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Star Citizen crowdfunding passes $750M
- hipadev23 2y agoGenuine question: Who looks at a video game that has raised hundreds of millions and think “Yeah they need more cash to get this out”
- noirbot 2y agoI don't think that's why people are giving them money at this point. They're paying for stuff in the game that happens to be rewards for "crowdfunding" the game. It's not a "Just 100 more bucks and maybe they'll deliver", it's folks already playing the content that's in the game and buying further ships or such for whatever reason.
- lolinder 2y agoThen this isn't crowdfunding any more, it's DLC revenue.
- popcorncowboy 2y agoBut nowhere near as clickable a headline
- eloisant 2y agoYes I don't know why we're still talking about Star Citizen as a crowdfunding project in development. It's a released game that is constantly evolving and getting money from in-game purchases, like Fortnite.
- dmix 2y agoThey apparently found every whale gamer on the market willing to buy virtual ships and stuff like that. I think all expenditure towards the game is counted as "crowdfunding"
- mh- 2y agoThat player database is worth a fortune.
- oefrha 2y agoYes, gullible, impulsive gamers are worth more than most people would imagine. According to an industry insider who I talked to recently, a casino-like mobile game sold its users for ~$300 a piece, and that’s counting the majority of non-whale users who don’t spend a dime.
- NelsonMinar 2y agoThey're exploiting people who are vulnerable to collecting impulses.
- Loughla 2y agoIsn't that just most people though?
- HKH2 2y agoIt seems like a majority. The people that collect NFTs should be in their own category though.
- Loughla 2y agoI always assumed that people buying nft's fell into three categories: a) fomo with crypto and feeling like this night be the next one, or b) zero critical reasoning skills, or c) wanted to make someone else hold the bag after eating losses on crypto or stocks at some point. Either way, real question; are nft's still being traded?
- eloisant 2y agoI think they are, for money laundering.
- UltraSane 2y agoMost people don't spend thousands of dollars on fake space ships.
- ikekkdcjkfke 2y agoI thnk programmers fall in a trap since we already have deconstructed whats going on. Normal people actually get attached to the pixels on screen
- 2y ago
- usrusr 2y agoNobody does. They pay for a unique service, not as a handout. "Finally I can be at the forefront of a gaming community just how I dreamt of when I was a kid. And in this particular gaming community, I don't even have to waste a minute playing!" It's suspension of disbelief pushed ahead one more level, a simulation of a space ship sim game. Think virtual virtual skeeball in Futurama s01e02. Just how kids who dream of risking their lives in a space-Spitfire don't really want to risk their lives in a space-Spitfire, grown ups who dream of sinking countless hours in a game of space-Spitfires don't really want to sink countless hours in a game of space-Spitfires. Both just don't quite know it yet, and profoundly enjoy that.
- vasco 2y agoIt's sounding a lot like fraud. And your whole stance seems to be "nobody knows what it means but it's provocative".
- lukan 2y agoPeople feel entertained. And new code and new models get shipped. So maybe underdelivered, but why fraud? That would require a intention to mislead.
- usrusr 2y agoYou're assuming that they don't have their own disbelief properly suspended. The illusion works, against all objective signs of failure, because they are believing it themselves. It's like Dafoe's Schreck delivering a very convincing Nosferatu in Shadow of the Vampire.
- InsideOutSanta 2y agoPeople are playing this game and apparently deriving enjoyment from it, that's why they're paying for things in the game. I don't think it's fraud, it's just kind of weird from the outside.
- danpalmer 2y agoOthers have left the likely real answers here, but... $750m is the right order of magnitude for this game. That's "only" ~400 employees for ~10 years. Games are hugely labour intensive, and in mainstream cases also hugely advertising intensive. The company currently have ~60 open roles. Your average Call of Duty game is $100-200m, and they come out with one every year or two, spending at a similar rate. The budget for GTA V was $265m, but has now made $8bn. I don't think we can even say that it's "bad" or "unfinished" and therefore shouldn't cost this much... the game is finished in the truest of senses – it's available to buy and brings in revenue. Whether they are continuing development, whether it currently sucks, etc, are all somewhat irrelevant. I think we can judge it for being a bad game, I think we can judge it for not being cash-flow positive like we would with any other startup, but the amount of money involved is seemingly in the right ballpark for the market.
- rowanG077 2y agoI don't think comparing GTA, the most financially successful game of all time, to star citizen does star citizen any favors. Star citizen is a very niche game, even if they will do everything they plan I don't expect they will even approach 500m in sales.
- wongogue 2y agoThese players are not investors expecting a return. In a way the game has already got them $750m.
- yreg 2y agoThey have already passed 100s of millions in sales. We can consider some of the earlier money inflows 'donations', but what's happening nowadays is de facto sales.
