Star Citizen: 2 Years Out.
What comes next?
A little more than two months ago, we were shown two days of genuinely affirming demos for a game we’ve all been longing for. These demos painted a picture of something we’ve never really had a chance to glance at before: Star Citizen’s game-loop. I mean, you saw it too right? Showcasing the future of item management, the future of base-building, the future of FPS combat, the future of Ship combat, the future of NPC interactions, the future of networking. After so many years, it seems that CIG is finally developing Star Citizen with an end goal in mind.
I’m going to take a moment and spill the majority of what we’ve been holding back until today. Why? Because I believe that the marketing behind the game goes too far into the narratives that surround it. Star Citizen discussion is nothing but an endless pit of speculation over dates and features as opposed to talking about any sort of concrete plans due to a hesitance to define them. The narrative we’re given throughout any given year is usually the same, a glowing start, 2 quarters of various major feature delays, and a final quarter’s promise of a New Year worth of patches that’ll finally bring the game to the next level. There’s a whole bunch of nuance to whether or not we have any entitlements to this information in the first place of course, but rather than agonizing over the morality and obligation of a game studio not telling us their, and let me fucking stress this point before you even think about scrolling further - UNFINISHED AND EARLY PLANS.
I’ll just make it a tad quick: CIG is a studio filled with lovely people. These lovely people do great work, but due to the way their marketing is set up makes it so sharing really anything requires martyring yourself in front of the community. Do you want to risk a bunch of Discord chuds attaching your face to work they don’t fully comprehend the labor behind, then bringing you up as if it was YOU who led SC astray. That’s CIG’s problem - we never get anything without a face. Even the comments we do get are all vetted and applied for (at least from what I’ve seen). That’s why I’m just going to lay it out here, an opportunity for y’all to understand the opinions of the people who are exhausted by the current communication status quo.
Before we get into the meat of what we’re going to talk about today, let me throw on a clarification: The following comes from a number of developers we’ve spoken to throughout the last year and change. Everyone has their biases, and we’ve tried our best to ensure everything we mention here today has at least one corroborating witness, or primary evidence (Screenshots/Video/Etc). Should you find any discrepancies regarding the events mentioned (especially if you were involved) or industry-related aspects (just a hobby), please reach out: contactpipeline@protonmail.com.
Take everything about to be mentioned with a grain of salt.
It’s all thanks to Montreal for Meshing, at least that’s what it appears to be throughout a variety of perspectives. Numerous sources and statements from leadership at public events starting in July emphasized Meshing's readiness, countering CIG’s year-long silence on the matter. While a demo at Citizencon showcased the feature, as well as a number of optimistic comments from Montreal’s leadership implying that the demo’s demonstrates the ability to fast track towards a Dynamic Mesh (AKA Meshing’s “Vision”). This confidence in their tech seems to be something more than simple buzzwords and hopium to drum up sales after a poor year with notably, around August/September, a significant re-prioritization effort seemed to kick in, potentially heralding a transformative shift after a decade of delays and lackluster releases. Before delving into this change in perspectives, let's assess the status quo.
CIG as a studio has historically maintained a primary focus on Squadron 42. Their monetization heavily centers around selling pieces of virtual real estate (some that can’t fly either) so there’s an incentive to advertise the 'dream' of Star Citizen beyond all else. Undeniably, Star Citizen, for the most part, has been relegated to the backburner.
According to our sources, this approach has adversely affected development in several ways, broadly falling into three categories, poor Management, poor Resource Allocation, and poor Tool Development
We’ve been given a variety of accounts that tend to align with one of these three issues. While we're confident in the legitimacy of our sources, it's essential to acknowledge potential biases. Each individual carries their own agenda. While I'll avoid specifics for events, here’s a glimpse into what we’ve heard within these three realms:
CIG’s engine is definitely very interesting, but make no mistake it is nowhere near the stability that is implied through advertising. Engine tools have been inconsistent, leading to communication issues and poorly planned development priorities, resulting in significant work hours lost due to tool instability. For instance, RaStar, reportedly an incredibly unstable tool, requires workarounds to get the bare minimum of functionality out of it. According to developers, this is one of the primary reasons that there’s a lack of ground content within the Persistent Universe. Those involved have commented on CIG’s insistence on using these tools, despite their dysfunction. If rumors are accurate, it’s plausible that CIG might overhaul their current version entirely to prepare for Base Building at the end of 2024 (Note: Recently reported information suggests an earlier bare-bones Q1 implementation. Further discussions with sources imply this is beyond unlikely).
