is either broken or simply doesn't list users that have never interacted with Spectrum in any way. 

[SansVarnic]

-= Topic Moved to PC Gaming =-

 

Please update to Meet TN Guidelines. Then contact a mod to move back.

 

[Master Disaster]

2 hours ago, Helly said:

The release was never promised, certainly not in 2014. Old info people keep digging up, please stop. It was to go into BETA before the end of 2020. They can still make that. If you backed you should get updates by mail regularly (monthly i think). I got one on SQ42 on September 2nd. They go into every detail on what they have been working on so the radio silence you mention, i have not noticed and as far as i'm concerned doesn't exist.

In the first kickstarter they did they slated 2014 as the release date for SQ42, I realise that was not a promise but I never said it was either. However they did say SQ42 will release in 2014.

 

I'm also curious exactly what you think is so special about this game that 8 years into development they can still be talking about design and issuing new development roadmaps. It seems to me, as an outsider, that the only thing they have actually finished is the ships to sell and the store to sell them on.

[Helly]

 15 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

I realise that was not a promise but I never said it was either. However they did say SQ42 will release in 2014.

you didn't say they promised you say? Did you read the quote from urself i added in my reaction.. here it is again.

On 9/14/2020 at 11:17 AM, Master Disaster said:

Squadron 42 is not an MMO and was promised to be released in 2014 so its now 6 years late. Plus after the third or fourth delay they promised it would be out....

sure looks like you said they promised. That "promise" is an old message which might have been in the old kickstarter. They changed all that when the money started to roll in by the bucket loads and instead of taking all that money and giving the small game they planned initially they took it and expanded the scope of the game and use all the money they got to make something much bigger.

17 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

I'm also curious exactly what you think is so special about this game that 8 years into development they can still be talking about design and issuing new development roadmaps. It seems to me, as an outsider, that the only thing they have actually finished is the ships to sell and the store to sell them on.

For the first part you can read the rest of my previous message, seems you stopped reading after my reaction to ur first quote.

 

As for what they "actually finished", as an outsider (who's never bought the game or even seen it) you only see things about this game in the news, and in the news and reactions from readers under them, they only talk about the expensive ships, the packages full of ships and the store(s) that are in the game where you can buy them.

You can try the game now for free until September 23rd. Play it, let me know if all they actually finished are the ships and single store to sell them on. Btw finished is a big word. It is still an MMO after all, nothing will ever be finished with any active MMO.

[JZStudios]

20 hours ago, dizmo said:

I don't see what Tesla, SpaceX, or starting an engineering shop has to do with this at all.

As for point #1, check my reply to Master Disaster, as well as feature creep. Not an excuse, but it's a reason.

RSI's main problem is not having a publisher. They need someone setting them clear goals, and a strict release date. Without that I think we'll just see them adding more and more and more. At this point I really wouldn't be surprised if we hear an announcement about how they're redoing the game to use Unreal Engine 5.

The point is that there's been real world business start-ups that have actually gone to space, complete career changes, and children growing up in the time it took this company to not release an alpha version. Once again, it DOES NOT take half a billion dollars and 8 years to start a company. Also the primary point. I'm sick of hearing about how much time it takes to start a company from people who've never done it, and given it's had such fucking massive amounts of funding from the public sector and other investors.

 

Feature creep doesn't make it more difficult to start a business. It makes the product release take longer. If people stopped saying "but... they had to start a business!" and started saying what actually happened of feature creep I wouldn't bring it up. It's 100% feature creep and mass mismanagement. Neither of those things effects starting a business.

 

I also wouldn't be surprised. RSI really reminds me of the scammy customer we had constantly trying to sell shit to people based on virtues he couldn't possibly achieve. He sold product to a university in Japan based on the premise it will meet their needs, and instead they had to wait like 2 years for us to completely redesign the product to meet their needs. And not just be a total piece of shit. They gave us the original product back that we just threw away. Meanwhile the customer was constantly falsely advertising and upselling features that were never even considered or mentioned to us so we were constantly scrambling trying to match his bullshit until it wound up going to court.

As far as I know though, RSI isn't doing the full Ponzie scheme like he was and using new investors to pay off old investors. They're just promising Jesus tech they'll never accomplish.

14 hours ago, dizmo said:

A smarter way to go about it would have been to release the game with what they promised at launch, and release the rest in modules. Instead they have way too much on their plate, and they're going to go very, very far past any expected release dates. I don't think, at this rate, they'll ever fully release the game.

Basically this. Again, if our scammy customer wanted an actual business he should've just let us make the product we initially agreed upon and sold it, instead he kept adding more and more shit for us to scramble towards and it ended up never going anywhere. Eventually we just got to the point where we pumped out enough product that if he wouldn't buy it would void our contract and suddenly he was "out of money" and needed to find some more investors. Oddly enough for $30,000 per product.

[Doobeedoo]

15 hours ago, dizmo said:

A smarter way to go about it would have been to release the game with what they promised at launch, and release the rest in modules. Instead they have way too much on their plate, and they're going to go very, very far past any expected release dates. I don't think, at this rate, they'll ever fully release the game.

