Cloud Imperium Games is going to be putting a cap on info about upcoming Star Citizen development goals with changes to how the public roadmap will work. Essentially, the public road will now only show the next upcoming quarter’s patch, and the company's reasons are not sitting well with many.
Two years after changing the public roadmap to include more development details, they’ve decided to limit what information goes out because community expectations are apparently a little too high and people complain if something gets delayed or moved around.
Their update says that the initial extended roadmap was put in place because, “Another big objective for us was to use our new Public Roadmap to better educate our community about how incredibly fluid game development truly is, and to help you understand that features and content shifting around (both forwards and backwards) is a natural state in software development.” This is fair since games take a long time to make, and as development (that has lasted for over a decade now) continues, some things may get moved around. Their roadmap change went from “delivery to progress” and wanted to show what they were working on overall not just when something might be coming out.
In essence, disappointment, expectations, and everything from complaints to negative feedback for reverting to a model that only shows the development for the next quarter’s patch starting with Alpha 3.18. Since they’ll no longer show things listed that have a high chance of being delayed or moved, no more complaints about them, maybe?
The community has reacted in different ways, from some understanding that things are effectively reverting back to how they were, but many are angry, not necessarily at the change, but at the rescinded trust in the player community and the blame put on them for the change in the first place.
CIG has gotten a new larger studio and seen some growth, with statements from the company saying there might be something for Squadron 42 in the next year or two. For something that has been in development for a decade, the community would generally have patience by this point. Blaming expectations for cutting off future development information just isn’t going over well.
For the full Roadmap Roundup statement from CIG, read it over at Star Citizen.
