It's not even a half built game, it's pre-alpha, in development, "early access". Almost everyone who pledged money should know that.
Fans who donated $77M did so to support the development of the game, with the hope that it would one day be complete and live up to their expectations.
People who bought some of the more expensive ships didn't do it just to get the ship. It's like those expensive dinners where you pay $250 per plate. It's not worth that much money of course, but you're doing it to support a cause (whatever it may be).
Also, an interesting note: CIG employs over 300 people working on Star Citizen at the moment. They also publish monthly development status reports which are interesting to read.
Disclaimer: I pledged $60 during the kickstarter and have closely followed the development of the game.
That's precisely why I have been skipping entries pointing to Wired for a good while now, and haven't looked back ever since. Their articles are worth next to nothing.
The article gives Chris Roberts, the game, and the company a fair shake. It explains who Chris Roberts is, his track record as a game developer, and what he is trying to achieve. The article also explains who has given the money, why they have given it, and what they have received in exchange for it.
It lets an active enthusiastic supporter explain the state of the game play and provides company produced promotional materials to accompany the article. The only suggestion of a harsh judgement is that the success of funding might be fuelling feature creep and delaying shipment. At no time does it suggest there is a scam: the worst implication of the article is that some backers/fans may have unrealistic expectations of their role in the project.
So is the title linkbait? Not really because "this guy" and "buggy half built game" have no context without reading the article. And the referent for "this guy" comes after the description of the game...and the embedded primary trailer.
Disclaimer: I looked it with my eyes outside the circle of wagons.
As someone who has spent a pretty significant amount of money (not compared to some, mind you, but pretty far up there) and is heavily involved in following the game's development progress, I have two things to say that I don't think almost any article correctly addresses (this one touches on the first, but doesn't really lean enough into the point and it's buried towards the end of the article):
1) Most fans who are dropping more than about ~$100 have no expectation that the money they are spending on ships is going to be equivalent to the effort that they would have spent in game on acquiring said ship. Most of those fans would probably really rather have that conversion ratio be extremely "poor" just because if it isn't, then the game is pay to win, and absolutely not a single lick of us want the game to be pay to win. I bought a Constellation, which is kind of an in-universe equivalent to the Millenium Falcon. Since it's a multi-crew ship, I would expect it to be about equivalent to when someone gets access to player housing in a MMO. If it takes a player who hasn't dropped a dime more than the basic purchase fee of the game at launch much more than 15 to 20 hours of effort including setbacks to get into one of their own, I am going to be really, really worried about the long term prospects of the game.
2) Star Citizen has had the single most open development of any major title ever. Short of indie developers who live-stream the programming of their entire game, I don't know anything that comes close. If nothing else comes out of it, we've all purchased some of the most interesting inside-baseball content on video game production ever.
I read the clickbait title and thought "Good for you, Toady, Dwarf Fortress really does rock" and divided the $77e6 by the $50 I sent him to get 1.5M players which seemed a bit high but semi-believable?
Better Title: Fans have willingly dropped $77M on this guy's buggy, half-built game that is in pre-alpha and all backers were made aware that the game would not be released anytime soon.
It's not even a half built game, it's pre-alpha, in development, "early access". Almost everyone who pledged money should know that.
Fans who donated $77M did so to support the development of the game, with the hope that it would one day be complete and live up to their expectations.
People who bought some of the more expensive ships didn't do it just to get the ship. It's like those expensive dinners where you pay $250 per plate. It's not worth that much money of course, but you're doing it to support a cause (whatever it may be).
Also, an interesting note: CIG employs over 300 people working on Star Citizen at the moment. They also publish monthly development status reports which are interesting to read.
Disclaimer: I pledged $60 during the kickstarter and have closely followed the development of the game.