But CI-G aren’t doing that. They are begging people to buy them enough sandbags to ramp them up to the top.
What gets me is the people who simultaneously say "you don't have to buy anything but the base package" and also "quit telling people how to spend their money!" when people agree to the "No Cash Til Pyro" campaign some folks are supporting.
They know if someone buys the base package, CIG's tactics will eventually get them to buy something else. That is the nature of this type of fundraising. Many people can resist that for a long time, but 11 years is a VERY long time, and not everyone can resist that kind of marketing pitch.
Yes, I take full responsibility for my choices in buying what I did, but I can also see where manipulation is used on people, and so while it is your responsibility not to buy more, I do understand why people actually buy more and more and more until they're Concierge, or Legatus whatever, because they think by doing this they're helping build the game, they're funding the dream.
Like I said, I really do like the devs, I like the community support teams, I'd wager most of the people at CIG are very good people and just want to make a great game. I want to say the marketing team is just doing their jobs, but their jobs are literally to get people to fund the game more and more even after 11 years where $600 million is still somehow not enough for the fundamentals of the game to be working. So I have little for them, to be honest.
That said, I put full responsibility for all of this directly at the feet of Chris. He's the one who signs off on all of it, and he's become very wealthy in the process of building his dream game. He's already won his own game. Even if development stopped tomorrow, he's already comfortable for a lifetime. The only people who will end up feeling the sting are the devs, the backers, and whatever fallout occurs in the gaming community and fundraising.
What's worse, to me, is I guarantee you that the day those servers go dark, there will still be people who have pledged $15,000+ yelling at backers for not having enough faith. I want to reach them, but I do realize that, like gambling, the sunk cost fallacy takes over and desperation kicks in, and there's not much you can do for them except ride it out, and hope they eventually understand.
This isn't some big, grand, dramatic epic story in gaming, it's just kind of sad, really, and we talk about it because there's 1,000 developers, millions of backers, and a lot of hopes and dreams involved in this debacle, and humans like to commiserate about their losses.
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