Star Citizen historically has a bit of a reputation for its over-priced monetisation practices. Now, in an attempt to one-up itself, a brand new bundle has been released for Star Citizen, that costs more than the average annual salary in the UK.
In the past, Legatus bundles that have been released for Star Citizen have also been horrifyingly costly, the most expensive of which was valued at £25,000. The latest offering, "Legatus 2953", is on a whole new level of insanity, priced at approximately £46,000. Backers willing to pay out this princely sum will gain access to all 175 ships in Star Citizen. However, for comparison, the average full-time annual wage in the UK is currently around £34,000.
To be eligible to buy this Legatus bundle, players will actually have to fork over even more than the £46,000 needed to buy the DLC. Only players who have spent £1,000 on the game so far, and are therefore members of the exclusive Chairman's Club, can splash out on the expensive bundle.
It's absurd that developer Cloud Imperium is offering yet another even-more expensive bundle for players, particularly given how long Star Citizen has been in development and the total amount of money raised. With over £600 million raised so far, and more funds raised every day, Cloud Imperium shouldn't run out of money on Star Citizen's development anytime soon, which makes the reveal of the new Legatus bundle feel incredibly unnecessary.
Even if you could look past the package's ghastly price tag (which you can't), the prospect of paying real money to buy every ship in Star Citizen is fundamentally unattractive from a player's perspective. Genuinely, what is the point of buying every ship in the game? To remove one of the main progression elements from Star Citizen? What purpose does this even serve?
Say you were genuinely willing to hand over £46,000 for an unfinished video game: would you be satisfied if the game was actually already completed upon arrival and you couldn't progress any further? Because that's seemingly all that's on offer with the Legatus pack in Star Citizen: the ability to beat the game without even playing it.
It's hard to imagine that Cloud Imperium will sell many of the new Legatus DLC particularly compared to say, Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty DLC, which costs much less than £46,000 and is now one of the best-selling DLCs of all time.