Chris Roberts Back in your wallet - STAR CITIZEN

[Samprimary]

Earlier in the thread I posted about a guy who spent a lot of money on this. I had a beer with him and a friend today. He came clean. He has spent about $18,500 so far. We suggested that he seek professional help ASAP.

Jesus christ

Yes, like, hopefully that was unironic advice. Like that he literally needs a therapist to help him with his compulsions.

[Pennilenko]

It was real friend advice. It is clearly a problem. You have to ask the question, at what point should Roberts cut off a customer? I mean shit at some point human compassion should take over and the company should stop the insanity.

[Trippy]

You don't cut off your whales.

[schild]

Earlier in the thread I posted about a guy who spent a lot of money on this. I had a beer with him and a friend today. He came clean. He has spent about $18,500 so far. We suggested that he seek professional help ASAP.

Does he know he's been the victim of a con or is the type to spend money on this the actual stupidest sort of person?

[Pennilenko]

Earlier in the thread I posted about a guy who spent a lot of money on this. I had a beer with him and a friend today. He came clean. He has spent about $18,500 so far. We suggested that he seek professional help ASAP.

Does he know he's been the victim of a con or is the type to spend money on this the actual stupidest sort of person?

He believes he is getting a game he can play for decades. He is convinced that it is going to be so popular that what he has spent will be equivalent to an actual investment. His wife moved out. My other buddy and I think she is positioning for divorce. It's some scary as fuck self delusion.

[schild]

Self-delusion is a failure to recognize reality. He's so, so far past that. He was past self-delusion when he spent $2,000 on theoretical space ship game. I wouldn't blame my wife for moving out if I did something like that, but all of my hobbies have a nearly immediate and obvious return.

[Paelos]

Or if you rake in $300,000 a year you can afford to blow $18 large on a hobby. I doubt this is the case for the guy in this case.

I mean his wife moving out, good lord. That should be the final straw.

[schild]

At $300k in modern society you should not be blowing $18k on a hobby without immediate turnaround.

$500k+, ok, maybe.

[Pennilenko]

I am fairly certain some of the money he spent was taken from his school loans. The three of us all went back to school when, individually, our businesses all went down the drain due to the economy. He used to run a granite shop that did counter tops and other stone trim. He had to sell all of his production equipment to save their home and I am pretty sure he has been living off his wife's salary for a couple of years since he went back to school.

It blows my mind he spent that much money. I mean I spend money on games, and I made a deal in my wife's favor to get away with purchasing elite dangerous. But I think in the last year I have spent probably 400 bucks on games, but that's like an entire hobby for a year. Eighteen and a half grand on a single game that gives no monetary return investment is mind blowing. I don't think I have spent that much in a whole twenty years of gaming. That includes computers and peripherals.

[schild]

Have him join f13. It's almost time for the yearly donation drive and he strikes me as a big fucking idiot that I want to take potshots at for funsies.

[rk47]

All dose cartel coins.

Gone, gone like tears on the bear.

[Rendakor]

$18,500 blows my mind. I can't wrap my head around spending that much money on a single game that isn't even out yet. If he was loaded it wouldn't be so incomprehensible; the fact that he's ruining his real, 3d life and losing his real, 3d wife due to an obsession over a nonexistent game really hurts my head.

[Pennilenko]

I would be willing to wager that there are at least a few people on this forum that have spent a ridiculous amount of money on Star Citizen. Not like they would speak up and face ridicule though.

To bring in the type of money they are, there has to be a large number of big fish.

[schild]

I'd like to imagine that the people here that have and would spend that kind of money on this pile of shit are either already banned or people I wouldn't mind banning.

[Velorath]

I would be willing to wager that there are at least a few people on this forum that have spent a ridiculous amount of money on Star Citizen. Not like they would speak up and face ridicule though.

To bring in the type of money they are, there has to be a large number of big fish.

$1000 on Star Citizen is a ridiculous amount. For $18,500 I'd actually feel better if he spent it all on heroin and gambling and just told you guys he spent it on Star Citizen. Those are at least understandable addictions as opposed to just being a fuckwit.

[schild]

Naw, I can see some of the Eve diehards here spending $1,000. That's a number I can understand. It's also a number that most of us have spent on dumb worthless hobbies also. Also, $1,000 simply isn't that much. For example, it's less than 2 cases of Magic cards.

I threw $2,000 out there because it's an amount of money with which you could buy actual life improvements instead. Like an amazing bed. Or 5 KitchenAid mixers or something. Not fake spaceships.

Three of the things listed in this thread would make you either some of your money back or more Right Now.

Fake Spaceships never will.

[Velorath]

I did specify that it was ridiculous to spend $1000 on Star Citizen. That wasn't to say that it's a crazy amount to spend on anything.

[schild]

Fair.

[satael]

The trouble I have with spending that much on star citizen is that I don't understand what they are hoping to gain from it (compared to a normal $65 "price of the game at release"-player). I could (kind of) understand spending alot on a competitive game like EVE but I thought star citizen was other things mostly (like private servers and single player mode etc).

[schild]

Made no sense in Eve either.

