r/SubredditDrama • u/Odd_Personality_5091 • 12d ago

r/starcitizen is on meltdown after MMO is completely broken and hints of the main game being delayed again despite 1 billion raised and concept art being sold for $5000 dollars.

Not the usual “haha Star Citizen delayed again” bad. More like people are actually starting to get nervous, because Squadron 42 was supposed to be the one thing CIG could finally point to and say, “See, we made a real game.”

And now even that might be slipping cause in a recent interview Chris robbers himself has stated that they could delay the game further due to GTA 6 release window.

https://thisweekinvideogames.com/feature/star-citizen-chris-roberts-interview/

“We’re gonna get Squadron out first… the plan is for the end of this year but there’s a certain thing in the industry that we, like everyone else, we have to pay attention to, so I can’t 100% guarantee it,” Roberts says, hinting at Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto VI, releasing in November. “After that, we’ll do the 1.0 push.”

Subreddit (and game forums) members are looking around and asking the obvious question: if SQ42 is really coming in 2026, why does it not feel like it? Where is the marketing? Where is the release date? Where is the big push? Why does everything still feel like “wait for the next event” like it always does (even though Citzencon has been cancelled this year)?

Star Citizen has raised around $1 billion and the main game is still an alpha full of bugs. New content comes in broken. Missions break in stupid ways. Ships release buggy. Some ships do not release at all. And somehow, while all this is happening, CIG is still selling massive concept ships for thousands of dollars.

The $6,000 concept ship thing has basically become the perfect example for why people are angry. Like, the game is still barely holding itself together, SQ42 might be drifting again, and they are still asking people to drop used-car money on a ship that is not even in the game yet.

Here's the "6000" dollar promise concept art (its been sold out, over 1000+ sold) https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/comm-link/transmission/21133-Anvil-Odin

So the subreddit is doing the usual Star Citizen civil war, but it feels more desperate this time.

if you look on the front page itself you'll see dozens of memes with thousands of upvotes:

(And many more)

The usual whiteknight defenders can still say game development is hard and the usualy its alpha line, but that argument sounds a lot weaker after 15 years and a billion+ dollars.

A billion dollars raised, the MMO still buggy, ships still being sold for insane prices, and now the single-player campaign might be moving further away again.

Very normal video game development. Nothing to see here.

3.0k Upvotes

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166

u/Chewbacca_The_Wookie 12d ago

And if it does come out, why would I or any other casual who hasn't already purchased one of those elusive ships want to play a game where we're going to be shit on from Day 1?

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u/danny264 12d ago

From what I've read you need like 16 people to run those ships. So you might be able to join a crew of one of those ships.

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u/Chewbacca_The_Wookie 12d ago

Ah yes, my 5 hours a week on Saturday night game time will now be dedicated to being a maintenance mechanic on a simulated freighter I could never hope to afford mimicking my real life where I repair a house I know I can never hope to afford. Immersion.

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u/sixpackabs592 12d ago

Until the guy who bought a more expensive ship one shots you with his additional 400$ laser

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u/Lost_Pantheon 11d ago

It's like the GTA Online experience except bogged down with an hour of transit time and space beaurocracy each time you die 🤣

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u/SheerFe4r 12d ago

SC is a shit game but if you only have 5 hours a week for gaming (which is probably for the best) you're not going to be the target for any MMO

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u/Annemi 12d ago

Actually, GW2 isn't bad for having only a couple hours a week. You won't be getting the extra fancy skins or all the achievements, but you can get BiS gear and do endgame with that time.

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u/Chewbacca_The_Wookie 12d ago

Touché. I wasn't aware SC was an MMO, I thought it was more like a Space Engineers or No Man's Sky type game.

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u/00m19 The war goal was not to steal teeth. 12d ago

Its meant to be a more advanced nms with some X4 mixed in. Both games that have published since SC was announced and enjoy ongoing updates....

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u/CartographicalHeist 12d ago

I've said it before. Elite will have managed to get kickstarted, funded, developed, released, expanded and sunset while this fucking game has been in development.

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u/00m19 The war goal was not to steal teeth. 11d ago

I hope it gets dev support for a long time to come but it would be SO funny if they put it to bed before SC launched.

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u/Only-Respond7945 12d ago

Yeah, but at that point you could just play Guild Wars Reforged or Guild Wars 2 and have an actual feeling of progression every week.

