There is still no word on when Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) will release the game, and now we have an explanation…
One day before the CitizenCon event, Tom Henderson reported on the status of CIG on the Insider Gaming website. According to him, the staff was working on preparing material to present at the event, but they were also working over the weekend. Of course, the employees did not take this well and CIG did nothing more than give them Sunday off… but only for those who could prove they had worked 56-hour weeks (i.e. six days a week, working just over nine hours a day…).
The atmosphere in the company is terrible because of this, and there are deeper problems than that. Money seems to have run out, even though Star Citizen raised a record $790 million in crowdfunding. More than 100 people have been laid off in Los Angeles and Austin this year, and raises have been delayed. There is a lot of spending that is seen as unnecessary (such as a large bar on the 9th floor of CIG’s Manchester office, or the unique Star Citizen furniture in the same office).
Many point the finger at Chris Roberts, the founder of CIG and the creator of Star Citizen. According to one ex-employee, there were often meetings where they would spend half an hour talking in detail about how to properly place objects that they thought players would never interact with, rather than focusing on making the game. Another said that Roberts would sometimes review the simplest features six times, only to demand that they be deleted or changed on the seventh review.
According to Henderson, CIG is banking on the upcoming release of Squadron 42 (the single-player spin-off) to fund its sequels and Star Citizen itself. According to an insider, Squadron 42 has just reached a state of feature completion, although CIG says that happened a year ago. CIG then plans to charge a lot of money for the ships in the game, and Henderson pointed out that the company is also planning a THIRD game in a medieval fantasy setting.
If this is true, there’s a lot of confusion within CIG…
Source: WCCFTech, Insider Gaming
