Star Citizen is a game that looks to be a holy union between Call of Duty, Mass Effect, and even bits of No Man’s Sky. One with incredible expectations as it smashed its Kickstarter goal with over 2 million donated to the cause of development. That Kickstarter campaign was several years ago with the game just now getting into its earliest of alpha stages, with no definite release date in sight. For those who donated any more than the price of the game, this wait can be discouraging.
Sure, crowd funding has its inherent risks, but for one user that goes by Streetroller, that didn’t change the fact that they felt that Cloud Imperium didn’t deliver as intended.
As shown in an email exchange, the user debated that the game has changed enough that it wasn’t what he originally “purchased”. Even though the representatives of Cloud Imperium reiterated the nature of crowd funding, the backer went on to involve an investigator to build a case, going as far as to call the campaign a scam. Many aspects of the game were added after the campaign finished, adding goals that morphed the game into something the seemed to no longer want. Between this and the fact that his donations equaled to about three-thousand dollars, led to the eventual compromise.
After several days, Streetroller eventually got his refund and was officially removed from the Star Citizen community. I can only assume that Cloud Imperium won’t be sending Streetroller any more demos or testing days, but only time will tell. The backer also intends to create some video content to share his story with backing the game, but that video has yet to arrive.
While its true that Star Citizen has been in development for quite some time, even after getting that boost to production through Kickstarter, it is important to note that Cloud Imperium’s intention is to deliver a AAA game. Most AAA games take several years even with the best developers in the world. It would be great to see Star Citizen at least in Beta by now, but any sort of discernible progress is worth praise. It would be a shame to see a wave of backers wanting refunds, but when stories like this reach those backers the chance of them asking is bound to increase.
Therefore, its important to keep vigilant and patient backers and potential players. Cloud Imperium have been streaming their progress, as well as uploading progress to various social media outlets. Star Citizen is a massive project that even the largest companies would have to take time with, so lets give the new kids on the block some time to really polish this one before abandoning ship.
Also, backing a game on Kickstarter doesn’t guarantee a product, ever. Doing so trusts the developer or team with funds so that they may attempt to create something to then present to the public. There is no guarantee with Kickstarter. Granted, some truly wonderful games and such have come from Kickstarter and the like, but they were never a definite. In fact, one of my favorite games of recent years Shovel Knight came from Kickstarter.
Let’s hope Star Citizen sees eventual full release. The ambition is definitely there and the funding is at least tangible, so its only a matter of time. Yet, there is always a chance it will fail and be scrapped.
For those of you still waiting for Star Citizen, just know that Final Fantasy XV was announced in 2006. I’ll wait for the math to set in…
