Derek Smart - Interstellar Citizens.
"Previously, in Oct 2012, Chris Roberts of Wing Commander fame, having left the industry back in the 90s for Hollywood, announced Star Citizen via Kickstarter. He was looking to raise $500K, but ended up with $2.1m on Kickstarter. More on this later. The original pitch was for a game that blended Wing Commander with Privateer, and dose of Freelancer, three of his previous games. And we were all on-board with that; me to the tune of $250 in funding. The delivery schedule was Nov 2014. We’re still waiting.

As of this writing, the game’s crowd-funding has not only ballooned to an unprecedented $85m, but so has the scope. The entire bulk of the crowd-funding, after sailing past that initial $2.1m Kickstarter funding, was in selling futures. No seriously, hear me out. Someone figured out that the hype around this game was so huge, that they may as well start selling ice to Eskimos. And they did just that.

Not that I’m saying there’s anything wrong with that; after all, that’s what raising funds for a project is about: selling. But it’s a double-edged sword. And usually, if you’re dealing with seasoned and experienced investors, or even publishers, if they’re not convinced or even interested, you’re not getting the money. And if you do get it, that money comes with strings - usually pretty long and taut strings. With crowd-funding, no such strings exist, and you can pretty much do what you want. And that’s usually where trouble starts.

So, they are making concept art for ships, some were actual models, and then selling them at a premium. People keep buying them. This, despite the fact that there is still no “game” to play them with. In short, the result is that you have ships you’ve bought, with no game to play them with."