What's your analysis on the validity of the claim? The article doesn't read well or make the authors look well educated on the matter. Reads more like empty click bait. The people casting stones at SC are using the typical DS obfuscated BS that he's infamous for. Basically, the votes for SC in this poll are coming from misguided folks.
I think that the article is correct in comparing the project to No Man's Sky, and that in fact the scale of the fallout for this project is likely to be even worse because of all the backer money tied to it. Of course, because of the unique funding model, the fallout will take a different form.
Take the Holiday Livestream from a few days ago as an example. It was one of the most embarrassing displays I have ever seen from a "AAA" videogame developer. And I don't just mean in terms of all the technical shortcomings, the garish costumes, the extended periods of dead air, the cringeworthy dialogue and tedious interviews. I mean in terms of the disconnect between what the user base expected and what CIG delivered.
What occurred was a rolling cascade of expectation that began earlier in the year in the lead up to Gamescom. At the time, people had a lot of questions about what direction the game was taking. The AtV's and RtV's were filled to the brim with minutia about character and ship models but light on information regarding actual gameplay for SC, not to mention the complete void of details on SQ42 . People in the community began to anticipate E3 and Gamescom for answers to many of these questions. Then news came out that CIG would be skipping E3 this year. So focus centered on Gamescom. Keep in mind, Gamescom is 8 months into the year, and during all that time people were hungry to see what CIG had in the oven.
Gamescom delivers with the 3.0 demo. But it also came with Chris's stated expectation that 3.0 would be ready by December 2016. In addition to this, no SQ42. But ok, maybe CIG is saving that for CitizenCon. So people start to defer their expectations for SQ42 to CitizenCon.
CitizenCon comes, and SQ42 is again a no show. People flew out from all over the country to what was ultimately a meager showing with a demo that was more or less a repeat of Gamescom but not as interesting. The backers were pissed off and disappointed. In order to mitigate the disappointment, CIG puts out a mini-doc showing that they were days away from completing the SQ42 Verticle Slice, but it just didn't come together in time. So now expectations are differed yet again, this time to the Anniversary Stream.
Anniversary Stream comes. No SQ42.
There is only one substantial stream left in the year, the Holiday Stream. The final deferral left. After that, it's another 8 month wait until the next Gamescom.
Minutes before going live, Chris puts out an email saying that the SQ42 VS is not only not going to be there, but that the entire demo has been scrapped entirely. Something that only a couple months earlier they said was days away is now gone (a repetition of what had happened with Star Marine at the start of the year). It also becomes evident that 3.0 is nowhere near ready, even though CIG's last word on the topic was the expected 2016 release. The bubble of expectation bursts, and is continuing to burst, all over the reddit and official forum. The backers are utterly gobsmacked. It's worth noting that the show was not substantially worse than the Anniversary stream in terms of content, but because of the deferred expectations cascade, the fallout has been an order of magnitude larger.
This is what I mean when I say that Star Citizen flopping might take a form that is different from NMS. For NMS, a game was released which forced people to reconcile the reality of the product with the expectations that were built up beforehand. For SC, a game may or may not come out in 2017, but they are dependent on their backers continuing to believe in the dream to stay afloat, and this belief is becoming more precarious and disconnected as time goes on. You can only defer expectations for so long.