These issues escalate when considering the existing workload, particularly concerning staffing. Teams that were focused on Star Citizen content usually had to fight for resources at every moment. Star Citizen-focused teams consistently fought for resources, often losing team members who had been dedicated to specific tasks, redirected to Squadron 42 teams in need. Consequently, the majority of Persistent Universe (PU) teams operated with minimal resources. This scarcity resulted in projects stalling due to a lack of personnel and most publicly released deliverables being driven by solo or small team efforts, rarely progressing the game substantially. Essentially, the PU functioned for years as a testing ground for newer staff, before they would inevitably be sent to the Squadron teams.
Regarding management at CIG, reports suggest that some managers may not exhibit the most approachable behavior. There's a prevalent sentiment among insiders that CIG operates as a highly 'political' studio, not in a politically charged sense, but more in terms of apparent nepotism within leadership decisions and their enforcement. While we refrain from divulging specific personal anecdotes or situations without full context, there are accounts portraying a prevalent leadership style characterized as 'rockstar' personalities, often lacking in effective communication, dismissing feedback, and issuing unconventional demands. Some developers reportedly felt intimidated by these 'problem managers,' going as far as avoiding physical encounters.
This culture of circumnavigating issues rather than addressing them head-on has led to a sense of hopelessness among employees talked to.
It's natural to seek some good news amidst these ongoing shifts at CIG—believe me, I’m right there with you. There's an unprecedented internal shift happening, and by all accounts, it’s a positive turn. But before we journey into what lies ahead, let's lay down a couple of essential points: Firstly, CIG is actively charting its course for the future, and secondly is that changes to these dates are (nearly) inevitable and ongoing.
Based on discussions and leaked documents, then it’s highly likely that again, these changes really began in earnest in August/September. Initial schedules were to wrap in December, but look likely to continue over a duration in January. However, it's essential to hold off on forming concrete expectations until we see the outcomes reflected in actual patches or updates."
Now, if all things are correct on our end, this is the timeline from now… until Star Citizen 1.0. This forecast combines insights from our internal sources and statements from within CIG both public and private.
2023 Q4 - 2025 Q4 (TENTATIVE AS OF DECEMBER 2023)
2023 Q4
3.22 - Quality of Life improvements
Tech Preview Pyro/Stanton JP (Planned in early/mid November, clearly delayed lol)
2024 Q1
3.23 - "-the goal of the Q1 patch [is] to contain as many S42 features as possible.”
Meshing tech preview (?)
2024 Q2
3.24 - Nothing yet known, likely finalizing what didn’t make it into 3.23.
Pyro preview (?)
2024 Q3
4.0 - Pyro, Meshing, Resource Network, Master Modes
2024 Q4
Planet Tech V5
2025 Q1
Squadron 42 PC/Console release.
2025 Q4
“Star Citizen 1.0”
Contains 5 Systems on Launch (Stanton, Pyro, 3 others)
“Narrative Experience” on Launch
If y’all ain’t swimming in the grains of salt I recommend you take here, then it’s going to be your fault when you get disappointed that a good chunk of this doesn’t end up happening. To say that there’s a bit of internal pessimism over whether the above can happen or not in the times given is an understatement. If there’s a silver lining, it would appear that this is more a learned response than a cloud of doubt.
“It's the first time that I see production being as serious about it […] I have not seen this panic mode before.”
“What’s the deal?” you might be saying, “Why is this pie-in-the-sky date the one that’s worth making a hubbub about things changing about?”
