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

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Now in preview. So far plays good.

So what are we looking at here exactly?

 

[Myobi]

So what are we looking at here exactly?

... at 2021:

Feels like the game could be ready for a soft launch in 1-2 wipe cycles when you consider Pyro, medical gameplay loop and the gen 12 renderer are only 2-3 quarters away.

 

[ADL]

We've had access to Pyro for years. Now it's just integrated into the game with static server meshing and jump points instead of it being a separate location in a menu.

 

[Myobi]

We've had access to Pyro for years.

October 30th 2023 at 7:47 pm
JakeAcappella-CIG@JakeAcappella-CIG

Hi everyone,
we're preparing for the first expedition to Pyro tomorrow!


We plan to run an 8-hour test each day, rotating between time zones to accommodate our global audience. As a reminder, we'll open the Preview Channel to our most active testers, Concierge, and those who have acquired a ⁠Digital Goodies Pack.

Who will have initial access to the Preview Channel for Pyro testing?
► We'll pull from from Digital Goodies Pack owners, Concierge, and our most active testers, followed by our usual wave process. We'd like to include as many as possible, but the capacity and access will be determined as we go.

Does this mean that all Concierge will get access on Oct 31st, or just those randomly selected?
► We'd like to grant access to as many as possible, and if we're able to do so for all of Concierge, we will. We also may revoke access if that becomes necessary to limit traffic.

@ https://robertsspaceindustries.com/.../forum/1/thread/pyro-preview-channel-schedule

 

[Gargaune]

This pik above makes me think the ship looks a bit like a space camper van, and I think some good roleplay/gameplay could come from that, the problem is Elon will probably be offering something in real life like that before this game comes out.

 

[Myobi]

 

[ADL]

https://simulationdaily.com/news/star-citizen-2024-second-best-crowdfunding-yearq/
Only a million less than last year despite the ships (in my opinion) being far less interesting.

@ https://robertsspaceindustries.com/.../forum/1/thread/pyro-preview-channel-schedule

Eh feels like an eternity ago.

 

[Myobi]

Eh feels like an eternity ago.

I guess 15 years of development kind of have that effect on people.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Eh feels like an eternity ago.

I guess 15 years of development kind of have that effect on people.

How else are you going to make a family business where your children can grow up and take over the family code?

 

[Myobi]

Another year rolls by, and another letter from Chris is vetted by the marketing team, sent out to ensure any shortcomings have an excuse, difficult truths are ignored, and more vague promises are made. What does the letter from the chairman mean? Is Star Citizen headed for the moon, or the stars? Or is there more to be read in-between the lines and half-truths?

The Reality Behind the Messaging Let's start with what the letter carefully avoids mentioning:

• Multiple rounds of layoffs throughout 2024, including long-term directors and executives [1] [2]
• A 30% decline in gameplay time compared to 2022
• New player signups dropping by 46% from 2022, following a decline in 2023
• Squadron 42 sliding from "polishing phase" in 2023 to "maybe 2026" (missing its target release by 11+ years)
• The Cloud Imperium UK Ltd Financial report, audited by PwC revealing the Calder investment group's put option that could fundamentally threaten CIG's operations if exercised in Q1 2025

PwC: “These rights were exercisable only between 1 January 2024 and 31 March 2024 for 277,500 shares but the holder has waived their rights relating to this period. For 1,599,900 shares their first put rights are exercisable between 1 January 2025 and 31 March 2025 and for all 1,877,400 between 1 January 2028 and 31 March 2028.” Link (page 37)

Instead, what we get is carefully crafted language that reframes serious development issues as features. The parallel live versions (3.24.3 and 4.0) aren't a choice - they're an admission that 4.0 is launching with incomplete mission types and broken gameplay loops. The much-touted Server Meshing, after 8 years of development, is a shadow of what was promised in 2016 when Chris Roberts talked about "thousands of players all in the same area."

While the letter boasts about "over one million players" and "32 million hours," it strategically avoids the stark reality of significant declining engagement for a game that is still unfinished and requires a constant stream of revenue. The latest promise of "decoupling feature development from content creation" joins a familiar parade of supposed solutions - new tools, new teams, implementing Agile, removing Agile, roadmaps, roadmaps for roadmaps - all while we sit at 2 systems out of 100 planned. The timing of this new "playability focus" - coinciding with the Calder put option timeline - should raise serious questions about the project's direction.

For Those Considering Refunds

If you're a backer feeling misled, remember that despite CIG's resistance to refunds, there are legal pathways available, particularly in the UK under the Consumer Rights Act 2015's provisions regarding fit-for-purpose digital goods. Our experience shows that when faced with legal action, particularly in small claims court, CIG has consistently chosen to settle rather than defend their practices. If you have any questions or would like to start the journey of getting a refund, please see the pinned getting started guide on this subreddit and if you need help. please reach out to myself or the wider moderation team and we will assist you. We're not lawyers, but have helped players get thousands of dollars back in refunds to date.

