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.
WTF!
At the time of this article’s publication, Star Citizen had raised $658,161,596 from more than five million accounts.
The game has not even officially been released!!
Yeah, Star Citizen is world renowned master of squeezing immense amounts of cash from its userbase.
First, they have many ship tiers, and as the most basic ones cost $40+, they feel comfortable charging more for bigger ships, with some ships costing well over $1000.
Second, they commonly introduce wipes in updates, and those wipes only affect everything players accrued in-game, not purchases made with real cash. So you either accept having your entire progress wiped again and again, or you give up and buy your fleet for cash (and any meaningfully gamechanging ship costs hundreds of dollars). The developers claim that this is due to bugs and exploits being found, and that eventually everything will stay forever, no matter how you bought it, but they are obviously aware of the situation and will probably make sure this never happens.
Third, the game does a good job at immersing you into the universe, so some players really go for a second life there. For them, it is the successful counterpart of the Metaverse.
And just like that we end up with people spending insane amounts of money on in-game ships. Half of the players I know spent over $300 on the game, and I personally know people who spent upwards to $8000.
Scary part is that many of them aren’t rich, and one of the people I know literally saved for years and hid $8000 from their family to buy a ship pack. He is living in Ukraine, a country with GDP per capita of $4350.
unfortunately by todays late stage mercantile economy this is just a bad deal
Only for Players Who Have Already Spent $10,000
This is so predatory in itself.
It’s like the scammers who include spelling mistakes, to make sure they only attract the real dipshits.
Probably a way to avoid costly charge backs for when regular users purchase that by mistake
Just being eligible for it is a sign that you need to make some life changes.
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
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 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
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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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.
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.
Honestly, at this point, if you buy this you and SC deserve each other, have fun.
To quote Thor. Star citizen is a storefront pretending to be a game.
Star Citizen is what iRacing players look at to feel better about themselves
Actually that’s too mean to iRacing players since iRacing works
Not real life money right?
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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… :)
OK, I understand EVE and I understand Elite Dangerous, but this is not normal.
Is this real world dollars or some kind of in-game currency?
This isn’t a game anymore, it’s just blatant money grabbing.
This isn’t real money is it? Please tell me it isn’t. I don’t play this game but that would just be fucking sad.
Some poor fuckers are getting fleeced.
