After 13 years and a surprising $800 million in backers’ funds, Star Citizen, probably the most bold area sim of all time, continues to languish in early entry.
The brainchild of Chris Roberts — greatest often known as the creator of the seminal Wing Commander sequence — Star Citizen was created to increase on concepts that did not discover their method into Freelancer, one other venture Roberts was engaged on earlier than the developer was acquired by Microsoft, and he departed. Launched in 2003, Freelancer centered on an open area sandbox that allowed gamers to carve out a residing buying and selling, mining, or looking bounties throughout 48 star methods. Whereas it was launched as a single-player recreation, Roberts initially deliberate to observe it up with a extra bold on-line model.
“My unique imaginative and prescient for Freelancer was to first launch a single participant recreation after which observe it up with a massively multiplayer model with a dynamic economic system and a world that reacted and tailored to the participant’s actions,” Roberts stated in a blog post. “I did not get an opportunity to ship this imaginative and prescient and finally whereas Freelancer was a great recreation, it fell wanting what I used to be aiming for.”
Virtually a decade later, Star Citizen grew to become the automobile for Roberts to execute on his unique imaginative and prescient for Freelancer. Within the intervening 13 years, the sport has been suffering from durations of radio silence from the builders, minimize options, and damaged guarantees, whereas additionally delivering a string of bold updates and universe-expanding (if generally half-baked) new content material. If Star Citizen ever delivers on its promise, it’s going to undoubtedly be one of many greatest area video games of all time… however can it ever fulfill its lofty ambitions?
A tumultuous historical past
After a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2012 that raised over $2.1 million, developer Cloud Imperium Video games (CIG) began releasing Star Citizen modules to provide gamers a style of the gameplay and options. The primary of those was the hanger module, which allowed gamers to stroll round exterior the ships they’d earned by pledging to the Kickstarter. CIG introduced they deliberate to launch a feature-complete model of the sport in November of 2014 (spoiler alert: they didn’t).
2014 did see the discharge of the Area Commander mode, which gave gamers their first actual style of sitting behind the sticks of Star Citizen’s ever-growing roster of ships. The module allowed backers to scoot round in races or tackle different gamers or AI ships in fight, and supplied a restricted handful of recreation modes to whet gamers’ palates.
The next yr, CIG dropped the primary iteration of the Persistent Universe module, which mixed earlier updates and have become the core of the early entry launch. It modeled a part of one of many recreation’s megacities and gave gamers an thought of what the ultimate model of the sport could appear to be. Finally, it will increase to mix in-ship and on-foot experiences and permit for expanded interactions between gamers. The Persistent Universe grew to become the main focus of growth and was the bedrock of the sport’s evolution.
On the identical time, CIG introduced they’d contracted a third-party studio, Illfonic, to construct a first-person shooter module that might ultimately mix seamlessly with Star Citizen’s core gameplay. Referred to as Star Marine, the venture was suffering from growth points and delays, and ultimately, the contract with Illfonic was cancelled, and growth was moved in-house. Initially deliberate as a 2015 launch, Star Marine did not see the sunshine of day till December of the next yr, and launched with out most of the initially promised options.
Updates adopted at a staccato tempo. 2017 noticed the addition of explorable planetary surfaces for the primary time, with character customization, mining, and the primary totally modeled planet and metropolis the following yr. Subsequent variations have added further planets, a status system, loot, and a bunch of different methods and options. However all through its growth, the sport has been haunted by the looming spectre of Squadron 42, a single-player element initially pitched as a tutorial that has spiraled into the realm of function bloat.
The Squadron 42 quagmire
The preliminary idea behind Squadron 42 was a tutorial section that might gently introduce gamers to the sport’s mechanics and feed them some in-game rewards upon completion. It has since morphed right into a full-blown, standalone recreation set within the Star Citizen universe, promising an entire single-player marketing campaign full with a forged of high-profile actors, together with Gary Oldman, Henry Cavill, Gillian Anderson, and plenty of others. Like the principle recreation, Squadron 42 guarantees to mix in-ship exploration and fight with FPS and different components.
Squadron 42 was initially slated for 2014, then bumped to 2016, earlier than being delayed indefinitely. Growth is being dealt with by a studio known as Foundry 42 below the supervision of Chris Roberts’ brother, Erin, and particulars have continued to drip out within the intervening years. The crew has launched plenty of teaser movies, in addition to a one-hour “vertical slice” of the sport from 2017 that confirmed off some exploration, FPS gunplay, and an extravehicular exercise (EVA) sequence the place the participant examines the wreck of a spaceship.
In 2020, CIG launched a sequence on its YouTube web page known as “The Briefing Room” which was set to discover varied features of Squadron 42. It was discontinued after airing a single episode.
