Star Citizen Faces Backlash Over New Items Available Only for Real Cash

When speaking of Star Citizen, you might think of some facts about it, like its extremely lengthy development period, which has already been twelve years and is still counting, or its Guinness record of the "largest single amount ever raised via crowdsourcing," which has accumulated a whopping of nearly $820 million from supporters.

With this huge amount of money received via crowdfunding, it's pretty shocking to see that Cloud Imperium Games would still favor some additional money from players' pockets. 

Recently, they introduced a brand-new feature called Flight Blades. The feature itself doesn't receive many complaints; it is explained as ship components that enhance flight behavior by increasing speed or improving maneuverability. However, as soon as it was released in the game on May 15 in the Pledge Store, it caused huge backlash in the community, as it went with a "pay-to-win" approach. 

Instead of making it available for both purchase of real-world money and in-game virtual currency at the same time, this new item was only made available for real money.

The explanation from the developers said that it's because the team is moving too fast and making a mistake in the process: "We're pushing 11 patches this year instead of 4. We’re crushing more bugs than ever, building more exciting content, moving faster than ever to make the Persistent Universe a better experience for everyone, and in moving that fast, we missed a step."

The team at Cloud Imperium Games stated that the Flight Blades will be made available for purchase with aEUC, ie, the game's virtual currency, Aurora Universal Exchange Credit, with the game's next patch coming in June. They also promised that this would not happen again in the future. 

Obviously, disappointed fans are not buying it. "This is a bandaid to calm people down, but the root issue here is that you continue to sell more and more items in the game that have a wider impact on what a player would do day to day," wrote one player. Another suggests the whole player base take action against such a decision, saying, "If we accept this and CIG makes money off these blades, then we deserve more pay-to-win features. Vote with your wallet, citizens!"