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Star Citizen’s sizeable 3.0 update has unfortunately been delayed once again. Originally slated to arrive in June, the update was first pushed back to the end of August and is now expected to land, like the content it provides, at the start of September.
Alongside performance improvements and design changes, Star Citizen alpha 3.0 is set to bring the anticipated planet exploration in which players can seamlessly land their ships on a planet’s surface, get out and explore.
The official website, Roberts Space Industries released a statement about the delay. “This week, we entered the optimization, polish and bug fixing phase for the 3.0 feature set. As there have been so many features and content implemented, we’ve encountered some stability issues that we want to address before going to a wider test audience.” It also went on to cite work on the new Patcher System to have caused a slow in progression.
Fan outcry towards the delay has resulted in a lengthier, more in depth post by Star Citizen’s director of player relations, Will Leverett, pleading with fans to be sympathetic towards the process of game development and its unpredictable nature.
Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 footage from 2016
“When venturing off into uncharted territory, one does not always see or know all of the challenges ahead of them. Working on 3.0 has certainly introduced variables and challenges that we could never have anticipated, and these just do not always cater to a tidy date on a calendar. As gamers, we are conditioned to consider all dates as static points in time that we can wrap our heads around and plan for in advance. The nature of this project does not neatly fit into that mould due to the complexity of what we’re building, and with what we learn about what’s possible and needed along the way.”
The post goes on to emphasise the scale of the 3.0 update, stating that with great size of an update comes great responsibility of bug fixing, “which obviously reshapes those estimates and changes those dates.” The developers are transparent about the dates that they set, making them available for everyone to view but with delays being so frequent, it's difficult to truly follow.
“We’ve learned that we can deliver something better than the original 3.0, something bigger, something pretty ground-breaking, something magnificent,” Leverett said. “That doesn’t always keep to a schedule, but we think it’s ok to take the time to do it right.”
KitGuru Says: It’s a difficult one with Star Citizen because the sheer scope of the game eclipses most that have ever attempted such a feat, but it has experienced a plethora of delays since its expected 2014 release. Did you back Star Citizen? How do you feel about another delay?
I hope to see in 2017 the final release of the game. We had to wait a lot of time till now.
For readers interested to understand what is going on, based on real numbers. Many huge patch are coming in a month and till end of 2018. Everything is under control despite few troll trying to soil this +700.000 bacekrs project 🙂
– Employees count:
Nov. 2012 end of Kickstarter: Chris Roberts and around 10 people
2013: 48 (Austin: 34 – LA: 14)
2014: 161 (Austin: 55 – LA: 38 – Manchester: 68)
2015: 258 (Austin: 57 – LA: 41 – Manchester: 132 – Frankfurt: 28)
2016: 363 (Austin: 54 – LA: 64 – Manchester: 191 – Frankfurt: 54)
2017: 428 (April)
– Pledges chart:
Nov. 2012 end of Kickstarter: goal was 2M$. They got 6M$…
2012: 7M$
2013: 35M$
2014: 68M$
2015: 104M$
2016: 140M$
2017: 155M$ (July)
I doubt it will be final even in 2019, which is when I expect the beta to be happening. Remember this is only just alpha 3.0. The roadmap that was shown last CitizenCon has shown that we have a couple more major patches – 3.1, 3.2 and 4.0 to happen over the time period 2017-2018. Alpha 4.0 is to bring exploration with many of the other solar systems and gameplay features such as farming. We can only speculate that a beta should be in 2019, but we don’t have any indication of dates for any of those patches. That said, I am perfectly OK with that, even with ~$300 spending on SC. If this game was to fail. my money would go with it, and I will NOT ask for refunds.
Just to let you know, I have pledged for Star Citizen with quite a chunk of money for a game package, a standalone LTI ship token and a ship upgrade of the basic Aurora MR to Mustang Delta. All the other funds I gave were for Gamescom/CitizenCon tickets and merchandise.
I can not understand why it is taking too long. We are working with “serious game” projects for very complex simulations with a fraction of the cost and time.
As I seen in their site they managed to rise a super serious funding that can have a super development team.
Sometimes I have the feeling that they do not have a plan to release the complete game at all.
Mate, do you even watch Around the Verse? Do you watch Bugsmashers? Did you watch ALL of the videos from “10 for the chairman” – you have not, then go and watch them and you will understand what is taking so long. I don’t know if you realize but they are working with really complex algorithms and things like physics and stuff. If any other game is going to be compared to Star Citizen, that would be Freelancer, because was also very complex for its time, and even now its worth to play over. I love this game. On the other hand, Elite Dangerous fails to impress with content. The only thing I like about it is the RNG. If they aimed to give us few high quality hand crafted systems like Star Citizen with RNG on items and upgrades, I think i will be the happiest kid in the world.
On the other hand SC aims for something else, and you should know already what they are targeting – LITTLE WARS on a large scale – this is what Star Citizen aims for. Chris Roberts essentially took the war game board and said “The universe is big enough to create a war game within it” – and now i am not qouting him, but that’s what Star Citizen is essentially doing. Whenever you hear “The best damn space sim ever” what do you think of?
