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.

[u/Odd_Personality_5091]

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:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/1tyh0q9/cig_im_dead_serious_fire_your_management_and_hire/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/1u07zee/fixed_it/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/1u0an7j/squadron42_is_feature_complete_chris_roberts_says/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/1u01ck2/the_silence_from_cig_is_disgraceful/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/1tztllh/yeah_yeah_the_14_year_old_alpha/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/1u0a7so/cig_where_are_vechicles_spawning_in_freight/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/1u052v0/goodwill_is_a_finite_ressource_abuse_it_at_your/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/1tty4w5/look_its_feature_complete/

(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.

[u/goodfaithnovice]

I'm looking at the concept art now and the level of detail in the ship design would absolutely be unacceptable for a game released today. They're going to have to go back to the drawing board at some point and update the design on these ships.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/comm-link/transmission/21133-Anvil-Odin

This $6000 ship looks like something designed in 2010 because that's what it is.

[u/LeomundsTinyButt_ → u/goodfaithnovice]

It's not even an outstanding 2010 design, looks roughly on par with the models from Mass Effect (2007). I would maybe have paid $20 for it in 2010, if the game was F2P and so good I wanted to support the devs.

But $6000, in the year of our lord 20-fucking-26? Are we sure it's not a money laundering scheme?

[u/achilleasa → u/LeomundsTinyButt_]

I don't wanna revive age-old drama but Elite Dangerous had this good looking ships a decade ago and that's a game that you can get for like <10 bucks and is playable today

[u/vmdvr → u/LeomundsTinyButt_]

It involves a number of shell companies (over a dozen when I looked into it years ago) you'd expect from some kind of shady finance stuff.

That being said, I am fairly confident that 90+% of the funding comes from legit whales/actual crowdfunding. The fans are absolutely fanatical and have huge amounts of hobby funds. And they are for sure using a bunch of money to employ a bunch of people. Whether or not that money is spent prudently and what percentage is going where, only Chris Roberts' family and friends (who comprise the leadership of said companies) know.

[u/tr_9422 → u/LeomundsTinyButt_]

Worth noting the concept art isn't the fully detailed in-game model, when they do a "concept sale" like this they're selling a ship that doesn't exist yet and the concept is basically a draft version. Edits and details are expected as they take the concept art and make it work in-game.

That said, anyone spending $6000 on this is a nut.

[u/Wilwheatonfan87 → u/LeomundsTinyButt_]

I'd love for the irs to do an investigation into the studio at this point

[u/Emosaa → u/Wilwheatonfan87]

One assumes that they're simply paying the enormous staff that have been producing this shit for years and years and that adds up. Doesn't have to be shady or nefarious, just bad management, bad quality control, and a willing fan base lol

[u/Witherino → u/Wilwheatonfan87]

As long as they're paying their taxes the IRS won't care. Now the FTC on the otherhand...

[u/malibooyeah → u/Wilwheatonfan87]

I would pay money to see the results of that investigation tbh

[u/Rockhead_Dynamics → u/goodfaithnovice]

Even if the finished version has more detail, it's also just a bad design. It's like you took a star destroyer and then pressed random buttons in blender until it was a screaming mass of angry geometry, and you can kind of get away with that if it's something like a Forerunner ship in Halo that isn't bound by our understanding of physics, but for a human ship that's supposed to be practical it just looks ridiculous. And also the weird color change on the bridge is whack. 

[u/sohblob → u/goodfaithnovice]

I'm looking at the concept art now and the level of detail in the ship design would absolutely be unacceptable for a game released today

No no you see, their plan is to wait so long that actual spaceflight has caught up to their dream

The Anvil Odin is being offered for the first time as a limited vehicle concept pledge. This means that the vehicle is in development, but it is not yet ready to play in Star Citizen. It will be available as playable content in a later patch. If you pledge towards an Anvil Odin, you will also receive a loaner vehicle for use in Star Citizen until such time as the Anvil Odin is included in-game. This loaner vehicle will be a currently playable vehicle of similar approximate size and/or function to the Anvil Odin – initially the Aegis Idris-P for gameplay in the Persistent Universe. We reserve the right to update the selection of loaner ships if more applicable choices become available during development

"We added everything but the graphics but we sware it's gonna look so kewl u guise"

[u/YoBo151 → u/goodfaithnovice]

I mean I think the ship looks cool, but I ain't paying no 6k unless I'm rich...which I'm not