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Star Citizen's Crowdfunding-Driven Grey Market
szyzyg writes "Star Citizen has broken all the crowdfunding records, raising almost 25 million dollars in the last year to fund Chris Roberts' promise of the ultimate spaceship game. However, an investigation sheds light on a murky secondary market where items are being resold by investors for profit, all for a game that won't be fully released for two years. The standard crowdfunding tactic of rewarding early backers has created a tiered system with ample room for profiteering, profits which many not be shared with the developers. Few things would please me more than Star Citizen succeeding, but backers should read this article before being tempted to trade up their internet spaceships through a third party."
Just what we needed.
I bought/sold items in games before. People did it with baseball cards. People did it with magic the gathering cards. Buy/sell/trading of virtual items makes sense.
What sickens me is the hackers who steal people's accounts. This is really not much different than people scamming people's bank accounts, but there is less enforcement. I just don't like hackers stealing peoples video game assets. These people who phish for passwords and steal credentials should have to go to jail if caught. And people should be trying to catch these guys.
You can't write it off as the account being worth nothing, so there is nothing of value lost. The fact that they sell your lewt shows that there is stuff of value there. They're nothing different than common thieves. I just don't know why law enforcement doesn't target them.
God spoke to me
How could this possibly fail?
Black market is for illegal trade, and grey market is supposed to imply some sort of wrongdoing.
Honest evaluation: people who got in early enough and anticipated a larger future demand than would be present for the initial kickstarting decided to buy up extra packs and sell them for a profit. This is the same as people who wait in line to buy PS4s and then resell on ebay for profit. They are selling their small amount of time, effort, patience or simply timing so that people who did/could not get into the first round of buyers can fight over the product a different way.
... will be stupid despite themselves.
I'm a American and I think that most of my fellow citizens are kind of stupid. Their just not that smart compared to a Europeans. I blame are government.
So? What's the problem?
The dev team got the money to make a AAA GPU-burning space-sim without moronic publishers ruining it.
People get to see the inside of game dev, week to week, which is really cool imo
Someone else making money with it is, for me, completely irrelevant, it is not detracting from the development, it's not harming their bussiness, why should I care?
Or is it one of those "only me" concepts?
PS: Star Citizen is AWESOME. and it is NOT Eve online, for fucks sake....
Hasn't the history of promises of in-game exclusives for hard cash up front pretty much always been followed by said in-game exlusives being pretty worthless?
It kind of makes sense - first extract as much money as you can from the die-hard fanboys, then avoid casual gamers being pissed off at preorder to win mechanisms.
Almost always exactly the same thing, share prices spike after they become "available" to the select few.
The use of "an" instead of "a" is determined by the beginning of the word after the "an" or "a". If the word following it is in singular form and begins with a vowel sound, "an" is used. Otherwise "a" is used for the singular form.
This rule is not unlike many other languages. In Spanish, for instance, verbs take on a masculine or feminine form depending on if the subject is a male or female....
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Disclaimer: I am a backer of Star Citizen.
This is ridiculously overblown. People are so butthurt about not being able to get in on the super special offers of Idris Corvettes or whatever, and they're jealous of people who can pay the ridiculous secondary market prices. Meanwhile, CIG itself is butthurt that they're not getting any money off the secondary market that they inadvertently created by offering limited issue ships and empowering users to transfer them. You know, because the millions upon millions of dollars that people have given them up front isn't enough.
If you create items that are scarce and enable people to trade them, you are creating a market. Period. No exceptions. You cannot then start whining about how you don't get automatic royalties every time somebody sells an item, or even stupider complain that people are selling them in the first place. Making them scarce gave them value, making them transferable created the market. Everybody get over themselves and stop whining. Oh and scams? First rule of ANY market: CAVEAT EMPTOR, BITCHES.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I'm shocked. SHOCKED.
