First of all I only have $60 into this, and won't be spending anymore I never spend more than $60 for any crowdfunded game.
That's a wise decision
I have seen extremely less ambitious games that were developed by more seasoned teams that took 7+ years to develop and were still excellent games when they released.
Such as?
So with these games being far more ambitious is the reason why I do not expect the game for at least 8 years for one of them to release.
OK then.
Some bumbs, scrapes, and bruises, and people making assumptions of their own do not scare me at all. Anybody who didn't expect any bumbs, bruises, and scrapes along the way and funded these games did so in great ignorance.
They're not assumptions. They're opinions, and others are based on fact.
And yes, literally every single game development is riddled with challenges. And nobody is saying that Star Citizen can't or doesn't have those. That argument is a non-starter; as is the argument about it's "visual fidelity". NONE of those two issues are ever a topic for discussion because there is nothing to argue about there. Regardless of the fact that as to the visual fidelity, it already looks aged, compared to other recent and upcoming games, as well as the fact that their own foolish decision to focus on visual fidelity instead of engine capability, is why the game has been rife with performance issues that we've yet to see the worst (GC2017 was only the tip of the iceberg) of.
So now, what the on-going discourse is about, centers around very basic and straightforward
FACTUAL things:
1) Arbitrarily increasing the scope of the original project that was pitched in 2012, thus invariably dooming it.
And before you say "Oh the community voted for that", don't - because
they didn't. And IF they had, it was still up to Croberts to know where to stop. He didn't, because money was coming in as a result.
2) Removing and/or sidelining promised features which were already paid for through backer funding
e.g. private servers, VR, ability for friends to visit your hangar, and
the list goes on.
3) Consistently and systematically lying to backers - about pretty much, everything - while under the guise of "open development"
e.g. the 3.0 dev schedule (which has turned out to be confirmed as fiction) , the port to LumberYard which was in planning for over a year, but never disclosed until YE 2016; and then they lied about it. Not to mention the Star Marine debacle, the state of SQ42, the original game that most people backed in 2012
And the
BIG one: knowing that SQ42 wasn't going to be shown because it wasn't ready, and knowing that they didn't actually have planetary tech working in the game engine, they went ahead and lied about literally every aspect of the project between AUG-OCT 2016 anyway. Then when they got busted (by me, as I was the first to proclaim that it was all R&D bullshit because of what sources told me) using an R&D demo being passed off as "in-game 3.0", they somehow managed to trot out a "The Road To CitizenCon" video, which conveniently precluded the events they were busted for. Because yeah, if you were upfront about something, the best course of action is to make a video
proving that you lied ahead of telling those lies.
And to add insult to injury, in furtherance of those very same lies, Croberts went on stage and LIED about the status of the much anticipated 3.0.
And that was during and after raising over $5M as result of those very same events which, a year later at GC2017, have been confirmed to be lies much worse than we previously thought.
5) Using specially created R&D demos, passing them off as actual game features and/or mechanics - until they got busted doing it. Then the one time they actually came to a show to get around that, the world saw during GC2017 that the emperor had no knickers after all.
There's a very long list of this because it has been going on since 2014.
Start here.
6) Going back on promises made to backers, including the
shameful rescission of rights backers once had in the original ToS. The same ToS which was based on a shallow "The Pledge" which they have routinely and disgracefully defaulted on -
repeatedly.
7) The on-going tactics to rip off backers, while continuing to raise money to fund a train-wreck and line their pockets, when in fact the game - as overscoped back in
Nov 2014, was already fully funded to the tune of
$65M. And yet, even after being late, this November will be
+3 years and almost +$95M later with the game
NOWHERE near Beta status and
NO vertical slice. Meanwhile, SQ42 is still MIA, though it was coming in 2015.
Then there was that time when Croberts claimed that
2.0 was "substantial" enough to refuse refunds. I said it was bullshit. Some guy tested it with State authorities. And they agreed with me.
8) The continued promotion of a game they know - with certainty - cannot be built as pitched in Nov 2014, but still raising money (while taking out loans, investor money etc - and lying about or not disclosing it to backers) under the pretext of building said game. Which, going by past actions, the lies, obfuscation and deception will only come to light after the fact, and when it's too late for backers to do anything.
As I wrote in my
recent GC2017 article, if another publisher or dev was doing even 10% of the above, there would be an uproar. Not to mention that a publisher backed project would have been
CANCELED by now - without question. And that's why, at this point, only the hardcore backers who refuse to accept the fact that i) they've been scammed ii) they're making a group of people rich iii) the game will never be a reality, are the ones carrying the torch, even as the rest of gaming continues to laugh.
Besides, even with Alpha 2.6 I already had a great amount of fun out of it.
Don't regret spending the money 1 bit, and currently have no worries at all. Ask me again in 3+ years how I feel.
That's a perfectly OK stance because it's your money and you have the right to do as you wish with it. However, making excuses for the state and status of the project, while ignoring the larger picture and the missteps therein, is irresponsible, shallow, and disingenuous.