A group of Star Citizen players get a $45,000 refund
This is some kind of record, right? A Star Citizen player has got a $45,000 refund after his or her guild decided they were fed up with waiting and being led by the nose.
Update
Following the story of a Star Citizen guild having received a $45,000 refund, Arstechnica contacted Cloud Imperium Games to ask the studio about the matter. In response, the company’s spokesman Dave Swofford said that a lot of the information in the Reddit post was fabricated. He claims that the guild’s account was issued a refund of $330, and not $45,000 – the company hasn’t even logged such a request – and that the refund was handled “in a timely fashion" with “no extended debate over whether we should”.
Original story
This is probably the highest refund in gaming history. A Star Citizen player managed to get $45,000 refunded for three Completionist packages ($15,000 each) that he or she had bought together with his or her guild. However, getting that was by no means a piece of cake. The player (they preferred to stay anonymous) took it to Reddit to tell their story and provide some evidence (in forms of pictures: here, here and here, and a video) to add substance to the story. They wrote:
It was a nightmare getting the refund, we are a commercial org and pooled the money to buy the completionist packages, and used a corporate card to buy them, so we had major issues with getting refunded to the same card, paypal and then providing ID. Total it took about 5 weeks to get sorted. A lot of time was spent trying to explain the situation to some woman called “Schala” and just getting the same answers copied and pasted backwards and forwards, they definitely try to delay you as much as possible in the hope you'll forget or give up.
This may just be a small bump on the road to another million, but it also shows that players begin to lose faith in Star Citizen. Chris Robert’s game is a real crowdfunding giant, having now gathered almost $160 million from well over 1,8 million players. However, more and more people are getting impatient with the seemingly endless development process and can’t shake the feeling of being led by the nose. The guild that got the big refund decided they couldn’t wait any longer for Star Citizen as so many great games pass them by and even claimed to know of “evidence of Chirs Roberts blatantly lying”. If other backers feel the same way, this may not be the last refund that Cloud Imperium Games has to issue.
