Technology

And yet? Nothing will be done. This is a target market that is more than acceptable to disdain, abuse, and otherwise fuck over.

It might be "cool" to be a nerd now, my fellows, but only on the surface. Don't get suckered into believing they accept you. They're just commodifying our interests for their gains. They are not us and they don't want to be. They just want us to like them enough to pay them more than we otherwise would.

Fuck the poseurs.

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.

unfortunately by todays late stage mercantile economy this is just a bad deal

It's like the scammers who include spelling mistakes, to make sure they only attract the real dipshits.

Probably a way to avoid costly charge backs for when regular users purchase that by mistake

It is the Ferrari model. You want a new Ferrari? Well you have to prove you have already owned several other Ferraris. Make people feel special while they hand over stupid money to you

Just being eligible for it is a sign that you need to make some life changes.

It's been a demo for over 10 years, not a game.

Games have story, star citizen is a glorified tech demo as far as I am concerned.

Luxury tax doesn't apply to dealers/retailers. It would just get piled on the final user. Which would be fine for the "richer than god" types, but not so great for some poor bastard with an addiction who can't help themselves.

It's one thing to drop a few bucks here and there into a game you enjoy but when you start spending 10k on a fuckin game you have a serious issue. Even if you're ultra wealthy, do you really have nothing else you could waste that money on? I think it's time for a serious crackdown on predatory gaming.

That level of buy-in is not required. You can get a game package with a single starter pack for US$40. The one in the article includes every variant of every vehicle currently in the game or in development or announced as planned. IMO it's for people who just want to support development because it literally removes a bunch of reasons to even play.

It's hard to definitively say if greed has taken over or if they're just trying to fund development as legitimately as possible without a publisher. They have done some groundbreaking things (64 bit coordinate system, object container streaming, etc) and are working in more (replication layer, server meshing, etc). That is why it has been so long and expensive, why the game is still alpha.

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Fucking billionaries... :)

If this is a genuine question you have some epic story to treat yourself to about how the bestest game of all times was ~~made~~ promised