Star Citizen's single-player component is in the 'closing stages' of development according to Chris Roberts, as rumours of another Squadron 42 delay circulate
I know how your buddy felt. When I got a 970, I was worried that you'd need at least a 980ti to play Star Citizen well at 1080p. Luckily I've never spent a dime on the game so don't have any strong feelings about how development has been going. Just see a news headline every couple months
Whenever I was reading threads on Reddit (usually when there was yet another free weekend that was supposed to lure outsiders like myself to blow their cash on SC), there were those fanboys who would write stuff like "No no, they're right on track and the game is already more than we were hoping for. You haters just don't get it".
I always used to wonder whether they actually believed that, when the game was at least five years overdue already and Chris Roberts just kept milking those poor suckers.
"As we get imminently closer to launch—and I say that in game development language—it's very hard to keep it under wraps"
"As we get" is not "we are". He is saying that in some indeterminate future where they are getting closer to launch, they will say more.
By not having more to say, the implication is that they are not close. They also soft-cancelled the 2026 release estimate, and did not put forward a new one. If they were anywhere near getting it done, they'd be talking which quarter of 2027 by now.
They've been pretty quiet about it in general, I'm not sure if no news about it confirms a "soft cancel" as you put it. Every time they mention it they reconfirm it but it's probably not as visible outside the community.
Rockstar and GTA6, or Valve and the new steam hardware are probably good examples of many companies choosing not to say anything until the answer is more than "work continues".
Elite dangerous is 90% of star citizen with 1% of the bugs, and it's already released, gets frequent updates, costs a fraction, and is super fun. I'm highly addicted
Having played both, Elite: Dangerous is a very different game.
Is it good! Yes.
Is it fun? Absolutely.
Does it have more merit than Star Citizen in many ways, while not being a predatory hellhole? Hell yeah.
But it falls short in a few things where Star Citizen delivers - most notably, immersion. That's their strong suit. In Star Citizen, you can actually freely walk aboard your damn ship, you can visit glorious stations and entire cities, leaving your starship far behind. The world is more alive, cities are filled with NPCs, ads and neon screens are blasting around, you can ride a subway or hop into a bar with friends! And then you walk your friends aboard your ship, and you have a cozy night at the kitchen - talking, sharing life stories, and having fun. The game feels very...real in this respect, and the social life you get there is a major part of the experience.
Perhaps, this is exactly how it extorted so much money from the gamers: making them feel at home, build social ties to the game, and then making them feel they can't progress and do more and be a worthy part of this society without putting in hundreds and thousands of dollars. Gotta admit - they almost had me, too, to spend $400 on a cargo vessel, and that was almost my monthly income at the time. Common sense took over, though, as I saw people throwing their life savings into the game.
Elite is no where near 10% of what start citizen has promised to eventually produce. Elite is a better game, yes, but to say it's "90% of Star Citizen" is downright delusional.
'Promised to eventually produce..' it hasn't even reached version 1 yet. Elite gave me almost everything I wanted out of Star Citizen, and it definitely has the potential to get those extra things I'm missing.
CIG shares stats from which you can derives their average concurrency; it's about 5,000 average for 2025. So somewhere ranked #150-200 in the Steam concurrency rankings (which often exclude MMOs and/or 1st party launchers).
This fucking game is approaching TWO decades of development... I do gotta hand it to the devs, they know how to keep suckers.. I mean, players on the hook for a long time and keep the fomo alive with their outrageous pledge pricing model. They must've been excellent dairy farmers in past lives..
Oh did you hear closing stages of development... No no no, you misunderstand, I was talking about the closing stages of the 'pre-alpha test build' development, we still need more money support to finish the project.
Sorry, my childhood train autism demands I correct you.
Thomas.
Now then... fortunately, there does not appear to be a Thomas replacement/model swap for the AV. There is one mod that replaces the Caliburn car with Thomas, and another that replaces the Ural truck, but, for now, the skies are safe.
Also I don't think those mod do the whole sound track thing.
... Was his name localized to Tomas for Spanish speaking regions... or are you doing a Mandella Effect bit?
Um, no, I've not been to that museum, does sound awesome, but my (nearly 100% certainly also autistic) grandpa had an entire, fully functional landscape / diorama / train track kit, that he spent like two decades slowly building... it was the size of roughly two queen mattresses, end to end.
I also did go to some train museums / exhibits up in the PNW, the cascades, they've kept an old school steam engine working on I think an old rail line for logging, up around snoqualmie, it'll choo-choo you around a nice little relaxing loop.
