I would consider a venture to fall into scam mode when they promised one thing and then claim (without a shred of evidence) that backers told them to massively expand the project. When TOS that protect said backers evaporate. When all schedules become meaningless as simply goals and not deadlines, easily shifted without consequence. When all pretense of previous promises become null and void to be replaced with whatever the Emporer declares and the hapless backers can no longer escape with their money. When all the game creation luminaries who originally poured into the project have left, apparently seeing that this ship is adrift, having told the emporer that this horse wont race and have moved on to brighter pastures rather than have their reputations soiled any further from association with this joke of the industry.
So knowing that his previous generals have all abandoned him as they no doubt told him this was a dead end yet he persists in the idea that he is making teenie baby steps of progress yet creating a buggy mess out of what used to run reasonably well back at 2.6 or so. I would think that he has to know his project began foundering long ago, at least as far as actual progress and goals go. No publisher would continue to fund a money pit that showed so little progress after all these years. Mass Effect Andromeda was COMPLETE (but still a bit of a mess) and was abandoned still. This stillborn project Star Citizen, run buy a man child meglomaniac jibbering idiot only exists because legions of fools persist in propping it up, many posting studio created sequences as game footage and sucking in other hapless fools who too will get ensnared in the 2 week gotcha money, you sucker, trap.
You will never see things as we former backers do because we are enlightened and you still have you head jammed firmly up your ass. No it is not necessary for Robbers to pack up his circuis tent and move to a country with no extradition treaties for this to be a scam. It merely needs to keep limping along giving false hope to backers while collecting tens of millions of dollars while the ringleader knows his project is fucked. To me this still fits the very definition of a scam because they know that other than an act of God this game will never acheive it's stretch goals but will sucker the backers dry of every space dime for years while in the process. This is not any different than televangelists who claim to do faith healings clutching the foreheads of cancer patients tossing them to the floor declaring the power of Jesus heals you! Roberts and his wife still collect millions in salary while it fails. It's all good as far as he is concerned. It's his job, selling hope to the hopeless.
This is as much as I will bother to feed this troll.