Star Citizen Introducing a $48,000 Ship Bundle, but Only for Players Who Have Already Spent $10,000::Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games is releasing a ship bundle for its controversial space simulator that costs an eye-watering $48,000.
Because there are lots of people in this thread who paint whales as “rich schmucks” who can afford to spend $48k without thinking twic. This is a myth that lots of the gaming industry itself loves to perpetuate, because it absolves them of taking responsibility for ruining lives.
Research has shown repeatedly that whales are much more likely to be people with mental health problems and/or gambling addicts. That Star Citizen isn’t a freemium game with loot boxes makes it marginally better than - let’s say - Genshin Impact, but offers like the bundle in the article is still predatory.
And yet? Nothing will be done. This is a target market that is more than acceptable to disdain, abuse, and otherwise fuck over.
It might be “cool” to be a nerd now, my fellows, but only on the surface. Don’t get suckered into believing they accept you. They’re just commodifying our interests for their gains. They are not us and they don’t want to be. They just want us to like them enough to pay them more than we otherwise would.
Fuck the poseurs.
What is one supposed to do about this? Genuine question.
Stop acting like they’re doing us all a favor by paying attention to our collective interests? It’s all marketing.
Only for Players Who Have Already Spent $10,000
This is so predatory in itself.
Meh my sympathy only runs so far.
You don’t have sympathy for people with addictive personality disorders?
On the one hand, my gut says “if they have 50k to blow and do so on a game, fuck em”
On the other hand, my experience with addictive personalities knows they almost certainly don’t have that money to blow, but they will do so anyway, fucking their life (and possibly their families lives) over even more in the process, and no amount of lecturing them will change, because they need therapy.
My gut isn’t as sympathetic as my brain is.
There was a guy that posted on reddit about how he spent thousands of dollars on loot boxes. The way he totally wrecked his finances and his relationship with his wife was harrowing. Everytime he would get the latest and greatest item, character, whatever, they would come out with something new and he would start all over again.
I have to wonder if this is a video game problem, or if it’s a sort of financial self-destructiveness expressed through a video game rather than through some other means.
Like, for every person who spends money they don’t have on video games, how many people spend money they don’t have on fancy cars, or clothing, or expensive pets, other luxury possessions? How many people spend the rent money on sneakers, or the kids’ college fund on fancy vacations, or the utility bill money on anime figurines, or their whole paycheck on partying, or their retirement fund on too much house?
Financial self-destructiveness seems to be a problem that some people have. It gets reported heavily when it’s expressed through video games, in part because much of the reporter’s audience thinks all video games are fundamentally pointless and evil to begin with.
The difference with in-game spending is that they use all the same shady techniques as casinos to exploit those people.
You don’t see sneakers shops offering time limited loot boxes for a chance to obtain limited edition sneakers, they also don’t show you a big grid of their catalog with holes for the sneakers you don’t own. “Just buy those 2 pairs to complete the collection of running sneakers!”
You clearly have no idea what “sneakerheads” are, as these tactics and more DO exist and have for decades. Hell, little kids were getting murdered for their Air Jordans not 30 years ago, walking home from fucking school, son.
Empathetic, to be fair. Sympathetic is to mirror their emotional state, etc. Empathy is to understand it without inhabiting that space/experiencing it yourself.
Nah, if you’re going to hide your bad choices behind clinical language, then you need therapy. If you’re not getting therapy and you have 50k to spend, then that’s a you problem.
Some people don’t realize they have a problem. I feel bad for those people.
The problem isn’t that they “have 50k to spend”, it’s literally the exact opposite AND that they don’t know it’s a problem that they spend out on stupid shit like this grift.
If they spend 50k on a videogame, then they have 50k to spend by definition, whether or not it’s actually their money. If it’s not actually their money, then I have even less sympathy.
I’ll give another example. I have a lot of sympathy for opiate addicts. I have zero sympathy for opiate addicts who steal from their friends and family.
Just being eligible for it is a sign that you need to make some life changes.
Like: shower, touch grass, rekindle an interest in humanity as a whole.
If you can blow 50000+ on a video game they are doing something I’m not.
A good portion of them are just making bad decisions and ruining their finances.
It is the Ferrari model. You want a new Ferrari? Well you have to prove you have already owned several other Ferraris. Make people feel special while they hand over stupid money to you
Probably a way to avoid costly charge backs for when regular users purchase that by mistake
It’s like the scammers who include spelling mistakes, to make sure they only attract the real dipshits.
Not real life money right?