A Word from the Mod Team

With a growing community, with this year seeing an increase of almost 3k members, the moderation team recently expanded and we're glad to have onboard the new mods: u/CMDR_Agony_Aunt, u/Patate_Cuite, and u/OfficiallyRelevant . Being long-term members of this community, they'll help it continue to grow and be a place for open conversation around Star Citizen. Here's a few words from the team summarising 2024:

Mazty: 2024 brought the usual excuses, but the widespread layoffs (particularly from costly US offices) and departure of long-term executives tell a different story behind closed doors. What has been delivered may never be meaningfully improved, the stretch goals will disappear into the ether, and as a classic post stated "the goalposts will shift, and where we are today will now be claimed to have always been the destination". I am looking forward to the potential Q1'25 timebomb that has been in play since 2018 but only came to light when a professional auditor looked at their financials. Pretty sketchy stuff, but that's BAU for CIG who've created a web of companies, with individuals located in tax havens.

TB_Infidel: The highlight of the year for me was the PwC report and the warning it contained regarding the Calder's and their put option. What they do next year, if anything, will give a great insight as to CIGs long term plan. If they withdraw then CIG will likely have to close. If not, then are the Calders looking for a tax write off or are they drinking the Kool-Aid as well?

CMDR_Agony_Aunt: Regarding 2024, its been just another year of CIG doing what its been doing for the past 10 years. I'm half convinced they can keep this up for another 10 years, hyping the game, releasing more and more ships, gathering more money, with varying levels of buggy releases that still are a long way off of delivering the experience they said they could do for 65 million - and the faithful will keep cheering them on. On the up side, that's another 10 years of memes and jokes about CIG's terrible mismanagement of this project.

Patate_Cuite: 2024 delivered exactly as expected, ending in a glorious disaster that only the most devoted cultists didn't see coming. For 2025, I’m anticipating a third complete overhaul of the inventory system, flight model version 287, and the debut of dynamic space wind, a feature no one asked for but everyone will get. Why? Well, why not?! Meanwhile, Squander 42 will remain “almost ready” for its final polish, as Chris Roberts continues his noble quest to find a computer that won’t crash during the demo of the tech demo. I wish all cultists a wonderful year 14 of Store Citizen, filled with many shiny JPG ships, endless promises, and the comforting hum of server crashes to keep the dream alive.

And that wraps up an eventful 2024! Thanks for being a part of this community and let's see what 2025 brings!

All the best from the team and a happy new year,

Star Citizen Refunds Moderation Team

 

[Perkel]

If anything lack of firings was a problem rather than doing them. I can't imagine any project where you can be one of the heads constantly not deliver and then stay in your job.

One of the heads leaving is the guy who designed Server Meshing. He is like 60+ years old egghead and he joined CIG around 2016 when server meshing was first designed as lead to implement his idea. Basically he joined CIG just to do Server Meshing and now that it is live he leaves to do other stuff (his words) while rest of the devs will clean his product and improve it. Also he wrote in that farewell message that some of devs are now trying to get credit for it despite moaning about it and fighting against it.

Server Meshing works. It is still buggy but not the kind of bugs that scream about fundamental issues like sky high latency but just normal fixable gameplay syncing bugs. The fear about it was that it would be fundamentally screwed in some way. Like i predicted high unfixable latency but that doesn't seem to be issue at all. The question now is how high it can scale. Just a half a year ago putting 400 people on it would blow up whole thing. Then they did 1000 people test where 500 was screwed but playable while 1000 one blown up. They started now 4.0 live with 500 total but now improved it to 600 and performance and bugs are incomparably better than that test few months ago.

Imho right now the biggest problem is CPU bottleneck. They were supposed to release main thread multithreading but it was delayed last year with no new eta. Since servers usually are slow cores but many, getting proper multithreading for main thread would instantly make ton of improvement to both servers and people playing.

 

[Myobi]

I can't imagine any project where you can be one of the heads constantly not deliver and then stay in your job.

 

[Perkel]

I can't imagine any project where you can be one of the heads constantly not deliver and then stay in your job.

He's owner though. Not the same thing. He literally can't be fired.

 

[Myobi]

.... and another one bites the dust.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Imagine spending 10 years of your career working in a place doing... something... shipping nothing.
"Advisor and consultant" eh? I guess that makes sense. Teach others how to produce nothing yet create infinite monetization.

 

[Stokowski]

^ Pure Golgafrincham genetics.

 

[Hammer Of The Heretics]

The interesting thing is that he left without another real job lined up. "Consulting" and "advising" is what you say you're doing when you don't want to admit you're unemployed.

