It's a company that has taken in hundreds if millions of dollars for something that they know will never materialize into an actual game.

We had a really confident businessman come into my rural college town 6 years ago with a big development plan that was going to revolutionize the downtown. He graduated from the local college 20 years ago and was supposedly some hot shot businessman in Miami now. He brought in all these local investors, signed agreements to purchase the land once the city gave him approval and grants, "purchased" a house and some other properties that were going to go along. He took up several city council meetings wherre he brought in his big design plans, feasibility studies, and everything else. But everytime he had to show he had the funds to get approval for development,he hemmed and hawwed and asked for an extension.

It turns out, he had made a similar pitch to quite a few other small towns. The house he "purchased" he actually was just renting, and then sub-renting it out while he was "out of town on business". He didn't put any of his own money in, relying instead in local businesses and landowners who signed him onto their deeds or gave him right to first refusal on their deliapadated properties. His 'feasibility studies" all came from a firm no one could find any actual information about. Fortunately no one really lost anything beyond a lot of time and legal fees backing out if his bad faith contracts, but it's established that the "developer" was really just a conman trying to grift the town. A scam.

Star Citizen is no different than any of the metaverse crypto scams from 4 years ago, it's just a bit more polished and at a grander scale. If you think that $800 million to develop a half-backed game that doesn't deliver on any of it's fundamental promoses isn't a scam, then i would love to pitch my riverfront development project to you when you have the time.