Reddit’s ‘Ryden-55‘, a former CIG employee, has shared his thoughts about the progress of Star Citizen and Squadron 42. According to this ex-CIG employee, although the team has created amazing systems that work well for the future of gaming, it has not yet stitched it together into its own game.
According to Ryden-55, both Star Citizen and Squadron 42 suffer from mismanagement. The former CIG employee believes that the company has incorrectly calculated their trajectory and player spending through 2023 and beyond.
The future of Star Citizen is also in a really weird state. As Ryden-55 claimed, those who buy the items that CIG is currently offering are basically contributing to the game’s delay.
As an example, Ryden-55 used the Cutlass Steel.
“I was there during the Cutlass Steel pricing. I suggested a ceiling figure of the ship based on its capabilities in comparison to the other Cutlass ships and its competitors (The Cutlass Black is notoriously undervalued, but still….). Despite my recommendation, the price got HIKED because “Surely people will buy it, it’s a Cutlass”.
This is a perfect example of what happens when people vote with their wallets – it makes them realize that it was a bad decision and that they should learn going forward. I think this is the key to going forward for the entire project. I think that the team can deliver key gameplay improvements going forward that encourage players to play and return, rather than trying to drip-feed concepts to people who may never fly them (I’m looking at you BMM). People “play the CCU game” to get a $500 ship for $250. Thats insane. I personally won’t be spending a nickel or dime until the game is delivered, because I became a concierge backer over a period of 5 years and I still don’t want to play the game as it is today, which hurts me because I contributed directly to it and want it to succeed. I’m just not going to perpetually test a product that, at this point, should be released.”
The former employee believes that CIG should focus on delivering both Squadron 42 and (at least) high-quality playable patches for Star Citizen. And, we wholeheartedly agree with this. Squadron 42 was first showcased in 2017, six whole years ago. Also, in 2020, this single-player mode of SC was nowhere close to completion.
“To date we have had nothing but buggy patches for SC on the live branch. Despite the game is in early access, the live branch needs to be the dedicated branch for stable (FULLY stable) builds where you can play with your friends and enjoy the gameplay loops currently present without thinking of losing your gear/ship/items.
Likewise with SQ42 they need to deliver on that project – its been in development for many years now and people are beginning to think it isn’t coming out. I’ve seen the progress, I know it wil be great, but that isn’t enough now and it needs to be showcased and a solid deadline put in place to ensure everyone has confidence in its deliver (NOT at the expense of dev crunch).”
For what it’s worth, Reddit’s moderators were able to confirm Ryder-55’s identity. So no, this isn’t a random Redditor. This is indeed a former CIG employee.
To be honest, I’m not shocked by these latest revelations. We’ve known that Star Citizen has been mismanaged and that it’s in development hell. We also know that it features cutting-edge technology. And yes, we all know that CIG is milking this golden cow with its skins and ships. But hey, as Ryden-55 said, why shouldn’t they? People are buying them and they are making a lot of easy money. From a business perspective, this is a smart move and, unfortunately in this case, it works!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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“As Ryden-55 claimed, those who buy the items that CIG is currently offering are basically contributing to the game’s delay.”
That’s what we’ve (excluding the diehard fans) been saying for years and years. According to their RSI website Star Citizen has raised over 600 million dollars so far and the fans just keep throwing money at the project buying anything and everything that is put up for sale including damned socks of all things!
“According to Ryden-55, both Star Citizen and Squadron 42 suffer from mismanagement. ”
We’ve been saying that for years and years as well. Chris Roberts is a very talented and experienced game developer but he is incompetent at running this project without having some authority above him making him finish it. He’s proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt in the past.
Basically the game suffers from Feature Creep which Roberts has gone on the record denying that but he’s just in denial.
No way crobber isn’t aware of this even as far back as 2016 or such, this scam is a scam, and has been for years.
From what he told, it was the monetization scheme with the in game store that drove the release back. Could be a form of gaslighting, but i think the story is true or at least make sense.
Another factor at play is their fear of Squadron 42 stealing the show. Once you play the single player, who wants to pay $999 for a cruiser in Star Citizen.
Good point and Squadron 42 is the only part of this project that I have ever cared about. It seems as unlikely that I will ever be playing that game as it is unlikely that I will ever play Half Life 3.
The whales do spend a lot of money on SC ships. Not much in gaming ever surprises me anymore but the DLC package which CGI released with every ship for $37,000 did. Surely even a multi-millionaire would see spending that kind of money on a probably never to be finished game as foolish.
Would be nice to know the profile of these whales. I tought it was just facebook moms playing those stupid phone games, but guess not.
One dude came out stating he had a very standard 9-5 job, wasn’t making insane amount of money and still threw $32k at models and in-game ships. It was an interview over the regret.
