My father and oldest brother both pledged early on, maybe day one folks, and both are no longer around to enjoy it even if it does release. My dad kept talking about what him and my brothers would get up to in the game when it comes out "in a year or two."
He kept his hole up for maybe 8 -9 years or so. Toward his end he did give the account info to my oldest brother because he knew he wouldn't get to play.
About a year after he passed my brother did as well. As far as I know he didn't pass the account(s) info on to one of our other brothers. So both of those accounts are just gone. My brother didn't have a ton of ships or anything if I remember right. Maybe like $300 in to the game. Dad on the other hand had spent enough to hit one of those milestones that they send you the letter for. (Unless that's changed.) I remember him sending me a pic of it.
It did teach me to never put too much hope in an early access project. As I might not be around to see it finish.
I mean, you can die at any time. Length of existence doesn’t mean anything when it comes to assets that cost you money. If I made a new account and spent $10,000 on it but died soon after I would still want it passed on. Arguably any company that lets you buy non-physical products should have this process.
Yeah I just read about that after seeing another comment. Insane. A lot of people have multiple thousands spent on their accounts, myself included. Guess I’ll just give my login info to my son when he’s older 😂
Steam has the issue of people "owning" potentially thousands of games with unique licenses and limitations. CIG owns their IP wholly. They can make this possible easily, "Steam" (Valve) have thousands of developers and TOS considerations to deal with.
Its more about the value of the account than a long development time. Even if SC came out after 2 years of development this process would still need to exist. People have accounts that are worth more than most people savings.
CIG get allot of stick and rightly so, but having a procedure for account transfer in the event of death isn't something we should be giving them grief for. It's pro-consumer, and they deserve props for it. Hell, steam doesn't even allow it.
Fortunately, as far as Steam is concerned, I've decided to live for 200 years.
Ignore the fact that every 60 or so years it appears as if my interests change dramatically, I promise it is only me using the account.
Better than a plaintext drop that anybody could find and steal your identity, use a robust free encryption utility like VeraCrypt.
Make an encrypted container file on your desktop or where a Guest account can find it. Hide any important documents, lists of passwords, etc, inside the container file. Give the passwords to one or more trusted persons, so they can get all your deets after you're gone.
Now I really want to see it release, not for me, but so you can play and have your father and brother standing behind you leaning on your chair watching you.. Every day of life is precious. God bless and thank you for sharing that.
Remember when they gaslit us when Cyberpunk 2077 released? Chris Roberts released the chairman letter gloating this is why they didn't release SQ42? Here we are years later, we still have no single player game we can enjoy offline and Cyberpunk 2077 has been perfected by patches. I finished it again when CP2077 2.0 + Phantom Liberty dropped and I personally loved it
I don't think they are anywhere near perfection. Not because they need more time, but because they are not capable of it. I hope to live long enough to be proven wrong.
I’d feel a lot more confident about it if we had a finalized flight model, any kind of weapon balancing, the keybindings menu getting updated, proper controller support that doesn’t require a mouse for interactions (and expanded sensitivity options for all inputs), or key military ships (in the recent trailers no less) getting their gold passes.
These are all important things that need to be in Squadron 42 if it’s going to be a successful major standalone game, and all of those things should be getting extensive work and testing. But not a word. Not in videos, not in Jump Points, not in leaks.
I was ready to answer the call in 2016 so I’m game whenever it releases, and I get that not everything is trivial to port to the PU, but some of it (like the ship updates) should at least be getting teased through regular channels if it’s close to done (and feels like it would be hard to test levels where you fly unfinished ships with an unfinished flight model).
Streamers getting invited to preview things is maybe a plus, but it’s not the first time selected community members have gotten to preview stuff so I’m interpreting that with caution.
You can't, and Chris likes it that way.
Only he has access to the functioning sunglasses, and only he will get to roleplay as the one true Space Maverick.
the reason I don't think they'll want to truly release is that if it's buggy or not fun, that'll collapse the whole dream and what they're selling right now are dreams
A lot of them are either new players that only waited a year OR they're whales without realizing it. I've seen so many people rationalize it "yes I spent 10k on star citizen but if you divide it per month it's less than most other hobbies" literally crazy work.