Maybe, who knows, I guess they communicated enough with core fanbase and what they wanted and what CIG envisioned too, so they both were yeah ok let's do it like so. They do have a lot on plate, each module so to speak expanded with it's own complex systems, tying them together to feel coherency will be a big challenge. If they can manage to release a game, that each part of it is solid enough from the get go and to build upon, it should be good. If the game would amazingly fulfill almost all realistic expectations on it's release, that would be quite something though. 
We've been hearing about this "AAAA" games initiative some companies plan, yet yeah I'm not sure how that will go, considering many things how they did up to date now. Even though far from finished Star Citizen I guess, by it's complexity and ambition could fall in that category, that is if it delivers.

[dizmo]

5 hours ago, Helly said:

Was no stretch goal. The game was announced as having "a rich universe focused on epic space adventure, trading and dogfighting in first person.". The first person implies that you gotta have shooting as well. Maybe it was added with a stretch goal, but it would have been among the first 10. I just checked and actually adding FPS is never mentioned. However they do mention EVA Combat in the 9th goal @ $5m. So the normal walking around combat would have already been planned from the start.

 

They are also only adding features to the game already promised years ago. They are not announcing much (if any) new ones AFAIK. Been months since i paid any attention though, MMO's aren't really my thing, i only backed it for the single player story.

 

What launch? The very first announcement of the game? I can't find the amount of systems promised at the initial announcement but at the 8th stretch goal (that's at $4.5m) they mention it will launch with 60 systems. Last time i checked they already said that systems will be released in stages and the beta version will launch with only 2 or maybe that has increased already. Like i said, i don't really keep in touch with it anymore. Either way, what they promised at launch is not all in the game atm.

 

Let's get this straightened out once and for all here. THERE IS NO APPLES TO APPLES COMPARISON POSSIBLE AT ALL WITH SC. There is no game like this AT ALL. If Rockstar made GTAV the same way as SC was made then it would have taken them twice as long AT LEAST.

If you are a serious software developer you should know that when you are creating a test version for your customer, which you have to constantly keep updating and be usable, it will take you A LOT longer to create the product.

Because your customer(s) (the backers in the case of SC) are using the product, they have comments and requests etc. They report bugs and problems, give you idea's to make it better. Some (if not most) of the time you will find them to be right about the changes and improvements and want to implement them. Bugs you of course want to fix as well. But at the same time a different part of your team is working on features and stuff to add to the eventual release version. Your bugfixes might create problems for them. Sometimes the other way around as well. They might find bugs users never noticed which you want to implement in the live version to make it better.

All this going back and forth to keep the backers playing takes a lot of time and resources which Rockstar NEVER has to do. They just keep building and building until they have a complete game, throw it into alpha and start testing and bug fixing. They got everything they want in the game and can just iron it out and fix everything. WAY easier to create a game that way, but it takes 5 or 6 years for a game like GTA to get there. If you have to let your backers wait 5 or 6 years and only let them see a video here and there and some screenshots, they're backing out and ur money stops coming in and ur game is dead. If you have a publisher like rockstar has that gives you money to keep going, its not a problem.

Let's also no forget that when it doesn't work out for rockstar, they have the advantage that no a soul on earth knows they we're working on anything, so they can just throw it out and start over. Imagine the shitstorm RSI gets when they do that. So there is also an insane amount of pressure on them to make this thing work and not fail.

 

And i've just decided to just give up on trying to convince people of all this... no point really, hopefully i shut up a few of you, if not.. meh, whatever.

I'm pretty sure VR was not mentioned during the initial games launch. So, no, they're definitely adding more.

 

So, how do you figure it would take studios with more experience and twice the staff, as well as a publisher pushing them to get something out, twice as long to accomplish the same goal? Simple fact; It wouldn't. Star Citizen is rapidly approaching the longest development time for a video game. Other companies that had lengthy production times also put out other games over that period, which is not the case with RSI.

 

Money stops coming in? Backing out? Not sure if you understand how crowd based funding works if you think that's a possibility. Backers have to go to court to get their money back, they can't simply ask for it. Nor are most of them a continuous stream of revenue.

 

You think large companies will invest hundreds of millions of dollars into something to just "throw it away?" You clearly have no idea how business works. While that might work for mega companies like Valve, it doesn't work for most.

 

You can't convince people, because most people can see through bullshit. This project is horribly managed. Period. Because of this, I'd be shocked if a final product is ever released.

 

1 hour ago, JZStudios said:

The point is that there's been real world business start-ups that have actually gone to space, complete career changes, and children growing up in the time it took this company to not release an alpha version. Once again, it DOES NOT take half a billion dollars and 8 years to start a company. Also the primary point. I'm sick of hearing about how much time it takes to start a company from people who've never done it, and given it's had such fucking massive amounts of funding from the public sector and other investors.

 

Feature creep doesn't make it more difficult to start a business. It makes the product release take longer. If people stopped saying "but... they had to start a business!" and started saying what actually happened of feature creep I wouldn't bring it up. It's 100% feature creep and mass mismanagement. Neither of those things effects starting a business.