 

[Myobi]

The interesting thing is that he left without another real job lined up. "Consulting" and "advising" is what you say you're doing when you don't want to admit you're unemployed.

Buddy, the man finds ways to make money, and for the past decade he has been printing fucking money without even having a finished product, this mother fucker is like Jesus Christ multiplying bread, Midas, turning broken, buggy turds into gold printing machines, I bet he can even squeeze water out of rocks in the middle of the desert.

I would be in front of the line to hire this man for my lemonade stand.

 

[Higher Game]

I think a lot of people have been fired as wokeness has faded in popularity. If Star Citizen went woke at the last minute, that would be the ultimate insult to injury. Being delayed so long might have saved it from the poz, who knows.

 

[Myobi]

"... at the Last minute", its like this mofo is trying to compete with ADL now.

 

[Perkel]

Report from 4.0

- CIG released 4.0 before christmas and went to a month vacation like they usually do.
- 4.0 initially worked great but quickly degraded
- It was broken at start of january
- 4.0.1 patch dropped by end of january that had many fixes
- but it brough some major bugs
- 4.0.2 is in evo that is supposed to futher fix stuff
- CIG did Star Citizen Live podcast when their lead engineer talked about bugs etc. after Chris watched some big streamer play SC and got stuck in elevator and uninstalled game instantly he decided that enough is enough and CIG will finally stop adding new features and go hard on fixing bugs for whole 2025.
- Patches will be released monthly instead of every quarter.
- They want polished gameplay at the end of the year.
- Instead of new features they will be doing new content instead using old features.
- New features will be in separate test channel and only will be brought to SC when they are "ready"


TLDR: they are basically ending alpha development because game is too broken to play and transfer it to live service early access game.

Imho it is a ruse so SC fans won't bitch and moan (there is huge contingent of SC players who hate CIG working on SQ42 instead of SC). Chris probably wants to polish SC in whatever state it is so that when he releases SQ42 next year people who finish it will transfer over to SC rather than go away play something else.

 

[Ryzer]

13 years and a billion dollars later, the thing is still broken, not released and soon to be on early access.

See you in 2077 for the official release (maybe?).

 

[The Nameless One]

Report from 4.0

- CIG released 4.0 before christmas and went to a month vacation like they usually do.
- 4.0 initially worked great but quickly degraded
- It was broken at start of january
- 4.0.1 patch dropped by end of january that had many fixes
- but it brough some major bugs
- 4.0.2 is in evo that is supposed to futher fix stuff
- CIG did Star Citizen Live podcast when their lead engineer talked about bugs etc. after Chris watched some big streamer play SC and got stuck in elevator and uninstalled game instantly he decided that enough is enough and CIG will finally stop adding new features and go hard on fixing bugs for whole 2025.
- Patches will be released monthly instead of every quarter.
- They want polished gameplay at the end of the year.
- Instead of new features they will be doing new content instead using old features.
- New features will be in separate test channel and only will be brought to SC when they are "ready"


TLDR: they are basically ending alpha development because game is too broken to play and transfer it to live service early access game.

Imho it is a ruse so SC fans won't bitch and moan (there is huge contingent of SC players who hate CIG working on SQ42 instead of SC). Chris probably wants to polish SC in whatever state it is so that when he releases SQ42 next year people who finish it will transfer over to SC rather than go away play something else.

Technically they implied, at least since the damn beginning (whenever the hell that was anyway) they would first release 42 and then cook the PU while it was in beta for a much later release date. Now that 1.0 and 42 are "set for next year", we may get a glorified beta for any or both, assuming half of what they have announced now was more than the last 10 years of snake oil marketing.

Anyone over the legal age who preordered should consider putting their account credentials on their will anyway.

 

[The Nameless One]

I can't imagine any project where you can be one of the heads constantly not deliver and then stay in your job.

The "investor Kama-Sutra", or how to screw your backers, as explained in sign language by our lord and spiritual guide Dr. Roberts.

 

[Perkel]

Now that 1.0 and 42 are "set for next year", we may get a glorified beta for any or both, assuming half of what they have announced now was more than the last 10 years of snake oil marketing.

SQ42 is announced for 2026.

1.0 of SC has no date but at least it has roadmap for 1.0:

Core features missing till 1.0:
- maelstrom damage system (unified force based damage system across all items/ships/people/structures)
- engineering (move ships and structures to resource network)
- base building (both on planet and in space) and crafting

Content missing:
- 5 systems total (2 done already)
- main story akin to SQ42 + sidequests which will work as tutorial and introduction.
- guilds + expansive missions system for all of them

It's getting close to feature complete but content wise it will need a lot of work so minimum 5 years assuming features won't slip it like rest of development.