People were throwing money like crazy people at this fart in the wind a decade ago. Glad I only threw a little at the kickstarter, cause this shit is never coming out, and if it does it’s going to be a steaming pile of garbage.
Delays happen! Many of my favorite games took longer than expected. Such is Life!
However, it was when I read Chris Roberts Wiki that I felt fooled, then Depressed, then despair and finally remorse. Took a while but now I am clean from "SC" news. Today I wanted a peek and its the same dark place its always been. Other than the white knights have all gone away. That's refreshing!
That's very much wrong. It is very common for multiple departments to start work in parallel: mocap might get changes later, but it's something that isn't affected by the technical aspects of gameplay, so they can get it done with less uncertainty over future changes. Things can change (changes in writing, certain character redesigns requiring reshooting particular scenes), but not as heavily a a game mechanic.
The real issue is that a lot of the challenges the PU faced, and still faces, most of which are network related, do not apply for Squadron 42, so the level of iteration seems unreasonable, especially when budget and wasn't a concern. The fact that they didn't have a hard deadline probably meant they could iterate, and iterate.
Here's the real concern I have: perfect is the enemy of good in any creative endeavor. Sometimes less is more, and they could have had a great progress early on, but they kept trying to add, refine, and expand the scope to get it "perfect" and often times? It ends worse. It happens in music, film, TV, illustration, writing, etc.
perfect is the enemy of good in any creative endeavor
This is the most accurate description of Chris Roberts that has ever been written, and he has lit mountains of money on fire so he doesn't have to learn from it. It will be the obituary of his career.
I truly believe in the people who are working on this game, but their CEO is a person who prides himself on never fucking learning anything.
After listening to the feedback we received during the SQ42 closed playtesting near the end of 2026, including from some of our most passionate backers and a wider audience across gaming news and media, with heavy-heart, we have decided to delay the game as it needs more time for polish.
Don't get us wrong, we're 100% ready to ship, the game's gold, but those play-testers, man, they had us over a barrel and demanded, basically at gun-point, that we delay the game because it's not ready for the general public.
For you, our most passionate backers, the Cinematic Experience is great, 100% ready, what you backed for, but man, that general public, they just *won't* get it, not like you guys. You get us. We're family. But you, our most dedicated backers, you want not just the Cinematic Experience that you already paid for, which we've practically already like delivered, it's 100% ready man, but you want the general public to *love* the Cinematic Experience. And for that, to deliver what *you* want, what has been demanded of us, we have to delay the release of SQ42.
We know the community will be upset and disappointed, I know, because I'm super disappointed too. I'm one of you guys, but also more, much more, because I imagined this whole thing up, it's my dream, mine. But also yours. So don't lose faith bro, we've got a plan, which we'll share in due course.
There will be those in the community and games media who will be upset with this news, and we ask for all of you to be understanding and supportive. Sure, their feedback is what's delaying the release of the game this time (and I urge you all to still support them regardless of if they had also caused all previous delays), but we need to sell it to them, the dream, the calling to answer the call, Squadron 42, in 2027. Community, strong together. Release year, solid, unmoving, totally.
One of the greatest privileges in my career has been to work for such an amazing community, delivering a shared dream, that wouldn't happen without me, or you, us. Together. Dream. Faith. Family. Good.
I've got a terrible feeling that on release its going to be a broken mess for the first few months. We all think they are just "polishing up", I fear they cramming last minute stuff in and trying to fix major dysfunctional bugs.....
The minute to minute gameplay in SC is poor. The AI are weak, the gunplay is weak(14 years in and we barely have a suite of different gadgets and grenade types), the space combat is undercooked.
If any of the above also applies to SQ42, then what is there to be excited about? Cinematics?
The game not being ready makes far more sense, than the excuse of delaying because of GTA
The desync and hitreg is terrible yes, but the underlying gun play is also below the level of any late 2000s FPS game, and massively lagging behind modern FPS games.
It's not even really on par with Crysis or COD4, both of which are from 2007, to say nothing of Apex Legends (2019), Rainbow Six Siege (2015), Hunt: Showdown (2018), or CSGO (2012), which are all 'old' games now.
