Star Citizen is back in the news after it recently hit Alpha 3.11.0. A recent AMA has seen frustrated fans and backers inquire about Squadron 42, and, well, Chris Roberts replied.
First up, the team issued a video update on Squadron 42 with the goal being to release such videos in a quarterly cadence until Squadron 42 releases. To that end, the team also shared a so-called Letter from the Chairman from Chris Roberts.
You can catch the full video below which is over an hour in length.
The video discusses various tech like server meshing which is where the whole MMO piece fits in. Roberts stated that he’s aiming to get the “first instance” of that tech next year – presumably 2021. To that end, an AMA was published ahead of the video where, understandably, people were frustrated with the lack of Squadron 42 progress, roadmap, and release information,
“They stopped updating the chapter roadmap in Q3 2019. The feature roadmap at the end of Q1 2020. Over a year later the roadmap is nowhere to be seen. The regular updates they promised are nowhere to be seen. And the first episode of a quarterly show has taken over 5 months to produce. So no, nothing that he wrote did anything to address any of the concerns. It just feels like they keep on stalling and that does not inspire any confidence in the current management team at CIG.”
Chris Roberts replied directly to this stating Squadron 42 will be “done when it will be done.” He also touched up on the roadmap,
“The new roadmap will show how we are doing towards that goal and as we get closer to the end it will be more accurate but it will never be a perfect crystal ball of the future as there is always a certain amount of unpredictability in game development, especially when the game is hugely ambitious and has a very high quality bar; Red Dead Redemption 2, Last of US 2 and now Cyberpunk have all taken a lot longer than originally communicated and those projects didn't even announce a release date until very deep into their production, when most of their tech had been resolved.”
Interestingly, he cites Red Dead Redemption 2, The Last of Us Part 2, and Cyberpunk 2077, though it should be noted that even though those games were not crowd-funded, they were not delayed out years after their originally announced release date. In the case of Cyberpunk 2077, the game was revealed in 2012 in a teaser trailer and is scheduled to release next month after seeing a total delay of 7 months. CD Projekt RED also released a full-blown RPG in The Witcher 3 in the intervening years.
As a reminder, Squadron 42 was announced for release in 2014 during the Kickstarter campaign. Squadron 42 has seen multiple delays since then with Roberts continuing in his AMA response,
“We still have a ways to go before we are in Beta, but everyone on Squadron 42 is working very hard to deliver something great.”
