Kind of scary how effectively the software industry has trained an entire world full of users to pay for something and not expect a finished product in return. Now this mentality is creeping into the world of hardware devices.
In the tech industry, it used to be that the real customer was the investor and the real product was the user (e.g. Social media monetizing users to meet the needs of investors).
Nowadays, the real customer is the founder and the real product is the investor (monetizing investors to meet the needs of founders).
I thought the point of Star Citizen was to never be complete. The original Kickstarter literally said that they didn't want a static universe and that it would be continually updated (as opposed to static releases like yearly). When someone says they want to create a universe that is ever expanding I wouldn't envision a product that can ever really be "finished." You're paying for a product that continually updates.
Let’s not pretend like that’s a magical concept and because it’s getting continually updated that it can’t ever release. A lot of games have done that concept and they see releases.
World of Warcraft, for example, is still seeing regular releases since 2004, when it launched a game that gave a sense of “complete” while still seeing updates. So many updates that Blizzard re-released the original game. Final Fantasy 14, which originally released such a trash version, re-made the game, released A Realm Reborn in 2013 and still sees updates to this day. League of Legends, a free-to-play game, released in 2009 and still sees regular updates, without expansions, and which you can play without paying a single dime to this day.
Being a “never finished” project isn’t a good excuse.
Final Fantasy 14, btw, began development in 2004-5, was announced in 2009, was released in 2010 as a trash game, then that awful version of the game was maintained and even updated while a complete remake was developed and released in 2013 as “A Realm Reborn,” a critically-acclaimed expansion. Even crazier is that Square Enix has released and heavily supported the game for PlaySation 3, PlaySation 4, and PlayStation 5, as well as the PC version.
It’s pretty pathetic that this game has received so much funding and is still in alpha over 10 years later.
