Vapourware Scam Citizen - Only people with too much money can become StarCitizens! WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?

[Slaver1]

 

[Zanzoken]

They've said... so I imagine it

In a world of truth in advertising, this would be Star Citizen's tagline.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

ITZ happening!

Posted by
u/Dreamxtreme

3 months ago

My Extremely Bad Experience with Star Citizen & Cloud Imperium Games

Refund!

Brace Yourselves as Im told I should write this as its really "juicy"

First off let me say I was one of the early backers from 2012 for the project so this is really bitter sweet for me. But I thought people should know about some of the emails that have been sent to me recently by Cloud Imperium Games.

I Have a long standing love/hate relationship with the project as I wanted it to work so badly. I wanted all the claims they initially made to be correct and for Star Citizen to be this online utopia of a space game. Im a space nerd at heart and when it was announced I jumped at the chance to help fund it. Not an overly insane amount but a good amount non the less. £500 odd which I did by way of buying a Carrack and some other ships as that was the ship I wanted in game and it made sense to me at the time. Citizencon 2015 was the high point where they also announced the cast of Squadron 42. Gary Oldman and an all star cast. Fantastic news.

But after that I found development changed with delusions of grandeur coming from Chris Roberts about everything that could be put into the game and after being told lie after lie about development with a roadmap that constantly changed and was right about 30% of the time maybe. It became clear that Cloud Imperium Games saw £ and $ signs in the ship selling programme with releasing ships before any sort of content was put in for those ships to actually do anything.

The online "verse" is simply a empty hole that reminds of things like Matrix Online and Second life. Lots of Lore but not much actual content aside from the fetch missions. Now in 2017 I decided I wanted a refund but this was promptly put in a support queue with dealing with someone called "The Specialist". As I was told I had to wait for them.

Months went by and nothing. So I left it, feeling hopeless. I jumped on the game occasionally only to see that they were still in 1 solar system and the content was still lacking with the continuing excuses for delays and lack of content coming from Cloud Imperium Games and it just got worse. The Company learned that they're fanbase was all they had and in my opinion found a way of exploiting that for monetary gain and I found myself so firmly on the fence I was feeling the splinters. What I saw was 2 very differently minded groups. 1 group is the loyal kind that will believe anything Chris Roberts says and go on the offence should anyone bad month them. The other group consists of nothing but "scam" citizen and hate remarks. Its pretty clear where the line is.

So with an open mind that was firmly shut quite quickly on the day after I went on the game and found the same bug of not being able to simply get into a ship that was there 6 years previous, I went to Citizencon 2019 I was shown fake "live" demos in that you could tell they were recorded before hand despite having people out on stage pretending to play them and suddenly having "problems" with voice comms. Id seen enough after being told to wait outside for 2 hours in the freezing cold and not feeling great to begin with. I left early. A Day later I sent an email of intent to Cloud Imperium Games for a refund for the full amount. I just wanted out. Ive found other games like No Mans Sky that more than satisfy my need for space games.

I instantly got a response of the usual spiel of " Your request for a refund exceeds our 14 day cancellation period as outlined in of our Terms Of Service We appreciate that Star Citizen is a game still in development, and as a matter of practice while the game is in development we have honored a 30 day ’no questions asked' refund period. RSI has applied your pledge to the development cost of the game, and this pledge is not eligible for a refund."

Now I should point out I am in the UK. As is an office of Cloud Imperium Games. Remember this as you read on. As I am covered by not only common law but The Consumer Rights Act which includes many laws to do with "Goods not received" or "Goods not to Satisfactory quality". Which is clearly being danced around by Cloud Imperium Games legal department based in the US and they simply believe their Terms of Service supersede any law of the land in which they do business in let alone have an office such as Germany or the UK both covered by EU Law.

When I pointed this out to them I was very quickly ignored on the email side. I gave them 28 days and several emails later before I found myself forced to go down the small claims court route in order to even get their attention. I pointed out much of what Ive written already in the claim and how the product and company are in breach of Section 5,9,16,20,34,35,36 and 45 of The Consumer rights Act 2015 (In case you want to read it)

2 days before the judgement was to be set to myself for no response from CIG, I get an email from the legal department. I was told my claim was unfounded and without merit and given a whole heap of their Terms of Service again. Terms of Service from the US. However they agreed in settling this to the amount on my account however I replied on the fact ive had to go down the court route so also incurred costs for that to which they also agreed to pay in the email and detailed out my account and amounts for items along with legal talk

So the reason I write this here and now Isnt really my due to the long history really but Is to do with their terms of service and legal practices which I found dubious to put it best. I have received emails from the legal team with lines such as " Please note that your account will be closed immediately after refund and you will not be allowed to return to the game under any circumstances. If you do so, your account will be closed again immediately without any refund. " Again Illegal in the UK and im sure many other countries because you simply cant take money and not supply something. If someone is banned you must refund.

