There is a reason no one uses the Ultima Online death rules any longer. They prevent people from having fun because everyone is paranoid about losing their stuff.
Jeez. It’s getting to the point where there are more free weeks than there aren’t.
Oh, look: a new ship.
According to an update from Roberts Space Industries, and the price of its RSI Perseus ship, it’s clear that they can make phenomenally well-crafted ships, but unclear as to what’s going on behind the curtain that merits the price tag of $600.
CIG did recently announce that it would be launching a new Montreal-based game studio to help develop the universe’s many star systems, so could this high price tag indicate some sort of major push to help finally get Star Citizen around the bend? It’s hard to say, but Star Citizen still seems to have no release date over the horizon.
That new studio in Montreal? They expect it to be fully staffed in three years!
Well, if they can afford it. Keep buying the ships, people!
It will take at least two years to fully staff the Montreal studio; two years is not “soon” unless Roberts is making a comparison with the decade he’s taken so far.
Well crafted? Well crafted for what?
Well, for a working space ship I assume. I mean, a REAL one 
. Because at this point I wouldn’t be prepared to accept anything less.
I almost would want to meet the person who would shell out for one of those things at this point. I mean, the stupidly rich aside I have hard time imaging the kind of person who would. But I’m sure any actual meeting within one of those (hopefully mythical) people would be less fascinating than sad.
More evidence for my cargo cult theory. Ubisoft has a studio in Montreal; Chris Roberts thinks that therefore merely having a studio in Montreal is what makes a game company successful.
To those who think this game is an outright scam at this point and Roberts knows it, the Forbes article linked upthread makes it clear that as of May 2019, Roberts seemed to genuinely believe he was working on a real game that would be released someday and the office was staffed with developers who were going to work every day and doing development work. And when this thread started in October 2015, there were people already saying the game must be nothing more than a scam.
I am still convinced Roberts is at least mostly sincere, at least consciously, but that doubts are starting to seep in.
These sorts of things don’t switch from being legitimate businesses to scams overnight.
New article shines a bright light on how messed-up the development has been.
But it’s funny – and historically worthwhile – reading back how optimistic many of those early updates were. Back in 2015, we reported how the game’s scope had already blown well past the original 2014 release date. And at that time, developers were already starting to talk anonymously about how some of their time had been wasted building out features that were scrapped shortly after.
For instance, here’s a tale from early on in Star Citizen 's development about having to find an in-game helmet to access the Arena Commander menu:
As an example, one high-level ex-employee shared the story of the Menu Helmet. At one point, according to that employee, Roberts decided he wanted players to have to find and wear an in-game helmet in order to gain access to the menu in Arena Commander. Some developers tried to shoot down the idea, noting that players would grow frustrated if they couldn’t find something as essential as a menu, but Roberts insisted, so a team of developers spent weeks making it work. Then, according to that source, Roberts tried it, only to realize that it wasn’t actually fun. So they scrapped the whole thing and went back to a regular menu system.
Roberts’ account of the Menu Helmet is quite different. In an e-mail this week, he said it had come about because Star Citizen’s main menu UI wasn’t far along enough, and players needed a way to select what ship from their hangar they wanted to fly in Arena Commander. Problem: the hangar is also intended to function as a ship gallery, where you can hop into ships and have a gander at all their immaculately rendered buttons and knobs. Solution: have them wear a helmet to designate that they want to play Arena Commander, not just look around in their ship.
Ultimately, Roberts said, once CIG decided they wanted to be able to launch Star Marine from the hangar too, the helmet method started making less sense. So they switched over to an in-game VR Pod. They also added a quick launch menu option for people who’d prefer to bypass all of that. So, according to Roberts’ account, it was still a lot of time and effort expended on a feature that didn’t stay in the game for long, but it wound up making sense in the long run.
Those italics refer to an article which was published two months before this thread was started:
To those saying that he “seems sincere”: All successful scammers do. Being able to seem sincere even when you’re not is what makes a scam successful.
For the amount of money they have raised, they could have built an actual rocket.
Looks like even Cyberpunk is releasing before Star Citizen! Unless we hear about another “delay” in the next few hours.
So not only did they miss the beta window (nobody is surprised), but the game is so far from completion that they won’t even release gameplay footage.
Yet Squadron 42 is close enough to release to be called in “close out” mode. 
It’s Zeno’s Computer Game!
Jesus wept 
.
I’m not a gamer, but I’ve been following this thread and the whole Star Citizen saga with fascination. At what point do players stop throwing good money after bad, and admit that this game is never going to come out? I say players, because it’s obvious that Roberts still believes that he’ll be able to turn lead into gold any day now!
The more you continue to support what is wrong, the harder it is to admit it. I guess it works pretty much like a psychological addiction.