Star Citizen Switches Game Engines

Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games announced today that the studio is using Amazon's Lumberyard game engine for Star Citizen and the single-player game Squadron 42. As reported by Polygon, Cloud Imperium began development using Crytek's CryEngine.

"We've been working with Amazon for more than a year, as we have been looking for a technology leader to partner with for the long term future of Star Citizen and Squadron 42," creative director Chris Roberts said in a statement. "Lumberyard provides ground breaking technology features for online games, including deep back-end cloud integration on AWS and its social component with Twitch that enables us to easily and instantly connect to millions of global gamers.

"Because we share a common technical vision, it has been a very smooth and easy transition to Lumberyard. In fact, we are excited to announce that our upcoming 2.6 Alpha release for Star Citizen is running on Lumberyard and AWS."

Amazon Games head of business Dan Winters added: "Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are incredibly ambitious projects which are only possible with great engine technology paired with the transformative power of the cloud."

This news comes just days after Crytek announced it was closing five studios around the world amid financial difficulties. According to a spokesperson for Cloud Imperium Games, the Crytek news does not impact Star Citizen at all. "We are totally not dependent on them for anything at this point," communications director David Swofford told Polygon.

Star Citizen was announced in October 2012. The crowdfunded project has since raised more than $139 million, making it the most successful crowdfunded project of any kind in history.

The game's single-player campaign mode, Squadron 42, was recently delayed out of 2016, while the game's FPS mode, Star Marine, is now playable in beta form. The full game, meanwhile, remains unreleased almost four years after its crowdfunding campaign first began.

This story has been updated.