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."

Comments

Another EVE online?

[duke_cheetah2003]

Just what we needed.

Re:Another EVE online?

[Fallen Kell]

You forgot that the combat is also twitch/skill based and not formula based. In Eve, 1v1 combat is all about knowing your ship's strengths and weaknesses, outfitting it properly to exploit those said strengths and weaknesses and knowing which targets are most vulnerable to your strengths with least ability to threaten your weaknesses... This plus the number of skill points the pilot has giving bonuses to the skills that affect the strengths/weaknesses of the ship.

In gang fights (which most fights are), it is mostly about who has the best logistics and/or best concentrated DPS (typically the group with the most people will win, but not always).

Re:Another EVE online?

[Fallen Kell]

No, this is actually flying/piloting a spaceship in WWII style dog-fights (with the aid tracking/locking computers, but aiming I believe will be up to the pilot for many ships/guns). Damage occurs based on what was actually hit by the aimed shots which ships having physical locations for things like engines, weapons, life systems, power generators, shields, armor, thrusters, etc., and damaging those different systems will physically affect the operation of the ship (i.e. if you lost all your port thrusters, and the ship doesn't have have a thruster on a gimbal/omni mount, you won't be able to turn to the starboard side (and would instead have to first roll the ship upside down so that you have active/working thrusters so you could then turn to the direction now that you have thrusters that work to push you there).

So actual flying skills will mater. Knowing how to properly dodge enemy fire, perform evasive maneuvers (possibly overriding safety systems that limit the G-forces you receive to do more extreme maneuvers, but then risking blacking out if you go beyond your body's and your suit's limits to keep oxygen going to your brain).

I just don't like the scamming hacker thieves

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

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.

Re:I just don't like the scamming hacker thieves

[CitizenCain]

I just don't know why law enforcement doesn't target them.

Limited resources. They spend more resources on crimes that are more damaging than simply having a game account stolen (which sucks, but is hardly life-altering) or crimes they can make money off of (speeding, asset forfeiture, etc.).

And, except for that last part where they play the role of modern-day highway robbers (literally, even), that's as it should be. There are enough *real* crimes that cause victims serious harm, so having your video gaming account stolen should never be a top priority for police, IMO.

Re:"all for AN game"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

BS

[Anonymous Coward]

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....

Re:BS

[szyzyg]

The problem is:
Trading forums deliberately suppressing information on actual prices and alternatives.
Package resellers on Amazon & Ebay charging large markups because the buyers don't know the mechanics.
Star Citizen MODERATORS in charge of enforcing the trading bans on the official forum directing users to their own trading service.

In short, the problem is information asymmetry, which this article attempts to address.

So overblown

[ElectricTurtle]

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.

Re:So overblown

[ElectricTurtle]

If you reach adulthood without knowing and understanding the fundamental principle of a buyer's responsibility in markets, you either had the worst succession of parents, family members, teachers, friends and mentors, or you're purely and simply an idiot. It is the foundation of a individual's ability to be functional as an independent adult.

Considering some of the tales of folly I've heard, I do indeed question the quality of those in mentoring roles, but in the end the responsibility lies ultimately in those who take upon themselves the pretense of independent action to be worthy of it. (Sometimes I even wonder if I've been wrong to dismiss Aristotle's concepts of human hierarchy. And for any pedants who would use such an admission as cause to paint me as a monster, I'm being facetious. Dawg.)

Re:Stock IPO

[Fallen Kell]

Well, that is due to proper market analysis more so than anything else. It is obviously in the best interest of the current share holders to properly evaluate the stock price before an IPO. An accurate evaluation with erroring on the side of being low means it will grow in price out of the gate, allowing those early backers a chance to sell their existing stock without fear of flooding the market with sell orders when there are no buy orders for the stock.

tl;dr version

[Gravis Zero]

people bought goods that were of limited distribution and then resold them for more money.

isnt this just basic supply and demand?

Re:tl;dr version

[ElectricTurtle]

Yes. And if CIG really wanted to have made a mint, they would have offered the Idris Corvettes in auctions. Considering that the manage to sell like a hundred of them for a grand each in a matter of fucking minutes, think of what ridiculous prices they might have fetched in an auction format. Plus, it would cut down on the secondary market transfers, because only a few people would likely pay more for the near peak prices of the auctions. The high rates of sale for even the ludicrously priced corvettes indicate that the market will clearly support even more ludicrous prices.

Remember, kids, "everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it." ~Publilius Syrus

Re:"all for AN game"

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:"all for AN game"

[CanHasDIY]

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.

Re:They'd better ship the thing.

[gweihir]

If you take into account that kickstarter games are about 50% cheaper, unless you get burned half of the time, you are still financially ahead. And if you take into account that most of these games would have never been made without kickstarter, you are even more ahead.

But I guess that bit if math is beyond most people.