Roberts Responds to Pay-to-Win Concerns After Currency Cap Removed

Star Citizen's Chris Roberts has taken to the official forums in defense of the removal of the in-game currency cap. After the United Earth Credits cap was lifted (previously players could accumulate 150k UEC), players began to raise concerns that "if the amount of money a player could amass before launch equals (number of days until launch x 25k daily total, there are players who..[may] be able to outright control the economy", according to one Reddit user. 

Further, Redditor DarraignTheSane opined:

[O]r [they will] set the bar for inflation so incredibly high that no new players will be able to buy virtual toilet paper to wipe their virtual ass on their virtual toilets provided they have one. Without either a cap on UEC or active money sinks in the game, the economy is fucked right out of the gate. Did no one over at CIG think about this before removing the cap?

As a result of the outcry, Roberts wrote:

Putting aside the puzzle of why some people don’t have a problem with stockpiling ships or items but a player having more than 150,000 UEC is game breaking, I think it may be useful to revisit Star Citizen’s economic model.

There will always be some players that have more than others, regardless of whether they’ve spent more or played more, because people start at different times and play at different paces. This is the nature of persistent MMOs. Star Citizen isn’t some race to the top; it’s not like Highlander where “There can only be one!” It is an open-ended Persistent Universe Sandbox that doesn’t have an end game or a specific win-state. We are building it to cater to players of all skill levels, that prefer PvE or PvP, that like to play solo or in a group or a large organization, that want to pursue various professions, some peaceful and some combat orientated. This is the core philosophy of Star Citizen; there isn’t one path, nor is there one way to have fun.

You can read Roberts' full statement on the Star Citizen site as part of the latest Letter from the Chairman.

You can also hear more from Chris Roberts at 32:40 in the video below.