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Comment by elmerfud | Hacker News Reader

This is got to be one of the biggest Ponzi schemes of all time. I am seriously shocked that the government has not started to investigate this. It has become a ridiculous joke. I remember 10 years ago now a person I worked with was all hyped on Star citizen how it was going to be the greatest thing ever and it was going to come out soon. They dumped tons of money into it all the early access stuff, but here it is today just a big old pyramid scheme.

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If you live in a country that has consumer protection laws maybe you can get a refund. There is a whole sub-reddit about recovering the money ( https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen_refunds/ ).

Do this soon before they run out of money.

(It is just a scam, not a pyramid scheme. E.g. it is perhaps the same as the Tesla full self-driving)

They do seem to have actually made a good chunk of a game, though. Whether it's worth it is another question. At least it does seem like there's an underserved market for the kind of game Star Citizen is aiming to be, though it is of course easier to sell a dream than reality. To me it feels about as exploitative as mobile gatcha games, but no more, and those are generally allowed to exist despite massive criticism.

I do agree that for everything that's described there is an underserved market for this kind of game but what will be actual result be? For all the money if all the time what is being actually accounted for and who is profiting off of it especially in the absence of a finished product, and the absence of an actual definitive release date. From the outside here it looks like this is crowd funding gone wrong. It seems due to its popularity and the fanatical zealotry of those who bought into it no one wants to really challenge what's going on with it.

Doesn’t fit the structure of a pyramid scheme, though. None of the early backers are getting any money out of it.

You can say none of the early backers are getting anything but are the developers is the game company what is the profit margin they're making what are their salaries what are they getting out of it?

Actually, I’ve heard of players selling their ships and/or accounts to cash out. Greater fool theory.

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