Star Citizen scaling back plans and no longer posting long term target dates

[spartaman64]

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Star Citizen developers Cloud Imperium Games' new public development roadmap will no longer include target dates for coming features more than one calendar quarter away. The change, the company writes, is largely to avoid "distraction" and "continued noise every time we shift deliverables" from "a very loud contingent of Roadmap watchers who see projections as promises."

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It has now been just over nine years since Chris Roberts first raised $6.3 million in Kickstarter funds for Star Citizen, a haul that has grown to over $434 million in funding in the years since. Despite all that time and money, though, the game still only exists as a very rough Alpha version that's still missing many of the promised features that have slowly crept into the project during that time. The single-player spinoff game Squadron 42, meanwhile, has seen a planned beta delayed multiple times, with CIG COO Carl Jones recently saying it still might be "one or two more years" before the game is playable.

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Now, just over a year later, CIG is now saying that maintaining a Release View that showed four quarters' worth of tentative feature release plans was "a mistake." The overhauled Release View "put too much attention on features that had a high probability of shifting around," the company said, adding that "it has become abundantly clear to us that despite our best efforts to communicate the fluidity of development, and how features marked as Tentative should sincerely not be relied upon, the general focus of many of our most passionate players has continued to lead them to interpret anything on the Release View as a promise."

In explaining the problem, CIG seemed to put some of the blame for this faulty interpretation on the players themselves:

We want to acknowledge that not all of you saw it that way; many took our new focus and our words to heart and understood exactly what we tried to convey. But there still remains a very loud contingent of Roadmap watchers who see projections as promises. And their continued noise every time we shift deliverables has become a distraction both internally at CIG and within our community, as well as to prospective Star Citizen fans watching from the sidelines at our Open Development communications.

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More than that, though, some players are getting understandably impatient with CIG as Star Citizen rolls well into its 10th year of development with nothing close to a final release anywhere in sight. No matter how much you update your roadmap or change the way you inform players about what's going on, at some point people start to expect something approaching an actual product to justify nearly half a billion dollars in funding.

source: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/02/star-citizen-devs-scale-back-roadmap-to-avoid-timeline-distractions/

 

I actually agree with them throwing out estimated release dates since they don't seem to be hitting them anyways. But if they are going to be removing promised features also, which again I agree with, but they should provide a refund path for people who bought in for those features. Also promising target dates and then not hitting them is their fault not the consumer's fault.

[Shimejii]

i cannot wait for these devs to be arrested and charged with fraud. At this point i would just force them to refund and drop the project. 10 years of game dev, its not happening

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Shimejii said:

i cannot wait for these devs to be arrested and charged with fraud. At this point i would just force them to refund and drop the project. 10 years of game dev, its not happening

10 years and $400 plus million.

[poochyena]

4 minutes ago, Shimejii said:

i cannot wait for these devs to be arrested and charged with fraud. At this point i would just force them to refund and drop the project. 10 years of game dev, its not happening

Fraud for what, exactly? They are still developing the game, no?

[spartaman64]

2 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Fraud for what, exactly? They are still developing the game, no?

yeah but its way past the promised release date so there should be a cut off somewhere. if i say hey im developing a game thats going to be released next year and then after next year comes i say actually its going to be released in the year 2500 dont worry we are totally still developing it and we are keeping your money i think that should count as fraud

[Arika]

still won't be released...

[poochyena]

25 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

yeah but its way past the promised release date so there should be a cut off somewhere. if i say hey im developing a game thats going to be released next year and then after next year comes i say actually its going to be released in the year 2500 dont worry we are totally still developing it and we are keeping your money i think that should count as fraud

well yea. People are donating for continued development, not for the promise of the game at a certain date.

I just looked at their site and I'm not seeing anything looking like a scam. Could you point me to the specific scam you are referring to?

[tkitch]

1 hour ago, spartaman64 said:

yeah but its way past the promised release date so there should be a cut off somewhere. if i say hey im developing a game thats going to be released next year and then after next year comes i say actually its going to be released in the year 2500 dont worry we are totally still developing it and we are keeping your money i think that should count as fraud

Daikatana.  Duke Nukem Forever.  No such statutes exist.

[AlTech]

This is why every roadmap you ever give to prospective and existing customers usually has the disclaimer that it's not a promise to release those features (either at the specified release or at any point in the future) and that it's subject to change at any time.

[AlTech]

1 hour ago, Shimejii said:

i cannot wait for these devs to be arrested and charged with fraud. At this point i would just force them to refund and drop the project. 10 years of game dev, its not happening

Nobody was defrauded though. People bought a game being developed. It's just taking longer than expected for it to release.

 

7 minutes ago, tkitch said:

Daikatana.  Duke Nukem Forever.  No such statutes exist.

And good thing too because otherwise some software and some games might not be created in the first place.

 

1 hour ago, spartaman64 said:

yeah but its way past the promised release date so there should be a cut off somewhere. if i say hey im developing a game thats going to be released next year and then after next year comes i say actually its going to be released in the year 2500 dont worry we are totally still developing it and we are keeping your money i think that should count as fraud

People didn't buy into Star Citizen on the idea that it would release at a certain date. Games these days are notorious for delayed release dates.  It's almost uncommon for a game to ship on time these days.