Like, I am entirely unironically the stereotype of 'loved trains waaaay too much as a kid = autism', and it literally runs in family, hahah!
I'm pretending he had nonunion latino equivalent like Flanders just roll with it
Next time I'm up near snoqualmie (got some family in Puyallup no don't try to say it) I might take that train. It sounds fun. We've got the Napa Wine Train here but that's more of a drinking + trains day.
Many years ago, I was this close to buying this game because they were saying that the single player campaign was almost ready. I am glad I didn't. Now, I wouldn't give a single cent to this guy.
I actually did buy in and don't regret it, but I definitely had to make sure my expectations were in the right place. My rule for buying all games, early access included, is only buying for what's in a game now, never on promises or plans. Star Citizen as it is now is a very expansive sandbox sim with a lot of unique tech and mechanics already functional, but I'd hesitate to recommend it to anyone without massive caveats.
Yeah, I get it. I was expecting a complete single player game, at the latest, within a year. But I do understand people who willingly give money to them knowing exactly what they are paying for. It is an interesting concept worth taking a risk for.
So... they did more mocap / voice recording / whatever this is called... Hamill and Oldman gave their initial performances to be digitized, in October of 2015.
I think that if you go with all the celeb mocap sessions, they added more celebs and had finished 'shooting' by around 2018.
So... this is like... a movie that's been in production hell for a decade. Thats... another way you can try to look at this. You'll be watching performances initially made over a decade ago.
Well, maybe we'll get another animated space action short out of it, which is entertaining in it's own right. I wouldn't hold my breath for an actual release.
Frankly I'm not too revolted by the ever-shifting deadlines, if people are paying for it and enjoying what they have it's all good by me.
What boggles my mind is how bland you can make a universe with such funding. I watch the trailers, and it's a long string of cringeworthy tired militaristic tropes, alien bad guys that look so generic it's not even funny.... a dystopian world ran by companies, but not in a self-aware/anticapitalist way...
I don't want to rub it in the faces of the folk who spent so much money on space nfts but I'm having a fuckton of fun in No mans sky. Just overthrew (okay saved from sentinels then got elected but overthrew is more fun) my first settlement! Upgrading my office and the community toilets whenever I find them, my settlement has poisoned air and water
I tried no man's sky again a few months ago but didnt give it more than an hour before getting bored and giving up. Reading that gives me regret and I might need to give it another push. Like medically need. Doctors would recommend.
give it more than an hour. i made up the community toilets part. and thus far i've only been playing on single player because my multiplayer online experiences over the last few decades have been well... to sum them up in a word "yeesh" and that's just my half of it.
The game doesn't even really start until you reach the anomaly, that's where the real research tree is. Or maybe there's a deeper tree I haven't found. I hadn't found the anomaly by an hour into the game, I think I was still repairing my first ship.
I'm currently flying around in a solar sailer because those are cool, a mid sized cargo vessel/corvette I designed myself, and this big ass-frigate I guess it's more of a carrier or fridge! That's the word the game uses. It's scratching the subnautica itch (or rather I used subnautica to scratch the itch while I waited to buy this. They're both great games) and the old 90s xwing/tie fighter and privateer itch. What I wouldn't give for a modern privateer OH WAIT
Edit that fridge should be freighter but fuck it that ship is a fridge
Tried it on a free weekend just last year and it was awful. UI was awful. Performance was bad. Ran into various bugs. Clipping through floors. Every single thing, and I mean everything, is tedious to the point of comedy. No guidance whatsoever for how to do anything. Had to endlessly hop between the game and a browser to figure out how to do anything at all.
For the number of years (decades?) it's been in development, the thing was a joke.
The scope was impressive and everything looked really pretty. But I couldn't find a way to actually enjoy any of it.
And I can't even remember for sure but I would have to say it's close to 10 years ago now that I had a friend and him and I used to play Eve online we started out with dust 514. He was incredibly into Star citizen put a lot of money towards the game over the years. I heard at one point in time he actually won the lottery and spent a lot of money on the game. He ended up committing suicide. It's heartwarming to know that even 10 years past that point this game is still not anywhere near finished.
66 Comments
Schmuppes@lemmy.today · 147 pts · 84d
I still chuckle when I think about my buddy getting himself the new GTX 970 so his rig would be ready for the upcoming release of Star Citizen.