I’d be willing to pay with real life money if they were real life spaceships.
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I can only assume you’ve no idea what Star Citizen is. 🤦🏽♂️
Bless his heart.
Is it that one bad game where you explore random planets?
That’s Star Field from Bethesda and you can say a lot about it but at least it exists.
Too many things with “star” in their names. Star wars, star trek, star field, star citizen
Wrong
Galaxy dollars /s
Remembering when it was not yet released, thinking “This looks kinda cool, but the business model looks terrible”. Seems it got much worse.
Seems it got much worse.
Seems like it’s going great for the developer.
I know it’s not the same, but you could just play elite dangerous which is an actual game, and you can get new ships through a crazy new innovative mechanic called “playing the game”
I like elite dangerous but I don’t like that you have to spend hundreds of hours grinding just to accomplish even the most minor gameplay advancement. No Man’s Sky and Starfield are more playable space games that that grindfest. I wish someone would just remake elite dangerous for normal people.
I want someone to make Elite dangerous but with single player progression. You get to pew pew in a bunch of increasingly fancy ships and at the end you fight an alien ship or something. 200 hours to complete and then go play something else with a nice experience.
Evochron, Dark Star One,X series (you may bounce off a few times but they’re extremely unique and deep games), older Elite titles, Freelancer!
To a lesser extent and a bit more survival crafty: Space Engineers or Empyrion with mods. Both have some additional community made content that adds stations/factions to progress against or for and are pretty good if a little janky.
It really depends on what you want from your game. I happily spent hours in my lil hauler playing space trucker, and the only real thing that’s changed since then is I have access to bigger space trucks. I’ve been on a big exploration run for the last 80 or so hours of playtime and I’m enjoying being able to just relax and exist in my lil virtual spaceship. I don’t need to feel like a number goes up every session, but I’m a weirdo.
I used to hunt griefers in my Black Friday skinned Mur-de-Lance w/ a Huge Particle Cannon and tuned yaw slip to kite and atomize those assclowns for profit. Hit my first Elite that way. The second was Void Diamonds, grinding for those “gonna be SO cool” flagships. I nearly made it the full trip with the whole gang doing the massive trek to the edge and back, but RL got in the way, so I’m not Triple Elite, and you know what? If it weren’t for the Silverbacks group (OGs, chill and welcoming, no pressure, from for RP and what TF ever, but always got your back), I don’t even know if I’d have played as long as I did.
You keep truckin’, space cowboy. 🤙🏼
Too bad NMS is boring and Starfield is even more boring
As someone who logged an unhealthy amount of hours in E:D, tricked out the computer chair with vesa mounts for a Warthog HOTAS and coded hundreds of macros and voice attack triggers (and a whole set up for an Index) only to give it all up when Frontier dropped the ball on atmospheric landings (their initial offering was complete shite as they thought that the “community” wanted political intrigue and inter-factional complexity — which we did, honestly, but they delivered shit there, too). Hell, I even came back for a minute, hoping the flagship update was gonna be The One… But, they locked that into a fucking grind with specialized fuel, etc., too.
Shame on E:D, but fuck Star Citizen.
I can’t overstate how disappointed I am in Frontier for completely abandoning Elite in the name of making more zoo simulators. Such a fucking cop out and I hate it.
Mile wide and an inch deep. That’s Elite. Beautiful game, huge grind.
How is elite dangerous these days? I was playing no man’s sky which has been continually updated since release yesterday and my bf was badgering me that I could play that instead. I was trying to explain to him that I was having fun playing this and want to play this and he was insisting that elite dangerous has been updated and is so much better. Honestly it was so annoying but I wanted another opinion on how it is as a game lol
Honestly I haven’t played in quite a while and was just a space trucker so my opinion really probably doesn’t count for much but if you already own it I would definitely boot it up and give it a few hours and see if it works for you
It’s at the dying phase. Developers turned around to develop other games instead. I have counted 1500 hours on steam and while the fun lasted, broken odyssey was a final nail in the coffin.
It’s not even comparable to Star Citizen, and I feel bad for anyone who gets suckered into believing otherwise.
I know right, they’ll never those 2 hours back
They could have spent it mindlessly doomscrolling.
But they DIDN’T KNOW! They just didn’t know…
My man. We live in the age of OnlyFans, TicTok, and Twitch. People out here getting money for feet pics, doing stupid pranks, and pretending to be NPCs. You should know that people will spend money on everything. Just go with the flow and figure out how to make some money.
