How Star Citizen took my money and gave my data to a unhinged sociopath

Star Citizen's Cloud Imperium Games blithe approach to customer security will result in misfortune or worse.

,a few years ago, I was playing Star Citizen, I recall encountering a player whose toxicity and poor sportsmanship was all out of proportion to the environment we were in. I and another player were politely duelling during a very early test build.

This player, let us refer to him as A, proceeded rather unsportingly interrupt our duel; since the mode was free for all, we decided to turn and destroy the interloper, after which he engaged in a rather strange and impolite rant. We bothed got a message saying he was going to destroy us in the ‘universe’, the released game that still 9 years later, has not been meaningfully released.

We reported him to customer service about his behaviour and the first and only time I got a decent response from a CSR there, who advised me that he was between a rock and a hard place on this one. A few weeks later he was fired and his glassdoor read “It’s a shame they are neglecting the support service because this is a project built on backer trust”. I should have read the implications then and there, but like everyone else I was still optimistic.

A moderator whom we contacted after that about these threats and violating the “no kill list” policy said they didn’t moderate in game behaviour; and A, winked and said thanks heaps Stehlik. They got rid of that rule just for him, although, that really shouldn’t have to be a rule in my opinion; it’s like “don’t murder other players”, it goes without saying.

We endured these guys for a few years until A had a meltdown, and these sociopaths were still around but under different guises; after 3 years we’d had a meaningful MVP release, that did not live anywhere near up to its feature set.

These patterns of behaviour only got worse. One group of players was notorious for going around just spamming Discord servers with gay porn; servers that were open for kids. And these guy would follow anyone these groups felt displeased with. CIG refused to even think about actioning this kind of behaviour - not on their platform not their problem. Nevermind that a lot moderators were participating in it.

This kind of stuff went on for years. All sorts of personal slander, racist-whateverist behaviour, griefing in game, you know the works - over stuff that an amatuer game developer could have fixed in a day.

However, people who even mentioned this growing problem on the official forums were instantly banned for “fearmongering” or “calling out homophobic comments”. I myself found myself banned repeatedly for nothing and each further ban justified by the last; over innocuous statements.

Host: Another problem with the development of Star Citizen is the lack of transparency. The game's developers, Cloud Imperium Games (CIG), have been criticized for their lack of communication and transparency with backers. Despite raising millions of dollars, CIG has failed to deliver on many of the game's promised features, and many backers have become frustrated with the lack of progress.

On top of this we endured a number of punitive actions from CIG after making complaints about this guy’s behaviour. We were repeatedly targeted by forum moderators and given lifetime bans whilst these groups of individuals would make all kinds of defamatory remarks about our characters.

These people also made impersonation accounts of us and would try and confuse people in game; and try to generally make people hostile to us by pretending to be us in chat servers. They also tried to coopt my identity and pretend they were me in other matters as to offer “expert advice” in my name.

We were also slandered and simutaeneously impersonated across a range of social media platforms. My main reddit account was targeted by a network of alt accounts - bots essentially - in order to downvote it into oblivion. This net was used on multiple occassions on forums and social media to champion for whatever issues they felt strongly about. It was not unusual to see one of their threads instantly up voted by 70 votes within a minute or two of posting. It is unlikely this was entirely organic.

This individual contacted us several times under various identities via personal message. He went to great lengths to exhort about his power over me, and his connections with various moderators at reddit and Cloud Imperium Games and how they would do anything this person asked them to. This kind of empty boasting seemed to me be exceedingly childlike but I did try and milk them for as much as possible. We had a pretty good idea who it was.

From this point, we were able to hone in on their behaviour and generally have a good idea who it was. We generally steered clear of this player, renown for their volatility but alas, given the relative pecking order, it wsa inevitable he would “challenge” me. Unfortunately, as a “spymaster from EvE Online”, his ideas of a challenge was begging CIG to ban me. So after, enabling other players to continually harass me in game, arbitrarily losing privileges and “rights”, CIG decided to refund most of my pledge - which after 8 years had ended up in the vicinity of 2500AUD.

Not only were they completely rude and unprofessional about the whole affair, acting high and mighty as if they hadn’t leaked my personal info to this guy. To add insult to injury they refused to do a normal person transfer and instead demanded by banking account details. Despite assuring me they would delete these details from their system, they remained (this will become important later). I was eventually shortfunded about 2200 by November, whilst inflation was running rampant; and they had refunded me in 2014 dollars.

I truly felt scammed at this point as it sunk in that all the shit I had been waiting for; the content that they had teased the community with and sold to us; like the 200 dollar tank I had bought; I’d never get to see any of it. I’d been waiting this whole time, dedicating my utmost, and they completely were happy to short change me.

Because in effect CIG had done the one thing everyone accused them of: take my money, use it develop more marketing material to attract more people, and pander to whatever they want; and so on. They’d taken my money as an interest free loan and at the very least paid less in real terms. It was just a classic pyramid scheme.

All the stuff they had promised never materialises or if it does, it’s broken or irrelevant. There’s actually very little interesting to do outside of dogfighting and that had been broken to pander to these same players.

