Intention is a tough thing to judge. If someone involved in SC in the early years told me that they genuinely thought it was going to be a two or three year initial development cycle, then release and dlc/updates, I would believe them because that's what they were saying it was going to be - but then the feature creep kicked in, Roberts learned that he could sell non-existent ships for big money, and the whole economy of the game evolved as a result such that actually releasing it no longer makes sense for the company, so it was at some point after the kickstarter that it consciously became a scam.
Well it was always a scam, because they never intended to deliver basically anything they promised. But it wasn't that obvious back then
Intention is a tough thing to judge. If someone involved in SC in the early years told me that they genuinely thought it was going to be a two or three year initial development cycle, then release and dlc/updates, I would believe them because that's what they were saying it was going to be - but then the feature creep kicked in, Roberts learned that he could sell non-existent ships for big money, and the whole economy of the game evolved as a result such that actually releasing it no longer makes sense for the company, so it was at some point after the kickstarter that it consciously became a scam.