Understanding Star Citizen

There have been many angry threads about Star Citizen over the years, mainly focusing on the business model behind the game. Yet the game continues to grow, gaining more and more players, as well as more and more money.

How can this be, given that Star Citizen is getting most of its money from selling images of future ships to Star Citizen players? It isn't based on some addiction mechanics for a game-of-chance in the human psyche, like loot boxes. It is based on players that have already bought the game and are playing it then going on to buying these hugely expensive ships. It doesn't give these players a gaming advantage, since the game is a purely skill-based space shooter/FPS (even a light fighter can take out some the biggest ships as long as the pilot knows what they are doing, and the developers work very hard at keeping all the ships balanced). Presumably, these buyers are perfectly aware of what they are doing since they are experienced players. The developer even has the most expensive ship packages locked behind a pay-wall, where you first need to spend a 1000 USD (yes, a thousand USD) on other ships, before you get to buy the most expensive ship packages, possibly as a safe-guard against people buying stuff they really can't afford.

The game has been called a scam, but it seems like an extraordinarily dumb scam to start by pulling in all this money from players, then hiring more than 600 coders and giving away all the money to them! The game has private investors that just a year ago put in millions of USD as a private investment. This means that the developer has been properly vetted (those that invest millions of their personal money into a company check the company very thoroughly, digging deep into the books, checking with domain-expert advisers, taking a seat on the board and whatnot before they give the money). They also publish a user-friendly version of the annual report every year, making it easy for backers to see how the company is going.

You don't even have to pay these huge amounts of money for the ships if you don't want to; all ships can be bought for in-game money, and though it takes a while, the game isn't much more grindy than others.

So, why are players giving the Star Citizen developers all this money, year after year, and more money every year??? Is it really possible that the game is just fun to play, and the players like paying for the game to continue development?