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12 Years and $700 Million Later, What's Going on With Star Citizen's Development? (insider-gaming.com)

submitted 1 month ago by Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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[-] Jrockwar@feddit.uk 170 points 1 month ago

$700 million is the estimated development cost of the Falcon Heavy.

Not a game, not a space simulation, but the actual Falcon Heavy rocket. A rocket that can actually go into space.

I know they're different things but I thought I'd leave this here to put things in perspective.

[-] Cagi@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

That is $700 million is revenue for Star Citizen, not development costs. More and more players are joining by trying it and sticking around, and CIG is making more money every year because it's genuinely a fun game now. If it wasn't, they wouldn't have $700 million in revenue from a growing base of paying customers after ten years. But that doesn't get clicks from ignorant salty cynics. "IT BAD SCAM" is a more profitable headline than "fun game enjoyed by many".

When videogame "journalists" are drumming up controversy, you always have to take it with a grain of salt. Lord knows we have enough of it.

I spent a grand total of $45 dollars on this game and I have had hundreds of hours of fun. Imagine buying a game for less than the cost of a new AAA game, playing it, enjoying it for dozens of hours or more for ten years, then someone who has never played it starts telling you how you have to spend thousands of dollars and actually didn't have fun and it's not a game, it's a scam because you heard this one guy spent his life savings on imaginary space ships and regretted it. That's how Star Citizen players feel; it's very confusing.

[-] athairmor@lemmy.world 30 points 1 month ago

As of 2022, according to its financials, the company has spent $637 million on development, with 2020 – 2022 averaging over $106 million a year. Assuming that the company continues spending around $100+ million a year, it doesn’t take a mathematician to realize that the $790 million raised so far at the time of writing is on the verge of, or has likely, run out.

No, the article is claiming $700M in development costs—based on $637M spent by 2022–and $790M raised. They’re speculating that the company is going to run out of money soon.

[-] Cagi@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

So they made over 150 million in profit so far, make more and more money with more and more players every year and that's a sign they are failing? "STEADILY GROWING PROFITABLE BUSINESS IS DOOMED TO FAIL!"

The speculation of gaming journalists is the worst way to get reliable and responsible gaming news.

[-] athairmor@lemmy.world 23 points 1 month ago

That’s not how you calculate profit. Their revenue might exceed their costs so far but they have to keep spending. The game isn’t done and it costs money to just keep the lights on.

Look, I don’t know their financials. I’m just correcting what you claimed and pointing out what the article is claiming which is that their spending appears to be outpacing their revenue.

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[-] TheYang@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

but only as in the modifications to Falcon 9 to make Falcon Heavy, right?

[-] Jrockwar@feddit.uk 5 points 1 month ago

I don't think so, SpaceX claimed (and NASA apparently verified) that the development costs for the Falcon 9 were $300 million. It's in the Wikipedia article, also here: https://newspaceeconomy.ca/2022/10/23/how-much-would-falcon-9-have-cost-if-it-was-developed-by-nasa/?amp=1

I was under the impression that the Falcon Heavy was a ground-up development. But in any case the Falcon 9 was cheaper, so go figure...

[-] FancyLad@lemmy.world 79 points 1 month ago

Vaporware until proven otherwise. I've given up on caring

[-] limitedduck@awful.systems 28 points 1 month ago

Stat Citizen has its problems, but it's literally not vaporware since there's something available that you can download and play with.

[-] Cagi@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It is the exact opposite of vapourware, even. They have over a thousand employees in multiple studios across the globe pushing out regular, massive updates.

[-] Fecundpossum@lemmy.world 27 points 1 month ago

Yeah, and it’s sad bro. I put about 900 hours into Elite: Dangerous, which I enjoyed a great deal, but it still left me longing for something with more depth. Back then I thought Star Citizen would be the next leap forward in my career as a space trucker who dabbles in bounty hunting and deep space exploration. I wanted to have games worthy of justifying a home cockpit setup, and now it seems like a lost cause.

I really hope someone picks up the torch. Even if it’s just Frontier making a generational leap with the Elite IP.

[-] subignition@fedia.io 23 points 1 month ago

Elite:Dangerous is sad for its own reasons, too, and I have a similar count of hours logged. Glacial pace of development and a lack of strong game design / sense for balance. I'm still stunned by how much of a selling point the background simulation was, and how limited it actually is in practice (it did get some love over the years, but far too little too late IMO.)

[-] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

I really wanted to like it, but it just never scratched the itch when I played it. I love stuff like freespace 2, but E:D just never did it for me. Which sucks, because the community search thing sounded really fun at the time.

[-] erin@lemmy.sidh.bzh 8 points 1 month ago

you can try X4: Foundations ^^

[-] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 8 points 1 month ago

The controls in X4 are so horrible though.

[-] peopleproblems@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

Good lord if that ain't the truth.

It has every opportunity to be good, but I can't even navigate the goddamn menus, let alone step into my ship.

Forget about using something other than a mouse and keyboard too, it just won't work.

[-] Fecundpossum@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Yeah, I never even bought it after reading the reviews about how janky it is, I want to use a HOTAS and rudder pedals and it doesn’t sound possible in X4

[-] arkthos@yiffit.net 2 points 1 month ago

I play it with hotas and it works fine. You'll absolutely still want to keep a keyboard and mouse handy though because the RTS/management half of the game is really not that well controlled with a flight stick.

[-] PushButton@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

Like any of these games, you need to change the key bindings.

I have a set that I use in all space sim. What I am trying to say is that the control can be the same as any other space sim.

This type of game might not be your kind of stuff.

[-] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

No, X is absolutely my type of game. Don't blame me for the horrible controls and menus, I didn't create that hot mess. It's also a well complained about part of the game.

