Star Citizen scales back roadmap following backer frustration

We are almost a decade on from Star Citizen’s initial Kickstarter campaign. Since then, the game has remained in development with an ever-shifting roadmap, all while garnering more than $400 million in crowdfunding. The roadmap has often been a point of contention, so CIG is now making changes to the way it communicates future updates with players.

In a lengthy blog post this week, Cloud Imperium Games discussed the negative feedback it has noticed regarding the roadmap, particularly when dates are missed due to the dynamic nature of game development. To combat this, CIG will only show features planned features for one Star Citizen update at a time, meaning you’ll see what’s planned for the next update, but nothing further out.

“It has become abundantly clear to us that despite our best efforts to communicate the fluidity of development, and how features marked as Tentative should sincerely not be relied upon, the general focus of many of our most passionate players has continued to lead them to interpret anything on the Release View as a promise”, CIG wrote.

“We want to acknowledge that not all of you saw it that way; many took our new focus and our words to heart and understood exactly what we tried to convey. But there still remains a very loud contingent of Roadmap watchers who see projections as promises. And their continued noise every time we shift deliverables has become a distraction both internally at CIG and within our community, as well as to prospective Star Citizen fans watching from the sidelines at our Open Development communications.”

Moving forward the ‘Release View’ roadmap on the Star Citizen website will only show the next upcoming update and its planned features, while content that is further out from release won’t be shown. However, dedicated fans can still use CIG’s progress tracker, which tracks what many teams across the studio are working on at any given time.

This all follows on from Cloud Imperium’s January update, during which the company stated it wants to get its single-player game, Squadron 42, released by 2026 and begin working on sequels.

KitGuru Says: Given that Star Citizen has been in development for a decade now, there is bound to be some impatience amongst long-time fans. Did any of you back Star Citizen at any point? How do you feel about the changes CIG has announced?

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