The most scary part is, it's not only the rich. I knew people who have put their life savings into the game.
Allero
joined 11 months ago
You're up for a ride if you have a read.
Game is 11 years in alpha development, still a buggy mess that requires a supercomputer to work smoothly, only recently got a second star system (dozens more are pinky promised, and hundreds promised since beginning of development), is constantly exploited in all ways possible, barely has any actual content...
...which absolutely didn't stop it from earning over half a billion dollars (yes, billion) by selling in-game ships for hundreds and sometimes thousands of very absolutely real dollars, as well as such monstrous packs.
Yeah, Star Citizen is world renowned master of squeezing immense amounts of cash from its userbase.
First, they have many ship tiers, and as the most basic ones cost $40+, they feel comfortable charging more for bigger ships, with some ships costing well over $1000.
Second, they commonly introduce wipes in updates, and those wipes only affect everything players accrued in-game, not purchases made with real cash. So you either accept having your entire progress wiped again and again, or you give up and buy your fleet for cash (and any meaningfully gamechanging ship costs hundreds of dollars). The developers claim that this is due to bugs and exploits being found, and that eventually everything will stay forever, no matter how you bought it, but they are obviously aware of the situation and will probably make sure this never happens.
Third, the game does a good job at immersing you into the universe, so some players really go for a second life there. For them, it is the successful counterpart of the Metaverse.
And just like that we end up with people spending insane amounts of money on in-game ships. Half of the players I know spent over $300 on the game, and I personally know people who spent upwards to $8000.
Scary part is that many of them aren't rich, and one of the people I know literally saved for years and hid $8000 from their family to buy a ship pack. He is living in Ukraine, a country with GDP per capita of $4350.
I never said it's not voluntary. The decision to buy the game is voluntary as well.
But it being voluntary doesn't mean it's not purchase. When you buy, idk, jewelry, or something to the same extent of not-survival-necessity, it's still a purchase.
And here it is as well. It is not a pledge, it is not a donation. When you're explicitly asked to "pledge" to get a ship, it's a purchase.
You're not asked to "pledge" to the jewelry shop and get a "kind owner's gift" of your earring? You just buy it.
What really is probably illegal at this point is officially calling it all "pledges", i.e. "donations", and calling ships and stuff a "reward for the generous donation".
Dudes, this is literally what a purchase is. If I don't donate, I don't get a ship (or even a base game).
This seems to be a ground to sue the hell out of them.
Star Citizen has long history of ship pre-purchases long before release
That is the option to take red pill and buy Bitcoin later
Completely depends on your age
As a person who didn't yet get love of my life or children, red pill is a pure win
There still are some problems, unfortunately.
Not a world of difference, but my laptop holds ~15% less when running Debian over Windows.
Ah, great! Should be like at home then :)
The first game it has shown me is...
WORKERS & RESOURCES: SOVIET REPUBLIC
Gabe knows some irony