[-] crapwittyname@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago

I couldn't find a way to bind a double press in X4, so hold RB and tap X for example. These combinations are essential because there is no other way to use a controller to perform all of the necessary controls. It's a shame because I would have invested a lot into the game if that was surmountable.

[-] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Steam might be able to bind that. But then you're probably going to need a diagram next to you while you play so you remember all your controls.

[-] crapwittyname@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago

I tried binding in Steam but the controller settings in Steam are kind of terrible too. Half the time I don't know what a setting does, and I feel like I need to do a training course to understand it. So I gave up and went back to Elite.

[-] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I don't blame you. Over the years I've seen some really impressive controller setting though. You can do a lot things with the steam settings. But yeah, you need to want to really invest in learning how to do it, and then actually remembering what you've set.

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[-] FancyLad@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

I remember how awesome Distant Worlds was, as a community event, and I wish I appreciated it more at the time. 65000 light years and back, I even bought a T-shirt and coin to commemorate the event lol o7

[-] Fecundpossum@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

My big in game accomplishment was making it to SagA*, I spent some time in colonia and joined a discord of nerds that hung out there getting big exploration creds. I actually made the trek all the way back to the bubble after spending about a month in the galactic core. It was an epic adventure in my mind, but afterwards it was hard to be motivated for the engineering grind.

[-] Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 month ago

I haven't played E:D so I can't really make comparisons, but maybe X3/X4 can pique your interest?
I don't think they can justify a home cockpit setup, they're also kinda hard to get into (especially X3, you can't get far without a guide), but hey, there's a combined 1.5% chance that you haven't heard of them and that you'll enjoy at least one of them if you don't care much about graphics. Or voice acting. Or UI/UX.

[-] Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

X3 is a fun game, with a very developed universe (you'll see factions conduct invasion in real-time as you do your own thing) with a wide variety of gameplay. The universe of X3 honestly makes Star Citizen seems like a theme park for children.

That being said it is extremely difficult to get into them both because there are so many gameplay options and the UI/UX is subpar (prepare to be constantly fiddling with menu and looking up how to execute a given course of action).

[-] morbidcactus@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I sold my pledges off 9 years ago, the reason I even made a reddit account in the first place. Was getting disillusioned with it back then and I was super excited when I initially backed it, had a decent amount of ships in the hangar at the time, but felt like I was only ever going to see them in the hangar

[-] Mandy@sh.itjust.works 78 points 1 month ago

All bs and scam atuff aside. This is what happens when you have a leader who never gets told no.
Dude never finished and feature krept freelancer too before Microsoft kicked him to the curb and finished it themselves.

[-] SupraMario@lemmy.world 25 points 1 month ago

Yep, feature creep is basically this entire dev cycle. Dude just keeps adding more and more and never really finishing anything. I grabbed the game on sale a few years ago, I have maybe 15 hours into it. It's got stuff to do, but not what I would expect from the money and time that's been spent on it.

[-] LouNeko@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago

At those time frames it's not just feature creep you have to worry about, but tech- and social creep as well. Think back what games were popular 12 years ago and what hardware we had. That's why usually in longterm, large scale projects you have a technological freeze, where you essentially ignore all progress made outside of your project for the sake of completion, which Star Citizen clearly hasn't done.

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[-] brsrklf@jlai.lu 52 points 1 month ago

Roberts is relatively well-known in and out of the Star Citizen community for being a perfectionist at the best times.

In a parallel universe, Roberts would have been allowed to continue working on Freelancer, and it would still be in development hell in 2024 with no end in sight.

[-] misk@sopuli.xyz 48 points 1 month ago

I imagine that the news headlines of the future will be:

12 Dyson Spheres and 700 Million Years Later, What's Going on With Star Citizen's Development?

[-] jagermo@feddit.org 31 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I backed it with about 60$ on the Kickstarter and have tried a few alphas. It's nice but unpolished. I don't care about the drama and by this point, if they release a game, I'll be happily surprised - and if not, meh.

[-] itsnotits@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

It's* nice but unpolished.

[-] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 6 points 1 month ago

Tits* nice but unpolished.

[-] blargbluuk@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago

I prefer unpolished tits personally

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[-] fulg@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

Same for me, though I did splurge a bit ($150 I think) to get the game on a USB key shaped like one of the starships in the game. I will never get that USB key…

If they ever get done I will consider spending more time with it, I don’t really care for early access into an unfinished game.

I should have asked for a refund when we had the chance…

[-] jagermo@feddit.org 5 points 1 month ago

Oh, wait, it was 30 usd. And i backed Shadowrun Online for 66, so Star Citizen might even be the better bet :)

[-] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 20 points 1 month ago

Why finish the game when you can sell "ships" for hundreds of dollars each?

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 18 points 1 month ago

12 years of early access. Thousand dollar DLC spaceships. Remaining players "happy".

This is as close to a cult as you will find in gaming.

[-] Harvey656@lemmy.world 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

They aren't listening to their community is what. I play almost daily, and all they fucking talk about is 'wait for 4.0, it's going to be so much better!' But they refuse to fix major problems, performance sucks, and the recent 3.24.2 patch may or may not have borked the game in many ways.

They need to perfect the game that already exists, fix the issues and iron out the code before working on more fucking mechanics. I swear it's so bad. The article calls Chris a perfectionist, but that couldn't be furtfrom the truth, he is a dreamer, that says put this amazing thing in then forgets about it and moves on to the next thing overnight. The game will go nowhere until he's gone.

Edit: fixed a spelling error and added some basic formatting.

[-] dax@feddit.org 7 points 1 month ago

The interesting part is, if they say the game is complete or at least in "1.0" shape, it will suddenly mean that people will judge it as a product and not just a vision. CIG won't call it finished as long as they possibly can.