'Star Citizen's' future revealed... (after raising $730m)

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Star Citizen is an in-development multiplayer, space trading and combat simulation game. The game is being developed and published by Cloud Imperium Games for Windows. An extended retry of unrealized plans for Freelancer, Star Citizen is led by director Chris Roberts. The game was announced via a private crowdfunding page in September 2012, followed on October 18, 2012 by a successful Kickstarter campaign which drew over US$2 million. Pre-production of the game began in 2010, with production starting in 2011. Star Citizen has garnered considerable criticism during its long production process, both for the lack of a clear release date and for the challenges backers have faced in getting a refund after abandoning the project. The launch of the game was originally anticipated for 2014, but has been repeatedly delayed.

In 2013, Cloud Imperium Games began releasing parts of the game, known as "modules", to provide players with the opportunity to experience gameplay features prior to release. The most recent module, the "Persistent Universe", was made available for testing to pre-purchasers in 2015 and continues to receive updates. After more than a decade in development, no projected date for the commercial release of Star Citizen is currently given.

After the initial Kickstarter ended, Cloud Imperium Games continued to raise funds through the sale of ships and other in-game content. These crowdfunding methods have led to further criticism and legal issues for the project. It is noted for being one of the highest-funded crowdfunding projects, having raised over US$700 million as of May 2024. In addition to crowdfunding, marketing is funded through external investment, having received US$63.25 million as of March 2020. Squadron 42, a single-player game set in the same universe, was initially announced in the Kickstarter as an included campaign in Star Citizen, but is now intended to be a standalone product.
~Wikipedia

TIMESTAMPS:
Intro: 0:00
New Tech: 1:44
Squadron 42: 7:37
Multiplayer Offerings: 16:10
The Endgame: 19:06
Player Bases: 25:48
The Game Today: 30:42
Pricing Model: 42:25
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[xklbr]

I was 29 years old when this game was announced for crowdfunding. Since then I’ve gotten married, bought a house, had children, changed careers twice.

I’m now 40 and this game still isn’t ready for release.

[TheDontletmedie]

bro, its ALWAYS 2 years away. In 2026 we will be told: "just two more years". And the cycle will continue

[WretchedIcon]

I got Star Citizen a few months ago. Made my way through and learned the basics. Once I got everything ready to go, I set out to a planet that was a hotspot for resources and weapons. I get there, lay down on ship’s bed, logged out to use the restroom, logged in, and my ship fell through the planet with me inside, glitched out, died, had to replace my ship, attempted again, collected the resources, got back to my ship, and as soon as I closed the bay doors, the ship fell through the planet again. I died, lost everything, haven’t played since.

I can’t even do the most basic stuff in this game without it falling apart and punishing me for it. I don’t want to repeat the same mission tens of times for hours at a time, just in the hopes that the proper sequence transpired for the program to be happy and allow me to progress.

[Pepperminto_]

I only spend 45$ on Star Citizen and I have a great time playing it. Start delivering some packages, do some bounty, get some money to rent an ROC and Cutlass Black to go, Minning, save enough money to Get a Prospector, Get in touch with Mining Org. Sell player Quntanium location, Save money Enough to buy a Harbinger, Do VHRT Bounty, Visit Invictus Expo, and get to fly 890 Jump with 10 strangers who I just met in the Expo.

It has a lot of issues, game-breaking bugs sometimes and the whole paying real-world money for in-game ship Insurance is weird but I say I've had fun with it for the whole 1-2 months, and For 45$ which is less for some AAA games that I far less enjoy playing. With all this I do hope It got released and everyone got to have the experience like I have

[JazerMedia]

The first hour of Squadron 42 was enthralling. It's epic space military combat and echoes games like Halo but in a new exciting way.

[found]

That Squadron 42 release date started me thinking...
CIG began developing Star Citizen in 2011.
SpaceX began developing Starship in 2012.
CIG has announced SQ42 releasing in 2026.
SpaceX announced Starships to Mars in 2026, during the next transfer window. This means people on Mars as early as 2029. (More likely, 2031 or so.)

So I made a bet with myself. Starships en route to Mars before Squadron 42 is released. Humans on Mars before full release of Star Citizen. I have a friend who's put money into SC, and he refused to take either bet, lol.

[bongwaterbojack]

"We'll stop selling ships when the game is done" is a very easy promise to keep. After all, it's entirely up to them when it's 'done.'

[TheBlargMarg]

People do not understand the meaning of "scam" until they research "The Day Before" or any NFT game.

That being said, Star Citizen isn't really a game people are testing, but more of an entire ecosystem. It's just annoying how disjointed the whole project is.

[GrimReaper_sGhost]

Love how Star Citizen fans can casually say something is glitchy but still years away from release while making it sound like almost a good thing.

[blackeagle_]

Hey I just want to clear up a few things about wipes, SC does NOT have regular/frequent FULL database wipes any more. However, there ARE partial data wipes, but rarely do they include in game purchased ships, weapons, armor, components, etc (things that are expensive). Back in the pre 3.0 days, SC had frequent full wipes because there was no way for the game data to persist between updates. The last full wipe was for 3.18 because it introduced full persistence which was a complete overhaul of their backend database, they prefer for player data to persist now between updates as it is important data for them to have on player activity.

If there is a need to reset some of the player account data, CIG will let players know in advance what will be affected. Most recently we had a reputation resent because they overhauled the reputation system, and the new and old systems had completely different styles of progression.

In extreme cases CIG has the ability to select what player data they want to reset i.e. Money, Items, Reputation, etc either game wide or on an account by account bases. For example, there have been a few money exploits recently where players were duping resources and making millions within an hour, CIG was able to ban the most egregious offenders and reset the money balance for others they knew were exploiting as well as remove anything they purchased in game using the exploits. Those of us who did not use the exploits were unaffected by the resets.

