Once again, the angry protest from fans on the internet wins out in Star Citizen. The livestream for CitizenCon will be free after all.
Yesterday, CIG CEO Chris Roberts staunchly defended the decision to charge money for the livestream of CitizenCon. But the people with pitchforks have won.
This is what happened: The livestream for CitizenCon 2018 was supposed to be the first one that required payment. This was sharply criticized by fans, fan sites, and critical observers of Star Citizen. A company that has received so much money from the community cannot behave this way.
The head of Star Citizen, Chris Roberts, justified the decision yesterday by stating the increased costs of the event. However, he already backtracked and assured that the opening speech and the closing event would be free. Additionally, everything would be professionally available on YouTube later – completely free of charge.
But apparently, that was still not enough to calm the tempers.
This is what Chris Roberts says now: Chris Roberts made a post in the official forum.
After sleeping on it for a night, I will chalk this up as a learning experience.
We will now save costs on the livestreaming crew. However, we will offer both stages in the livestream for everyone with a Star Citizen user account.
The content creators of Star Citizen are also invited to further spread our stream.
If you want to help us cover the increased costs of the streaming, you can purchase one of the CitizenCon digital goodie packs.
High Standards or Greed?
What are the positions? It is a relatively complicated situation that shows how far developers and the community are apart.
Chris Roberts presents it as if he wanted to deliver the best possible outcome for fans, went a bit overboard, realized how much all of this costs, and then wanted to involve fans financially. From his perspective, people were outraged over a trivial matter and not the issue itself.
For critics, however, the action came across as greedy, as if they were trying to squeeze more money out of a promotional event.
What’s behind this: Interestingly, the ‘internet protest’ has won again. Since Electronic Arts buckled under a raging shitstorm during the angry protest over Star Wars Battlefront 2 in late 2017, this seems to be developing into the trend of the year.
Developers make controversial decisions, internet forums explode, and if the uproar is loud enough, the developer ultimately backs down. We can now observe this repeatedly.
Star Citizen is set to become the 'best damn space simulation of all time.' Nothing more and nothing less. The mastermind behind the project is Chris Roberts, w...