Anyway Ive got some of my money back but not all of it. So I reply to the court matter that states if I have been paid to the full amount I asked for by CIG. No I have not. I respond to the legal department as well to confirm. Ive had enough messing about after trying to be paid by paypal which I do not have and such and I get this.

"If you pursue the claim that is your decision but please be advised that you will lose. Your agreed to a settlement (as evidenced by this very email thread) which overrules all previous agreements. We fulfilled our part of the agreement while the charges of your bank are your problem.Only as an additional gesture of good faith we transfer another GBP 30. If you do not withdraw the law suit we will enforce the refund of the costs of our lawyers against you. Our patience is not endless"

I have agreed as I am told by my bank that since they sent it from the US and not their UK office they chose to split the cost instead of paying the fees themselves. It just seems to me they try every trick in the book. But I will say the legal flexing makes them look ridiculous as they know they're dealing with someone in a completely different country.

I just hope this warns people of the dangers of kickstarters and backing games that go no where fast and in particular this company.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Posted by
u/kimjongundotcom

5 days ago

Star Citizen's prison ≪gameplay≫ is a hate letter to game design

Forget the bugs, forget not being able to refund anymore(or at all ever in some circumstances), forget how dull and boring the gameplay was because CIG and Chris Roberts have outdone themselves with this new update : You cannot even try to play SC anymore.

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitize...r_citizens_prison_gameplay_is_an_hate_letter/

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Posted by
u/DingDongsEverywhere

Other
2 days ago

My friends and I haven't played Star Citizen in five months due to how bad it is

Discussion
My one buddy and I came to the conclusion the game can be somewhat fun solo simply because when the inevitable crash or fuck up occurs you can recover somewhat and move on. In a group the odds of someone crashing are all that much greater and trying to stick together becomes a mess. And to boot after hours of this, nothing really gets done.

Playing as a group is a nightmare. Someone will invariably have a 30k. Maybe the med bed will work, maybe not. Sometimes it doesn't and then a person spawns in 20 minutes away in a different area. We had elevators dupe trapping people out of the mission, people de-synced so hard AI couldn't be interacted with much less them firing a weapon. 30k errors aren't as bad, but they used to be all the time. Every half hour someone or everyone would get kicked. Or the entire server would melt down. We rarely had fun, and even more rarely made any progress. There were a few moments of fun, but we'd lose all our weapons and that money sink would break some of the people. And we almost never made money. I think one time.

We all got frustrated and shelved the game. There were barely any hot fixes, and long standing issues were just left to be. We started playing other games and had a hell of a lot more fun than suffering through the star citizen experience.

At this point after the 3.9 mess it is unreal. They removed so much of the features on the road map and promised that at least we'd have stability. And after even that got delayed, stability remains to be seen.

This isn't alpha meme dev, this is straight up incompetence. Competent alpha development would have something to show for the time vs hollow game additions that barely work and the utter lack of forethought glaringly obvious in what they did manage to put in. I play quite a few EA (aka alpha) game,s and those games have far fewer devs on their teams not to mention far less resources.

I saw someone posted that they wanted their mind changed on buying in. Don't do it. I'm kind of venting, but I am mostly just disgusted at this point. It's just so pathetic all I can see is the wrong at this point. CIG needs to get someone in their that knows what they are doing, and how to get results. CR (who has become a fucking ghost) isn't the guy to handle this. And at this point Star Citizen is bigger than he is. He needs to step aside and get somebody who is capable in there so he doesn't become a pariah.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Posted by
u/TheBentCarrot
1 day ago

How do you sell your account on the gray market, and how do you know how much it's worth?

Help
I think I'm done. I've been with this project since nearly the beginning. I've spent about $450 on it slowly over time. And now I'm over it. I just don't see them getting to a point where I consider the game "fun". Because, silly me, I think games should be fun, not a frustrating chore. Even if SQ42 came out this year, I'm not sure I'd even be interested at this point.