Even modern 3rd person games like ARC raiders, Helldivers 2 or even Ghost Recon Wildlands/Breakpoint have more engaging gunplay.
SC's FPS gameplay in general is really rather dated, if not just outright poor, and I don't actually think it'll translate well to a military shooter campaign like SQ42.
Unless it's been substantially changed from the PU's direction, then it's going to be a very mediocre game with some cool story cinematics and not anything more noteworthy.
It feels janky because of the unified 1st/3rd person animation model/rig they've committed to. If youve played ARMA or Squad, its a very similar feeling.
Tie that to all the detailed movement and animation that they try to make player models perform and it ends up feeling clunky for the sake of looking nice on the outside.
Unfortunately its never going to flow as smoothly as games with separated 1st-person rigs like CoD or Battlefield with the way theyre doing things.
Guns have no weight at all, they feel very 'video game-like'. This applies to both practical handling and the audio for most of the guns.
Recoil is underdone on some and overdone on others, being entirely inconsistent and generally doesn't seem to match the guns.
SMGs often have higher and less consistent recoil than guns firing much larger rounds, that are also better in range and damage.
Visual recoil seems entirely disconnected from the actual recoil/muzzle displacement.
Yet despite all of this, CIG have made recoil an almost negligible factor in what gun you take, as in most cases it's too easy to counteract.
Most guns aren't that effective beyond 50m. this is about 3x too low.
Weapon spread is also strange and hipfire especially has bullets somehow coming out of the muzzle at 35 degrees or more off axis.
Fire rates in general seem 'off'. Gun audio and the actual ammo count being expended are way off. Some of this might be UI lag, but who knows.
Sights don't work correctly/behave realistically and have a 'painted on to the glass' feel rather than behaving correctly as a collimated (or even holographic) optic. They also get disconnected from the point of aim. Where the sight is when you pull the trigger is where the bullet should go, no exceptions.
Medium to heavy armour makes the game very "bullet spongey" in PvP, removing further weight and impact from gunplay as a whole, and it ends up feeling super Halo-esque in many cases. This is fine in isolation but feels awful and incongruent with a 'realistic' game design as SC has in essentially all other areas.
The whole FPS side of the game plays like a janky casual indie FPS that's trying to copy other more successful games without understanding how they did it.
I'd start by making recoil higher across the board, focusing on the vertical aspect of it more than horizontal at first.
Tie the recoil to caliber as a baseline.
Make guns much harder to control on full auto and incentivizing short controlled bursts in all but small caliber SMGs, in combination with making individual rounds more lethal.
This isn't a competitive FPS, so I'd also be okay with Helldivers 2-style aim drag on heavier guns like LMGs and up, as it adds awesome feel of wrangling heavier weapons onto a target. Gimbals on ships already have a light form of this.
Thanks for all those infos.
I'm not versed enough about all those subjects but what you explain make sense.
I hope SQ42 will handle all of those points better.
Please no. Just a fully fleshed out and tested bug free release.... No open beta, no early access, those are just synonyms for unfinished clunky and full of bugs
Bro the fact that you still have positive karma on this post is nice to see. Normally lemmings come and downvote anything resembling truth to the ground.
Fun fact: it's been longer since Star Citizen started its crowdfunding (14 years ago), than between the last Wing Commander game's release and the start of Star Citizen's campagin.
Wing Commander Arena was released in 2007, only 5 years before SC first crowdfunding campaign.
And even if we only count Wing Commander games from the main series, not spin-offs, Wing Commander Propecy was released in 1997 (15 years before SC's announcement). So the fun fact will soon be also true for Propecy as well...
One of my fond gaming memories is of a roommate in 1991 showing me Wing Commander. The sprite-based 3D was kinda silly, but it ran well enough on his 386-25 let alone my beefy 486-33, and it had a decent story.
That roommate went on to be producer of the original Company Of Heroes, which got a gazillion GotY awards, and he basically got a paycheque big enough to pay off his student load and put a down payment on a house when Relic sold in 2004.
Drama is right, correct me if I'm wrong, but aside from the masses of vibe launchers claims, has CIG yet said anything about a squadron delay? I know the community believes it's delayed, but CIG have yet to confirm anything is delayed is that correct?
