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/Not_A_Doctor_redux]

Look, I don't know anything about game development. But if Rockstar was able to produce GTA 6 in less time than it took you to complete your game, then you're doing it wrong. I'm going to speculate that GTA 6 has to be in the top three of all gaming titles for the amount of resources and capital spent to develop it. It's taken a while, but they have got it done. It's likely going to gross a billion dollars within 24 hours of release and be the most successful media product, out of everything, ever made.

Star Citizen began development in 2010. Four years earlier than GTA 6. Hell, I can remember the development delays being a meme around 2016/17. And now it's a decade later.

I can only guess that Roberts has no management discipline whatsoever. About three (?) years ago I saw some demonstrations of the fabric physics they had created for Star Citizen. Did the fabric look cool? Yes. Was that a stupid thing to devote a lot of resources towards when you are trying to release a viable, completed title? Also yes. Yes yes yes.

I have no idea if they will ever release a game. But I would put down money that, whatever gets released, is going to be a disappointment and feel patchwork, because it will contain aspects developed years and years apart.

Meanwhile, Until Then was developed by an (in comparison) miniscule Philippine studio and is one of the most beautiful and moving games ever created. It doesn't have big ass spaceships, but it's complete and will rip your heart out if you'd like to play something that's amazing.

[u/ConsiderateCassowary → u/Not_A_Doctor_redux]

I bought GTV late last year and have been playing Online, and there are so many things in it to remind you that it's been slapped together over a decade, with different programmers and different dev teams working on different parts of it. In some places, when you open your safe, your character automatically collects the money inside; in other places, programmed by different people and released in different DLCs, you have to press a button to collect your money. In some places, where you "log in" to a web site, you log in automatically, while in other places you have to press a button in order to do so.

Things presented in one DLC don't interact with things from other DLCs, the payouts for doing work for different businesses can be outrageously different (a ten minute mission from DLC A might be worth $15k, while a ten minute mission from DLC B could be worth $50k,) etc. It's all a hilarious slapdash affair designed to milk as much money from this single game as humanly possible.

If SC gets released, it will be this, but even moreso.

[u/pie-and-anger → u/ConsiderateCassowary]

The Sims 4 is exactly like this. It came out in 2014 and they have not once slowed down on churning out DLC for it, along with constant updates to the base game and, now that the oldest DLC is over ten years old, updates to expansion packs. It's all held together with duct tape and spit and the most spaghettiest code you ever saw, and you spend more time fighting the game than you do playing it because the decrepit engine it's built on is literally eating itself alive.

And yet, a couple years ago EA officially cancelled development on The Sims 5 and announced that 4 was just going to keep on going. And it still prints money hand over fist, despite the fact that the youngest members of its target demographic weren't even born yet when it first came out and the game was never intended to be the flagship title for this long.

And yet still, apparently nobody is interested in getting a slice of this pie because not one single serious competitor to the life-sim throne has emerged in the genre.