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SaltEMike TV
SaltEMike Reacts to Star Citizen raised $1 Billion... Still no release date... | @LukeStephensTV
⏱ 57 min video · 3 min read27 May 2026
TL;DR
SaltEMike reacts to a Luke Stephens video covering Star Citizen hitting $1 billion in crowdfunding across 14 years with no release date. Mike agrees with most of Luke's analysis but pushes back on several points, arguing the milestone is less impressive than it sounds and that CIG is structurally incentivized to never launch a 1.0.
Key points
1
Star Citizen has raised $1 billion from ~6.5 million backers over 14 years, but Mike argues this is not a remarkable achievement when compared to games like Valheim which sold 5 million copies in a single month.
2
Mike contends the game has two entirely different experiences: players who bought ships with real money almost never lose them, while players on starter packs constantly lose ships to bugs and wipes, making it fundamentally unfair.
3
CIG is structurally incentivized to never launch 1.0 because ship sales fund the studio; removing them at launch would collapse revenue and force massive layoffs.
4
Squadron 42 is unlikely to release in 2025 and Mike predicts it will generate at most one month of news cycle hype even if it does launch, with no path to mainstream success given PC hardware barriers and the microtransaction model.
5
Persistent entity streaming tech is impressive in isolation, but meaningless in practice because players cannot choose their server, so items left in the world are almost never retrievable across sessions.
Key arguments
→
The $1 billion figure is crowdfunded over 14 years from a tiny active player base of roughly 30,000 players, making it far less impressive than headlines suggest.
→
CIG has never eliminated paid ship sales despite promising to do so since at least 2015 (Chris Roberts rolled it back at a Bar Citizen event that year), so promises to remove ships at 1.0 should be treated with extreme skepticism.
→
The game cannot realistically go mainstream: it requires a high-end PC ($4,000-$5,000 barrier), runs poorly even on an RTX 5090, and its macrotransaction model would be immediately rejected by console and casual PC audiences.
Notable quotes
“They have taken your money and built a company with it, but they haven't built anything from it yet.”
“You ignore that every time you play and then you go and defend this game company from people who cannot ignore that stuff.”
“They have just created an incentive to never finish the game.”
Worth watching?
⏭️
Worth watching the full video?
The core arguments and commentary are all captured here — only watch if you enjoy Mike's live reaction style and want to hear his tone and asides during the Luke Stephens footage.
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