It was so curious to me back then. I need to ask them about this as I can’t believe people still pay any attention to this as I think it will never happen.
What you can do is impressive. I'm not going into a detailed depiction, but people who've played the SC persistent universe know what I mean. It's somewhat mind blowing in scope. It's also heartbreaking because it's utterly broken in so many ways that no AAA studio that actually needed to sell new copies to new people would ever tolerate. I keep a list of the most egregious/humorous things that have happened to me from spawning in the middle of the sun for no reason, to having my ship blow away on the surface of a planet.
I think there are a lot of possible explanations for this, but I suspect the main ones combine scope creep, constant tech stack changes over a really long dev cycle, and not having to make a playable game to be rewarded financially. I hope some day it becomes playable, because it's really a neat platform, but I sort of doubt it ever will.
Someone monetarily buying into an idea + in communication with a large community who has also bought in + future promises = cult
It may be a productive cult, but it's still a cult. And has all of a cult's reality distortion effects on its members.
I learned my lesson years ago with Chris Roberts games. Do not bother thinking about them until they ship. Strike Commander was my antidote for him. Overpromised, under delivered. He has been trying to make 'privateer' for 2+ decades at this point. He has shipped several iterations at this point 2 priv games and 2 others. This is number 5. That is what is kind of frustrating about it. He can ship games, and has many under his belt. But this one looks like a death march. Drags on much longer and they will have to do yet another engine switch out to keep the 'look' modern and not dated. Which would probably necessitate touching all the assets again.