It’s hard not to be a little bit annoyed to see my time and dedication wasted like that; then looking around at other space games/MMOs from small dedicated teams that were dedicated to their games - that had no funding or players, because Star Citizen hogged the limelight with impossible promises and FOMO tactics. CIG have essentially sucked all the oxygen out of the space sim genre, and will continue to do so as long as it stays in development hell.

They’re not just doing this passively either, I see how some of these players go out of their way to advertise Star Citizen in these tiny communities and disparage or otherwise try and white ant these games/communities. Players are actively incentivized via referral codes and a deeply unfair referral system that basically rewarded large streamers who consistently advertised for them.

Naturally your bonuses go up the more your referrals spend; it’s a pretty standard sales clause, especially in recruitment. These people have a business relationship that far exceeds what is disclosed, and the more people spent, and the more they might miss out on this next patch, the greater the groupthink incentive to reinforce existing views.

This can be easily demonstrated by examining ‘whiteknight versus the haters” dynamic in their social spaces and the sheer intolerance towards any views that don’t fit into preexisting mental models. It makes for a fascinating subject of itself, but it is beyond me to provide a worthy treatment of it.

The reason I mention the predatory sales tactics is because I got my best friend into the game for I too was a believer - not an extremist like some, but also very veteraned. I do not boast when I consider it possible that I am the best 6DoF fighter on the planet.

Correspondingly, Khajiit, my friend, was lured in by the same promises of cool ships in the environment she had been introduced to; and she spent more than advisable. This wasn’t really a problem until CIG began blatantly engaging in Pay to Win tactics, by releasing an exclusive ship that was ridiculously overpowered. It didn’t have any of the interesting simulation-like interactions but instead was just a pure arcade fighter.

The moderators refused to action these guys, but everything they complained about, the devs nerfed or got rid of. The game didn’t develop properly as a result, and even to this day, has been built on flawed predications that cannot be undone.

These players whom Khajiit and I had been beating, suddenly spent all the time possible trying interrupt our fights, exploit stuf fon the server and generally empty the server. Given that during Australian peak hour the combat mode was lucky to draw six players - a week; this had a pretty dramatic effect on the community.

And 9 months later, they repeated the same tactic but with more ships and completely cloned an EA game, Squadrons - just the exact opposite of what they promised on their Kickstarter and their website.

More and more the feedback seemed out of touch and completely out of whack with the game and ships we had been sold. Nearly all my purchases had been obsolesced in favour of one ship; and for others, there simply was no content available to use them in. Any time we tried to enjoy the game in any modes, these groups of players would follow us around and use exploits and try and harass us out of the game.

Because of this Khajiit, raised a ticket against them and they found out. They also made some ‘sexist remarks’ which player relations staff just completely ignored/lol’d at and let these guys abuse her - and keep abusing her. Without the kind of background I have in gaming, she was generally upset by this and they continued to harass her as well. In fact they consistently followed her around sent her creepy messages and created an impersonation account.

All this time the CIG team refused to do anything about it - despite the community manager making it clear that impersonation wasn’t allowed, the support staff basically refused to do anything, instead offering her a “free name change - and you can even change your profile picture”. It’s a pretty insulting response to a woman who is being cyberstalked by a genuinely unstable person - and whom’s reputation precedes them.

No doubt CIG will have posted some corporate trite nonsense about International Women’s Day this year too.

Around this time, one of the individuals in question had another episode and made some wild claims, but during which he demonstrated and showed emails from CIG to him showing them disclosing the various players who had reported him for bad behaviour and whom he could target. Because, predictably, they would boast about it eventually.

Khajiit at least got a lucky break with her refund when CIG abruptly offered to refund me some of her money after being confronted by the Dept for Fair Trade NSW. Instead they made the bizarre decision to refund me; without any communication or notification, despite having supposedly deleted all my information, including sensitive stuff like my bank account details. This process was delayed and delayed for two months until Khajiit told me to check my bank - whereupon I had to transfer her the money and all the stress that brings.They gave her 200 bucks though.

So CIG abruptly decided to refund her/us (rather than even acknowledge her as a real person) after collecting a bunch of personal information from us, at the same time that it was revealed that their staff, who wouldn’t do a thing to help her had been giving out our details. We’d obviously had a sense of this; but they were also actively trying to force us out of the game whilst keeping our money. Essentially constructive dismissal.

Over time I have become completely immune to games that have what Star Citizen promises actually implemented - and I can’t get excited about it, I procrastinate, and I lose interest. I see through it all too quickly - and it’s all too limited. I’m consciously aware of this conditioning but there isn’t much I can do about it. Simply put Star Citizen ruined gaming for me.

By completely hitting that FOMO and Skinner box buttons, whether I regarded them or not, my sensitivity to anything without them pinging off is nonexistent. They had me hooked up to a buggy poker machine for so long that I can’t enjoy any games for long now. This is not to mention skeletomuscular disorder from the jankiness of the game and the impossibilities of their control schemes.

Unlike some in the community, I took my refund and left, bought a new PC and started playing around other games, but I stopped associating with the Star Citizen community long before I refunded.

Now companies are trying to copy their monetisation model - Star Citizen is essentially offering proto-NFTs, only, yknow, theyre completely fungible and CIG can take all your money at their whim with little recourse available to you, the consumer.