What a hastily written article…
Some additional information that the reporter failed to realize: The employee was a Customer Service Manager, not an “anonymous former developer”.
https://twitter.com/RayRoocroft/status/1696304618081292521 https://starcitizen.tools/Ray_Roocroft Link to the actual post for better information: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/164cea5/leaks_pyro_release_date_chris_roberts_qa_excig/
Based on this it looks like he was not very involved in the actual development itself, so take that into account when he talks about the “design trajectory”.
It was pretty clear after the original kickstarter that the managment was incompetent and had absolutely no idea what to do. Having a dedicated team that generates exclusive items for cash to buy for a game that’s not even out of alpha should tell you everything you need to know. I said for years that they will never finish the game and keep it in “beta” with never ending funding cycles.
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A friend of mine bought the game 2 years ago. It was realy buggy, be he was willing to overlook that. After that he contacted the support, because one ship he bought wasn’t selectable in the game. The just send him a refund without helping with the original problem. I think that says everything about the state of the game and the developers.
I mean, for anyone who was familiar with Freelancer it was largely obvious from the start that there would never be a viable open world game. Seriously, all of this happened… let’s pretend five years ago even though it is likely closer to twenty and now I am sad.
But for 70 bucks or so to get a new Wing Commander at the height of “Kickstarter is awesome”? A lot of us made poor decisions. Although, in fairness, the expectation was that the SP game would be done first and THEN it would all go to shit.
But seriously. None of this is new. The exact same shit happened during Freelancer development. But, back then, Microsoft was able to step in and say “What the fuck? no” and more or less take the game away so it could be finished(-ish).