Not true! It's still in alpha.
https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/12grru/comment/c6uzxz...
The budget for this thing is absolutely insane and I have no idea how it's all going to end.
What? In what way? What part of "We are going to build a giant space MMO" and spending like ten minutes worth of pitch time waffling on about how "look! Each of the 16 thrusters on this little spaceship are physically simulated! That's so important to someone playing a space MMO!" and right from the beginning allowing you to pay to win was "old school game design"?
Star citizen from the very very beginning was clearly a trap of "More immersion means more better", which is interesting because they really were not showing off anything especially immersive. None of the presentation for kickstarter really showed off anything that seemed like exciting space ship combat. It only really sold the kind of vague dreams that people have and never think through.
Then, after saying they wanted to build a giant MMO, they chose a game engine that could not even offer reasonable multiplayer performance and support. Years later Chris would waffle on in an update about how "Oh we had to go and implement object synchronization over the network" at a time when both Unity and Unreal offered that as built in functionality, as if that kind of statement from the Lead of the project is anything other than an admission of utter incompetence at choosing Cryengine.
But, they had to have the pretty visuals to sell the kickstarter I guess. Shows you were their priorities were.
It's all horribly dysfunctional and hostile to its customers. In this context, this latest wrinkle is hardly surprising.
As someone who backed this project early (when it was at "only" $33 million or so) I'm not even mad anymore, just disappointed.