It will be surprising to some to hear that Star Citizen has a very active community of players reselling ships, known as the Grey Market. Ships originally purchased directly from Cloud Imperium Games, are being marked up and sold by third party. Only a small portion of the ships sold are actually playable in Arena Commander. Many are not even available viewing in a ship hangar. Yet there’s enough surplus demand that players are buying and trading these digital assets.
What’s Fueling the Grey Market?
There are two major factors contributing to the viability of the GM. CIG introduces new specialized ships through what is called a concept sale. This is where the ship being sold is still in the design phase. Some of the ship designs are further along than others when they’re introduced but none have been physically implemented in the game. They have however, reached a point where the physical design, role and technical implementation details are known – for the most part. At this juncture, a LIMITED duration sale is made available in the Pledge store.
These aren’t your run of the mill everyday ships in the SC universe. There are highly specialized ships suited for very specific roles and as such, player objectives. If this is a ship you want in your possession at the very start of the game, they only way to acquire it is by purchasing it during the concept sale. If you miss it, don’t want to pay cash for it or can’t afford the cash price, you will be able to earn/purchase the ship when the game launches using in game currency. However, we don’t know what the in-game prices will be or how long it will take to earn the amount necessary. So for a die hard enthusiast, purchasing their dream ship during a concept sale is appealing.
What happens if you missed the concept sale?? They don’t run long – typically 1 to 2 weeks. If you weren’t following the SC website, too busy, out of town, etc., that’s it. You’ve now missed your one and ONLY chance to purchase the ship for cash, directly from CIG. This is one of the major factors contributing to the GM.
The second contributor is the concept of Lifetime Insurance. Ships will be destroyed, that’s a fact of life in a space MMO. Anyone who plays with any gusto, no matter how calculated, will eventually lose a ship. Having insurance will replace the base model of the ship lost – not upgraded items or cargo. Players familiar EVE know that top tier insurance on a very expensive ship can be costly. We don’t know how much insurance will cost in SC, nor how long it will take to earn money in general. Therefore the idea of lifetime insurance sounds like an excellent option. Unfortunately, LTI was only initially available for ships purchased during the original Kickstarter campaign. Now it’s only available on ships offered via concept sales. Although CIG has made attempts at assuring the community that insurance will be an inconvenience not a major cash sink, some are not convinced.
Combine limited opportunity to purchase special ships, that also happen to have lifetime insurance and you have the major factors driving grey market selling. Another factor are ships being “manufactured” in limited numbers like the Vanduul Scythe, of which there will be only 1k of them made available. Its limited availability turns the Scythe into a collector’s item. And undoubtedly, there are people who spent money on a ship but later thought better of it. They can do a grey market sale to recoup their money instead of receiving an in store credit from CIG. I think these are the primary reasons that the grey market exists for SC assets.
Cloud Imperium Game’s Stance
Buying, trading or selling grey market is not against the game’s EULA. CIG has officially stated that they don’t have a problem with it. The one change they made to help protect users or limit scams, was to modify the gifting system so that an asset can only be gifted once. Other than that, they’re hands-off on the topic.
In some ways this side market benefits SC funding. More of the really expensive ships are likely purchased during the concept sale than might have otherwise. These speculators purchase now in the hopes that the value of the ship will increase once it’s no longer available. From what I saw when researching the topic, this tends to be true. All of the ships sales I looked at were priced higher than the original CIG concept sale listing. Many are 25% to 50% higher.
Is it Safe?
Like any purchase on the internet, let the buyer beware. The legitimacy of the sale rests with the reputation and reliability of the seller. There are SC ships available for purchase on EBay which has a built-in buyer’s protection program. Most of the others I saw were through PayPal which offers the same. Using these two outlets, it would appear to be relatively safe. But don’t risk what you can’t afford to flat out lose if you’re the victim of a scam.
The two sources I researched were EBay and the Star Citizen Trades sub on Reddit. SCT sales vary from the individual purchaser trying to do a single ship sale or trade, to stocked sellers with multiple ships, to megastores with a few dozen listings and brokers/middlemen who sell their services. From what I scanned, I didn’t see any threads from buyers claiming to have been scammed.
Buying into a Dream is Intoxicating
For those of us sitting in the engine car of the hype train, buying into the full potential – the dream of what Star Citizen could be, is intoxicating. How often do you get this much visibility, insight, opportunity to provide feedback and exert at least minor influence on your MMO of choice? Taking into account that a majority of the concept sales reflect ships that the backers voted into being via funding stretch goals - you asked for it, here it is and you can buy it now, is a hard urge to resist. Not to mention, that it continues to help fund the game you’re anxious to play. These are likely some of the things going through someone’s head when they purchase a concept sale ship in the first place and what motivates someone to buy grey market when they couldn’t for whatever reason, buy when CIG was selling the item directly.
Hopefully, people are using some level of self-control and not spending more they can afford. After all, no amount of wanting SC to be fabulous can make it so. Release dates for the first few models have slipped significantly and we know they’re tackling very difficult technology challenges. There’s a chance that SC won’t be all that we hope and you’ll have spent hundreds on assets for a game you no longer want to play. Keep that in mind when buying assets for an unreleased product.
That said, this is the only new MMO currently on my horizon. I hope this is going to be my next WOW, the only MMO to date that I played consistently for multiple years before taking the first break. The only MMO other than GW2 where I have more than one character at max level in top tier gear and max professions. My next long term MMO home with a strong horizontal game and crafting/trade economy to sustain my interest in the end game. I’m a backer. I’ve purchased concept ships. I’m a monthly subscriber. And now I add grey market buyer to the list.
Yeah, I purchased two ships whose concept sales I definitely would have participated in, had I been following the SC happenings during that time. Gaming gods help me. I’ve told myself that’s all I’m buying for cash. Done. I have to have something to want to buy and work toward in game. I have a couple of extra things that I’d really like to play with real life friends who won’t play MMOs because they don’t like games about killing. I’ve recently got them into the non-combat aspects of Don’t Starve Together and am making the pitch to join me in SC too. *smile*
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