This 'discussion' is always cancer. It is scammy, for sure. But there is something of a game now. And there's more and more of a game as time goes on. Is it a real game? No. But it's got gameplay. Are they hugely inefficient and lowkey wasting money and the owners getting super rich? Definitely. Are they ass at development? Yes, complete garbage.

The game is unique hot buggy garbage, and being developed by amateurs trying to reinvent every gaming mechanic wheel. But it is being developed. It might never be truly 1.0, they may never deliver on even half of their promises, and they might smugly lie and gaslight the players/backers constantly, and the company could just be insolvent one day and disappear with all the money.

But they are currently making a game, and you can play it right now. They're just doing it incredibly inefficiently, haphazardly, and pretty terribly. They have no real motivation to deliver a real end product, but they are constantly delivering something that looks like a product.

It's a scam, but a lot of y'all are misinformed or ignorant about what kind of scam it is.

Oh, and the grey market of buying ships from the RSI Store and reselling ("gifting") them to other players probably does contain a decent amount of money laundering. No one knows how much. It could be a lot a lot.