So I hope to get some money back. The only thing I think might make my account worth more is I bought the Mercury Star Runner in concept.

 

[IDtenT]

Is there even a game yet? Last time I installed it I could walk around a dead space station and climb in my spaceship and fly around doing nothing.

 

[Norfleet]

Nope. Scam Shitizen remains firmly vaporware.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Seriously?

It's like a year ago now that a bunch of zealots in this very thread REEEEE'd at me for asking if the game exists yet.

Thread title needs a change:

Star Citizen Forever: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar.

Seriously, even Grimwah exists now as a real game on Steam.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Seriously, even Grimwah exists now as a real game on Steam.

TBF Cleve has what? Nearly 2 decades? Guess we need to wait another 1.5 decades to criticize Star Citizen

 

[Perkel]

2015 - "this is the reason why SC is a scam, people don't buy it !" - SC reaches 80mln
2016 - "this is the reason why SC is a scam, people don't buy it !" - SC reaches 110mln
2017 - "this is the reason why SC is a scam, people don't buy it !" - SC reaches 140mln
2018 - "this is the reason why SC is a scam, people don't buy it !" - SC reaches 190mln
2019 - "this is the reason why SC is a scam, people don't buy it !" - SC reaches 240mln
2020 - "this is the reason why SC is a scam, people don't buy it !" - will break easily 300mln

 

[Zarniwoop]

There are no Star Citizen "users" because there is no Star Citizen.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Seriously, even Grimwah exists now as a real game on Steam.

TBF Cleve has what? Nearly 2 decades? Guess we need to wait another 1.5 decades to criticize Star Citizen

1.1 decades left. It's been going since 2011.

Also Cleve is just 1 man neanderthal. These guys have studios on every continent including Antarctica and will probably soon have one on the International Space Station. They should be able to finish in AT LEAST half the time

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

People giving money to something doesn't mean it's real - see all the ponzi schemes, Bernie Madoff, etc.

Something called "StarCitizen" certainly exists. However, it bears very little resemblance to what was promised on kickstarter. It is even farther away from a product that a competent studio would do in 9 years with 300m USD. GTA5 budget was 265m USD ffs.

 

[Stokowski]

There are no Star Citizen "users" because there is no Star Citizen.

Presumably some people can use jpegs of imaginary spaceships to masturbate to.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

There are no Star Citizen "users" because there is no Star Citizen.

Presumably, some people can use jpegs of imaginary spaceships to masturbate to.

Like all Ponzi schemes, it was bound to fail from day one. Even the most disgusting fanboy will realize the game they envisioned will never be completed and that the tech demo they know have will become worse and worse with time, to the point of becoming unplayable. I kinda liked it, to be honest. The longer they take, the worst will be the outcome. Imagine having a 300 million project that delivers an unplayable demo. It will make C. Roberts look the most incompetent developer in the history of mankind. It will be grandiose, but not in the way he was expecting.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

level 2
SudoWarfare
-1 points· 2 days ago

This is where you're wrong. Everyone keeps calling it an alpha, but it's not. This IS the game. It's just very early on. At no point will they ever stop development and put a game on the shelf. It will ALWAYS be under development. Just like WoW and Eve.

level 3
Yrguiltyconscience
8 points· 2 days ago

It’s not an alpha.

For an alpha it would have to have most of the key gameplay features and loops in.

Star Citizen is a broken techdemo, that’s rapidly approaching it’s technical limits.

They’ll keep developing it though. Until the time that the whole scam collapses, either because backers have finally lost faith or under the sheer weight of incompetence and spaghetti code.

level 4
DingDongsEverywhere

Other1 point· 2 days ago

Even if it was functioning and firing on all cylinders they'd be adding content presumably for revenue. I imagine they'd always add ships with potential new game loops, new systems, and tons of cosmetics.

You are right though. They are stuck in a quagmire of shitty code and incompetence. I wouldn't call it an alpha either.

level 3
Habuta

4 points· 2 days ago

CIG also calls it alpha. Most of the backers are calling it Alpha as well. Mostly because they use it as an excuse whenever someone complains about bugs and crashes.