It’s not a controversial thing to say that CIG’s dates; internal, public, promised, planned, etc; are for the most part a suggestion. This isn’t to say that CIG is absent of crunch or anything of the sort - if something needs to make a deadline then people will work overtime to meet that deadline, what I am saying is that for the most part the grand plan of Star Citizen was just to have it run on idle until something changed internally. As I mentioned earlier, a large majority of the reasoning behind the lack of consistent delivery can be blamed on a lack of priority for Star Citizen over Squadron 42. This has luckily been changing, though I’ll also say again that we’ve yet to truly see the fruits of this effort as a lot is still in planning, so just keep this all in mind as simply one reading of events.
To give a brief summary of what’s happened internally - a number of CIG developers that were focused solely on Squadron 42 were moved over to Star Citizen in an effort to finally get Star Citizen going. Squadron 42’s teams were to be reformed into strike teams that would be specialized towards polishing out the remainder of that game, while Star Citizen would get new blood and direction through the reformation and adjustment of already existing staff. If comments by a number of developers during Citizencon were accurate, then this would mean that SC now has 1-300 more fully focused game staff. It also appears that conduct and delivery is being a tad more scrutinized. Rumors have been going around that problematic staff have been re-prioritized into less public affecting projects. I cannot confirm these reports using publicly accessible means, but if true would lend even more credence that there is indeed a change occurring deep within the roots of the project.
What is this change? Direction and intent: For the last few years CIG has been allowing the PU to continue relatively business as usual due to a mixture of reasons, almost all stemming to a preference in Squadron 42. The funding well drying up towards the center of this year, alongside previously mentioned technological breakthroughs, appears to have been motivation enough for leadership to decide on a radical new goal for the company - to release Star Citizen as a feature complete game in two years. To do this, meetings have gone on (and continue to be ongoing) regarding a roadmap that would guide the team throughout these two years. The initiative is called…
Star Citizen 1.0 is essentially an extremely optimistic initiative within Cloud Imperium to bring the game “from an alpha game to the very first complete version” with an optimistic launch window of EOY 2025. I’m going to emphasize how much this “optimism” is laid bare throughout all the discussions I’ve been privy to by making sure everyone who lays their eyes on this article that this is a goal that is (in my own opinion) not likely to be met. This is due to the overwhelming scope of the proposition, which is essentially increasing the activities in the game by a factor of 10, as well as a rumored “Narrative Experience”. This experience has been described similar in interactive scope to Squadron 42, a hand-crafted narrative that will serve to introduce the player into the grander ‘Verse at an approximate 10-20 hours of gameplay. The experience, which will mimic similar main questlines in other MMOs, will be instanced from the main game world to allow for a tad more involvement than what players in SC have become used to.
This instancing is important to inspect as we move further into more of the foundational tech coming online. By all accounts, instancing appears to be a major backbone consideration for mission content coming online in the future. While its complete scope remains illusive to us, we’ve already been teased to what these upcoming separated game worlds will be used for - Raid content such as the Distribution Facilities, Personal Facilities such as Personalized Hangars, and Hand-Crafted narrative-focused mission content such as hero NPC interactions. Specifics on the interactions with the larger shared game worlds that we’re used to with these instanced areas are lacking, likely due to the tech still being in its infancy - though I’ll note of course that its development level compared to other server tech is unfortunately unclear.
There’s plenty more to say on 1.0, but to give you a summary: It’s the MMO-ification of Star Citizen.
So, what now? Is this another start to the cycle? Are we only going to get an optimistic start followed by them dropping the ball midway through the year in terms of content delivery like usual? Or is the technology required finally here?
A little more than two months ago, we were shown two days of genuinely affirming demos for a game called Squadron 42. This a game that, while not entirely smooth sailing, has prevailed in marching on despite CIG’s track record of reworking progress. Its leadership now looks to Star Citizen to try and steer it in a similar direction. I cannot overstate how significant of an effort this is, but I also can’t overstate that this is all in active planning. Delays will likely happen, scopes will likely be reduced, plans will likely change, c’est le vie.
No matter what the next year brings however, it’s at least moving in a different direction. Let’s hope they bring on that new start in 3.23!
SCAM!!!!!!!!
As always, we shall see. Here's hoping. I enjoyed the article. Nice work.