With 2020 winding down, Cloud Imperium Games Founder and CEO Chris Roberts posted a massive letter to update Star Citizen fans on what happened throughout this tormented year at the studio.
All in all, Roberts claimed that the game has had a successful year with the exception of the development setbacks suffered due to the work from home policies enforced by COVID-19. CIG delivered four Star Citizen updates, from Alpha 3.9 to Alpha 3.12, introducing plenty of new content and features.
Additionally, the game saw new player records, with gamers playing from 200 unique countries and territories around the world and from 56,340 unique cities play 26,576,364 hours of Star Citizen. Overall, more than 740,000 unique players played Star Citizen in 2020.
There’s even a brand new roadmap in place, though it is not meant to give any estimates when it comes to the release of Squadron 42, the single player campaign of Star Citizen. In fact, Chris Roberts said the ‘Briefing Room’ show focused on providing the community with Squadron 42 updates will go on a ‘hiatus’ until the game is closer to release and there will be more to show.
The new Roadmap is not meant to give people an early estimate on when Squadron 42 will be completed. We made a conscious decision to only show the Squadron 42 work concurrently with the Star Citizen work over the Roadmap’s four-quarter window. This is because it is too early to discuss release or finish dates on Squadron 42.
As I said earlier this year, Squadron 42 will be done when it is done, and will not be released just to make a date, but instead only when all the technology and content is finished, the game is polished, and it plays great. I am not willing to compromise the development of a game I believe in with all my heart and soul, and I feel it would be a huge disservice to all the team members that have poured so much love and hard work into Squadron 42 if we rushed it out or cut corners to put it in the hands of everyone who is clamoring for it. Over the past few years, I’ve seen more than a few eagerly awaited titles release before they were bug free and fully polished. This holiday season is no exception. This is just another reminder to me of why I am so lucky to have such a supportive community, as well as a development model that is funded by people that care about the best game possible, and not about making their quarterly numbers or the big holiday shopping season.
[…] Because of this I have decided that it is best to not show Squadron 42 gameplay publicly, nor discuss any release date until we are closer to the home stretch and have high confidence in the remaining time needed to finish the game to the quality we want.
[…] This does not mean we will stop communicating our progress on Squadron 42. We will continue with our monthly reports for Squadron 42, and we will also share our current development progress in our New Roadmap.
