Yeah, we definitely should have been told sooner. Especially once Rockstar re-confirmed the release date in June 2026.
It is worth pointing out that the GTA VI release date was delayed twice. Originally it was set to release sometime in 2025 (announced in Dec 2023). In May 2025 they announced a delay with a release date of May 26, 2026. Then in November of 2025 they delayed again with a release date of Nov 19, 2026. I'm sure CIG was hoping for GTA VI to be delayed again.
Sounds like it's delayed until Summer of 2027, mostly blaming GTA 6.
They will at least open it up so that a small group of players can test it out, and it sounds like we'll get the official release date locked in soon after that:
We are allowing a small number of original backers and long-time Star Citizen content creators an opportunity to play Squadron 42 this October 9th and 10th. We’ll be making further announcements about our release plans during this time and a specific release date shortly afterwards.
Not really, the whole article is worth a read. Here's the next section (and there's a lot more after that):
Putting It Into Practice with Alpha 4.10
Our focus has been on the following core areas:
AI
Docking & Refuelling
Economy & General Exploits
First Hour Quality of Life
Freight Elevators
Hangars & ASOP
Inventory
Login & Connection Errors
Quantum Travel & Starmap
Ship Loss
Twice a week, QA, Production, Player Experience, and Community teams come together to look at the issues having the biggest impact on players. We weigh what we’re seeing internally against your Issue Council reports, looking at how often an issue is reported, how many players it affects, how long it’s been around, and how severely it impacts gameplay. We pull those factors together into what we call an “Impact Score,” which helps us decide what needs our attention most.
Your Issue Council reports play a significant role in that. In several cases, detailed reproduction steps, supporting information, and video evidence have helped us get from knowing something is broken to understanding why it’s broken - and that makes a huge difference for getting a fix.
With Alpha 4.10, we can start to see the results of that approach.
At the time of writing, Alpha 4.10 has reached 1,239 bug fixes submitted over its release cycle, compared with 295 in Alpha 4.9. Those numbers naturally vary depending on the size and scope of each patch, and 4.10 is a significantly larger release with more content, which means more issues to identify and resolve.
What matters more is the context here though. Of those fixes, 479 addressed bugs that were already present in Alpha 4.9 or earlier. That's a more useful measure of the progress we're making toward improving the existing Live experience, rather than simply counting issues discovered and fixed while developing new content.
We’ve also seen a significant improvement in client performance. Over the last few months, new content without corresponding performance improvements had contributed to a steady decline, with Instancing and Siege of Orison making that gap particularly apparent. That led to a coordinated effort across Engine, Physics, AI, Gameplay, Rendering, and Content to address some of the worst performance offenders.
Across all hardware configurations, measured in equally populated Landing Zones between Alpha 4.9 and Alpha 4.10, average client FPS has improved by 15.5%. Your next Lorville run should show a noticeable improvement!
I jumped in already. It was actually running far better than I was expecting. I went straight to Siege of Orison (a quick solo run). Enemies were very reactive and deadly if I wasn't cautious.
Performance-wise the FPS seemed better.
Inventory worked better than 4.9 as well, I could drag attachments to weapons from the main inventory view without issues. The only issue here was, at one point, with putting some tea into my hand to drink. Either right clicking and "carry" worked or just dragging it to my hand worked, so it was only a momentary hiccup for a few seconds.
Ships spawned fine for me, I didn't notice anyone in chat complaining about any major issues (but I wasn't paying too much attention once I jumped into Siege).
As far as fake ships, most of the announced ships have already been released and are playable today. They're continuing to release new major updates a few times a year that anyone can play. So, I'm not sure what you mean by "no output".
The single player game (Squadron 42) is supposed to release this year. Monthly newsletters still state this, but they haven't locked in a release date for it yet. I wouldn't be surprised if they pushed it back to next year.
The Star Citizen 1.0 release date won't be for at least a few more years (I would guess 5 years if they stick with their currently projected release items).
On the plus side, the game is in a much better state than where it was 2 years ago. Server crashes (30k's) are practically non-existant. We have fauna in game now. There are some "boss fights" and raid-like gameplay. NPCs don't T-pose all over the place. NPCs can be very reactive (if you find a good server). There can be ~700+ players flying around across the 3 solar systems at the moment. VR support has been added. However, the learning curve is still heavily geared towards learning the workarounds to common bugs.
There's always controversy for one reason or another. My biggest recommendation is to avoid grinding for anything in this game. Just play to have fun.
I noticed that they didn't make any mention of a reputation system. In my opinion integrating a reputation system (similar to what EVE Online has) would be useful for all things party/communication related.
For instance, in EVE Online reputation can be assigned at different levels:
NPC Factions
NPC Corporations
Player Corporations
alliances between corporations
Your personally assigned reputation to others
So, I can see how my organization/alliance has rated individuals and make informed decisions based on that. This makes it relatively easy to identify which players would be hostile, friendly, or neutral in certain lawless areas.
Although, it could be argued that an org level reputation system would splinter players into territorial groups and make it harder to find random groups to join up with. Maybe that's a part of what can make EVE Online so toxic compared to other games.
Trying this again.
