Star citizen– a video game first announced when Gangnam Style was at the top of the charts – is sometimes unfairly referred to as vapourware. That’s what it’s usually called by people who have never actually played it; if they had, they would know that there is the framework for a game out there that is playable, but also nowhere near being what anyone could fairly describe as “finished”.
You need to know because this story is about the unfinished game’s player base, many of whom paid for it Star citizen when Lebron James was still playing basketball in MiaI. Those players who routinely log into the various parts of the unfinished game and fly/walk around a bit found that with the release of Alpha 3.18 last week, they could not get into the game.
The update – which introduced a lot of things, so much so that they made a trailer for it— First released last week, and that trailer seemed exciting enough that many people tried logging into the game to try it out. To many people.
Developers Roberts Space Industries quickly found that the game could not support so many people trying to log in at once, and then it all fell over. “Due to the high amount of traffic related to the launch of Star Citizen Alpha 3.18.0, the RSI Launcher may become unresponsive,” they said on March 11, adding that “The team is already working to fix this issue as soon as as possible.
Two days later, however, many players were still locked out. And those who could came in, found the game full of crippling bugs, prompting RSI to tweet “We apologize for the super rough start – our team is working all hands on deck to get things running smoothly as soon as possible”.
At the time of game broadcast still is not back to normal; Star Citizen’s own status page is displayed that several elements of the game, including its persistent universe, are still suffering from a “partial outage”.
Fans are understandably upset, citing things like the fact that this game has been in development since FIFA 13 was on the shelves, but I think it’s a glass half empty. For them, a broken game must seem like a disappointment. For everyone else, a broken game shows that there is a game to break!