Not all the whales are happy: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/07/court-denies-star-citizen-backers-4500-refund-lawsuit/
True, but quite a few of us are and just aren’t hugely vocal about it.
SQ42 never had a planned co-op mode, it’s been solo since '12. This guy is on crack. And the 30 day return policy is absolutely generous. You back SC, 30 days later you still don’t have it, absolutely nothing has changed that would warrant a refund.
Every single time one of these guys sues and loses it’s a nail in the next guy’s coffin. Ortwin is a genius.
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I guess I just don’t understand why anyone would back this project without knowing exactly what they are getting into.
Anytime I invest in something, for any amount of money, I research what it is before I get involved.
I watched SC for just shy of a year before I backed it.
Now, that was still very early on, and I am in for quite a lot of cash now, but I knew what I was getting into.
It blows my mind when people come in and complain about things that were made clear from the beginning. There is no release date, it is in Alpha, it is open development, not early release.
Sometimes I want to blame CIG for promoting the game the wrong way, trying to sell it as a game when it is still a project that will one day become a game. But even that can only explain part of it.
At some point people have to be held responsible for their own actions. Choosing to back the project is something each person does on their own, nobody is holding a gun to their head telling them they have to buy a package. There is SO much warning about the state of the development and what you are pledging for that there really is no excuse to come back and say you didn’t get what you expected.
But the game industry is partly to blame for abusing the terms Beta and Pre-release and Early release. They promote games through “beta” tests when the test is really just a chance for you to try out the game and build interest in buying.
I can understand why CIG wont give refunds. The money they get from pledges is allocated toward development. If that number is constantly in flux then they have a hard time budgeting out the development. So I don’t blame them for locking in pledges.
Worst case, if this guy really needs the money back, he can sell the ships on his account or just sell the account outright. Or he can try. Nothing in the TOS against selling ships as long as you sell them for current store value. So the TOS doesn’t even restrict you form making money on the sale if you ship went up in value since you bought it. I think that is pretty generous of them too.
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The people who complain and want their money back DID know…99% of them anyway. They’re just hoping that being a squeaky wheel will get them what they want.
You have to agree though, there’s been a significant amount of scope creep and change from the original pitch.
The original pitch was sketches on a cocktail napkin that would cost a couple of million dollars. The backers wanted more, a lot more, so CR adapted the concept. The more money we gave him, the broader the scope could be. The “broken promises” whines always amuse me, because they were never promises. No one from CIG ever said “I swear to you on my mother’s great, this is what I’m going to do!” Anyone who backed this game and hangs on any given word they say as “promises” should have kept their money in the first place and it’s their own fault that they’re out the cash.
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I believe many people would be happy with a little less scope creep and a little faster delivery is all.
Some, not many, and a small number is my guess. Why? Nearly $200 mil and going strong, backing isn’t stopping, which means people want more, enough to keep it going.
People are absolutely going to fall by the wayside if they want “what was originally promised”, but that’s just the way it goes.
This is why SC gets no more of my money and I’ve put the whole project on the shelf until it’s delivered.
As you should.
No.
We had a big discussion about scope creep vs design changes and development cycles.
There has not been significant scope creep. There has been significant design change and through the typical development involved in those changes there has been lots of features that were always going to be needed but were never clearly stated or defined that are now being developed.
I can agree the scope of the game has changed massively since the original pitch, absolutely.
Yeah, as a proj mgr, “scoop creep” has a very specific meaning to me, professionally. We agree on a documented scope, then you, the customer, want to add features to the already existing scope during development.
In 2012, there was no defined scope, just a vague idea. CR is both the customer and the developer, he is the only one who has the scope in mind, we’re just the backers, the money. The scope has drastically changed since 2012, but it was never formally submitted to us for approval and we never agreed upon it, so it is not “creeping”. Professionally, we call this a “fluid scope” project 
As a developer I call this a typical customer who has no f’ing clue what they want.
In all seriousness though, the design has been pretty well nailed down for a few years now and they have stuck to that design very closely. The problems in CIG are not related to poor management or inefficient developers, they are almost entirely related to poor marketing and PR.
I don’t like to say “poor PR”, but that’s because I like Ben and Sandi. I will say that CIG people talking out their ass when they had no clue what they were saying was certainly a problem, especially in the first couple of years. For the last 3-4 they’ve really locked it down and acted like an actual dev company, but “some people” just shot off their mouths about any ole thing and the backers took it as gospel
Again, love Ben and Sandi, just sayin
Fair enough, I like Ben too.
Sandi less so but she gets on my nerves for reasons and seems to have little to no experience or knowledge pertaining to the position she is in.
But I agree, the problem was as you describe and has gotten much better in recent months