Dear Mr. Smart,
I'm 41 yo now and although i still enjoy videogames, I've become pretty unsocial in terms of game or game-related communities: the older i get, the worsen it gets. I'm strictly invested in the games themselves and nothing more. Point is, in October 2016 I bought a SC starting package as a result of personal frustration and casual watching of a YT clip of their citizencon planet tech: i never had been interested in SC in the first place, but the idea of having the spacesim/dogfight experience to be just means so that i could be able to land on a procedural planet and explore/fight in 1st person seemed way more appealing to me and -i guess- many others.
Unfortunately, being the unsocial piece of shit that i am, i knew pretty much zero of all the drama surrounding the development of the game or even how the game itself was in terms of playable stuff.
I knew who the author was (and had mixed memories of his past), i had read the kickstarter campaign and ofc i knew there was a fair bit of teenage nostalgia involved in the entire process. I will spare you my first impression of actually playing the 'game', but i can tell you i had good laughs. Thing is, instead of just forgetting about it for a year -my original plan- i started wondering why people had been giving away lots of money for that pile of shit and, sparked by my curiosity, i watched plenty of zero-actual-content videos about its fableish gameplay mechanics, the 'groundbreaking' tech behind it and blah blah blah. Eventually i dove into the cesspool of insanity that is the official RSI forums and that's how i got hooked.
Fast forward to today: I'm still a baker, I already had my 30something euros worth of enjoyment by fucking around with the hilarious bugs in the 'game' whenever a new patch comes out and i still follow the equally hilarious story developments, which is become the videogame equivalent of a very addictive spanish soap opera, whose drama component is fat and greasy while the 'serious' social/economic implications are incredibly fascinating to me. However i do avoid the official forums like the plague cause there's only so much i can take in.
I'm really glad you chose to stick on providing a collection of tangible facts about what's going on and although our conclusions on the matter may be different, i genuinely hope your actions will help pile up proof so that when the time comes and this shitfest finally collapses, hopefully there will be some serious consequences and accountability. To be perfectly honest, i personally hope it all crumbles at least in such a way that governments WILL have to refine some specific laws, perhaps resulting in way less shady commerce practices for the future.
At the same time, in a very '80s-Xmas-witch-curse-movie fashion, i hope you will be rewarded for your efforts by magically watching the whole SC+NMS communities flood your games: you will gain the deserved success, but at the price of having a community made entirely of fucking idiots. ;)