- arlcode 2y agoBuyers in Europe pay full VAT for Star citizen "donations" since that law was introduced many years ago. So at least the EU and UK believe these transactions to be sales.
- Hamuko 2y agoCyberpunk 2077 needed like $100+ million on top of the original $300+ million budget to get Phantom Liberty out and to patch the game to a point where the general public stopped hating the game. Still, even with all of the money sunk into Cyberpunk 2077, its ~$450 million budget pales in comparison to Star Citizen.
- roygbiv2 2y agoAnd it's still full of bugs (Cyberpunk 2077). I've just bought it on sale, it's annoying close to being bloody amazing but every so often you get someone T posing or just something else that ruins it.
- gambiting 2y agoI've completed the game start to finish 3 times now and I've only really seen any bugs on my first playthrough close to launch. Post DLC I honestly hand on heart don't recall any.
- lukebitts 2y agoI could open my copy of the game right now and find a bug in 5 minutes. That has been a constant for me since the game released and until at least 3 months ago when I last played
- machinekob 2y agoCyberpunk have a massive problems caused by success of Witcher 3 a lot and i mean A LOT of people move to western studios and they were best engineers in the company. They still have people problem as pay in CDPR is pathetic compared to other studios and not much top talent want to work there. Cyberpunk 2077 budget was overblown thanks to that + ~50% of that was spend on marketing I would assume there were also a lot of IP "costs" so overall "production" cost was probably about ~30-40% of the budget.
- speckx 2y agoNot me. I funded them initially on Kickstarter for $35. I won’t fund anymore, I’m only in it for the single player Squadron 42 game.
- dyauspitr 2y agoThis is a question for someone that has been playing star citizen for a long time. How close are we to an actually playable game? How good is what they have built so far?
- aeonik 2y agoIt's in a quantum superposition of being really good and unplayable, and releasable soon and infinite scope creep.
- NelsonMinar 2y agoAlso not releasing is a highly profitable strategy for them.
- aeonik 2y agoI disagree, they'd make way more money releasing the game to a wider audience and continuing the strategy with a larger pool of customers. Though the incentive to release is definitely weaker due to them making so much money prior to official release.
- mh- 2y agoThat supposes there is a larger pool of customers to be had. Putting this in B2B terms: what % of their TAM is already "in"?
- imtringued 2y agoReleasing the game costs money and their money making strategy remains the same after release There is no incentive to deliver anything other than digital collectibles.
- dpig_ 2y agoWho will play this game that isn't already playing it?
- bsder 2y agoErm, I think somebody missed a power of 10 somewhere in the title. Their funding is definitely not $750 million. Although, $75 million is still impressive. Edit: I stand corrected. I simply looked at the website which listed the stretch goals to $65 million and missed the $750 million total. Cowabunga.
- aeonik 2y agoIt's not a typo, it's 750 million. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-funded_crowdfunding_projects https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-funded_crowd...
- vunderba 2y agoThere's not a lot of transparency around their funding - and the only indication that they've raised $700+ million is... their own website. They also claim around 5 million backers which puts the average donation at around 150 dollars. That seems really high. From the wikipedia article, the next highest game is Prison Architect at a comparatively paltry 20 million. It's still possible. On the other hand, it could all be completely PR bull crap since there's no way to audit them.
- anomaly_ 2y agoThey have to file accurate statements with the UK government re some R&D tax incentives they claim; you can have a look at those filings on companies house. They lag the website but broadly align. + the $750m only includes ship sales. If you include other revenue (subscriptions) and investors, they are likely at $900m+ now.
- vunderba 2y agoThe only thing I could find in their filing history was from 2022 for their full accounts - revenue at that time as hovering around 50mil USD. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/08882924/filing-history https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c... EDIT: From Companies House Next accounts made up to 31 December 2023 due by 31 December 2024. So I guess we'll find out in roughly a month.
- AdmiralAsshat 2y agoThree quarters of a billion dollars apparently still isn't enough to resist laying off staff: https://insider-gaming.com/cloud-imperium-games-layoffs-report/ https://insider-gaming.com/cloud-imperium-games-layoffs-repo...
- Justsignedup 2y agoWhen your burn rate exceeds your cash flow you cut the burn. They don't have much in the bank. They burn over 100 mil a year on headcount.
- MisterBiggs 2y agoI funded this back on kickstarter when I was still in high school. I remember the excitement that came with every $1mil milestone, it really felt like an incredible movement that was going to produce something really special. I haven't been able to follow progress closely over the past decade, but the gameplay demos have been fun and there always seems to be a decent amount of progress so at this point I think I'm content waiting.
