This "game" is in Alpha right? Been in development since 2012.
The bigger question is. Why is this even being operated as an actual game? Why are their even accounts to ban. How can you cheat on something that isn't released yet and undergoing testing and bug fixes.
The bigger question is. Why is this even being operated as an actual game?
Because the longer they call it an "alpha" the longer they can try to rake in more kickstarter money and the longer they can use "it's an alpha" to excuse game breaking bugs.
The moment they hit 1.0, they become officially answerable to their customers for having a playable game.
Why do that when you/re perpetually raking in the money anyway.
Seriously...whether it ever actually hits 1.0 or not, making the microtransactions/real money purchases live in a product that they "insist" isn't a game yet, is just shady as fuck.
I was surprised with how many people were watching Star Citizen streams on Twitch. I don't know if there was some sort of event on or something, but it was near the top of the Twitch leaderboards.
I was one of the suckers that bought the game in the initial campaign and I haven't played it yet. It looks like there might actually be enough content now to be worth checking out, but I'm not convinced it's worth pushing past the jank to play when there are so many amazing, polished games to play instead. I'll wait until I hear it's reasonably stable. (Which it clearly isn't, yet; the streamer I briefly tuned into the other day was saying that he can't complete a quest line the intended way because of a game-breaking bug that's been around for months.)
Tbf, when I played I didn't feel jank. It was however abrupt and sudden when things went wrong, typically hard disconnects or crashes. Game was empty though, it felt like a roleplay game more then anything, but that was like 2 years ago so who knows.
They're ramping up to get to 1.0 so I wouldn't be surprised to see more of this as we get closer. They can't be too harsh though because they still need people to test and find these kinds of exploits, they probably just banned the people that accumulated tons and tons of money doing it.
That is, according to the post on their forums, exactly what they did. The people who were clearly just doing it to grind money as fast as possible without regard for the effects it had on the servers and without attempting to report the results of this "testing" (because they weren't testing, or even playing arguably) got a suspension, not a perma ban.