Markets, like life, find a way.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
A thriving grey market means that Star Citizen has a healthy fan base. In many ways it's a better indicator of Star Citizen's future success than the massive funding.
I guess Canadians are cretins as well as our English dialect also uses this rule.
A game.
An apple.
Perhaps you need to realize that your dialect is not the same as the dialect of others even though it seems quite similar.
Figured I'd get the Millennium Falcon analog, and the alpha / beta access that comes with it. It was like $200. Forget that.
If there was some guarantee that I'd get the advertised game on a specific date I'd consider it, but AFAIK there is none. So it's like gambling.
people bought goods that were of limited distribution and then resold them for more money.
isnt this just basic supply and demand?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
They'd better ship the thing. There have been some large, overfunded Kickstarter projects that never shipped. Remember "Clang and the Pitfalls of Kickstarter"? Then there was the Form 1 low-cost 3D printer. Despite being way overfunded, the delivery date always seems to be four months away. It was four months away last December, and it's four months away now.
An helps the speaker elide into the next word by breaking apart vowel sounds.
I don't know what dialect of English you're speaking where you DON'T use 'an'... but I've never seen one - and I'm not American (I'm English).
1st rule of being a grammar-nazi: be good at grammar
WHY do you AMERICANS?
Why do stupid non-Americans* always make such idiotic blanket generalizations about Americans? Some sort of ePenis-envy?
* Not that all non-Americans do this - just the stupid ones.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
They have specifically stated that these things won't even be exclusive - all ships will be attainable through in-game means. You may get a unique skin at best.
I wish I could vote you up. I've been all around the world and have never encountered English spoken WITHOUT the distinction between 'a' and 'an'. I am baffled as to how the OP could possibly come to the conclusion that this is errant, and that it is ONLY Americans that do it. Makes me chuckle a bit, actually.
I don't know where to start with this comment! There is so much wrong with it!
The government cannot be blamed for how stupid the Europeans are, they don't have any say in another country's education system. Besides, it just isn't right to compare North and South America like that. There are a lot of cultural differences you have to be sensitive to.
Please fix your comment.
WOOOOOOOSH!
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Because we're Americans, not Amiercas.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
Apparently we can't even spell our own goddamn demonym correctly, either. I'm an idiot.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
It really REALLY bothers me that this game has gotten $25 million when this AMAZING PERFECT GAME already exists, and it's called Vendetta Online. This is reinventing the wheel and marketing nonsense, and if people actually cared/desired to play such a game they would be already.
Yep. English doesn't really do glottal stops.
SC is already getting overhyped beyond means, and ship sales are just adding fuel to the fire. This decision alone from CIG has been huge turn off for many players to check it out, because while sandbox space sim doesn't have special "win" scenarios, still it's gives huge advantage right out start at the game for people with bought ships.
I personally don't like this huge in-game assets sale. I know SC fans argue it's for supporting SC development, but...seriously. If you are so curious to support game, do it without getting ship back in return. This is not best advertisment for crowdfunding, because it reminds a pre-order gifts which lot of people loath.
Also SC feature set boasted by fans aren't that unique - for example "Elite: Dangerous" with their current development docs (see archive of Development Decision Forum here http://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=36) looks more detailed and nuanced that SC - still SC gets more hype because of involved people trying to get their friends buy ships.
I also prefer ED ship design (can be seen in-game engine trailer here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE8B4KptyVI) comparing to SC "planes in space" (don't getting those "car ad" type videos for ships either, only one of them is done ok).
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Tha''s a li'le bi' bigo'ed of you. Some of us li'er our pa'er with glo'al stops.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Seriously .. think of the best game you ever played .. how much did you buy it for .. then look at what people are paying here. They are trading on dreams not a reality - games often perform below expectations upon release. Items sold here can be bought / earned in game .. I strongly suspect when you get the game and after 50 hours of playing can upgrade your ship to a $250 ship - they won't be sold for $250 any more.
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