Melobol@lemmy.ml · 26 pts · 84d
I got my Star citizen with a hundle for AMD radeon r7... Yep. Totally game ready.
commander@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 83d
I know how your buddy felt. When I got a 970, I was worried that you'd need at least a 980ti to play Star Citizen well at 1080p. Luckily I've never spent a dime on the game so don't have any strong feelings about how development has been going. Just see a news headline every couple months
Schmuppes@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 83d
Whenever I was reading threads on Reddit (usually when there was yet another free weekend that was supposed to lure outsiders like myself to blow their cash on SC), there were those fanboys who would write stuff like "No no, they're right on track and the game is already more than we were hoping for. You haters just don't get it".
I always used to wonder whether they actually believed that, when the game was at least five years overdue already and Chris Roberts just kept milking those poor suckers.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 83d
Or whether you found Chris Roberts himself
BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz · 6 pts · 84d
Oh this made me chuckle too
Deestan@lemmy.world · 66 pts · 84d
The actual statement has too many qualifiers:
"As we get imminently closer to launch—and I say that in game development language—it's very hard to keep it under wraps"
"As we get" is not "we are". He is saying that in some indeterminate future where they are getting closer to launch, they will say more.
By not having more to say, the implication is that they are not close. They also soft-cancelled the 2026 release estimate, and did not put forward a new one. If they were anywhere near getting it done, they'd be talking which quarter of 2027 by now.
Nora@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 26 pts · 84d
I remember being so excited for the then upcoming 2014 release...
fartographer@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 84d
They still have some time to make it before the late last moments of the quarter for a year of some number.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 83d
I got so hyped for the seriously any day now you dudes 1985 release
osprior@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 84d
When did they soft cancel the 2026 release?
Deestan@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 84d
"Soft cancel" as in stopped talking about it long ago and dodging questions about it.
osprior@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 83d
They've been pretty quiet about it in general, I'm not sure if no news about it confirms a "soft cancel" as you put it. Every time they mention it they reconfirm it but it's probably not as visible outside the community.
Rockstar and GTA6, or Valve and the new steam hardware are probably good examples of many companies choosing not to say anything until the answer is more than "work continues".
shittydwarf@piefed.ca · 43 pts · 84d
I mean.. this shit was funny YEARS ago.. I can't believe they're still able to milk it
Edit: if someone did eventually make a star citizen game one day I would love to play it
luthis@lemmy.nz · 12 pts · 83d
Elite dangerous is 90% of star citizen with 1% of the bugs, and it's already released, gets frequent updates, costs a fraction, and is super fun. I'm highly addicted
Allero@lemmy.today · 20 pts · 83d
Having played both, Elite: Dangerous is a very different game.
Is it good! Yes.
Is it fun? Absolutely.
Does it have more merit than Star Citizen in many ways, while not being a predatory hellhole? Hell yeah.
But it falls short in a few things where Star Citizen delivers - most notably, immersion. That's their strong suit. In Star Citizen, you can actually freely walk aboard your damn ship, you can visit glorious stations and entire cities, leaving your starship far behind. The world is more alive, cities are filled with NPCs, ads and neon screens are blasting around, you can ride a subway or hop into a bar with friends! And then you walk your friends aboard your ship, and you have a cozy night at the kitchen - talking, sharing life stories, and having fun. The game feels very...real in this respect, and the social life you get there is a major part of the experience.
Perhaps, this is exactly how it extorted so much money from the gamers: making them feel at home, build social ties to the game, and then making them feel they can't progress and do more and be a worthy part of this society without putting in hundreds and thousands of dollars. Gotta admit - they almost had me, too, to spend $400 on a cargo vessel, and that was almost my monthly income at the time. Common sense took over, though, as I saw people throwing their life savings into the game.
luthis@lemmy.nz · 4 pts · 83d
This, unfortunately is true. But I hold out hope that fdev will eventually get those added into the game.
Allero@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 83d
Here's hoping!
Yggnar@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 83d
Elite is no where near 10% of what start citizen has promised to eventually produce. Elite is a better game, yes, but to say it's "90% of Star Citizen" is downright delusional.
luthis@lemmy.nz · 10 pts · 83d
'Promised to eventually produce..' it hasn't even reached version 1 yet. Elite gave me almost everything I wanted out of Star Citizen, and it definitely has the potential to get those extra things I'm missing.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 83d
I want to make a game about star citizen, except it's about getting money out of kickstarter not about space battles
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works · -1 pts · 84d
There is a playable MMO with an active playerbase: https://mmo-population.com/game/star-citizen
Agent_Karyo@piefed.world · 4 pts · 83d
CIG shares stats from which you can derives their average concurrency; it's about 5,000 average for 2025. So somewhere ranked #150-200 in the Steam concurrency rankings (which often exclude MMOs and/or 1st party launchers).