- zamadatix 2y agoOut of curiosity, do you find the development story itself the worthwhile investment or are you holding out on the bet if you'll wait ${years} more then something like the promised feature set will eventually be delivered as the polished, complete, and functional package you've been looking forward to?
- MisterBiggs 2y agoThere is a lot of value in the development story for me. Over time they've almost entirely stopped talking about progress outside of major milestones which is disappointing but theres only so many years in a row you can say server meshing will be finished in 6 months before people get tired of hearing about it. The team seems genuine, and donations aren't slowing down, so it seems likely that the game will materialize in some complete form eventually
- wlesieutre 2y agoI wonder if the $14m “Professional-quality feature-length ‘Behind the Scenes of Star Citizen’ documentary film” stretch goal is still on
- doctorpangloss 2y agoThe game focuses on the idea of the idea of a space game which turns out to be what people really pay for, ie space real estate, ie limited edition ships, ie works of art. Another POV is that it would be much simpler to have waited 10 years and developed NFTs in 2021 instead. If you have the skills to hype an aesthetic experience for a broad audience; and you’re so cynical as to not really do anything; just make a shitcoin. Make an NFT. Doing all this other work is a huge waste of time.
- djmips 2y agoI don't think you have the skills to hype an aesthetic experience for a broad audience.
- spiritplumber 2y agoI backed Star Citizen in the first round (you may remember me from the Wing Commander Privateer remake) and... honestly the thing is, since I did, Space Engineers came out and scratched that itch better than any of this could.
- sen 2y agoSpace Engineers is still to date my favourite space sim of all time. It has a steep learning curve and is ideally played with a few mods (encounters etc), but even stock standard it’s such an incredible game that only gets better the more you play it.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoI don’t get how it keeps getting funding. It always comes off as a glorified tech demo, and makes me think people are just funding a leisurely game studio hobby for the developers instead of a story they can experience.
- pixxel 2y ago> I don’t get how it keeps getting funding. Why’d you jump into these SC threads? There’s an interest, clearly.
- empressplay 2y agoMaybe with that much money they can have Mac and Windows clients too...?
- Iulioh 2y agoIt won't ever happen. It needs BEEF to run and macs are not capable of that much cow.
- globalnode 2y agoand yet theres still no game
- Elizabeth0147 2y ago[dead]
- glimshe 2y agoThe product isn't Star Citizen, but the dream of Star Citizen's completion.
- Hamuko 2y agoSo it's like the lottery where a lottery ticket doesn't really buy you a chance at riches, but the possibility to dream about what you'd do with riches?
- saagarjha 2y agoMaybe the real game was the friends we made along the way.
- spiritplumber 2y agoI'm about to marry someone I met during the development of the Privateer remake, so... yes, in my case.
- saagarjha 2y agoCongrats and good luck :)
- Refusing23 2y agoIm still a bit disappointed that they keep increasing the scope instead of just getting the promised game out the door, and then creating some large free content updates as time progresses. its getting a bit redicilous i mean, they have motion capture and voice acting from mark hamill and Gary oldman (and probably more) and they're gonna die before the game is released
- ConcernedCoder 2y agoso who's holding the $750 million?
- jdlshore 2y agoThey spend it as it comes in, mostly on salaries. It’s a large company. Their financials are publicly available if you care to look.
- gigatexal 2y agoAn incredible number for sure. But space sims meh. I’d give 750M to Gave Newell for HL3 (yes I know it was never finished etc etc).
- mdavid626 2y agoI can’t close the cookie popup on my iPhone SE 2020. It’s a shame that we reached this state in 2024.
- skrebbel 2y agoWow, what a ride. As a non-gamer, I clicked the link, saw a site that looks like it's Best Viewed In Internet Explorer, with a ticker of an obscenely high dollar amount. It took me a good 2 minutes to figure out this was about a video game. I'm very impressed they managed to raise this kind of money with a site like this.
- Hawxy 2y agoThe website is a fun mix of ancient Vue that was written a decade ago alongside an ongoing overhaul that has replaced the menu and most main pages with React.
- RUnconcerned 2y agoRegardless of Star Citizen being a huge scam, a Hackernews encountering a site that does not look like all the b2b SaaS sites and being surprised that it managed to raise money is extremely funny.
- nottorp 2y agoThat's 750k golden ships at 1000 each? Golden the Ship Was - Oh! Oh! Oh!
- Smithalicious 2y agoAnd when this all blows up everyone will walk away without a scratch. In a just society everybody involved in this mess would spend a double digit number of years in jail.
