Cloud Imperium Games’ Star Citizen is a game that’s built on promises and potential. After being announced in 2012, the ambitious spacefaring MMO has yet to be released outside of alpha. However, for one reason or another, players are still willing to pour money into the game that’s sunk hundreds of millions of dollars in development. Naturally, players were going to complain about what’s taking Cloud Imperium Games so long and why things keep on changing.
Although Cloud Imperium Games doesn’t have an answer yet as to when Star Citizen is going to be released, it has issued a response to the constantly shifting updates of everything that’s headed to the game, as detailed on the roadmap.
In their most recent Roadmap Roundup post, Cloud Imperium Games went back to its decision in 2020 when it added speculative content to its roadmap. The studio explained that they intended to let the community know of everything that they might think of adding but isn’t a sure thing just yet. However, Cloud Imperium Games did not expect the backlash when the studio started dropping tentative features. Because of this, the Star Citizen developers don’t want to include “tentative” content in roadmap updates down the line.
As explained by CIG, future Star Citizen roadmaps will only contain content that is coming and will be ready. Furthermore, CIG pointed out that the reason for this was because of the “noise” from the community that had become a “distraction” for the team. The rather poorly worded statement is quite ironic coming from a studio that’s not exactly known for keeping an open line of communication with its community.
To no one’s surprise, the recent statement from Cloud Imperium Games only made things worse. It’s not exactly a good idea to pin the blame on a community that has invested over four hundred million dollars into a game that’s been in development for over a decade. It doesn’t help that Star Citizen’s single-player campaign, Squadron 42, is still years away from launching.
Crowdfunding has helped small-time developers come up with some of the best games of all time. Hollow Knight, for example, wouldn’t have been made and become one of the best low-spec PC games out there, if the developers didn’t reach out to audiences and asked for financial help. But, for every Hollow Knight, there are at least a dozen of games that either underdelivered or were never even released at all.
We’re not saying that Star Citizen is going to be stuck in development hell forever, but with the way things are going, Cloud Imperium Games is on the fast track to landing itself on our list of the most tone-deaf statements in gaming history.