The SKG discord provided some options for those in the state, outside of the state, and for those in other parts of the world (edited to avoid the wrath of DBZer0's automod):
If you live in California, or know someone who does:
The animations look amazing.... Unfortunately we saw what happened to the Syulen where a lot of things ended up broken after a year or so of updates. I'm hoping this lasts longer and allows the team a little more time to go back and update the alien ships we already have in-game.
Yeah, we definitely should have been told sooner. Especially once Rockstar re-confirmed the release date in June 2026.
It is worth pointing out that the GTA VI release date was delayed twice. Originally it was set to release sometime in 2025 (announced in Dec 2023). In May 2025 they announced a delay with a release date of May 26, 2026. Then in November of 2025 they delayed again with a release date of Nov 19, 2026. I'm sure CIG was hoping for GTA VI to be delayed again.
Sounds like it's delayed until Summer of 2027, mostly blaming GTA 6.
They will at least open it up so that a small group of players can test it out, and it sounds like we'll get the official release date locked in soon after that:
Not really, the whole article is worth a read. Here's the next section (and there's a lot more after that):
I jumped in already. It was actually running far better than I was expecting. I went straight to Siege of Orison (a quick solo run). Enemies were very reactive and deadly if I wasn't cautious.
Performance-wise the FPS seemed better.
Inventory worked better than 4.9 as well, I could drag attachments to weapons from the main inventory view without issues. The only issue here was, at one point, with putting some tea into my hand to drink. Either right clicking and "carry" worked or just dragging it to my hand worked, so it was only a momentary hiccup for a few seconds.
Ships spawned fine for me, I didn't notice anyone in chat complaining about any major issues (but I wasn't paying too much attention once I jumped into Siege).
You're absolutely right, I should have just followed Hitchens's razor from the start:
Their financials are more public than many companies, you can dig through them yourself if you suspect something.
They summarize everything from their most recent financial statements here.
Or you can review everything in much more detail with what they submitted to the UK here.
Direct link to the most recent 51 page document here.
As far as fake ships, most of the announced ships have already been released and are playable today. They're continuing to release new major updates a few times a year that anyone can play. So, I'm not sure what you mean by "no output".
The single player game (Squadron 42) is supposed to release this year. Monthly newsletters still state this, but they haven't locked in a release date for it yet. I wouldn't be surprised if they pushed it back to next year.
They showed off over an hour's worth of gameplay footage for the first mission recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H-0x4xk2Xk
The Star Citizen 1.0 release date won't be for at least a few more years (I would guess 5 years if they stick with their currently projected release items).
On the plus side, the game is in a much better state than where it was 2 years ago. Server crashes (30k's) are practically non-existant. We have fauna in game now. There are some "boss fights" and raid-like gameplay. NPCs don't T-pose all over the place. NPCs can be very reactive (if you find a good server). There can be ~700+ players flying around across the 3 solar systems at the moment. VR support has been added. However, the learning curve is still heavily geared towards learning the workarounds to common bugs.
There's always controversy for one reason or another. My biggest recommendation is to avoid grinding for anything in this game. Just play to have fun.
Interesting, I've never heard the "front for some government op" angle. Care to explain some more?
Well, it's good to see that they're trying to handle the inevitable fires before the next free fly.
I'm getting invalid cert errors when trying to access PieFed.social now.
Edit: looks like it's resolved now.
Day 27: I have finally earned their trust with an "abandoned" 890J that my crew was able to repair and show off.
The whales are planning to join us on a tour around Crusader tomorrow.
They suspect nothing.
I noticed that they didn't make any mention of a reputation system. In my opinion integrating a reputation system (similar to what EVE Online has) would be useful for all things party/communication related.
For instance, in EVE Online reputation can be assigned at different levels:
So, I can see how my organization/alliance has rated individuals and make informed decisions based on that. This makes it relatively easy to identify which players would be hostile, friendly, or neutral in certain lawless areas.
Although, it could be argued that an org level reputation system would splinter players into territorial groups and make it harder to find random groups to join up with. Maybe that's a part of what can make EVE Online so toxic compared to other games.
I would recommend that everyone search their own comment/post history and try to replace any archive[dot]is/ph/today links with something else.
Good question, I wasn't paying much attention to the ranks in the newsletter.
Looking at the list of ranks here: https://starcitizen.tools/United_Empire_of_Earth_Navy
It looks like "Leading Starman" makes the most sense.
The newsletter still includes an image claiming that it'll release in 2026.
I'm not so confident that they'll meet this deadline, hopefully we get an actual release date soon.
Well, the jogging track looks awesome. And once some smaller ships flew around it I finally realized how big it was.
Trying this again.
The SKG discord provided some options for those in the state, outside of the state, and for those in other parts of the world (edited to avoid the wrath of DBZer0's automod):
For those in California, please write/call your State Senator: https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/
Quick link to the rebuttal against the ESA's letter is here (if you're on a client that can't see the original post's text content):
https://consumerrights.wiki/w/User:Louis/Rebuttal_to_the_ESA_on_AB_1921_and_Stop_Killing_Games
The animations look amazing.... Unfortunately we saw what happened to the Syulen where a lot of things ended up broken after a year or so of updates. I'm hoping this lasts longer and allows the team a little more time to go back and update the alien ships we already have in-game.