I have several ships that I purchased in game about a year ago that have persisted. Several I purchased just because I knew a money wipe was coming the following patch, but I also wanted to test if there persistence tech was working as advertised. Since then I've had one ship that was accidentally wiped but was able to get it back after I alerted customer service. that was over 6 months ago now and I have not had any issues since.

[Yuuki-SJ]

Star Citizen is a game I enjoyed playing nonstop for 6 months. Gets stale after awhile but its a game i come back periodically. Its crazy the amount of shit you can interact with and how space travel feels so great. Downside is its graphically intesive so you need a decent pc. Their update last year though helped give people more frames with their new tech which i cant remember the name. It loads persistent item systematically and uses the engine to generate. It really improved my fps

Edit: Dont go into this game expecting it to be a star wars action esque game but as a space simulator.

[vallor]

First, "Thats no moon!" needs to be said. The 10 years of insurance will run out before this game releases. I am an OG Kickstarter and I can't imagine this game will ever actually release. It has become a cautionary tale of what happens when you give a billion dollars to someone who has a history, nay, a tradition! of missing milestones and including scope creep in his games.

Roberts bit off more than he can chew and now, we're as likely to see this game before he dies as we are to see the completion of the Game of Thrones (books) before George RR Martin dies. Or Patrick Rothfuss finishes the Kingkiller saga.

And when you can mint 3/4 of a BILLION dollars with ships, there is no reason actually to stop their predatory practices.

[wiegraffolles]

People cope that purchasing ships doesn't ultimately matter, but if that were true, nobody would buy them.

[TheOriginalGrib]

Luke, the location for Citizencon rotates every year to each of the different CIG locations. From what I remember the location next year is Austin, TX, then Germany, Then Los Angeles, Then UK again. They also have a new location in Toronto, so there's a chance they may have one there one of these years. Just an FYI.

[imba]

27:12 wasn't an 890jump, that was a 400i. Although similar in design language, the 890j is much larger.

[aledantih]

A slow paced story is honestly fine if the atmosphere is there and it definitely looks to full of it so that's good to see. Also if that's Mark Strong I spotted the casting guys know what they're doing.

[aarontopping]

I spent nothing on Star Citizen, but I watched the full hour of Squadron 42 and what I was most impressed with is that the narrative is actually pretty solid. I have been semi-amused over the years, but I was convinced that they were going to throw all this money at the game, then it was going to be ultra cheesy as hell or something. Nope, that prologue for the game was absolutely amazing. I can't wait to play the full version of the single-player game whenever it releases. It is top tier amazing. Really impressed. I only play single player games.

[QuRareLugene]

I'm from Korea, and I've spent 705 USD on Star Citizen. It still got no official Korean translation.
Some says that Star Citizen is a scam. They also point out that some officials in CIG already done some scams. However,
What I've seen until now since I first played Star Citizen, This is what I think : Even if this is a scam, it still worth all my money.
Also, I think CEO of CIG is kinda daydreamer. Dreamer, who dreams and pursuit rainbow. But, I don't think chasing rainbow is all bad thing.
So, I decided. I want to join chasing rainbow.
How long for Star Citizen 1.0 to come out to take, well, I don't give a shit. Oneday, they'll catch rainbow. With all development they've done so far, Oneday. I know that they will do it.

[KSerge]

Thanks for giving the game a fair perspective, Luke. I bought the minimum game package that included the same Aurora ship you flew in this video, Star Citizen, and Squadron 42 for $65 back in 2015, and the only money I've spent since was another $40 to upgrade my starter to a Gladius in 2017. Rest assured that nobody is as upset about how long SC and SQ42 has taken than the actual backers of the game, so for anyone complaining about how long it's taken, I agree 100%.

As for the monetization, I agree that the ship pledges and their prices are obscene, which is why I haven't bought any outside of what I mentioned above. For that investment, I have already enjoyed hundreds of hours of gameplay (and have hated hundreds more when bugs occurred), and have no plans on giving CIG anymore money not because I can't, but because for me part of the fun is earning those ships to fly them. In the long term I agree they likely won't stop selling ships, but I also feel like when we get to 1.0 those ship prices will drop or they just won't sell.

To hopefully help put the $730 million headline in perspective:

- with over 5.3 million game accounts, assuming every one of them has the bare minimum aurora + SC game package ($45) that alone makes up $250 million of the revenue they've made, so more than 1/3 of the game's revenue over 12 years came from just people buying the base game offering. The whales absolutely exist but you don't really need that much money per person to get to $700 million.
- Genshin Impact made $930 million in revenue for 2023. That's just one year to CIG's 12 years.
- Concord cost $400 million to make and is literally gone, cannot be played.
- CIG employees over 500 developers. If we lowball their average salary at $75, 000 a year, then pay that for 10 years (they didn't have all these people when they started) that works out to over 380 million just to pay their developers over that time frame. This is JUST to cover the developers, not the writers, composers, actors, mocap studios, none of that stuff. I shouldn't need to say this but game dev is expensive.

[krazivan]

at 1:15 you say "a lot of people hear it hasn't been finished or it hasn't released yet", all while doing 'air quotes' then you go on to say "that's not what it is" and "they don't realize when they throw out term like scam", but in fact this IS what it is, saying otherwise is misleading and irresponsible, statements like this from you and other content creators drive consumers to potentially make the wrong choice in buying this "game" thinking it's a mostly finished product, when in reality star citizen is still in alpha and many of the promised features are still missing. I hope you consider retracting these statements and hope you clarify to your viewers that this game is in fact in alpha and is unfinished in future videos, ideally without sarcasm.