10 Lies Video Games Could Never Recover From

Cloud Imperium Games’ Star Citizen has won numerous funding awards since it popped up on Kickstarter in 2012 - many of them containing the words “most crowd-funded ever”. In only a year CIG had raised $2 million on Kickstarter, alone, and had a grand total of $15 million when all other funding sources were included.

By 2022, CIG has gathered over $500 million for the game from crowd-sourcing alone, as well as over $60 million from investors buying seats on the company’s board. At the five-year-mark, in 2017, the company’s financial reports suggested they have already spent $193 million on development. With around 4 million backers giving half a billion dollars and 11 years of development, you might expect Star Citizen to be an amazing game.

Well, it’s not even a game, yet.

An alpha version giving players a few tidbits of scattered gameplay has been released, but there is no actual game to speak of. Not great for something with a promised delivery date of 2014.

Many of those 4 million backers have raised complaints, and in some cases even lawsuits, demanding refunds for their crowdfunded investments. Refunds that are reportedly very difficult to arrange and receive.

CIG is pretty mum on how much money they've been forced to give back, but reports suggest at least 25% of backers were demanding refunds in 2015 alone. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has reportedly received over 100 formal complaints regarding CIG, to date.