Elite dangerous is 90% of star citizen with 1% of the bugs, and it’s already released, gets frequent updates, costs a fraction, and is super fun. I’m highly addicted
Having played both, Elite: Dangerous is a very different game.
Is it good! Yes.
Is it fun? Absolutely.
Does it have more merit than Star Citizen in many ways, while not being a predatory hellhole? Hell yeah.
But it falls short in a few things where Star Citizen delivers - most notably, immersion. That’s their strong suit. In Star Citizen, you can actually freely walk aboard your damn ship, you can visit glorious stations and entire cities, leaving your starship far behind. The world is more alive, cities are filled with NPCs, ads and neon screens are blasting around, you can ride a subway or hop into a bar with friends! And then you walk your friends aboard your ship, and you have a cozy night at the kitchen - talking, sharing life stories, and having fun. The game feels very…real in this respect, and the social life you get there is a major part of the experience.
Perhaps, this is exactly how it extorted so much money from the gamers: making them feel at home, build social ties to the game, and then making them feel they can’t progress and do more and be a worthy part of this society without putting in hundreds and thousands of dollars. Gotta admit - they almost had me, too, to spend $400 on a cargo vessel, and that’s almost my monthly income. Common sense took over, though, as I saw people throwing their life savings into the game.
Elite is no where near 10% of what start citizen has promised to eventually produce. Elite is a better game, yes, but to say it’s “90% of Star Citizen” is downright delusional.
CIG shares stats from which you can derives their average concurrency; it’s about 5,000 average for 2025. So somewhere ranked #150-200 in the Steam concurrency rankings (which often exclude MMOs and/or 1st party launchers).
I mean… this shit was funny YEARS ago… I can’t believe they’re still able to milk it
Edit: if someone did eventually make a star citizen game one day I would love to play it
Elite dangerous is 90% of star citizen with 1% of the bugs, and it’s already released, gets frequent updates, costs a fraction, and is super fun. I’m highly addicted
Having played both, Elite: Dangerous is a very different game.
Is it good! Yes.
Is it fun? Absolutely.
Does it have more merit than Star Citizen in many ways, while not being a predatory hellhole? Hell yeah.
But it falls short in a few things where Star Citizen delivers - most notably, immersion. That’s their strong suit. In Star Citizen, you can actually freely walk aboard your damn ship, you can visit glorious stations and entire cities, leaving your starship far behind. The world is more alive, cities are filled with NPCs, ads and neon screens are blasting around, you can ride a subway or hop into a bar with friends! And then you walk your friends aboard your ship, and you have a cozy night at the kitchen - talking, sharing life stories, and having fun. The game feels very…real in this respect, and the social life you get there is a major part of the experience.
Perhaps, this is exactly how it extorted so much money from the gamers: making them feel at home, build social ties to the game, and then making them feel they can’t progress and do more and be a worthy part of this society without putting in hundreds and thousands of dollars. Gotta admit - they almost had me, too, to spend $400 on a cargo vessel, and that’s almost my monthly income. Common sense took over, though, as I saw people throwing their life savings into the game.
Elite is no where near 10% of what start citizen has promised to eventually produce. Elite is a better game, yes, but to say it’s “90% of Star Citizen” is downright delusional.
There is a playable MMO with an active playerbase: https://mmo-population.com/game/star-citizen
CIG shares stats from which you can derives their average concurrency; it’s about 5,000 average for 2025. So somewhere ranked #150-200 in the Steam concurrency rankings (which often exclude MMOs and/or 1st party launchers).