The Invictus Launch Week free-fly event of Star Citizen is usually meant to be a time of celebration; a way to try out ships and see newly released vehicles. However, some items introduced to the game’s cash shop during the event have incited some intense fury from even the game’s most invested players as accusations of pay-to-win and predatory practices fly across the game’s forums and social media.

The firestorm was ignited with the introduction of blades, a purchasable piece of ship equipment that directly improves the speed or the maneuverability of specific internet spaceships at the cost of a reduction in another part of a ship’s performance. These items are being sold in the cash shop for between $15 and $35 depending on the ship, though CIG does point out that they will be available for in-game credits this summer.

On top of these ship blades, the cash shop is now also offering individual ship components for real-world money, including bomb racks, weapon kits, and cargo modules, some of which include in-game insurance. We point out here that these cash shop components don’t specify their availability for in-game credits in their item descriptions at the time of this writing.

Players are absolutely incensed as a result of these new shop offerings. The official post announcing blades currently has over 4,300 downvote reaction emojis (and nearly 2,800 clown reactions), and the official forums are alight with multiple threads that call blades pay-to-win, worry that these cash items are just the start of deeper nickel-and-diming, and calling the monetization predatory and likely to push away new players.

“My dudes, one of the promises of Star Citizen was that it would never go pay-to-win,” writes a backer of 13 years and $5K in total spending. “I thought you wouldn’t do anything stupider than what happened with the ATLS. You’ve managed to break through the unobtainum floor with that weapons-grade stupidity. Congratulations.”

Fans aren’t letting the sunny announcements about Invictus on Twitter get away without open revolt as fans attack the studio over “P2W” ship blades, and fans on Reddit are also expressing alarm at the item offerings.

This is, of course, not the first time that Star Citizen has pushed the patience of long-suffering backers of the alpha title. One of the most recent kerfuffles was related to the ATLS loader vehicle, which players categorized as a start of P2W shenanigans since it was capable of doing separately what required two players to do, and we’ve previously chronicled CIG’s openly aggressive treatment of old backers. How this latest behavior will affect wider sales won’t be an answered question for a little while, but it has applied another wound to the studio’s overall credibility.

Great job screwing that up pic.twitter.com/kz2NnwFaWv

— Kevin (@KevinMckoolio) May 15, 2025

sources: official site, official forums (1, 2, 3, 4), Reddit (1, 2), Imgur (1, 2), Twitter, cheers J3PT and Felix! Longtime MMORPG gamers will know that Star Citizen was originally Kickstarted for over $2M back in 2012 with a planned launch for 2014. As of 2025, it still lingers in an incomplete but playable alpha, having raised over $800M from gamers over years of continuing crowdfunding and sales of in-game ships and other assets. It is currently the highest-crowdfunded video game ever and has endured both indefatigable loyalty from advocates and immense skepticism from critics. A co-developed single-player title, Squadron 42, has also been repeatedly delayed.