Star Citizen Introducing a $48,000 Ship Bundle, but Only for Players Who Have Already Spent $10,000

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.

Only for Players Who Have Already Spent $10,000
This is so predatory in itself.
- Just being eligible for it is a sign that you need to make some life changes.
  
  If you can blow 50000+ on a video game they are doing something I'm not.
  
  Like: shower, touch grass, rekindle an interest in humanity as a whole.
- Meh my sympathy only runs so far.
  
  You don't have sympathy for people with addictive personality disorders?
- 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
- 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 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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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
- 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"? 🤦🏽‍♂️

Never play Star Citizen, even if it somehow becomes playable. Got it.
- The game costs $45, for the record. For an MMO. With no subscription fees.
  WOW costs $155 per year.
  
  WoW works.
  
  That's a incorrect comparison. You're treating WoW and Star Citizen to be similar games. When WoW for more than a decade has been in its own premium bucket.
  The average MMO today is free. Then the small percentages of MMOs that require the core game purchased.
  
  GW2 is free and FFXIV is also free up to storm blood or shadowbringers expansion. How much content is there in Star citizen again?
  
  I don't like WoW, but that's at least an actual game. SC is still nothing but a glorified tech demo. And I say that as one of the earliest backers.
  
  $45 plus a rig that can play it, I have a decent one and it nearly melted
  
  To be fair, WoW is an actual complete game, while SC is very, very unfinished. And I say this as someone who occasionally plays it and gets some enjoyment out of it.
  
  If it's $45, how are people spending $10,000 on it?
  
  Apparently it costs up to 48k to get certain ships, so that means absolutely fucking nothing.

Some poor fuckers are getting fleeced.
- Kinda hard to consider them poor if they can afford the $10k it costs to whale out $48k more :-\
  
  Apparently they only pay the difference to 48k for the missing items.
  Meaning they're getting fleeced continually.
  They might not be poor, but they could be middle class sinking all their savings and getting credit to fuel their addiction.
  
  Kinda hard to even feel sorry for them
- If you can afford to spend $48,000 on a video game, how is that getting fleeced?
  Like, OK, maybe some idiot mortgages their house for this. Bad spending decision. More likely, anyone who looks at that ticket price and thinks "fair deal" is already a millionaire, and quite welcome to do whatever the fuck they want with their money.
  Virtual ships certainly cost a lot less to operate than a Lambo or a boat.
  
  It's like any amount, there's people that can properly afford it, and others that will beg, borrow and steal to buy it for the prestige and hurt themselves and others to do it. It's the latter where the harm lies.
  
  They're being scammed. They are getting next to nothing for inordinate amounts of money. They might not be financially poor, but they're being taken advantage of. Like NFTs, just because the fraud is mainly being bought by millionaires you don't stop calling it a fraud. And just like NFTs and gambling there will be a percentage of people who can't afford it who will hurt themselves and their innocent loved ones because con men are willing to abuse their addictive personalities to make them fall into debt and have them pay for nothing.

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 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?
- Released is a strong word, lol. Agreed though, it is completely unprecedented
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.

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.

Not real life money right?
- Padme_meme.jpg
- 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?
- I'd be willing to pay with real life money if they were real life spaceships.
- Wrong

Cap'n i see the whale thar she blows

To quote Thor. Star citizen is a storefront pretending to be a game.
- The god Thor?
  
  He's talking about Jason Thor Hall @ https://www.youtube.com/@PirateSoftware
  Who's behind https://store.steampowered.com/app/567380/Heartbound/
  His middle name is Thor and that's what he goes by (who wouldn't)
  He's recently gotten a lot of attention because his YT Shorts have just exploded.
  
  You can get some pretty good gaming info during thunderstorms.
  
  Lol might as well be. Thor. The former Blizzard security dude who turned game Dev and live streams now.

That $48K can get you a real plane though, or boat. But maybe someone paying that for ships in Star Citizen has both already 😅
- 48k for a plane or boat? Good luck with that.
  
  Something like this, there are more selections within that range on that site,
  https://www.yachtworld.com/yacht/1991-hunter-35.5-legend-9163237/
  Or these
  https://hangar.flights/airplanes/affordable-personal-aircraft/

Wait, in real money? Or like video game money?
- If this is a genuine question you have some epic story to treat yourself to about how the bestest game of all times was ~~made~~ promised
  
  Genuine question my friend lmao
- real money
- Real cash.

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.

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.

- unfortunately by todays late stage mercantile economy this is just a bad deal

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

Honestly, at this point, if you buy this you and SC deserve each other, have fun.

Game cancer

Star Citizen is what iRacing players look at to feel better about themselves
Actually that's too mean to iRacing players since iRacing works

I hope an underground software liberation group (cracking) can make this software accessible for everyone.
- 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
- 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.
  
  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…
  
  Redirecting wouldn’t be challenging. Redirecting in a turnkey manner and requiring minimal effort on the part of the user?
  Ah yeah. Shits tricky.

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.

My buddy loves this game, but I just don't really get it.
- I’ve only spent $45 and when it isn't being a buggy mess (rare) its an incredible game, i just have minimal hope they can ever really fix it at this point.
  
  I swear I’ve heard the same thing about NFTs
  
  It gets really good after 10 ~~hours~~ thousand dollars.
- Why don't you get it? Huge fun space game, has more content now than most other games and they've only just started working on it properly after finishing squadron 42
  
  Based on my friend's description, it's a perpetual work in progress. It seems like the appeal to him is the idea what it might eventually become, and the anticipation of updates, as opposed to what it currently is. Not for me.

OK, I understand EVE and I understand Elite Dangerous, but this is not normal.

They don’t want to risk such a large chargeback or lawsuit over “accidental” purchase by a new user, so are only trying to sell to proven whales.

There are no married people playing this game
- *random oil sheikh with 50 wives enters the game
- I think whats scarier is that there probably definitely are some who are married and their spouse has zero idea how much they've spent.

The biggest scam in gaming continues unchecked.

Well I guess if anyone had doubts before about SC being a giant fucking scam, they can put those to rest. I was on the fence previously, but this answered it for me.

Is this real world dollars or some kind of in-game currency?

Yes! Sign me up!!!
Pick me! I'll be the first in line!

This isn't a game anymore, it's just blatant money grabbing.

I just want to know who would buy this shit so I can do a few things:
1: bitch slap some sense into them 2: buy them lots of hookers and balloons 3: make sure they understand that a real world does exist