CCP was 100% forever doomed to fail as Eve's success was a unique mix of poorly bottled lightning and luck. They have no idea why it was a success and could never replicate it.

[DraconianOne]

I read that figure last night and it's taken me this long to get my head around it. Jesus fuck but that's a lot of money. 

[lamaros]

It's worrying, but there are always people who have extreme issues. The real worry with Star Citizen is that there are so damn many of them. And that they are being actively exploited.

[Miasma]

That kind of money you're talking mental issue gone extreme, like the people who filled their houses with beanie babies and hoarders.  Probably a fair bit of depression and he's built a fantasy where a video game can solve all his problems.  He has to spend more money to keep validating the belief or something.

Tell him there is a gray market to sell that crap, he would have to properly research how it works though.  You used to be able to just trade ships between accounts but I don't think you can do that anymore.  There are also of course scams so you have to be careful.  I think the rule is each hull can be traded once now and after that it's tied to the account.  A few people have received cash refunds with a nicely worded email.

For a second I thought you were the guy who posted the "a friend has asked to borrow a large amount of money" person which would have lead to, interesting times.

Last chart, they only made $270,000 yesterday.

[Jeff Kelly]

I find it easy to wrap my head around such numbers. It's a tell tale sign of clinical depression.

He lost his business and has to live off his wife that's a pretty big hit on the self worth of most men. He has marital problems that probably didn't start with the $18,500 donated to star citizen. He's back in school and probably frustrated that he's still not able to get a new job. And he spent an insane amount of money on some escapist fantasy. He's probably very depressed and it wouldn't surprise me if he has other issues besides overspending on ridiculous things.

[Jeff Kelly]

Damn beaten to it. What Miasma said.

[Samprimary]

I almost wish I could speak to him in person. I would tell him that he's got a serious problem and that even if he doesn't have to be ashamed about it, he needs to take steps to handle it right now or his problematic spending / compulsive behaviors will rule him for the rest of his days sure as a hoarder becomes ruled by their shit.

If he can recoup entirely using the grey market, have him do that. Also he might want to consider petitioning Roberts for a refund, which is not really impossible.

[Teleku]

Yeah, from what I hear, you can still sell all this stuff to other suckers people, correct?  So if you guys can convince him to seek help and realize that it was a very bad mistake, he could possibly recover all the cash (possibly even make more if items went up in value), right?

[Miasma]

If he has rare ships that were limited release like Scythes or Retaliators he could make money on those, if he doesn't get scammed.  Most of his purchases were probably just things that they still sell though so his only advantage would be lifetime insurance so long as they were purchased before (I think) November.

If he did something extra crazy like buying the multi thousand dollar Idris mini-carrier those used to be able to be returned for a full refund because they still had a waiting list of others who would just snap them up immedietly, I don't know if that is still true.  The military version of the Idris used to sell for more than it cost on the gray market as well.

He would have to do his research.  Unless the account is full of rare stuff I doubt he would be able to sell the whole account in one fell swoop so it would take time.

Edit: He also has to be careful to get actual cash back from the buyers/company and not the in game credits.

[Pennilenko]

He is  already not talking to us.  He thinks we are taking his wife's side, even though we have been friends for a decade.  Telling him that he needs help triggered a whole "you guys have been talking to my wife" speech. I'm not going to get involved anymore with it,  I have enough of my own problems.  This whole thing makes me examine my own forms of escapism more closely though.

[Hoax]

If any form of escapism is costing you $10k or more a year then you need to be worried.

If any form of escapism is buying imaginary shit you for sure need to be worried.

A form of escapism that does both? This may be one of the sadder things I've ever heard of. And here's the point, they aren't spending this cash to support the game. They are spending it because they want to be wolves and kings and the Big Swinging Dicks of the Star Citizen universe and they think this is their ticket to that. Which means that anything Roberts does that helps the people who didn't pay for the privileged of winning (no I don't think this is a real game but for argument sake lets pretend) is going to raise all sorts of hell with these sick fucks. So yeah this entire thing is doomed. All these whale backers will make sure that this game sucks because their own self interest is going to 100% conflict with making a game that's fun to join and play.

Fuck Star Citizen. Fuck Chris Roberts. This shit turns my stomach.

[Miasma]

Anything taken to an extreme is bad.

[Cyrrex]

Anything taken to an extreme is bad.

Extreme breast fondling sounds pretty okay.

I'm annoyed that the world needs another good space sim and this doesn't appear to be it.

[DraconianOne]

Anything taken to an extreme is bad.

Extreme breast fondling sounds pretty okay.

Depends on whether you go up to random strangers on the street to do it. 

Or pay the best part of $20k in hope that you will be fondle the best virtual breasts ever to be funded.

[Velorath]

Have him join f13. It's almost time for the yearly donation drive and he strikes me as a big fucking idiot that I want to take potshots at for funsies.

Hell, I'd donate $20 if you can get an interview with Chris Roberts and write something up about all this shit. Of course you'd probably have to hide this thread in a private forum for a bit just in case he decides to research the site.

[Miasma]

You want star citizen fans to follow him here?