 

I also wouldn't be surprised. RSI really reminds me of the scammy customer we had constantly trying to sell shit to people based on virtues he couldn't possibly achieve. He sold product to a university in Japan based on the premise it will meet their needs, and instead they had to wait like 2 years for us to completely redesign the product to meet their needs. And not just be a total piece of shit. They gave us the original product back that we just threw away. Meanwhile the customer was constantly falsely advertising and upselling features that were never even considered or mentioned to us so we were constantly scrambling trying to match his bullshit until it wound up going to court.

As far as I know though, RSI isn't doing the full Ponzie scheme like he was and using new investors to pay off old investors. They're just promising Jesus tech they'll never accomplish.

Basically this. Again, if our scammy customer wanted an actual business he should've just let us make the product we initially agreed upon and sold it, instead he kept adding more and more shit for us to scramble towards and it ended up never going anywhere. Eventually we just got to the point where we pumped out enough product that if he wouldn't buy it would void our contract and suddenly he was "out of money" and needed to find some more investors. Oddly enough for $30,000 per product.

That's irrelevant. Not only is irrelevant, it's factually incorrect. Space-X has been around for 10 years more than the end of when the Kickstarter finished. Which was long before you'd have a properly formed company. On top of that, they have 8x the number of employees. Are you in video game development or business? I don't think you have a basis for stating something like that. They've been given absolutely no money from the public sector, I'm not sure why you'd even infer that.

 

You're right, that's also not at all what I was implying when I said that. Feature creep pushes up development times because they have more features to work into the game. Now you're clearly just misinterpreting what I said.

 

I think it's doable, I just don't think people have given them enough time. Didn't they also restart some portion of it from scratch half way through? Again, not an excuse for them, but it would be a reason that it's taken them so long to get the finished product out the door. It has been massively mismanaged though, and I think that falls fully at the leaders feet. I remember seeing worries of this early on in some news articles, saying he's capable of being a good leader, and during his Wing Commander days even tried to keep extending that project.

 

[Helly]

15 hours ago, dizmo said:

I'm pretty sure VR was not mentioned during the initial games launch. So, no, they're definitely adding more.

VR is an "eventually" thing for SC AFAIK. Has no priority at all.

 

15 hours ago, dizmo said:

So, how do you figure it would take studios with more experience and twice the staff, as well as a publisher pushing them to get something out, twice as long to accomplish the same goal? Simple fact; It wouldn't. Star Citizen is rapidly approaching the longest development time for a video game. Other companies that had lengthy production times also put out other games over that period, which is not the case with RSI.

Did you even read anything i said? There is no comparison to SC with any other game(development). If you put rockstar with GTA5 in the same position, running 3 different version instances of the game simultaneously with at least one with the least amount of bugs and somewhat playable. You would have seen at least double the development time for that game. That's what i said and that is a FACT. I know from experience. The development of SC is COMPLETELY different from any other game.

 

15 hours ago, dizmo said:

Money stops coming in? Backing out? Not sure if you understand how crowd based funding works if you think that's a possibility. Backers have to go to court to get their money back, they can't simply ask for it. Nor are most of them a continuous stream of revenue.

Not sure if you understand how crowd based funding works but if you want to keep getting money and selling ships in a game like SC you gotta have players be able to do something with it other then admiring it in a hanger or see it in a pretty picture or in a video. No one said anything about getting money back. If backers go away from ur game no one talks about it and no new players(backers) come to your game anymore and the money stops coming in.

15 hours ago, dizmo said:

You think large companies will invest hundreds of millions of dollars into something to just "throw it away?" You clearly have no idea how business works. While that might work for mega companies like Valve, it doesn't work for most.

Think? No i KNOW this happens. Look up the Halo MMO. 90 million dollars gone. And that's just 1 quick search. There's lots more i'm sure. You think game development companies build the games you buy in 1 try and never fail and start over? You clearly have no idea how software development works. Sometimes it IS actually far easier and better to start over then to patch old code up to new standards and ways of working which might take just as long to complete only you have thrown together code from different places now with probably a lot more bugs then when you would have started over.

Yes most game development companies do this. So many projects they started but never finished and all that time and money is just thrown away. Sure bits and pieces are used in other projects to limit the wasted time and money but most of it is gone.. never to be seen again. Want proof? Well every now and then you get a news article about a game that was canceled (former mentioned Halo MMO, Starcraft Ghost, Fable Legends, This Is Vegas... to name a few) there's undoubtedly a lot more we never hear about. Don't start about those games coming from big companies only. Of course they do, who's going to care about some indie developer canceling their game and starting over? Not news worthy so you don't hear about it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

 

15 hours ago, dizmo said:

You can't convince people, because most people can see through bullshit.

Ah no i don't think so. It's because people don't read anything other then what they want to believe and ignore everything that says otherwise no matter where it comes from. Look at the 2 people i reacted to here in this topic. Immediately say things i clearly already explained in the very message they themselves quoted.

[Helly]

whoops....

[Quinnell]

Star Citizen is a lost cause as far as I am concerned.  It's money I've considered effectively burned in a fire... horribly mismanaged project that will eventually die in a completely unsurprising waste of time, money, and withered dreams.