Star Citizen's Single-Player Game, Squadron 42, Delayed Out of 2016

Squadron 42, the standalone single-player game spinoff of Star Citizen, will not be out this year as previously planned.

A delay for the game--which was originally set to be a mode within Star Citizen before being spun off on its own--was announced at the recent CitizenCon 2016 fan event. Creator Chris Roberts described Squadron 42 as having "significantly grown from when it was first pitched in 2012." He laid out the scope of the project and its story and talked about what still needs to be done. Despite what had been said previously, developer Cloud Imperium Games wasn't ready to show off a mission, which he acknowledged as a "bit of a bummer."

He then talked about wanting to do the game right, claiming that the crowdfunding model, which has raised over $127 million, allows it to do so. "We want to do it right. It's really important to do it right," he said. "What we're enabled to do by you guys is to do it right. Because if we were in the typical situation with a publisher, they would say, 'Well, no, you've got to make the Christmas [release] window; you've got to get it out. You can do some patches and the DLC and don't worry about the people who won't think it's quite as polished and it's got a bunch of bugs.'"

This served as a long-winded preface to the delay news. "As much as we wanted to have Squadron 42 for this year, it's not going to be this year. Because from the polish we need to do, it still needs a bit more time." He then promised to show a completed, polished mission "in the near future." He suggested that could happen before the end of the year, but he wouldn't commit to that time frame. He also didn't provide a new date for Squadron 42, which was at one point expected out last fall.

During the presentation, Roberts also detailed future updates to Star Citizen, including the 3.3 update that will add farming, among other content. Later, at the 1:25:20 mark of the video above, a demonstration was shown of the game's procedural generation of planets. This included a segment with a giant sand worm at the 1:54:28 mark.

Star Citizen remains unreleased almost four years after its crowdfunding campaign first began, though modular components of it have been offered to the public. One backer recently received a refund after complaining to California's Attorney General.