Gramps, did you just spell that “TicTok”? 🤦🏽♂️
To be fair, who gives a fuck how that shitty platform is spelled
Ikr? He clearly never ate tictacs
Star Citizen is what iRacing players look at to feel better about themselves
Actually that’s too mean to iRacing players since iRacing works
Honestly, at this point, if you buy this you and SC deserve each other, have fun.
According to a friend of mine that plays, the whales were asking for this feature so they didn’t have to go through the purchase process for each ship
Fucking billionaries… :)
I hope an underground software liberation group (cracking) can make this software accessible for everyone.
It’s an MMO, so that would require hosting private servers and figuring out how to redirect the game to those servers. Not likely to happen.
Redirecting wouldn’t be challenging. Redirecting in a turnkey manner and requiring minimal effort on the part of the user?
Ah yeah. Shits tricky.
Yea reverse engineering they’re servers would be a lot tbf, but who knows, crazier things have happened
It’s not like every other game out there has private servers or anything…
It is. You don’t need to buy ships with real money, it’s for backing the project only.
It’s $45 to buy the game outright.
The gamer careful with his money has already bought Elite Dangerous on sale for less though. Even $45 for what is currently being offered is embarrassing.
It’s a start, but we can do better. Well, someone out there can! I’m patient lol
If you are rich enough to afford to pay for this, you’re too rich.
A few of the most broke-assed people I know in my gaming circles are all in on this game. The rest of us tried to gently prod them away but it’s like a cult.
It is 100% a multi-level-marketing feeling I get from the active players that keep trying to reach out and get us in on it. I’m talkin late 90s Quixtar MLM pyramid scam feels.
The most scary part is, it’s not only the rich. I knew people who have put their life savings into the game.
Landowner class spends that kind of money on larks its nuts but like those people should be seperated from their money imo
Either you’re too rich or bad at investing.
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Cap’n i see the whale thar she blows
unfortunately by todays late stage mercantile economy this is just a bad deal
I wonder if games that require such farfetched amounts of money should be included in the Luxury tax?
A lot of those “whales” have cognitive difficulties and/or gambling addictions issues. Since many if these game developers/publishers have no qualm blindly milking and profiteering. It should be no surprise if some sort of tax is levied to help societies (à-la-tobacco or sugar tax) attenuate the ravages of gambling addictions.
Moreover, Star Citizen has been released over 10 years ago while been continually updated.
At what point is it just senseless greed that has taken over the game?
It’s one thing to drop a few bucks here and there into a game you enjoy but when you start spending 10k on a fuckin game you have a serious issue. Even if you’re ultra wealthy, do you really have nothing else you could waste that money on? I think it’s time for a serious crackdown on predatory gaming.
Released is a strong word, lol. Agreed though, it is completely unprecedented
Luxury tax doesn’t apply to dealers/retailers. It would just get piled on the final user. Which would be fine for the “richer than god” types, but not so great for some poor bastard with an addiction who can’t help themselves.
You’re right, in that the customer would pay the tax. But also its not like they could be charging an extra 20% and be getting more money. They will have put significant effort and research into finding out what the optimal level of pricing is to get the most grift, which means the fall in “sales” from putting things at a higher price would outweigh the increased profit. I’d rather them scam less and let the government get at least a slice of it. Though really, more regulation to stop this kind of exploitation would be better.
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Oh look you’re now stalking me though comments and decided I’m a libertarian. In some places more regulation is good, in others poor regulation is bad. For example placing regulations on when unions are allowed to strike is an example of bad regulation, is that ok with you? Or would you rather I just played into your fantasy of techno-bro and just say “government bad, ubermen smash!” more?
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That level of buy-in is not required. You can get a game package with a single starter pack for US$40. The one in the article includes every variant of every vehicle currently in the game or in development or announced as planned. IMO it’s for people who just want to support development because it literally removes a bunch of reasons to even play.
It’s hard to definitively say if greed has taken over or if they’re just trying to fund development as legitimately as possible without a publisher. They have done some groundbreaking things (64 bit coordinate system, object container streaming, etc) and are working in more (replication layer, server meshing, etc). That is why it has been so long and expensive, why the game is still alpha.
It’s been a demo for over 10 years, not a game.
Games have story, star citizen is a glorified tech demo as far as I am concerned.
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I boufh a ship beginning of 2014 just to test it out, worst $200 (supposed to get a usb ship, bunch of squadron 42 stuff)
And most games have a point, the only point to star citizen is for YOU to spend money
This kind of news really allows me to know which games not to play.
At this point you don’t need to do a lot of research to know to stay away from Star Citizen