The identical yr, whereas revealing a progress tracker and roadmap for each the principle recreation and Squadron 42, Chris Roberts stated “Squadron 42 will probably be executed when it’s executed, and won’t be launched simply to make a date, however as a substitute solely when all of the know-how and content material is completed, the sport is polished, and it performs nice. I’m not keen to compromise the event of a recreation I imagine in with all my coronary heart and soul.”
At CitizenCon 2023, the annual Star Citizen fan conference, CIG introduced that Squadron 42 was function full. Whereas plenty of followers and media shops assumed this meant that launch was imminent, a full yr later (at CitizenCon 2024), the corporate introduced that Squadron 42 wouldn’t release until some time in 2026.
The state of Star Citizen in 2025
Remarkably, Star Citizen manages to really feel precisely like what it’s: a recreation that is been in growth for 13 years and a recreation that is nonetheless in alpha.
It is extremely bold and in some ways, a outstanding feat. The depth of a few of its methods is beautiful; for instance, in case your character is wounded throughout fight, you could turn into injured and require medical consideration. As a substitute of a single well being bar, every of your physique elements has its personal pool of hit factors. Accidents to your legs could trigger you to limp. Arm accidents could lower melee injury or enhance weapon sway. To heal accidents, your character might want to spend time in an appropriately geared up facility like a hospital, and there is a full medical profession obtainable for gamers who need to chase their Gray’s Anatomy desires in area.
This is only one instance of the massive gameplay selection on supply within the present model of Star Citizen. The legacy of Freelancer’s methods is most evident within the profession paths obtainable. Gamers can select to be miners and extract priceless supplies from asteroids in area, planetside in specially-designed mining autos, or on foot with a handheld mining laser.
Or you could determine to reside the lifetime of a dealer, delivering commodities the place they’re most wanted (or desired), or an outlaw, haunting the fringes of society. You may as well mix profession paths by, for example, mining assets after which promoting them alongside a worthwhile commerce route, or making your mark buying and selling contraband.
There’s additionally bounty looking, salvage, racing, and plenty of different careers, most of that are buoyed by supporting missions and methods that make them totally viable for tens of hours of gameplay. The primary-person gameplay has additionally made a number of leaps each in sophistication and polish, and enhancements to gunplay, loot, and physics have made it almost as compelling because the area components. A number of floor autos can also be obtainable, starting from gravbikes and hovercycles to powered exosuits that appear to be development mechs.
With all that stated, the sport’s pre-release state can also be very evident at instances. Bugs are ubiquitous and vary from amusing to annoying to downright game-breaking. Gamers frequently encounter log-in points, infinite hundreds, and stock points. Unsurprisingly, for a recreation that is replete with a sprawling variety of methods and objects consistently interacting with one another, there are quite a few points, and patches usually introduce as many issues as they right, particularly when new options are launched.
There have additionally been plenty of troubling experiences in regards to the state of the sport’s growth and the well being of its developer, Cloud Imperium Video games. An Insider Gaming report from October of final yr revealed a studio in disaster: pushing its employees to crunch, shedding greater than 100 of its staff, and freezing wage will increase. Financial data from 2022 confirmed that the corporate had burned via greater than $637 million over the course of growth, at a fee averaging $106 million a yr between 2020 and 2022.
The report additionally detailed plenty of growth points, together with employees referring to the present engine as a Frankenstein of mismatched items that is onerous to work with at greatest. It additionally signifies points with Roberts’ administration type, the place he could introduce huge modifications each day that end in weeks of chaos because the studio tries to catch up.
To some extent, Roberts appears to be acutely aware of those points, at the least when it comes to playability. In a Letter from the Chairman revealed in December of final yr, he stated the main focus for 2025 can be squashing bugs and making the sport extra reliably playable.
“Our drive for playability surrounds three crucial areas – efficiency, stability, and content material,” Roberts stated. “The sentiment lots of you will have shared—and one we wholeheartedly agree with—is that if the present recreation, because it stands as we speak, ran easily with fewer obstacles and bugs, it will present an unparalleled expertise.”
Roberts has additionally indicated that server meshing — a function launched in an replace on the finish of final yr that permits a number of unbiased recreation servers to attach and work collectively seamlessly as in the event that they had been a single bigger server — was one of many final limitations to a full launch.
That stated, we have been harm earlier than. It is undoubtedly an vital step ahead on the tech facet, however after 13 years of ready, I will not be holding my breath for an imminent model 1.0. Whereas attainable, the percentages that Star Citizen will launch earlier than Squadron 42, at present slated for 2026, appear infinitesimal at greatest.
