A recent Star Citizen development stream went horribly wrong, resulting in some fans losing confidence in the long-awaited sci-fi game.
Earlier this month, the team at CIG decided to do a live stream showing off the current internal build of Star Citizen following player complaints over new content in the game. The developers heard players were having a bad time with this content and decided to do a stream of an internal build to paint a picture of the “intended” experience. Essentially, they were hoping it would show players that they’re fixing issues and that this is a very temporary inconvenience… unfortunately, things went terribly wrong.
The developers kept running into bugs that showed the game is indeed broken. The developers had issues using their own weapons, swapping between their weapons, accessing their inventory, and much, much more. Eventually, the frustrations among the developers grew, and they started becoming passive-aggressive with each other before opting to just pull the plug on the stream altogether.
To add more fuel to the fire, one of the developers closed out the stream by saying they were proud of the work being done by the team and that they wanted to get this build out so players can have the “same experience” they had on stream… which just made fans feel like they lacked awareness of what happened during the broadcast. It’s a brutal watch, and fans have been making fun of the entire experience and expressing amazement over the fact that the team didn’t pull the VOD offline.
“Incredibly awkward, cringe, forced, slightly sinister feeling at times, and the local server gameplay was still terrible. No one was having fun here,” said a comment under the stream. “Felt like a hostage video.”
Overall, fan morale is quite low following this stream. Star Citizen has been in development has been in development for roughly 15 years and has raked in over $1 billion from fans to help fund the development. The game has been in early access since 2017, but there’s no release date in sight. One would imagine the game would be done or very close to done with all of that time and money, but when major issues like this are popping up, it certainly feels like it’s not close at all.
Will Star Citizen ever see a 1.0 release? Who’s to say! The game is certainly ambitious, but some are starting to question if the team is capable of achieving its goals. In addition to Star Citizen, the team has also been developing a single-player standalone game known as Squadron 42. CIG CEO Chris Roberts stated last year that Squadron 42 is playable start to finish and is on track for a 2026 release, but with four months left in the year, there’s no release date in sight.
Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN’s news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.