Star Citizen, the spaceship-combat game with a never-ending crowdfunding campaign, is currently undergoing a wave of backlash from players. Developer Cloud Imperium Games recently rolled out components that improve ship movement that were originally exclusive to the real-money store–a change that has caused fans to revolt.
As reported by PC Gamer, CIG’s addition of flight blades in a recent update, which improve ship maneuverability or speed, has caused significant anger among the community. The particular issue at hand here is that CIG rolled these out only to the Star Citizen Pledge Store, where the studio sells in-game items like ships, cosmetics, and upgrades.
Selling an item like flight blades isn’t on its own unusual–the pledge store is a core method that CIG crowdfunds its game. However, Star Citizen has long had a norm of allowing players to purchase upgrades either with real money or with in-game currency (called aUEC). While the studio promised that they would be made purchasable by in-game currency later in the summer, they were launched early to players willing to shell out cash. Gating the flight blades exclusively behind a real-money paywall struck many fans as a bridge too far. The Star Citizen forum thread announcing the flight blades has accumulated over 2,000 replies, way more than the average thread, and most of these are quite negative.