Star Citizen has a lot of time, a lot of money and no release date in 2023

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The mammoth project Star Citizen has no release date, but it took a lot of money and time, so much time to develop something special. This emerges from the letter from Chris Roberts to the players and supporters at the turn of the year to 2023. Good news everywhere you look. Well, except for the schedule.

What are common allegations against Star Citizen? There are two major allegations against Star Citizen:

  • Feature Creep – Players were promised a bigger and bigger game with more and more features in order to get donations. The vision of a “fully playable MMO SF universe” has become so powerful over the years that it is now technically almost impossible to master. There are therefore no release plans or firm commitments, it is a “pie in the sky”
  • Release is not worth it – The game makes so much money from the sale of ships that a release is not urgent, because the company earns enough that way

    • Space MMO Star Citizen shows event that looks more like Halo and Battlefield – This is Siege of Orison

    More players, more money, more staff than ever at Star Citizen

    This is the status now: Above all, the second accusation “The release is not worth it” seems to be indirectly confirmed by Chris Roberts in a letter to the players. Because the message from the letter is: “Everything is going fantastically.”

    Roberts elaborates:

  • that more people are now playing Star Citizen than ever before:
  • 240,000 people log in every month – that’s 33% more than every year
  • Every day you have 50% more users than in 2021 and twice as many as in 2019

    • The money is also flowing like never before:

  • Star Citizen surpassed $100 million in 2022 revenue in November
  • In 2022, you earned even more than in previous years, when more money flowed in due to Covid, you earned 30% more than in 2021
  • A large part of the money comes from new players, more than 800,000 accounts have been created. Roberts rejoices that 70% of them have become “paying players” who bought the Starter Pack

    • And there are also endless employees: 861 employees are now working on the mammoth game.

    “500 million €” project Star Citizen takes an important internal step to become a “real MMO” – but from the outside comes ridicule

    The big feature of 2022 did not go live in 2022 after all

    And what about progression of the game? At one point, there’s something like a “negative comment” in Roberts’ jubilation.

    When looking back on last year, it says in a subordinate clause: The big feature that was planned for 2022, the persistent universe, was not live in 2022, but it was gotten on the test server. At least something.

    Roberts then emphasizes how great and elaborate a persistent universe is for an “MMO with millions of players”. He doesn’t know of any other “large-scale MMO” that even tries to do that.

    The visionary Chris Roberts.

    Project is something very special – would be impossible with a typical publisher

    Doesn’t it take him too long? Roberts makes a virtue out of necessity. He once again plays the narrative that the “Star Citizen” project may take an extremely long time, but it is also something very special.

    Because something like this is only possible with the support of the players. A normal publisher, especially a listed one, would never give the development team the time to create something awesome like this:

    “There is no other way to build Star Citizen without the community-driven model. The investment of time and money is too expensive for a normal gaming publisher.”

    This is behind it: In the letter, Roberts proves once again that he is a master at explaining to players that they are a part of something unique. You can’t contradict him on that either

    This narrative that “normal games” are so severely restricted by the publisher’s obsession with profit and that crowdfunding is needed to develop something unique has long been advocated by Star Citizen supporters:

  • It also seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the enormous financial success of the crowdfunding campaign alone has made Star Citizen unique.
  • The fact that the project has been in production since 2011 and not even the single-player campaign “Squadron 42” really has a release date makes it difficult for outsiders to fully share Roberts’ enthusiasm

    • Finally, Chris Roberts said once again that next year will be big for Star Citizen. Probably the biggest year so far.

    More about the game:

    After 12 years and $504 million, Star Citizen explains its skill system

    mmod-game