- Cloudef 2y agoScam Citizen
- corobo 2y agoAt that level of funding and the amount of time it's taken I wonder what percent of their backers are dying waiting on this In another 10 years I'll add "of old age" to the wonder I can no longer remember a time where the internet wasn't waiting for Star Citizen haha
- blitzar 2y agoSunk cost fallacy at its finest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost
- somat 2y agoI think my biggest beef with the game is how unstable it is. The game design is a bit grindy, whatever, lets grind away then, however any time I start to make any progress the game crashes. After two or three of these I loose interest. Only to try again in 6 months to much the same results. They appear to be following a long term slow burn development plan, nothing wrong with this many of my favorite games follow this same pattern, factorio, valheim, however these games follow the cardinal rule of public development which is "keep it stable" it has been 10 years and star citizen still is a crashy mess. They have a lot of neat tech in their engine, seamless space to surface to inside to instance is not trivial. But I wish they would just sit down for a quarter and stabilize the thing. I like to joke that the elevators in the game are probably some of their most advanced tech, the punchline is that if you have played the game you know that most of the crashes and other weirdness involve elevators. but I am only half-joking. because the elevators really are connecting zones and instances in a cool seamless way.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoThat's it, a lot of early access indie games are built using the lessons learned from agile methodology; Factorio recently released a video showcasing the ~6000 tests they have to verify all their complicated systems work as they should, and their velocity is incredible, fixing over 600 bugs in the span of a month (few of which were game-breaking btw, a lot of their bugfixes are fairly trivial). But Star Citizen has all the hallmarks of too much ambitions, too many people, and poor management. They have over a thousand people working on it and have for a long time now. And that scale isn't the problem - Rockstar did the same with RDR 2 and will likely exceed it with GTA VI - but while the main guy has some games under his belt, they too had problems with development and actually finishing.
- Hawxy 2y ago> too much ambitions, too many people, and poor management. The main problem in this case was SC's game director. He was around for nine years and set the scope/goals/roadmap for the game before being abruptly fired 9 months ago and replaced. Through the grape vine I've heard he never provided a long-term vision for the project internally whilst constantly promising new things to the community (ie scope creep). The new game director, Rich, is well liked within the development team and much of the recent CitizenCon event was spent cutting back scope and providing an actual goal for SC 1.0 to release as.
- CM30 2y agoTo be honest, I think the biggest difficulty this game faces is that at this level of funding and this time amount of development time, I'm not sure you can actually make something that lives up to the hype. From what I've heard the stuff that's implemented so far is pretty good, albeit buggy. And the team definitely has the skill to make something amazing. But you don't want decent or even good from a project that's spent over 12 years in development with over $700 million of development costs. You want a genre defining masterpiece that puts pretty much everything else in the genre (or even industry) to shame. I'm not sure it'll be possible to deliver that, at least to the degree you'd expect from a game this expensive. At a certain level of development time/costs, expectations become so high that it's almost impossible not to disappoint everyone with the finished product. And I think Star Citizen passed that point a long time ago.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoExactly that. I mean sure, it may visually be up there, and it may have an attention to detail to things like... people shuffling around in line at a cantina or whatever it was I heard about the other day. But that's window dressing. If they can't get the core technical (= stability, performance) and core gameplay (= is it fun) right, it's a flop. Of course, at this point they will never earn as much from sales of the finished product as they have already received and spent on development cost. It won't be the next GTA Online. At best it'll be as popular as games like Elite Dangerous (fishing in the same pond) or Eve Online, which have player bases that are middling at best compared to the games they're competing with budget- and scope-wise, like GTA or Cyberpunk. I mean Cyberpunk's launch was terrible as well because it too didn't get the basics right - crashes, poorly/slowly loading textures, etc.
- mekster 2y agoA good example of how no money can guarantee a timely quality release. It only makes people lazy when they realize they have decades of time to waste.
- Jean-Papoulos 2y agoI'm not sure if you're joking or not. In which world does having no money guarantee timeliness and quality, because I really wanna live there.
- v3ss0n 2y agoAnd yet still full of bug in empty space with only boring things to do.
- honeybadger1 2y agoThis game mirrors the paradox of a flawed system—like a government program that perpetually stumbles, yet justifies its failures as the inevitable consequence of insufficient means, forever seeking more while never addressing the root of its shortcomings.
- kleiba 2y agoIn unrelated news, "Unknown Realm" was apparently demoed at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo this year: ttps://stirringdragon.games/portland-recap-pt-1/
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- personalityson 2y agoIt has glimpses of an awesome sci-fi atmosphere, which no other game has. I like to do a lot of this: https://youtu.be/0Cii3MWNN8M?si=n2WMfQfgxciRZj0A&t=75 https://youtu.be/0Cii3MWNN8M?si=n2WMfQfgxciRZj0A&t=75
- FrontierProject 2y agoDude tried to make a chill scenery video then kept jerking the camera around like a schizophrenic squirrel.
- alicemoor22 2y ago[flagged]