Because the transparency of the game you started hearing about it when it was still on the drawing board. Also the scope of what the game looks to implement is huge in comparison with other games. You could always make your own star citizen to be released before RSI and see how it works out. Most games take 3-7 years to create from the first steps of programming to going gold. We’re currently in the 3rd year.
I can understand completely what you are saying. For me SC is the best and it will be the best for a long time.
The only think that I am saying from a technical aspect of view the time that it took them to complete it is too much if we take in mind the funding that they managed to get that should super boost the production.
I am not as amazed from a technical aspect as I should be and I am not seeing something super speciaI. My opinion is that it took so much time and it should be completed along time ago.
I am participating a developing team of “serious games, simulation and interactive immersive vr applications” and I am talking about the technical aspect.
As I just said at the beginning I love SC but it took too long to be released.
Well, it’s not just technical. It’s the fact that they’ve started with a very small team and gradually grew in size as the funding went booming. This is not EA. They don’t have 1000s of employees and studios in every country. They need people with specific skill set. It’s a lot of things to take into account, not to mention this is not a AAA developer, it’s indie. They may set the stage for the next generation of games quality, which will have a massive pressure on every large corporation, and perhaps some of them will shatter in pieces and new developers will come with new ideas, with new way of developing games. This has not happened yet, though I do have faith in Chris Roberts. He has done it in the 90s in Wing Commander, Starlancer was a successful game, and even though he did work, but did not finish Freelancer, this is a game requested by THOUSANDS of players on GoG Galaxy to go back on sale, still holds my top spot for a favorite game until Star Citizen is out. He has done it and he will do it again.
People aren’t complaining about Cyberpunk or other titles because they aren’t invested in them. SC has sailed past every major launch date, and it’s done so with the help of over $155 million of other peoples money, and when you’re willing to accept that money you should be held to account when things aren’t going as they should.
That’s not how Kickstarter or any of those other services work, and if that’s what you were expecting, sorry, but you’re ****ing retarded. With said services you are giving your $ away with absolutely no strings attached. The receiver doesn’t owe you ANYTHING. It’s entirely up to them whether they make good on their end, and it’s entirely up to you whether it seems like a sound investment. You are owed/obliged absolutely freaking nothing when giving something money on Kickstarter and the like and the sooner people realize that, the better. Investment = Serious Risk, if you can’t stomach that, don’t donate to projects like this.
If you think investors aren’t owed anything then you have a seriously warped view of business in general. When you’re taking other people’s money they have the right to criticise you, it’s not just money going into a blackhole . Ofcourse they don’t HAVE to deliver, but if they don’t they’ve essentially blacklisted themselves from ever being trusted with anything again, and this team is in serious danger of that.
You don’t understand Kickstarter and the like AT ALL. You aren’t buying stock in a company (where you literally own a part of the business, which makes it ubligated to you, the shareholder). All you’re doing with Kickstarter is giving someone an unconditional donation. (So if you don’t trust the people on the other end, DONT GIVE THEM YOUR *****ING MONEY DINGUS!) Lol…If you do decide to contribute, that’s an investment on your part, but they sure as heck aren’t obligated to you in anyway, which is HOW IT SHOULD BE! Kickstarter and the like would NEVER work if every donation came with contractual obligations, why? 99% of moonshot efforts fail (and if they were held responsible to doners, no one would ever put themselves on Kickstarter to begin with, way too much huge blowback risk), that’s what makes them moonshots (and why they end up on Kickstarter), but we should still have the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of that 1% and now we do. Lol it seems you are the one who doesn’t understand business.
You have to realize you are not investor to a game publisher like EA, Ubisoft, Activision or Rockstar. You are donating money in return for entertainment. You won’t get any cash back, you will have to wait for the product to release and should help in alpha / beta since its the product you paid for to be developed. There is a difference between an “investor” and a “donator”. On kickstarter, you are the DONATOR, when you are on board of directors table, you are the INVESTOR and you expect return of cash from the CEO. If you are not happy with the CEO, you and other investors would vote for him to LEAVE the company.
If CIG was to go public with having investors in a directors board, CR will have no chance to stay. The only thing the investors think about is what they get in return. They are not willing to take a big risk. In that case everything is calculated – budgets for marketing, every part of development is known before even the project begins. For a Kickstarter project, with Star Citizen – nothing is known, no investor would like this, even the ones that are willing to take a bigger risk (and of course would be asking for bigger return) would not go with that. Crowd funding has its disadvantages and publishers have their advantages, but in the end of the day, you can’t expect a publisher to go into uncharted territory like Star Citizen is doing. Crowd funding on the other hand is another story.
Publishers and developers sign a contract. The development team has dates to finish something to receive their payment. If they want to add to the game, it’s fine – they can work for free then, but that doesn’t mean they can miss the next date to finish a certain task.
There is NO contract when it’s crowd fund. It’s all on developers, and projects do tend to fail. Delays are totally normal. Delay with a publisher means that development team is probably being beaten up/being paid less for not getting deadlines with perfectly done tasks.