 

I guess under your interpretation we would need to charge most of the gaming industry with fraud.

[bcredeur97]

I remember when this game was first announced and the crazy Kickstarter backing. Years and years of disappointment since. Not sure how it still hasn't died yet to be honest. Dont see much talk about it anymore.

[Eaglerino]

41 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

I remember when this game was first announced and the crazy Kickstarter backing. Years and years of disappointment since. Not sure how it still hasn't died yet to be honest. Dont see much talk about it anymore.

Despite its failures it's still unlike any other space game out there. Elite Dangerous is another option, but they charge their players $60 then scale back their promises all the time. No Man's Sky just isn't the same, plus kickstarter backers are under the delusion their donation makes them a stakeholder and they will stick around for anything. You know I'd even make the claim it has more players than Battlefield 2042.

 

Anyway nobody should buy or back Star Citizen from now until the nonexistent day it comes out

[Areco777]

I dont expect to play this game in my lifetime 

[poochyena]

6 minutes ago, Areco777 said:

I dont expect to play this game in my lifetime 

you can play it right now https://robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/play-now

[Areco777]

1 hour ago, poochyena said:

you can play it right now https://robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/play-now

i meant in a way that it wont be finished before my death 

[Middcore]

"Actually, the reason we never hit our development milestones is that people point out we don't hit our development milestones. Yes, it's all your fault really, fans. But not to worry, we'll solve this by just not having any development milestones at all." 

[vetali]

2 hours ago, bcredeur97 said:

I remember when this game was first announced and the crazy Kickstarter backing. Years and years of disappointment since. Not sure how it still hasn't died yet to be honest. Dont see much talk about it anymore.

Yeah, I tried warning people back then their goals were entirely too ambitious. Especially back when it was announced. Everything from the kickstarter level seemed... like a scam. I decided to wait it out for a release product. Not trying to pat myself on the back because I wanted the game to deliver. It seemed like a great game concept. Especially considering I had just completed the Mass Effect trilogy when it was announced. I just had doubts.

[AlwaysFSX]

5 hours ago, poochyena said:

People are donating for continued development, not for the promise of the game at a certain date.

"The initial estimated target release date was stated to be November 2014, with all proposed features available at launch."

Yeah, no, nobody backed the kickstarter and continued development because the game is supposed to release or anything. Not at all!

What kind of take is this? lmao

[sub68]

5 hours ago, Shimejii said:

i cannot wait for these devs to be arrested and charged with fraud. At this point i would just force them to refund and drop the project. 10 years of game dev, its not happening

 

5 hours ago, poochyena said:

Fraud for what, exactly? They are still developing the game, no?

GEES thats a big page for that.

[AlwaysFSX]

2 minutes ago, sub68 said:

 

-snip-

GEES thats a big page for that.

Golly Gee it's almost like the game is basically vaporware and those of us who were sane back in 2012 knew this!

[aDoomGuy]

Scam Citizen.

[Taf the Ghost]

This was a failed game from a Production-level very early. It was noticeable. Kept over promising what wasn't technically feasible and simply wouldn't be. The choice back in ~2015 was either to radically cut content to get a game out or go full Early Access Model and roll out new features every 6 months or so.  Anyone observing the game from the outside could see this 5 or more years ago.

But two things happened. 1) They found a gullible market for hype selling proto-NFTs and, frankly, 2) the company has looked the other way as someone has found a way to use this as a money transfer point outside the normal system. (This screams "money laundering front", but there's no direct proof for it.)  To their create, it does seem like a decent studio to work for, minus the fact the management has been over their head for nearly a decade. I do feel bad for those that invested heavily in the "game", as they're never going to get anything they thought they'd get out of the game.

 

Though, post-2021, I can't even been that annoyed about this anymore. The NFT grift is basically the same play and its even more massive.

[Franck]

5 hours ago, aDoomGuy said:

Scam Citizen.

it's not a scam I've found the proper definition :

 

"Type of unsustainable business model that recruits members (investors) via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying genuine investments or products"

 

Oops my bad that was the definition of pyramid scheme.

[Doobeedoo]

Interesting move though. I'm not a backer, but personally interested in the scope and detail of the game they're after, I really wish for a modern sci-fi MMO game like it. It has ship systems, an fps play, etc. Yeah they keep extending their goals, but backers want them too so.. Yes it's been in dev for like a decade, but hey, much easier games are being developed for years and years and also end up short, broken and lame. This game just in technical side how they expand is way more complex, some people expect few years of dev and it's done, meh. 

Either way, nothing else but to wait and see how it evolves.

[Xkillerpn]

I bet most the the people sharing and posting don't even play. 

 

For 40£ and the amount of gameplay you get and hours spent you can't get this anywhere for the same money. Yes it has bugs yes it's an alpha, the quality of the game is amazing. I do follow the roadmap and I do prefer the new view, yes it needs a number on the task X of Z completed. 

 

ATM for me the problem is the lag or dsync, not on the space battles but on the FPS encounters.

 

Yes still waiting a release and I still play it every day.