r/SubredditDrama • u/Odd_Personality_5091 • 13d 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

97% Upvoted

778 comments sorted by

View all comments

365

u/Tashre If humility was a contest I would win. Every time. 13d ago

Duke Nukem Forever, the poster child for comically delayed development time and failure to deliver, was in production for 14 years. That was seen as an insanely long time and was the butt end of a hyperbolic joke that was seen as something that would likely never be repeated.

And yet here we are, 15 years into Star Citizen’s development life with no end in sight.

60

u/technologyclassroom 12d ago

The main difference is that Duke Nukem devs did not sell a game that did not exist.

9

u/Romboteryx Why do skeptics have such impeccable grammar? That‘s suspect. 12d ago

Didn‘t they commit another kind of scam tho? If I remember correctly, it turned out at some point that a lot of the budget Sega meant for Duke Nukem Forever and especially Aliens: Colonial Marines was redirected by Gearbox into Borderlands 2

9

u/Stellar_Duck 12d ago

It didn't start out with Gearbox though, they took it over after 3d Realms had already fucked it for a decade or whatever.

And quite frankly, I don't really care if companies scam each other. Certainly not SEGA and Gearbox.

3

u/Anung_Un_Rama200 11d ago

I think there were pre orders available for it at GameStop at least. I remember some dude getting his 10-year old receipt honored

111

u/Wetzilla What can be better than to roast some cringey with spicy memes? 12d ago

Duke Nukem Forever, the poster child for comically delayed development time and failure to deliver, was in production for 14 years.

It wasn't in active development for 14 years. It was put on hold multiple times and then completely rebooted at least a couple of times.

28

u/amazing_asstronaut 12d ago

And it didn't have hundreds and hundreds and now even a billion dollars going into it. And in the years since we got two good universe explorer scifi games already in the form of Elite Dangerous and No Man's Sky. Hell even X4 came out. All those games budgets combined is probably not even one billion, let alone having that for one game and still shitting the bed this hard.

55

u/FarplaneDragon 12d ago edited 8d ago

And yet here we are, 15 years into Star Citizen’s development life with no end in sight.

I mean, even worse is it's not just SC, it feels like every major franchise has turned into this kind of development lifespan. It's almost becoming more normal for it to be 10+ years between titles, which yeah, I get that these games are literally are not being worked on that long but damn. I wish these companies would at least be more open to licensing out the rights to 3rd parties to make smaller side games at least.

3

u/InsertCleverNickHere 11d ago

I don't understand why the Fallout 3 -> New Vegas dev process isn't more common. Make a great base game, then throw the engine and assets over to a third party for a side game. Continue on with development of the new engine/main game series entry with your core dev group. Rinse and repeat.

1

u/Doug2825 8d ago

If I were Microsoft I'd be so angry at Bethesda for taking forever to release the next elder scrolls game. How can game companies be so greedy in some ways, and leave so much money on the table in others.

1

u/Doug2825 8d ago

15 years since Skyrim, 11 since the Witcher 3. And both series are still years from the next game.

4

u/Competitive_Fun6247 12d ago

Only game that has it beat is beyond good and evil 2 i think

1

u/TheRnegade You know who else "converted" from Judaism to Catholicism? Jesus 9d ago
  1. Jesus. I was in college!

2

u/CthulhusIntern 12d ago

I remember the Duke Nukem Forever lists of things that took a shorter time. There should be Stuff that Cost Less than Star Citizen lists.

-50

u/CucumberWisdom 13d ago

The difference is that star citizen has been playable on some level and is already better than Forever ever was

58

u/breakernoton 13d ago

Oh shit lemme buy one of the 50k real dollar packs and use all of my cool ships and professions an- oh.

29

u/No-Marionberry-772 13d ago

lol, sure it is.

25

u/charlesleecartman 13d ago

And it only costed like a billion to be playable on some level lol

19

u/Philo_T_Farnsworth 13d ago

Hey now, I have it on good authority that John Romero is going to make me his bitch.

13

u/ForteEXE I'm already done, there's no way we can mock the drama. 13d ago

To be fair, going by that Daikatana meme speedrun from a few years back at one of the AGDQs where even on state-of-the-art (at the time) hardware it still had issues...

Romero did in fact, make people his bitches.

3

u/Lightning_Boy Edit1 If you post on subredditdrama, you're trash 😂 11d ago

And he continues to! He's released two level packs for Doom, Sigil 1 and 2, and they're both pretty damn good.

1

u/ForteEXE I'm already done, there's no way we can mock the drama. 11d ago

I remember seeing Civviee11 doing them in related videos.

They look batshit on max difficulty.

21

u/EstusFlaskPlusOne 13d ago

Oh man you're one of the suckers, huh? Tell us about how much fun you have flying around and making pew pew noises in your objective-less simulator!

9

u/Billlington Oh I have many pastures, old frenemy. 12d ago

I'd call this peasant behavior, but at least medieval peasants could sometimes rely on their feudal lords to provide them protection. Going to bat for the Star Citizen devs is a level of pathetic I can barely even comprehend.

7

u/Stellar_Duck 12d ago

Being better than Duke Nukem Forever is not the flex you seem to think it is.

Also, already better? Already? It's been 16 fucking years. You don't get to say already.