At Star Citizen's annual Citizencon, Cloud Imperium Games showcased the first hour of gameplay of its Star Citizen spin-off title, Squadron 42, announcing a release window of 2026. This is amid reports that the studio is facing financial woes, mismanagement, and more.
During today's presentation at Citizencon in Manchester (stream embed below, demo starts around the 7:33:34 mark), Cloud Imperium Games showcased a lengthy live demo of Sqadron 42, showcasing its early prologue in a mix of in-engine cinematics and gameplay. The action centered on a large-scale space battle between the United Empire of Earth Navy and an alien race, showcasing space combat, roaming around the wreckage of the battle in space itself, as well as first-person combat as the UEE ships are boarded.
The demo wasn't without its issues, with characters glitching as they moved through the world, as well as one spot towards the end where an NPC didn't actually take the character's gun as scripted, prompting the team to stop the demo and run a trailer announcing the 2026 release window. Despite the glitches, it was an hour-long look at what Squadron 42 is shaping up to eventually be when it is released, highlighting the celebrity A-list cast, gameplay, and visuals for those in attendance and watching via the live stream.
This window would put Star Citizen's spin-off releasing fourteen years after it was initially announced as part of the Kickstarter in 2012. This is while CIG's CEO Chris Roberts announced that the game was "feature complete" and was moving into the polish phase in October 2023.
Yet amidst all the hype assuredly being felt in-person today at Citizencon 2954, Cloud Imperium Games finds itself the center of reports that paint a picture of financial woes, micromanagement, and more.
According to a report on Insider Gaming (thanks, Kyleran), the Star Citizen developers expressed a feeling the studio itself has started to run out of funding, which seems supported by a look at the 2022 financials and the current funding threshold. According to Insider Gaming's sources, the assumption that money is either drying up or has already run out is something current and former employees have expressed. According to the official funding stats page on the Roberts Space Industries page, Star Citizen is just shy of the $730 million funding threshold.
Earlier this month, we wrote about how employees were mandated to work daily leading up to today's Citizencon. Something touched on how that mandate shifted multiple times due to developer outrage and apparently fears the required overtime might violate UK labor laws.
"It’s a mandate that was quickly altered after staff raised questions about the legalities surrounding it. So, instead, CIG opted to give employees Sunday off if they meet the minimum threshold of 56 hours worked from Monday to Saturday – a change that would still be illegal in UK law if CIG’s employee contracts didn’t contain an opt-out agreement of the 48-hour weekly limit."
The report continues, talking about the new Manchester office, which is still under construction on one floor, as a sign of alledged overspending by the company as well, including decking out furniture and office spaces that make employees "feel like they are living in the Star Citizen universe." The office also has a coffee shop that apparently takes up a "large portion" of one floor, all while employees describe a situation where career progression feels stalled and increased financial difficulty as wage increases are reportedly frozen, with some telling Insider Gaming they are struggling to make ends meet.
This is just months after CIG laid off, as the studio put it in a statement to MMORPG.com at the time, a "small number of positions," though Insider Gaming estimates this between 100-150 across the company's Austin and LA offices. This was reportedly seen by employees as a mandate to move to the UK to work in the new Manchester headquarters in a move described by CIG as an effort to "co-locate as much development as possible."
The report also details a convoluted development process that can see changes being handed down that "cause weeks of issues" for the team, while even the smallest decisions can "take hours, or even days, due to [Roberts'] micromanagement." All this is against the backdrop that, according to Insider Gaming's report, Squadron 42 only just recently hit its "feature complete" stage, despite last year's announcement.