That’s not an accurate comparison, The game breaking bugs in NMS on release were patched a day or two after release (I stupidly preorderd and experienced the hyperdrive blueprint issue). But the issue with NMS wasn’t really bugs, just over promises by the developers that didn’t match the final product. At least there was a few hundred hours of gameplay and complete gameplay loops.

Star Citizen, another game I stupidly preordered / Kickstarted (I’ma sucker for space games; kickstarted Elite Dangerous too) is a totally different kettle of fish. A decade later, there still isn’t a single, non-buggy / non-broken game loop in the entire game.

I so desperately want to like Star Citizen but for $600mil, having a few hours of “mucking about” with no real purpose nor way to achieve anything meaningful without experiencing migraine-inducing bugs, it’s pretty much unforgivable.

For the same money, I’ve been able to play Elite Dangerous for almost a decade and sink 1000s of hours, build a massive fleet of ships, and hang out with my buddies without screaming at the game. Sure, it’s shallower, but at least the loops are complete and the management were able to regularly make meaningful feature additions to the game over the years (although Odyssey was an utter shitshow at launch and took a year to patch into something stable and fun).