Personally I don't care whatever they call it, I am also fine with calling it anything. It doesn't change much, it is just semantics at this point.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

level 1
Habuta

7 points· 3 days ago

I said this before and will say it again. Please go to youtube and search for MMO alpha gameplay footage. The idea that in Alpha state you expect a game to be unplayable is stupid. You expect it to have bugs and missing gameplay features occasionally and crashes rarely. That doesn't mean it is okay if its unplayable. It is way worse if it is due to network issues. Having network/server side issues 8 or even 6 years into MMO development is very questionable.

level 2
Yrguiltyconscience

2 points· 2 days ago

Yup. It’s bizarre how Star Citizen has actually only gotten worse with time.

level 3
DingDongsEverywhere

Other1 point· 2 days ago

It's not just worse. They don't fix anything. We all wait 4 months (or longer now) for a major patch. Any issues are hot fixed a couple times, and most things ignored for months and now years. Problems just add up and the pile gets bigger.

They don't even fix low hanging fruit. They should be hotfixing and iteratively patching what they released all the way up to the next major release.

level 4
Aurazor

Savagely hard and unpredictable2 points· 1 day ago

They don't even fix low hanging fruit. They should be hotfixing and iteratively patching what they released all the way up to the next major release.

The reason is they simply don't have the juice in the tank to do it anymore.

The end has been in sight for some time now, and they are desperately skipping from raindrop to raindrop trying to stay ahead of the complaints long enough to get somethingout the door.

If something can't be band-aided by junior devs and will take real investment to fix, they just handwave it internally with a "Oh no point that'll get fixed with <SomethingTech> 3.0 refactor in Q4 next year no sense wasting real dev time on it now."

This approach used to pay dividends in the DOS era because bandaid fixes only come back to haunt you thirty years later when someone tries to make your game run on DOSbox.

Not so these days.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

level 2
Deals_With_Dragons

print('Release ' + int_to_string(CURRENT_YEAR + 1);14 points· 1 day ago

Even worse: there is no discernible design behind it all that indicates they do have an actual plan how they want to go from A to B over C, D, E, F, G and finally to H, here "H" is the finished game. They seem to be mucking around with A, C and E, and each of those don't seem to have to do with anything else.

Furthermore, there's no indicator they actually have an clue on game design. It's questionable they have a plan how to get from A to H - but it is even more questionable if they have a game in mind that works as good game in all the parts and fit together to form good gameplay worth the effort.

This isn't even touching the issue that they're building a game that is full of abuse, possibilities to cheat and to cause grief to people who want to play the built game - if you're doing such a free open world then gameplay that keeps griefing (etc etc etc) from happening must be fundamentally be built in the features and game loops. CI seems to think they can magically get all this done later, somehow (which is how they "plan" their entire project) with some sort of anti-cheat solution, server side authoring (which piles even more load on the servers), and maybe some custumer support/policing (something they're already horrible at).

tl;dr Even if they manage to make a game, they face the problem that it needs to be a) fun and b) keep the more nefarious players under control, both aspects don't seem to be considered at all during making the game.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Even worse: there is no discernible design behind it all that indicates they do have an actual plan how they want to go from A to B over C, D, E, F, G and finally to H, here "H" is the finished game. They seem to be mucking around with A, C and E, and each of those don't seem to have to do with anything else.

Pretty much what I said from the start.

There's no actual "game", they just have endless podcasts and interviews explaining how incredibly detailed the snot physics on the player's nose will be or something equally stupid.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

People giving money to something doesn't mean it's real - see all the ponzi schemes, Bernie Madoff, etc.

Something called "StarCitizen" certainly exists. However, it bears very little resemblance to what was promised on kickstarter. It is even farther away from a product that a competent studio would do in 9 years with 300m USD. GTA5 budget was 265m USD ffs.

Exactly. And if anything, Citizens cycle-jerking and celebrating how many millions they’ve already thrown at this failure is another red flag.

 

[Zanzoken]

It's one thing for people to get scammed at the outset by a cool premise, but you would think after years of delays and broken promises the fans would eventually lose hope and stop donating.

And yet it's just the opposite -- Star Citizen is raising money faster than it ever has.

 

[fantadomat]

It is amazing how many brain dead people there is out there.

Star Citizen is raising money faster than it ever has.

Hmmm i kind off doubt that,it is just graph put out by them,i am not sure that it is real.

 

[Myobi]

It is amazing how many brain dead people there is out there.

Star Citizen is raising money faster than it ever has.

Hmmm i kind off doubt that,it is just graph put out by them,i am not sure that it is real.

I wouldn't be surprised, at all if it was true.


There are people doing 25,000$ refunds… I mean… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