Star Citizen’s new cash shop offerings provoked fresh pay-to-win and predatory monetization accusations | Massively Overpowered
Star Citizen’s new cash shop offerings provoked fresh pay-to-win and predatory monetization accusations | Massively Overpowered
OH MY STARS! THE GAME THAT SPONGED CROWD FUNDING FOR MILLIONS IS TRYING TO GRAB MORE MONEY!? UNTHINKABLE!
It's not a scam guys. GUYS It's not a scam quit calling it that. Just because saps, I mean marks, I mean people bought $400 digital ships over a decade ago and haven't seen shit yet, doesn't mean this game won't release any day now.
The way they designed this game I swear to god the entire thing is one giant MLM and Star Citizen is the product they want you to sell to everyone else.
Not even beta or EA.
What do you call the thing you can load up and play right now?
Eheh for a second I thought EA was Electronic Arts.
Like a beta game is unstable but before the beta you get the EA stage/release where it's just doesn't work but is still for sale.
Pay to win what? Is there a game yet?
JPEG wars
Star Citizen looked so fucking cool when it was announced like 15 years ago. Since then it's dipped lower and lower every single time new info comes out.
Like, the hopeful dumbasses that got burned initially like my dumb ass did with No Man's Sky, I kinda get... but how the absolute fuck are they still getting sales?? Are there seriously still people that don't know it's a scam?
Worse. The die-hards may as well be cultists at this point. They delude themselves as hard as MAGAts. (I know a few guys who've been off-and-on players for years, and they still try to convince me to join them!)
As someone who has exactly one ship in the game, it's not 'bad' if you just want to go 'live a space life' and do stuff like that.
It's cool you can go do stuff in-world and not have loading screens, and just fly around ships doing trading, PVE missions, or doing space stuff, it's enjoyable. There's not much else to it, but if that's what you expect it's fun.
I don't get the cultists thinking they're playing the game in some future state where it's anything more than that, though. I spent like.... fuck, maybe 100 bucks? For the hours I put in, I enjoyed it but I'd never put in the 10s of thousands of dollars other people have dumped into this game.
The Amway of videogames.
ince then it’s dipped lower and lower every single time new info comes out.
I couldn't disagree with this more, but you likely have lower standards for your entertainment.
Played it on a free weekend a few months ago after hearing about it for over a decade.
Shit sucks.
Looks pretty, and that's where the good parts end.
Everything, and I mean everything, is insanely tedious and the inventory system is godawful. After 10+ years of "development".
Avoid this garbage.
Exactly. Your game is bad if I have to look up how to do something as simple as equip a weapon. Your game is bad if I have to run around like an idiot for 15+ minutes after every death before having the chance of doing something enjoyable again.
As someone that played star citizen and enjoyed the gameplay very much, this game has been basically ruined by greed for years now. They basically discourage playing the actual game with these practices. Sure, you can work your ass off and make a butt load of money to buy a bunch of cool guns, armor, and ships, but as soon as they do a server wipe, which they do fairly regularly, most if not all of it will get wiped clean. But if you give them real money you get to keep everything after a server wipe.
I even had a friend where his ship, bought with in game currency, glitched and he was able to keep it several updates later with no issue while mine disappeared. We both bought them with in game currencies at about the same time. Mine disappeared as soon as the update came out and he had it for almost two years! To me that sounds like it's intentional and they could totally get away with letting you keep your stuff but they choose not to.
Holly shit thats despicable, you mean people who actually earn shit the hard way lose there ships!
And look, I've played early access games before and I'm used to playing games that do a server wipe every once in a while or saves being incompatible with the new version, but I'm talking every update and multiple times a year. It makes it so the only sense of progress you feel is when you buy a ship with real money so you can still have it on the next update. It's a very exhausting game.
Normal Store Citizen behavior.
Wait... the game where you can buy a bundle of every ship in the game for $48,000 might be pay to win?
Weird huh? Before this article I really couldn't tell. But I think they might be on to something...
Star Citizen still exists? I started when I was in my twenties and now I'm pushing 40!
Game development as a service.
I mean I paid $45 dollars for a ship a decade ago and have since made 100s of hours of wonderful memories with my friends. I wish I got scammed more ¯(ツ)_/¯
I spend about 100 on the game. I paid like 45 or 50 for the base game then spend about 50 to upgrade my ship. Honestly, I don't feel 'scammed' at that price point. I feel bad for the dudes who spent thousands on ships though.