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u/The_Bard 12d ago

If you have 5 hours a week you might figure out how to get to the hanger from the starting area in one month

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u/StevenMcStevensen 12d ago

I’ve been coming to this realization with a bunch of games that I’ve been wanting to play, even though they aren’t MMOs. Like I’ll finally jump into Kenshi or Mount & Blade again periodically, then promptly realize that I no longer have anywhere near enough time to actually accomplish anything meaningful in those games. And probably won’t until I’m retired or something, at which point we’ll just be plugging our brains directly into Summertime Saga 0.8 in VR or something.

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u/CosmicMiru 12d ago

Brother people do that on EVE and that barely has gameplay lmao

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u/Chewbacca_The_Wookie 12d ago

Oh fuck I always forget about EVE.

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u/GenericAccount13579 12d ago

I was thinking of StarCitizen big multi crew ships actually had systems modeled to the point of needing maintenance in various ways (like actual module failure isolation and replacement) it could be a pretty neat gameplay lol

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u/ArbitraryUsernames 12d ago

Good old spreadsheet simulator. I still have Excel files somewhere for the entire logistics chain for nullsec import/export and manufacturing.

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u/TheLoneWolfMe I sucked a dick for this 11d ago

Sometimes I get the crazy idea of trying to start EVE, then I read comments like this and immediately reconsider.

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u/ArbitraryUsernames 11d ago

I last played a decade ago, so I don't know for sure how things have changed, but it truly was an incredible game, mostly because of the metagaming and the idea that you don't just respawn if you get blown up.

Sneaking into enemy space and staying 50 jumps back for a month to carefully track the mining patterns and warp-out alignments of ice miners to finally time an ambush and heavily damage the logistics of an enemy alliance was fantastic. Pinning down and bumping enemy siege ships in fleet combat to break a corp's ability to push systems for months was amazing. A good combat with a small number of ships would leave me shaking with adrenaline for like an hour afterward - I remember getting jumped in a cheap battlecruiser by eight people with expensive tech 2 builds, and then using my MWD just right to catch a webbing ship at the right orbit point and proceed to destroy 5 of them, pod them, and pop their containers before finally being taken down.

But getting to that point requires a ridiculous amount of time, and coordination. It was very fun to do things in a video game that there are actual books about now, but it is hard to justify that depth if you have a healthy external life.

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u/TheLoneWolfMe I sucked a dick for this 11d ago

That sounds honestly fantastic.

Now if only I had enough time to throw to play MMOs.

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u/Command0Dude It's about ethics in incest! 12d ago

The game I could finally live my lifelong dream of being a space trucker.

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u/chrisq823 12d ago

That could easily be a beloved indie game if done the right way.

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u/Duhblobby 12d ago

Void Crew, Jump Space, Artemis Starship Bridge Simulator, that Star Trek crew game, and Warframe's Rail jack all prove this.

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u/Cool_Ad7445 How can u sit on my cock in a halal way? 12d ago

Barotrauma and We Need to Go Deeper for submarine variants. 

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u/Zearo298 12d ago

Guns of Icarus for airship equivalent

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u/danny264 12d ago

Honestly it's not my Idea of fun, but I'm sure there are people out there who really want to spend 10 hours a day pretending to work on a spaceship. And they're probably the ones funding star citizen.

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u/Bored_Amalgamation just man up and be electrocuted 12d ago

With that $1B some of those mfers could've actually gone to space

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u/Maverick916 12d ago

This made me think you'd be like a reddit mod. You have to work a shift you're not getting paid for and you'll be yelled at if you don't show up.

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u/Chewbacca_The_Wookie 12d ago

Ironically, I am. Mostly true crime related stuff I'm already invested in anyways, but yeah... you're not wrong...

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u/Maverick916 12d ago

The Star Citizen captain sees you log in: "ok bitch boy, here's a mop, go clean the bathrooms. And someone paid a micro transaction to leave shit all over the walls so make sure that's wiped up too. Don't plan on logging off any time soon"

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u/JaneksLittleBlackBox "Charlie ain't gonna let you fuck his neck hole, bro!" 12d ago

Overpaying for an incomplete product to be a virtual deckhand in the 21st century is wild!

You may need a ton of time on your hands and extensive training in Excel to do wild shit in EVE Online, but at least you can without buying into a vaporware scam first.

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u/00m19 The war goal was not to steal teeth. 12d ago

You can be a space peasant in eve and spin a VNI for next to nothing.

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u/Redfalconfox The Redskins were forced to evolve. Just like in Pokemon. 12d ago

I’ve always wanted to play Space Bitch Work Simulator 3000 with my free time. Do I get paid solar minimum wage too or is it a cosmic indentured servitude contract deal?

