Star Citizen Executive Producer Quits, As Dev Opens New Office

Star Citizen executive producer Alex Mayberry has quit developer Cloud Imperium Games. Mayberry leaves the team just a week after the game's FPS mode was delayed indefinitely; his future plans are unknown.

Mayberry left Cloud Imperium Games at the end of June for "personal reasons," a representative for the company told GameSpot today.

Global head of production Erin Roberts will take over many of Mayberry's responsibilities.

"We were sorry that Alex had to leave the CIG family," the representative said. "No impact at all on development. In fact, it's full steam ahead for us."

Game Informer first reported Mayberry's departure.

Mayberry was one of Cloud Imperium Games' most high-profile new hires when he was originally brought on to the team in May 2014. He came to Cloud Imperium Games from developer Blizzard Entertainment, where he worked for more than a decade on the World of Warcraft and Diablo franchises, among others.

At Cloud Imperium Games, Mayberry was responsible for overseeing all development on Star Citizen. He was also charged with managing the company's worldwide development studios. Mayberry reported directly to Star Citizen creator Chris Roberts.

"After 10 years at Blizzard, I didn't think that there was anything that could ever get me to leave," Mayberry said back in May 2014 about joining Cloud Imperium Games. "But then Chris invited me to come check out Star Citizen, and after seeing the game and listening to Chris talk about his vision, I knew that I had to be a part of it."

Star Citizen is the most successful crowdfunded project--of any kind--in history. Its crowdfunding campaign originally began in October 2012 and to date, gamers have backed the project to the tune of $84.9 million.

Development hasn't gone entirely smoothly, however, as the game's first-person shooter mode, Star Marine, was recently delayed indefinitely due to an array of technical troubles.

Cloud Imperium Games also announced today that it has opened a new studio in Frankfurt, Germany. The team is currently made up of "some of the top engineers, artists, and designers in Europe," some of whom actually created the CryEngine technology that powers Star Citizen, the company said in a a press release.

CryEngine was created by Crytek, which is based in Germany, suggesting Cloud Imperium Games has hired away some staffers from that company.

The new Cloud Imperium Games studio in Frankfurt currently has 21 people on the team, but it hopes to have around 50 total employees by the end of the year. A list of open positions is available here. The new studio adds to the developer's existing offices in Los Angeles, California and Austin, Texas.