And there isn't even a game yet.
X4 is more game than Star Citizen. Elite Dangerous is more game than Star Citizen. Both these games are still getting updates that expand and build upon their mechanics. But the time Star Citizen becomes 1.0, these other games will have already surpassed it.
Hell, graphically Star Citizen used to be cutting edge... Like nearly 10 years ago. Now it just looks kinda "normal".
I’m convinced this game is a Lacanian social experiment.
Also how can a game be play to win if there is no game?
I played this game and threw some money at it. I wanted it to succeed. Recently there have been plenty of developments that convinced me to quit this game completely. This one just gives me more confirmation I did the right thing.
I think CIG is at its tipping point now and it will be game over for Star Citizen in a few years.
Class action suit anyone?
SC has so much potential. There is real magic in some of the game they have produced; the aesthetic is fantastic and the fundamentals are solid… all of which makes what they’re doing to run the game into the ground so fucking disappointing.
Scam Citizen.
Did this game even release? I worked with a guy 10 years ago that invested heavily into this game and would always tell me "its about to be released"
In alpha I think? They have a playable version afaik, but not released, no. Can spend thousands on virtual ships tho
Last I saw, Squadron 42 (the single player version of the game) is function complete and undergoing optimization, but SC the multiplayer game will never be finished in my mind.
i have been waiting for long time for them to add enough content to be worth buying. If they are going this route, i guess i'll forget about getting the damn game entirely
Best thing that came out of star citizen XD https://youtu.be/isLH2GalU4g
Years ago they had certain components for sale, but removed them due to backlash. Given how unique the game is, I don’t mind this so long as everything is also available in-game. Being familiar with the game and how it works, this doesn’t seem “pay to win” to me.
It's not pay to win. You're right. Spending big bucks on a big ship will still get oneself killed by a small ship earned in-game. People who call SC pay-to-win listened a bit to much to Derek Smart while sipping their Monster, snacking on Doritos, wonding how many days they have to wait for the next Call of Battlefield. Those people genuinely do not understand what kind of game it is, why money can be spent, and that not a single penny beyond a starter package even needs to be spent. Nearly everything bought with real money can also be bought in-game. The monies goes to support the project, its clear when you buy anything, and you get like a month to return no questions asked if you want to. Or return at ANYTIME for instore credits and swap to some other ship without spending anything new. The misrepresentation still blows my.mind to this day.
I get where people’s angst comes from. It’s been in development forever, it’s made mind-boggling amounts of money, and the way promises have been routinely made and then broken erodes a huge amount of trust. I can’t blame anyone for thinking of it as “Scam Citizen.”
But despite all that, Chris Roberts has created something that nobody has ever seen before. Even in its current incomplete state, there has never been anything else remotely like it. Maybe it’s the buddhist in me, but I have had so much fun with the game over the years as-is, rather than being upset with what it’s not or what it’s supposed to be.
Comparing it to other “normal” games, the optics of buying stuff can definitely seem pay-to-win, but for anyone that had played it, it’s clear that’s not how things work. And since the game is early access and wipes have been so frequent until now, buying components at this stage is really just a bit of a time saver. You can save a day or two of playing to fund and source the components in-game. I don’t see the problem with that, especially if it keeps development progress moving.
Star Citizen is a scam. Stop giving them money.
I'd be more-generous and just call it a wildly-mismanaged development process that ran out of control, and where they have no realistic way of fulfilling all the promises they made at this point.
This is not to imply that one should throw more money into the hole, mind.
In a traditional development environment, the publisher would have bailed on this a long time ago.
EDIT: I do think that it does highlight two things, though:
It's possible that it wasn't a scam to begin with.
But now? Now it's impossible for even the most dewey-eyed dreamer to see it as anything less than a deliberate hustle, perpetrated by amoral grifters.
They can't. Star Citizen is the Trump of videogames
Oh my god... that's the perfect summary.
Not to get political, but instantly dismissing things as "looks like Trump" is so ironic as that's exactly what those types of people do to reality. It also really brings the point home further when you are just repeating rhetoric without understanding the existing support.
Give it to activision blizzard for a 20+ year old game instead that you could be playing for free.
Those are not the only two options.