Star Citizen

The good old days of the Original Backers (tm). They told me all about it! Back in those days, all you could do was look at your real-money purchased ships in a hangar. They still threw all their money at it back then. Some people just want to believe Chris Roberts sooo badly that they're willing to give their paychecks to Chris so that he can buy another yacht!

I've also heard of the ponzi scheme that is the gray market ship sales. People literally "invest" into time-limited ships and paintjobs and LTI (lifetime insurance) packages, and then resell them for a profit to other suckers believers, which is money that they then promptly "invest" into another ship.

The suckers who pay a $2000 markup on a $1000 digital ship are then super thankful that someone did them a "huge favor" because that ship will be "worth a lot" when the game finally releases, which they've convinced themselves is when money will finally become "extremely hard to get" in-game, where it will take "months" to grind for ships and where ship claims and insurance will be super expensive. So they're simply buying these extremely buggy digital ships (with pretty colors!) in preparation for that day! "It's an investment!"

It's like some kind of pyramid scheme cult of believers and grifters.

Your comment reminded me of Shroud of the Avatar, Richard Garriot''s attempt to get back into online games after Ultima. People bought castles for thousands and thousands, before the game even launched.

There was a YouTube video posted recently of someone logging in to see how it was, years later. Empty world, huge castles and homes everywhere. A ghost town of some of the most expensive real estate online. It never took off, but is still being updated. A truly sad story. A cautionary one as well.