One time i threw money at one of these service games, nothing crazy just what would amount to a regular game, and i realized that it was a stupid mistake because without grinding these games amount to nothing, they are all grinding simulators and are designed around it, the only challange provided (at least when you know the “gameplay loop”) is to get good rng for rewards.
But 32k? lmao, i wonder if it was just the promise or what is the appeal behind these games, is it just grinding as well?
I view star citizen similar to Eve Online, NMS, elite dangerous, while it takes work to get anywhere, it can be over a longer period of time. I can only assume they didn’t want to do any form of grind, but you can most definitely unlock all the ships through playing the game.
or you can just play starfield.
Man you are shilling Starfield hard, have you noticed that? Why are you doing it?
because i didnt know it sucked so hard back then.
Hard to believe to be honest. American Krogan spent a year removing woke stuff from Fallout 4, that’s a lot of work, and that game was released in 2015! why the hell would they change course now, including the fact they got absorbed by the Microsoft woke blob!! I’m calling bs on your excuse.
Freelancer is better
X is better
I’d rather play those than Fallout 4 in Space
He is literally reccomending a game that is not even out yet.
Imagine not imagining that you are playing the greatest game that will ever be made. /s
yeah but they dont have the ground stuff, spacebourne 2 on the other hand does.
So…my initial prediction was somewhat correct…2189 playable beta..Full release 2312 nice…the game will be a BLAST!!!
scam is still scam and he was part of it
This game has been in development for longer than Duke Nukem Forever.
SC has been in production for 12 years and counting. Still it’s laughably in Alpha after all those years.
Sounds like a game that will never pass alpha state. The list of games with insanely long developments that still turned out a fun working product at release is slim. Half Life 2 and Metroid Prime 1 are but a few examples.
Now we need another Dev to show the other side of the story: His name is Joe Blobers and he lurks every Star Citizen thread.
Jokes aside, this is why one of the worst things in gaming is gamers themselves. This is a feedback loop of bad incentives, too much money to spend on virtual gadgets and the cancer that is game as a service. I can understand devs making cosmetics when people are willing to pay, but not the fools buying it.
Someone said they already got 600 million dollars worth, do other GaaS games get as much money or more? I bet it does. The lesson is simple: Stop voting with your wallet, but no one will be wise to the advice.
I don’t know if Blober is still around to defend SC. He may not be working on the project anymore and doesn’t give a damn now.
Let’s wait and see, you may think so because it has been a while since this site posted a SC story.
what progress?
Jokes aside we are at a point in which the very same people who donated to its kickstarter dont care anymore and nor does anyone else. We are at a point that when the game was announced it was made clear that consoles could not run the game, then a new generation of consoles came, it ended and a new one came with bethesda ripping of starcitizen and making a fully playable singleplayer version of it developing it for 7 years from start to finish. Its laughable.
I’d argue Elite Dangerous is more in that territory (you can play single player or multi) but hell, I’ve not played Starfield yet (will be tomorrow though)… or Star Citizen for that matter.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d98d87eac83ad954de6e467292c58b8310db4596fd778b78a9dccc0dda755934.jpg
Chris Roberts sends a big thank you to all the SC backers for his new yacht.
Rich people don’t end up in jail unless they go against the players behind the government
Hamill did his mocap work for Squadron 42 back in 2015, this is a perfect example of a greedy exorbitant service driven game with hubristic a**holes leading it.
Still think an end product will never see the light of day
its more ScamCitizen..
The ex-dev told that they were burning developement money not on the game but on Studio Wall art..
They were more concerned about the looks of their studio and furniture than the game.
As long people buy skins for ships that arent developed yet, ScamCitizen devs will laugh at those people.
The only thing what they “show” are emails with updates in very difficult software jargon and gibberish so they can evade suspicion.
I backed with this scam in 2014 with €35 believing that Squadron 42 would come out in 2016…
In the meantime im married got 2 kids and have developed much more than their whole studio combined in all these years.
The should be ashamed of themselfs.
Scam Citizen!!
People continually pouring money in to this game are just ensuring the
game taking it’s sweet time to be completed. Why rush to finish it when
donations keep pouring in. The company would get moving if money wasn’t
coming in. Who the hell even funds another company to make money… it’s
absurd as hell
Well, I thought I would find Joe Blobers here telling people how he loves to gargle on SC “devs” balls every morning, which helps them to release yet another (alpha) roadmap.
I’m disappointed!
Give it a week, he is probably in another Star Citizen related article on another website.
Most probably, yeah. LOL
Nothing new here, its been long known its been mismanaged. I just hope that when it finally does launch it won’t seem too far behind that generation of games.
Biggest scam in gaming history.