Star Citizen's developers have stated that the game's 1.0 launch is imminent, around 12 years after its initial crowdfunding campaign began. Chris Roberts, CEO of Cloud Imperium Games, seems to be hinting that a 1.0 release may soon be possible.
This news comes after the latest breakthrough in their server meshing technology which allowed a player to seamlessly travel through a wormhole from one server to another.
"After many hard years of work towards a goal many thought was impossible, we are on the cusp of delivering one of the final pieces of technology that will enable a connected, shared universe that thousands of people can experience together at the same time," reported Chris Roberts during his latest update.
Roberts claims that in order to be closer to the time zones of Manchester, Frankfurt, and Montreal—where Star Citizen production is concentrated—he relocated from Los Angeles to Austin as part of this 1.0 push. As a result, developers based at Cloud Imperium's LA headquarters have been requested to shift to other offices, mostly in Manchester.
Squadron 42 was split from Star Citizen and its features have been slowly making their way into the game. Squadron 42 is a standalone story-based game that stars actors like Mark Hamill and Gillian Anderson in the persistent universe portion of the game. Last year, Squadron 42 was declared feature complete.
According to a blog post by CIG chief Chris Roberts, Star Citizen Alpha 4.0 will launch in 2024 (yes, the game is still in alpha). He finished "The journey is longer and more difficult than I anticipated 11 ½ years ago, but the final destination is so much more exciting and fulfilling. I would have never in my dreams expected to have the opportunity to build something on the scale and ambition of Star Citizen, and because of this feel incredibly blessed by all of your support, and I am determined to finish strong"
Star Citizen is one of the most contentious video game projects ever. Its crowdfunding campaign has been labelled many things in the twelve years since it started, including a hoax by some who don't think it will ever launch properly. It is frequently criticized for its virtual spacecraft, some of which can cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars. Perhaps Chris Roberts will finally lay these suspicions to rest very soon.