German magazine heise.de did a piece on Star Citizen, mentioning the growing unease as the project is delayed over and over:
https://www.heise.de/newsticker/mel...r-Kernschmelze-fuer-Crowdfunding-3723223.html
The comment section is flooded with astroturfing and up-voting of all pro-SC comments.
Quick n dirty tranlsation....
Permanent-Alpha Star Citizen: 150 million collected, fear of crowdfunding meltdown
The mega-project Star Citizen has collected more then 150 million US dollars but a release date is not available. A collapse might have dire consequences for the crowdfunding movement.
The crowdfunded game-project Star Citizen has collected more then 150 million US dollars. This has been announced via CiGs official fund-tracker. No other crowdfunding project was able to collect this amount of cash before. Since development started the CEO Chris Robert has brought up great expectations. Star Citizn is supposed to become the most complex space simulation to date, allowing the exploration of whole planets and providing multi-leveled economy mechanisms.
Earning money with virtual spaceships.
Players can continue to support the development by purchasing virtual spaceships. Not for petty cash tho. The newly announced spaceship Aegis Eclipse LTI goes for 275 US-dollars, the warbound edition still is 250. Today CiG increased these prices without any statement to 297,50 and 327,25 US-dollars. The previously listed Constellation Aquila is priced at 327,25 US dollars. Insider admit to heise online in march 2017 that a possible collapse of Star Citizen would equal a meltdown for the crodfunding model.
Star Citizens sale sites show an information that the game is still in Alpha. However development started back in 2012, by Cloud Imperium Games and numerous subsidiary companies. The next alpha-version 3.0 is announced for july 20th enabling players to land on planets. A final release date isnt available tho. The single-player campaign Squadron 42 was delayed, is still supposed to release 2017. Notes on the SQ42 website indicate that this game too is still in alpha.
Change to Vulkan
in march 2017, the lead graphic developer Alistair Brown stated in a forum post that Star Citizen would use the platform-independant interface Vulkan. Microsoft DirectX12 interface was disregarded, future support of DirectX11 was questioned. Its possible that these Vulkan-integrations are responsible for further delays of the mega-project Star Citizen.
Heres my favorit from the comments so far....
Misunderstood Businessmodel
Why should somebody finish the game? In the end people are going to be unhappy about it anyway. It has bugs, its too simple, somethings overpowered, expensive ships, bad balancing, doesnt run on Linux....all the internet ever does is complaining....especially the gamers. It makes more sense to promise everything while delivering nothing. Money is still coming in nevertheless.