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 83d
Ooof. How is it comparing to Anarchy Online?
Soulphite@reddthat.com · 42 pts · 84d
This fucking game is approaching TWO decades of development... I do gotta hand it to the devs, they know how to keep suckers.. I mean, players on the hook for a long time and keep the fomo alive with their outrageous pledge pricing model. They must've been excellent dairy farmers in past lives..
SupraMario@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 84d
I grabbed it on sale for like $10, even for $10 it wasn't really worth it. So much broken shit, and then almost nothing to do.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 84d
the honest living farmer meme, but the crop is hopium
Noite_Etion@lemmy.world · 38 pts · 84d
Oh did you hear closing stages of development... No no no, you misunderstand, I was talking about the closing stages of the 'pre-alpha test build' development, we still need more
moneysupport to finish the project.thingsiplay@lemmy.ml · 26 pts · 84d
The 42 in Squadron 42 stands for the year 2042. Compared to Star Citizen, it's truly imminent to release.
fartographer@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 84d
Someone should patch Cyberpunk 2077 to include billboards for the upcoming release of Squadron 42.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 11 pts · 84d
Now that is a good idea for a gimmick mod.
Also... there are actually are mods that figured out how to make player flyable AVs. Its jank, but it ain't nothin.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 83d
...
I want to tomas the train the fuck out of those hank avs
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 83d
Sorry, my childhood train autism demands I correct you.
Thomas.
Now then... fortunately, there does not appear to be a Thomas replacement/model swap for the AV. There is one mod that replaces the Caliburn car with Thomas, and another that replaces the Ural truck, but, for now, the skies are safe.
Also I don't think those mod do the whole sound track thing.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 83d
no i meant tomas
what the kentucky fried fuck did they do to his glorious mustache? (｀∀´)Ψ
bee tee dubs have you been to the train museum out in sacramento? i don't even have the childhood train autism and it's fucking amazing.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 83d
... Was his name localized to Tomas for Spanish speaking regions... or are you doing a Mandella Effect bit?
Um, no, I've not been to that museum, does sound awesome, but my (nearly 100% certainly also autistic) grandpa had an entire, fully functional landscape / diorama / train track kit, that he spent like two decades slowly building... it was the size of roughly two queen mattresses, end to end.
I also did go to some train museums / exhibits up in the PNW, the cascades, they've kept an old school steam engine working on I think an old rail line for logging, up around snoqualmie, it'll choo-choo you around a nice little relaxing loop.
Like, I am entirely unironically the stereotype of 'loved trains waaaay too much as a kid = autism', and it literally runs in family, hahah!
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 83d
I'm pretending he had nonunion latino equivalent like Flanders just roll with it
Next time I'm up near snoqualmie (got some family in Puyallup no don't try to say it) I might take that train. It sounds fun. We've got the Napa Wine Train here but that's more of a drinking + trains day.
kureta@lemmy.ml · 24 pts · 84d
Many years ago, I was this close to buying this game because they were saying that the single player campaign was almost ready. I am glad I didn't. Now, I wouldn't give a single cent to this guy.
ericwdhs@discuss.online · 8 pts · 83d
I actually did buy in and don't regret it, but I definitely had to make sure my expectations were in the right place. My rule for buying all games, early access included, is only buying for what's in a game now, never on promises or plans. Star Citizen as it is now is a very expansive sandbox sim with a lot of unique tech and mechanics already functional, but I'd hesitate to recommend it to anyone without massive caveats.
kureta@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 83d
Yeah, I get it. I was expecting a complete single player game, at the latest, within a year. But I do understand people who willingly give money to them knowing exactly what they are paying for. It is an interesting concept worth taking a risk for.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 19 pts · 84d
So... they did more mocap / voice recording / whatever this is called... Hamill and Oldman gave their initial performances to be digitized, in October of 2015.
I think that if you go with all the celeb mocap sessions, they added more celebs and had finished 'shooting' by around 2018.
So... this is like... a movie that's been in production hell for a decade. Thats... another way you can try to look at this. You'll be watching performances initially made over a decade ago.
... assuming... this... comes out ... this year.
pno2nr@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 84d
They probably need another billion dollars.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 83d
My first golden battleship sank to the bottom of the swamp!
KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml · 14 pts · 83d
It's been in the closing stages for a decade.
