I don’t get it, wouldn’t the jpeg be tied to your account?
I suspect they sell the account, like they used to in MMOs back in the day?
Possibly. You’d still need whales to move any significant amount of money to make it worth the trouble. Just slightly cheaper whales.
Yeah. I’m not so much thinking it is a money laundering scheme as much as a mismanaged “ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE” dream?
Personally I don’t think Chris Roberts is intentionally perpetrating a scam. I believe he has, at least, a bit of Dunning-Kruger going on.
JMHO.
M.
If the skill was there to run a really effective money laundering scheme, you’d think the skill would be there to actually, ya know, make a game, too.
They can never live up to the promises, so they will be more successfull selling the lie than actually trying to deliver on it.
Probably, at this point. I doubt it started out that way. This is s a classic case of reach exceeding grasp, for sure. Coupled with more than a little hubris.
Gotta say, DCS world has a lot of similarities with this and may provide some insight into behavior.
- Expensive jet modules…check.
- Most everything sold as early access that doesn’t get finished for years and years… check.
- Ponzi like business model. New early access planes sold to subsidize development of older early access planes… check
- Unpolished game engine. Lots of bugs…check.
- Anemic game loops. Promises made for future…check.
- Extremely passionate and vocal user base… check.
- Passionate developers…check.
Passion seems to be a key element here. Eagle Dynamics is incredibly passionate about recreating iconic airplanes down to the smallest detail. The user base is equally passionate about flying said planes. Behavior on both sides is not your typical video game relationship and falls more into making niche hobby possible category. User expectations are entirely different in that case.
Same deal with Star Citizen on a grand scale. I don’t think anybody can criticize Chris Roberts for lack of passion. The fans equally so. They see this as making something possible that could not exist without their participation. Derek’s continued assertion that this game can’t happen just reinforces that.
Now to highlight the differences (and make sure folks don’t get the wrong idea about Eagle Dynamics). If Star Citizen started as a passion project, they soon realized it could be a money machine and that has corrupted the whole thing. DCS world remains and will likely always remain a passion project. ED makes enough to get by and keep going. They remain uncorrupted.
The user base is way smaller so the “support niche hobby” model makes more sense. It sways to older jaded men who are ruthless in criticisms that ED can’t ignore. ED sells expensive unfinished stuff, but at least you can use it on day one. Not just a jpeg. They have been doing this for a long time.
I guess my takeaway from all this is that Star Citizen may have started as a passion project, with that same dev/user relationship as DCS, but the business model has turned it into something else. Money has corrupted the whole thing. That relationship remains unchanged though for many users, explaining their behavior.
Yes, that happens to, and it goes hand in hand with that whole sunk cost fallacy thing.
No. You can sell individual JPEGs or entire accounts. There’s a thriving black market on eBay and Reddit.
https://old.reddit.com/r/starcitizen_refunds/comments/ds6wty/grey_market_refund_assistance/
Well that’s basically it. Because if they stopped selling the lie, the whole thing collapses.
^this
Over at the ranch, methinks he mad
He touches upon an interesting point, a lot of critique towards SC is probably causing the zealots to double down. Maybe if the world™ ignored SC entirely, the zealots would be forced to look inward to find an enemy (instead of unifying against the external forces trying to pry jpegs out of their little hands) and thus they would eventually come to the conclusion that the dread pirate Roberts is the foe, or they’ll eat themselves – either would work at this point.
Perhaps a generalized lesson for this thread as well!
Sounds like DCS World is the direct descendant of Air Warrior and that ilk of pay per hour flight sims from the eighties and nineties.
I started watching the Star Citzen show hoping for a Breaking Bad finale and instead got Lost.
That’s such a great line.
I enjoy keeping up with the ongoing drama through this thread, but this observation…
…is pervasive everywhere I look. I am so furious and disheartened in equal measure that I’ve got nothing left in the tank to direct at this fiasco. Maybe that’s why I’m more inclined towards a live-and-let-spend mentality about the whole thing.
During the dot com boom a lot of companies were destroyed by over-funding. The raised so much money they became completely irresponsible with it never considering the money would stop coming in and eventually run out. I saw this happen first hand with the company I worked at during the peak. We got huge funding and in no time the company ramped up to 300 people and took over a whole building adjacent to Levi Plaza in SF. There was no way the business we were doing was ever going to support the burn rate, and we had an actual viable product with a viable market (the product is still in use today). Three years later the tech was sold for something like 4% of the money that was raised and burned through.
While it of course can’t be said with certainty I feel CIG would have had a better chance of creating an actual game by this point if they hadn’t raised so much money. Not the pie in the sky everything to everyone MMO, but at least an actual complete game. They money certainly went to Robert’s head leading not just to the vast scope creep but a change in focus from making a game to continuing the revenue stream.