This is just a quick one (hopefully). I wanted to say something empirically positive about Star Citizen since CIG has very recently made what is quite possibly their first level-headed move in a long, long, long time.
Every now and then, CIG opens the game up to non-backers. This allows people who have not purchased a pledge package to jump into the game for free to see how it is first-hand: no hearsay, no having opinions feed to them through self-serving “content creators” or reddit posts. I have no idea how many people actually take advantage of this, but it’s never the people who really should, I’m sure. Of course, even in the Patch of our Lord 4.0.1 the game is a shit-show, but don’t take my word for it. Read this:

In a bold-move-for-them, CIG has opted to cancel their upcoming scheduled free-fly event because even though the post doesn’t come out and say it, the undertone is clear that they realize that maybe the current state of the game is not the best way to get people to invest interest and money. It goes without saying that this should have been the stance all along, and raises the question of “why now?” but every day is someone’s first realization of a truth other people have understood for a while; not everyone processes the world at the same speed.
I’m not exactly sure who this plays to. Truth be told, I don’t think any Star Citizen Old Guard were fans of the free-fly events as they always brought in people “with nothing to lose” who might just use the opportunity to cause havoc, and a sudden influx of people on the servers were always seismic events that degraded the experience beyond what we were already used to. I doubt this announcement saddens those who keep Star Citizen at arm’s length or greater, and I know the existing community is happy about not having to share server cycles with transients.
There is a sea-change going on at CIG, and there’s no doubt about that, from the myriad of recent lay-offs, firings, voluntary RIFs, or whatever we’re calling them all, to this most recent “adult-level decision” made by the Powers that Be. It could all be positive: with 1.0 in their sights, CIG finally adopts a goal that isn’t immediately “more money” and is actually good for the game and the community, even though they need to “clear the decks” to reach it. On the other hand, this could be a pull-out-all-the-stops panic mode where CIG finds that the whales aren’t whaling as hard, anyone who might buy into the project has already done so and that there aren’t many or any more open wallets, and it’s time to — as my mother used to say — shit or get off the pot as the end-over-end money train is finally running out of steam.
I am an OG backer on this project and, over the course of almost a decade and a half, have added more money into CIG’s pockets. That’s on me, and I am at peace with that as it’s not taking food out of my mouth in any way. I have a vested interest in seeing this project succeed and would love for it to succeed, but I have also turned a page that has left me feeling more like this project is going to end up as the subject of so many retrospective analysis pieces on how to drive a project into the ground in the most spectacular fashion imaginable. While I wish that the drive to 1.0 and the recent cancellation of the free-fly event are positive signs that CIG is aligning their boats for the first time in ages, I can’t shake the feeling that they’re doing too little, too late to fight the tide of inevitability. Still, I’d be A-OK if I’m wrong because I really don’t want to be proven right.