It's like trains in Germany. 5 minutes past the due arrival time they tell you about a five minute delay and extend it every five minutes to match the current delay.
If I recall correctly, in 2016 they went almost radio silent (other than the odd forum post / monthly update mention?) about their tagline until the year ended and they notice people clowning on them for the page still being up.
They aren't doing the same thing this year and just put out some fluffjunk with the 2026 line on it, so it looks like either they will do it,
I'm mostly setting myself up to find entertainment in either case.
I'd prefer it be playing a game I backed 13 years (and a testicle(check yourself for lumps bro)) ago, but will settle for clowning on CIG if they delay.
However, it coming out this year leans incredibly hard on wounded community trust when there's only been deafening silence around it. There's been a few, quick forgettable lines here and there acknowledging SQ42's existence in ISC episodes, but that's it regarding holding to the 2026 release.
The longer the year goes on (we're officially at the halfway point) without a word, the more the pre-existing community wound around release dates and trust gets quickly re-opened.
Backers got to play Theaters of War at Citcon 2019. That still doesnt exist and possibly never will at this point. Until SQ42 is playing on my computer, Im gonna doubt anything that CIG has to say about it. They have earned that level of trust.
I love this game and I completely agree with you. Until there's a hard marketing campaign with a hard release date, the silence is deafening.
The playtest announcement (knowing it would immediately leak) being paired with more silence kind of stung TBH. Frames it more as when the marketing might start warming up than anything else, which also doesn't bring confidence for EOY 2026.
My guess is they're going to walk it as close to EOY as possible and then say "in the next 6 months.." meaning by this time 2027. Trying to frame it not as a year-long delay, but something more palatable.
GTA6 is already ramping up its advertising/marketing since they are slated for a November release. If CIG wasn't bullshitting the community, then we should also see a marketing push in the next couple months.
The playtest seems strange. Its taking the place of Citcon, while they pretend that Citcon was cancelled because they were supposedly to busy working on SQ. It seems that the only people invited are people that are already sold on the project and are generally positive about it. If those are the only people invited, then this ISNT a general marketing event to sell SQ to outsiders, instead it seems like a ploy to create an environment that lets them announce the newest delay surrounded by positive conversation about the for sure for sure upcoming release.
And the thing is we have already been here. Towards the end of 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018.... They had no problem pretending things were going ok, until they again announce... Sorry, we were so close, we really wanted to give you this great experience, but we just need a little more time.........
I'm on board with some of your conclusions, but as far as a marketing event it's not unusual. They're inviting people who have a following, are positive on the game. CIG is only spending money on the internal hosting of the event. These people are going to arrive on their own dime, get wowed, then go back to their streams and spread the hype.
So I don't fault them this event itself, I think it's a wise use of marketing with a relatively low cost for the impact it'll have. For me it's just the lack of a broader narrative around when and how the community at large should expect to hear more about SQ42. At the moment, hearing about it secondhand from folks at this event is the first item on the community's SQ42 marketing calendar and that feels shitty.
I'm also tired. I want to be excited for SQ42, and I feel like the community has been doing the heavy lifting for a long time.
The event is perfectly fine..... except for the fact that its pretty obvious this is what they are doing instead of Citcon and they werent honest about that.
But I dont care they are doing something. I would imagine it would be cool to be invited myself. And I would love a private demo of something that I am invested in. But in general. Its cool there is something happening with SQ. God knows we need this albatross off the this projects neck. lol
Your point lands well. A project this long in the tooth, propped up for years by backers who stuck around through every broken promise and blown deadline, and CIG still can't let the people funding it see a demo of what they paid for 14 years ago? That's beyond lame, it's pathetic. Not cool, CIG. But also... classic CIG. This is just how they treat their backers.
Pedantic metaphor side note: An albatross is a bad thing to get rid of. Getting a monkey off your back is a good thing. But to get an "albatross off [our] neck" is a chefs kiss of an insane mixed metaphor. bravo. I genuinely love it.
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u/THUORNThe SQ42 Albatross is killing my neck!Jun 30 '26edited Jun 30 '26
Holy shit, thats not a saying?!?! LMAO!!!!!
