The criticism from the fans has helped, announced today Star Citizen Chef Chris Roberts that the CitizenCon Stream will be free for supporters.
The announcement that the backer / supporter of Star Citizen for the previously free stream of the CitizenCon should pay, caused an outcry on social media. Whether on Facebook, Twitter or Reddit, the fans were angry. Nobody who already supported Star Citizen with money to get access to developers & Co was willing to pay extra to see the developers with the latest announcements at CitizenCon.
Star Citizen - developer statement
Fortunately, the negative PR caused enough waves and so had to be today Chris Roberts row back with the statement and announce that the stream will be free for backers.
UPDATE:
After sleeping on this, I am going to chalk this one up to experience.
We're going to cut back on the live streaming crew / costs but have both stages streamed for anyone with a Star Citizen user account.
Star Citizen Content Creators are welcome to rebroadcast our stream live.
If you would like to support the additional costs of streaming all the presentations, you can support the show by purchasing the CitizenCon digital goodies package (Imperators still get this as their October flair)
Thanks to the restreams, all other fans should also enjoy it. Only one question arises: Do you really have to save on production because of the loss of income from the unsold tickets?
Roberts' statement reads almost as if one were talking about amounts in the millions and not of 10,000 - 30,000 euros that can be saved in production. Some alienated fans reacted quite sarcastically "Who knows if he hadn't hired Steven Spielberg to direct the stream".
So apparently a lot of ships still have to be sold to pay for all of this.