A billion dollars in sunk cost fallacy. Jeeze. Elden Ring, Tears of the kingdom, most “AAA” games have what, $200 million in development costs?
I can’t imagine trying to be supportive of 15 years of financial mismanagement and frankly what looks like just a long grift.
Overall, fan morale is quite low following this stream. Star Citizen has been in development has been in development for roughly 15 years and has raked in over $1 billion from fans to help fund the development
Then there’d be so many more things to mindlessly grind for!
(I’m kidding, but I do think what’s holding Elite back is FDev’s insistence to not do game design and to just keep adding mindless busybody work - ended up leaving the game as a result)
They’d crap out a game for 5 mil, spend five years and another 5 mil making the game go from shit to amazing, and then have 990m left over like "uhh, y’all want pizza or sumtn?
Can people band and sue them in a class action? Because technically they aren’t shareholders, so they wouldn’t get the same rights and protections, right?
Consumer rights nerds please chime in and correct me
My understanding is that this game is crowd funded. And it heavily depends on what’s promised in the contract. If the contract promises a playable game at some point, the consumers can just demand a development timeline and a game release schedule and that’s it.
But if it’s just a “donation to the development” with unbinding promises of ships as a reward, things look very different. Either way, this is definitely not a state of the art video game purchase, so it will be a bit of a gamble.
Concerning the class-action, there’s a bit of a skirmish about jurisdiction but generally we have quite a big group of similarly situated plaintiffs, so from what I can tell this looks like something that would be class-certified. Just needs a bit of luck, a good attorney and some good case management to get it going.
Initially the pledge ships were only supposed to be for funding development and would go away on release. I don’t know if that’s still the case, but if it is, the game will never release. Otherwise I expect a release sometime in the 2040s. Optimistically.
Sunk cost is a hell of a drug. I’d bet if we could see their actual revenue you’d see the shift from individual purchases to more and more whales sinking money into it, that’s what they’re banking on. It might have started as an ambitious project, but it’s definitely a full blown grift with some “keep up appearances” icing on top.
And this recent stream showed everyone that the icing tastes like shit.
A billion dollars in sunk cost fallacy. Jeeze. Elden Ring, Tears of the kingdom, most “AAA” games have what, $200 million in development costs?
I can’t imagine trying to be supportive of 15 years of financial mismanagement and frankly what looks like just a long grift.
It’s basically criminal negligence at this point. Imagine what a competent game studio could do with a billion dollar budget.
Imagine if Frontier Developments had gotten $1B…
Then there’d be so many more things to mindlessly grind for!
(I’m kidding, but I do think what’s holding Elite back is FDev’s insistence to not do game design and to just keep adding mindless busybody work - ended up leaving the game as a result)
But then people would realize it’s as deep as a puddle quicker.
Elite often feels like its just missing something. It’s a good game but feels like there is potential to be so much better.
Given Odyssey more time to bake?
How about Egosoft? Although I am not sure if they would even know how to spend it all.
They’d crap out a game for 5 mil, spend five years and another 5 mil making the game go from shit to amazing, and then have 990m left over like "uhh, y’all want pizza or sumtn?
Y’all? Not a chance. They are German. Ve should go eat ze schnitzel und drink bier, yah?
Can people band and sue them in a class action? Because technically they aren’t shareholders, so they wouldn’t get the same rights and protections, right?
Consumer rights nerds please chime in and correct me
My understanding is that this game is crowd funded. And it heavily depends on what’s promised in the contract. If the contract promises a playable game at some point, the consumers can just demand a development timeline and a game release schedule and that’s it.
But if it’s just a “donation to the development” with unbinding promises of ships as a reward, things look very different. Either way, this is definitely not a state of the art video game purchase, so it will be a bit of a gamble.
Concerning the class-action, there’s a bit of a skirmish about jurisdiction but generally we have quite a big group of similarly situated plaintiffs, so from what I can tell this looks like something that would be class-certified. Just needs a bit of luck, a good attorney and some good case management to get it going.
the game is technically playable from what I understand, but has been in alpha for years and probably will be for years to come
Yeah I’ve got no idea. Seems like you can sue people for anything in the US but it probably isn’t clear cut.
With a billion dollars, they could have made some actual space rockets.
And maybe I’m way behind but… Wasn’t this supposed to be some pay-for-a-ship-with-hundreds-of-dollars-US web3 kinda thing anyway?
Yeah I’ll chuckle from waaaaaay over here, thanks. Lol
Initially the pledge ships were only supposed to be for funding development and would go away on release. I don’t know if that’s still the case, but if it is, the game will never release. Otherwise I expect a release sometime in the 2040s. Optimistically.
There has to be a point where the people who still buy into this don’t give a fuck anymore?
Sunk cost is a hell of a drug. I’d bet if we could see their actual revenue you’d see the shift from individual purchases to more and more whales sinking money into it, that’s what they’re banking on. It might have started as an ambitious project, but it’s definitely a full blown grift with some “keep up appearances” icing on top.
And this recent stream showed everyone that the icing tastes like shit.
Yeah its been the same people with too much disposable income or margin for a while. The whole scheme is selling “clout” for a few hundred a pop.