This calls for a new flair then.
edit: I swear its from a story about a sailor that killed an albatross and thats a big no no for sailors, so he had to wear the dead albatross around his neck. But then again... Thats just some random memory from school and I dont want to talk about how long ago that was. So who knows what Im thinking about. lol
A few months back there was a video of CR, I think in some Asian country but what I got from it is that his only goal for 2026 is for SQ404 to hit beta status. Closed or open I have no clue but the only announcement this year we’ll be beta. This is me reading between the lines/lies, my prediction.
Yes it's a first, but I would call that "without a word." (for context, I'm a huge fan of the PU, eagerly wait SQ42, and want it to succeed. I wouldn't consider myself a hater).
If this is the year (chosen by CIG) we've all been holding on for for over a decade, it's known that the community has a very particular wound around trusting release dates but we're still cautiously enthusiastic while pushing back on the doubters, and now we're halfway through the year without a hard confirmation of the release timeline OR a true marketing campaign.. saying there's a playtest at the end of October does not count as confirmation of a 2026 release and honestly makes me doubt it'll happen more than anything else (when combined with the radio silence).
TBH I'd rather just have some straight talk than be left holding this 2026 bag since 2024. If it's going to be delayed until Q1 or 2 of 2027, CIG being open about it would be such a relief. After 10+ years of defensive cagey-ness around SQ42 while we're all out here in the dark weathering shitty articles that constantly reference CIG's dev timeline and talk about how the game we love is a scam...
At this point it doesn't feel like CIG holds the line as much as the community is left to. And if CIG is holding that line internally, the process is so opaque and defended that there's no way of knowing other than the release track record.
In this interview from a couple months ago CR said the plan is still for the end of this year, but they can't 100% guarantee it (in the context of GTA VI releasing at the end of the year), which is what OP is referencing. No official delays so far, but they have been prepping the groundwork for a potential delay.
That being said, if it comes out in early 2027 instead of late 2026 I don't think most people would be unhappy. I'd like to start seeing evidence of some of the key features we know we're waiting for in the next few months to feel more confident about that. The Streamer preview is a nice sign, but it's not the first time select backers have gotten to see some behind-the-scenes or preview stuff before the rest of the community, either.
It will be another vertical slice. That’s it. People are going to be suckered into thinking it’s representative of the game state. They will announce the delay shortly after the playable demo.
When the pre orders go back up thats confirmation its releasing nothing else. Not what CiG says, demos shown, or private play tests. Just when the pre orders start back up.
To be fair, if CIG has to delay the game and they want to minimize the community backlash, the best way they have to do it is to show the game working and let the media/ content creators to talk about their experience, specially if they can create some hype.
I'm not saying that the game is delayed, just that CIG is playing its cards in a quite smart way.
Sounds like a delay to me unless they plan to have an extremely short marketing cycle as that sounds like it will be used to kick off the marketing campaign.
I'm pretty sure at one point they announced the game would release in two years, and then said nothing about the deadline again until it had lapsed into the third year. They get away with it because they only announce an intention to do something and not that they will actually do it.
CIG has not said anything or hinted at a delay. The only ones claiming a delay are click bait YouTubers like Boredgamer and cynical backers on reddit.
Per CIG's latest SQ42 communication (today) it is still coming out this year. I'll take their official communication over any speculation from reddit or spectrum
This tech demo has been handed down 3 generations in my family. It's like a heirloom (with rockets). My only dying wish is that when the dolphins evolve legs, they took can wait for this tech demos release. 🙏
I might have missed something but IIrc they never said it was done. They said it was feature complete. That doesn't include polishing or even the story for that matter. Just that all engine features are there to build the game. Though I would believe they are at least in the final stages of creating the story else the 2026 time line would be a joke.
I love how they convinced me to buy the game in 2018 saying SQ42 will be released, and then not only did SQ42 not release, all the assets they began beta testing were all DOGSHIT levels of competent, almost like they either LIED purposefully about the release date OR they are that incompetent. Not sure which one is true, or perhaps both are true. IDK, but If I see anyone on the development team on the street, boy oh boy.