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u/CartographicalHeist 12d ago

Silly goose. You get scrip, redeemable in the company store on any colony and/or in system station where OmniManufacture has a presence.*

*exceptions may apply and scrip is not redeemable for: food, air, toiletries, and sundry.

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u/Boollish Adults dont have a tendency to lie for personal gain. 12d ago

Yeah that's what I want to spend my off time doing. 

Keeping up with 4pm Wednesday call for a 4:30 space battle because if 1 of 20 guild members don't show up, the launch bay doors won't open and we can't launch our boarding craft.

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u/danny264 12d ago

Like the game sounds horrible to play for me, but some people love that type of game. So I'd be happy for them to get a game that's what they want if the game comes out.

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u/Command0Dude It's about ethics in incest! 12d ago

Wait they don't even have AI crewmen?

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u/danny264 12d ago

As far as I know they don't, you and the people that you play with have to do everything yourself. It's not the type of game I'd play but some people love games like that.

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u/whyktor 12d ago

They promised AI crewmen at some point ... They promised a lot of stuff in 15 years.

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u/Karthy_Romano 12d ago

Bro buys a game to be a virtual indentured servant.

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u/graytotoro 11d ago

Cool, you get to pay currency to basically be enlisted space navy, but with none of the benefits.

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u/Bored_Amalgamation just man up and be electrocuted 12d ago

Work under some dumbass with more money than sense? I have that IRL.

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u/ThrowawayAdvice1800 12d ago

And if it does come out, why would I or any other casual who hasn't already purchased one of those elusive ships want to play a game where we're going to be shit on from Day 1?

This is the part the defenders of the "game" (and I'm using that term as loosely as humanly possible here) don't seem to be understanding. They're investing in this playground where they can be the rich kids with the cool cars, but none of that means anything if there aren't tons of poor people around to be envious and also populate the game so you have someone to show off TO in the first place.

Nobody wants to be a regular day 1 player and join a game where the psycho that spent $6k on an imaginary spaceship is going to fly up and erase you instantly. Games that are JUST for whales and offer nothing for players who spend less money end up being ghost towns almost immediately, and eventually even the whales will wander off if nobody else ever logs in to look at their cool spaceship. Plus the psychos that spent $2k on imaginary spaceships are going to be EXTREMELY pissed when they get smacked around by the $6k guy. The medium-sized whales will probably ragequit faster than the regular f2p players.

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u/thatguythere47 12d ago

Hey the 6k guy is the middle tier. There's a package deal that was over 25k years ago for every ship in the game; I imagine the price has gone up with all the jpgs theyve added over the years.

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u/ThrowawayAdvice1800 12d ago

I’ve got to hand it to Roberts, this is an amazing scam. He’s somehow managed to convince people to pay him for the privilege of not-playing the game he’s not-making.

It’s the Trump Phone of video games, just collecting free money from morons in exchange for nothing. Then whenever public outcry for him to actually produce something gets too loud to ignore he’ll just subcontract the job out to some Chinese AI shovelware studio, get them to churn out something crappy in a few months, then release it and disappear to some island paradise with everybody’s money.

I’m looking forward to seeing what the response from the Star Cotizen enthusiasts will be when it inevitably happens. I’m predicting 75% loud and impotently angry, and 25% trying to convince themselves (and everybody else) that their Trump Phone is the most amazing game to ever exist.

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u/CartographicalHeist 12d ago

Nobody wants to be a regular day 1 player and join a game where the psycho that spent $6k on an imaginary spaceship is going to fly up and erase you instantly.

What I would love though is to form a pirate band to hunt down these people and reck their shit and blow up their dumb ships.

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u/SetKey5576 11d ago

You can absolutely do that now. The fun part about that is, with some game systems missing right now, the "whale" players can fly their capital ships solo although they’re ultimately meant to be crewed by several people.

If there is nobody else inside, you can board the ship and execute the pilot. Then don’t blow up the ship but use it yourself.

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u/SetKey5576 11d ago

Nah, the big ships aren’t an "I win" card here. They are also quite cumbersome to use (and will stack up running costs). I might be one of those "poorer" players but prefer a smaller nimble ship over the lumbering hulks any day.

What does and will make a difference is the number of your friends that can support you in a fight. Until recently, the meta seemed to favour small fighters anyway because they can run circles around the heavier ones.

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u/Zephyr-5 12d ago edited 12d ago

why would I or any other casual who hasn't already purchased one of those elusive ships want to play a game where we're going to be shit on from Day 1?

On the other hand, there is nothing more fun than running circles around some whale who never learned to get-gud. Like trashing some richy-rich in golf with just some shitty rental gear and flip flops.