This is the thing. I've had the feverent backers pointing to how it is now possible to buy ships in game.... and sure, if you are willing to sacrifice your life for a few weeks, only for it to get wiped anyway at the next reset.
We know from CIG's financials now that subscriptions are not part of the funding tracker, and if the funding trackers is to be believed, its largely ship sales. Ships sales bringing them in a thousand or two dollars per freaking hour (let that sink in for a moment, backers are buying new ships and stuff all the time, every hour, without fail, for a game that isn't even released yet and technically speaking, if the game ever releases, you never actually need to give CIG an additional penny - that leads to either some skepticism, worry for the state of humanity, or wondering if you are somehow missing something. The skepticism path leads me to think there are some hardcore backers who are constantly giving CIG money. But there again, i can almost believe that among the million or so backers, there are a few thousand who regularly spend their pennies on new ships.
Either way, its mindboggling, and the day CIG makes earning ships easy, and persistent, is the day their cash cow slows down. Not stop of course, there are always those who will pay to "win", and plenty of them. CR didn't discover this, its been known in the mobile app market for a long time.
I am waiting to see if CIG ever does decide to "release" the game, whether they will stop ship sales like they said they would. However, at this point, i think that even if they get the game into a releasable state, they might be better off not going gold and instead keeping it perpetual "beta", which would allow them to keep selling ships without going back on their promise to stop selling on release.