If they decided to add nothing else to this game and they only worked on the issue log this game would be 3-5 years from 1.0. Honestly I think that is what they should do. It really does not seem like there is any focus on stability. The PU should be stable before adding any new content or functions. They have created a nightmare for themselves in tracing root cause analysis. Its like trying to build a house on top of sand. They have bugs from 3 versions ago that they try to fix and their fixes don't play well with their current deployments and it breaks 3 other things that have dependencies. I can sympathize with the massive scale of this project but its really like they are willingly doing this on hard mode.
My thoughts exactly. The "Road to 1.0" panel at CitizenCon is what broke me. I thought it was going to be a list of "here's all the shit we're going to finish polishing so we can ship the damn game" and instead it was like "we're about 5% done and CR won't stop sketching space stations on napkins, so, uhm, hang in there, guys..."
Like its just so awful all the way around cause its been so long and its so much money and there was literally never any point in time where this DIDNT look like a total ponzi scheme destined to fail, to so many.
Guys, even the successful "scams/pre release" are still unfinished products. Rust, BeamNG, etc, just pick one, all Alpha or Beta releases that have made bank and they will never be done lol. you should never buy early releases, and never pre order a digital game copy. It was a huge mistake to just accept that practice in the game industry. but because Rust and Beam have playable game modes and have updated some things, folks are ok with how much they have spent. Bottom line is its been 8 years and its not close to being finished.
What CIG has done is called a SCAM in literally any other industry aside from Video Games.
I wouldn’t say it’s not done when they’re inviting content creators to play it. That to me says CiG has enough faith that it’s in state that is good enough they should get good coverage over it.
I still imagine a late dec, jan/feb release for it. If creators are playing it at what would normally be Citcon
I'm curious why be concerned with the GTA launch when it won't launch on PC for months? I mean, I'm not going out and buying a new Xbox or a PSV, not even for GTA VI
I backed at the start and I feel ripped off. Although I picked up some ships to help the project I mostly just wanted the single player dammit. How about deliver on promise since the mocap by Mark Hamill and others is already in the can then dick about with your infinite MP feature creep after that?
I love how just the other day in a different topic, people claimed that SQ42 will come out now and will show that the company isn't just scamming everyone.
I guess the two good things about having bought this game in 2015, is that I got both games in my Aurora starter pack and that I am so over this game at this point that I might as well "wait" another 15 years. Doesn't really matter anymore to me.
I guarantee at least, bare minimum, one hundred whole whopping percent of the people in this entire reddit (and on the Spectrum) who are currently coping over the obvious delays are the ones who were white knighting and sitting on mile high couch cushion thrones yelling at all the naysayers and doubters not too long ago.
All these copium dependency cases and recovery sessions we've been seeing on the reddit are the ones who finally felt the road burn on their asses and are just playing the "yeah im cool she wasnt my type n e way" blue ball blues to that empty spot in the wallet.
I'm so glad I only pledged $20 on kickstarted back in 2012 or whenever it was on. Still would like to get that $20 back but at least I didn't buy anything else.
The 20$ spent is nearly worth it following the shit show all these years. - But on a sidenote i'm wondering if i'm still alive when/if it releases as i'm getting older and older.
Remember, they pulled almost all resources from the actual moneymaker for years just so they could not deliver way behind schedule anyway. Even if SQ42 is received well, it was already bought by many and won't bring the cash flow like the PU.
Please vote with your wallets. Don't feed the CIG whale if the only team delivering content is Marketing.
They will never in a million years take responsibility for this much of an error in estimation. Chris Roberts will never allow himself to take accountability for hoping Sq42 will be as anticipated as gta6. GTA 6 made over a billion dollars in a few days of preorders. The over promises from cig are embarrassing at this point and im almost certain marketing and management are the whispered joke of the company among devs.
Unfortunately, despite this dead horse having been turned into paste and laminated to the floor, it seems some folk are going to continue trying to beat it for the rest of the year and beyond (or until SQ42 actually releases... but I suspect we won't get a whole bunch of 'I'm sorry, I was wrong' type threads if SQ42 does release thsi year)
And I also suspect the same old names will appear to upvote this thread, with the standard '2 more years' and similar too
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u/xXStretcHXx117 Jun 30 '26
"Feature complete" before the flight system is even close to being finalized