I left out features of Merchant of the Skies that are not relevant for a comparison.
The fact is that after 12 years and ~$750M allegedly spent on development, the trading/hauling gameplay is more crude than a indie game developed by two people.
That they are “still developing” is irrelevant. It is not unreasonable to question where the money is going considering how crude the gameplay is (if it even exists as we can see from the journalism spaceship JPEG).
Because they’ve got about a million things to do. So yeah, it’s pretty basic gameplay right now. Nobody is denying that. But to reduce multiple engine switches, court enforced stop work orders, and assets in production to “they spent everything over a decade and all they have is a jpeg”, is just ridiculous.