MrNesser@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 84d
Even if it gets released in at the end of 2027, i won't touch it until a patch has been pushed to fix the inevitable issues that will pop up.
I assume this statement is about pushing investors for more money.
It's pure sunk cost fallacy at this point.
ulkesh@piefed.social · 11 pts · 84d
Summzashi@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 83d
I remember this was supposed to release in 2015
Aielman15@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 84d
Don't worry, the devs will crunch for a few days around release so that they can put out a new trailer with a new promised release date.
cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de · 6 pts · 84d
Well, maybe we'll get another animated space action short out of it, which is entertaining in it's own right. I wouldn't hold my breath for an actual release.
Hadriscus@jlai.lu · 6 pts · 83d
Frankly I'm not too revolted by the ever-shifting deadlines, if people are paying for it and enjoying what they have it's all good by me.
What boggles my mind is how bland you can make a universe with such funding. I watch the trailers, and it's a long string of cringeworthy tired militaristic tropes, alien bad guys that look so generic it's not even funny.... a dystopian world ran by companies, but not in a self-aware/anticapitalist way...
kurcatovium@piefed.social · 5 pts · 84d
Best vaporware ever!
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 83d
I don't want to rub it in the faces of the folk who spent so much money on space nfts but I'm having a fuckton of fun in No mans sky. Just overthrew (okay saved from sentinels then got elected but overthrew is more fun) my first settlement! Upgrading my office and the community toilets whenever I find them, my settlement has poisoned air and water
yermaw@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 83d
Is any of that stuff true?
I tried no man's sky again a few months ago but didnt give it more than an hour before getting bored and giving up. Reading that gives me regret and I might need to give it another push. Like medically need. Doctors would recommend.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 83d
give it more than an hour. i made up the community toilets part. and thus far i've only been playing on single player because my multiplayer online experiences over the last few decades have been well... to sum them up in a word "yeesh" and that's just my half of it.
The game doesn't even really start until you reach the anomaly, that's where the real research tree is. Or maybe there's a deeper tree I haven't found. I hadn't found the anomaly by an hour into the game, I think I was still repairing my first ship.
I'm currently flying around in a solar sailer because those are cool, a mid sized cargo vessel/corvette I designed myself, and this big ass-frigate I guess it's more of a carrier or fridge! That's the word the game uses. It's scratching the subnautica itch (or rather I used subnautica to scratch the itch while I waited to buy this. They're both great games) and the old 90s xwing/tie fighter and privateer itch. What I wouldn't give for a modern privateer OH WAIT
Edit that fridge should be freighter but fuck it that ship is a fridge
Etterra@discuss.online · 5 pts · 83d
Is it just me or does she look like Gillian Anderson?
Hadriscus@jlai.lu · 2 pts · 83d
Yea that's her. They got Luke Skywalker too, I forget the actor's name. And Gary Oldman !
Etterra@discuss.online · 1 pts · 81d
No you're thinking of Gillian. Gillian Anderson is a former adult entertainer best known for her role on Baywatch... and Playboy.
BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 83d
My first thought as well, def feels inspired
myrrh@ttrpg.network · 1 pts · 83d
oxideseven@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 83d
Sure it is.
gmask1@aussie.zone · 5 pts · 83d
That would mean they’re nearly ready to begin pre-alpha for the single player mode? Can’t be launching without SQ42 ship sales eh?
DarkFuture@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 82d
Tried it on a free weekend just last year and it was awful. UI was awful. Performance was bad. Ran into various bugs. Clipping through floors. Every single thing, and I mean everything, is tedious to the point of comedy. No guidance whatsoever for how to do anything. Had to endlessly hop between the game and a browser to figure out how to do anything at all.
For the number of years (decades?) it's been in development, the thing was a joke.
The scope was impressive and everything looked really pretty. But I couldn't find a way to actually enjoy any of it.
titanicx@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 83d
And I can't even remember for sure but I would have to say it's close to 10 years ago now that I had a friend and him and I used to play Eve online we started out with dust 514. He was incredibly into Star citizen put a lot of money towards the game over the years. I heard at one point in time he actually won the lottery and spent a lot of money on the game. He ended up committing suicide. It's heartwarming to know that even 10 years past that point this game is still not anywhere near finished.
Soulifix@piefed.world · 4 pts · 83d
BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz · 3 pts · 84d
Are these guys responsible for the iranian nuclear project as well?
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 83d
And earth's core cooling
sturmblast@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 82d