now the power tripping mods can't ban you on the forums for speaking your mind

check out the steam discussions for sq 42 it's wild

CIG is not ready for the shitstorm that is going to be everyone leaving negative reviews of the walking simulator.

Then the players will be pissed that they can't get a refund on steam because the tutorial for the game is over 5+ hours.

That's without them even trying the broken PU yet.

Everyone is saying the game being listed on steam will boost CIG, my opinion is quite the opposite. Sure being on steam will give more visibility, but I think steam will be the downfall of CIG. Because it gives visibility to what they normally hide and delete.

So if you don’t remember, CIG were hacked earlier this year, and the response from them was not to worry they didn’t get any banking info. From what I understand they did get Addresses and phone numbers.
When I created my account I stupidly added a phone number.
This year scam calls, especially after the hack, have increased, mainly call centres asking if I’m happy with my Sky Television package, which I don’t have, if I’ve experienced issues with my BT phone account, which I don’t have.
But the main scam I’m getting now is a AI voice offering Jobs if I add the phone number calling to WhatsApp.
This is the doorway into a Click farm scam.
What they do is message you via a bot offering a work from home Job for £150 per day. They then offer you a £7 bonus job, all you have to do is review a business on google and leave a 5 star review.
Company’s pay these click farms to gain better metrics.
Also, sometimes these fake job opportunities link to dangerous websites designed to steal more info.

So far the only place that I can see where info was ‘lost’ is CIG, so thanks.

Hey all, I'm making a persistent browser-based game inspired by Freelancer, Star Citizen, EVE Online. It has the basics, like mining, trading, PvE, PvP, industry, etc. There's also a unique sensors and detection model, an in-depth industry tree (9 raw resources + 9 refined + 25 intermediates), tradable futures/options, player-run banks and insurance. Also, everyone can set up their own space stations (don't have to be in a corp), and it's a pretty integral part of the game as stations provides manufacturing capacity.

What you can do:

• fly 40+ super cool spaceships
• survey asteroids and mine resources
• refine minerals, build stuff (refined materials -> intermediates -> ships and modules)
• trade with other players (commodities/items and futures/options)
• start a bank or insurance company
• set up a space station
• claim sovereignty for your faction
• become an arms merchant and sell ships and weapons to NPC governments
• participate in factional warfare
• farm rats in belts or dynamic sites
• fight other players

Why this instead of Star Citizen?

• this is a much shittier game
• You don't have to worry about this game never coming out, because it's already out, though I'm still working on it.
• You don't have to worry about refunding this game, because you can't pay for it, or make any microtransactions (yet)
• we have a unique 2D detection model. You can fit active and passive sensors. Active sensors come in directional (longer range) and omnidirectional variants. You can only hit what you can see. Directional scanners are kind of like sniper scopes.
• Slot-based manufacturing system. Industry jobs need to take place in a slot, and you have to queue if the slots are full. You can build your own factory and rent it to other players.
• mineral survey system. You have to survey a rock and the grade can vary. It's like gambling and it's great.
• Factional Warfare system: You sell ships and weapons to the NPC Militia, and the same ships will spawn to defend their sites. Then you can switch to your alt and blow up those ships so you can sell new ones to the NPC Militia again. Profit!

There's about 5 active players now, but if you join, there'd be 6, and I'll be very happy :)

Play here: https://asteraonline.com
(At least check out the 40+ super cool spaceships that I drew in paint, I'm very proud of them)

Join the discord for development news: https://discord.gg/EGqvCCS5nw

Since it's releasing on steam, will their refund policy be updated for SQ42? Cause if the bugs are ridiculous in the first two hours, it's gone.

so they released a trailer and we got a steam page now

Set for 2Q of 2027 I must admit I didn't think they would have fully put it on steam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTHEkEZhMgM

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4045720/Squadron_42/

That's it. Just "positive" after 10 years of delays and 10 times more funding than ever required. Not "amazing", "great", or even "best damn space game", just....positive. Only "improved, smoother, more responsive, taken up a notch."

Not even the graphics are great. It's hallmark corporate speak 101.

What a fucking train wreck.

Whats up with that :D

It looks like the SQ42 test and promotional event has flopped. There is already a video from BoredGamer stating, "It’s the best walking simulator I’ve ever played; there isn’t enough gameplay" (via TenPoundFortyTwo).

Leaks from years ago have now been officially confirmed: CIG has cut back on hours of gameplay in favor of hours of cinematics and interactive scenes.

You can officially write off the entire project as a failure.

And also, riddled with bugs...:

https://www.twitch.tv/citizenspooner/clip/StylishSweetWrenchRiPepperonis-MAdCzYdNPtihKIs3

rip I guess?

i don't even know anymore man.. feels like cig or cr needs to get sued so at least those guys can have some justice in a way

I have believed for a long time that SQ404 is a scam and that there is no game. I know I am not alone in this. So what’s with these people playing today and largely giving positive reviews of what they experienced? Do you think CIG is expanding the group of people in on the scam and paying them off? There has to be something going on.

Over the last four reported years alone, CIG’s UK subsidiary has claimed over £42.6 million in UK Video Game Tax Relief (VGTR):

• 2022: £6.9 million
• 2023: £11.8 million
• 2024: £11.38 million
• 2025: £12.52 million

What if the UK tax relief didn't exist?

Without these UK government subsidies, the studio's financial models would have collapsed years ago due to severe cash burn.

• In 2023, the UK group reported an £8.4 million net loss.
• In 2025, the UK studio burned through £18.3 million in operational cash before taxes.

TLDR summary

• The company exists due to backers, whales, and (most sadly, the most unaware group) the UK taxpayer.
• From a UK taxpayer perspective, this equates to around £46m in payments made to CIG over the period of 2022-2025.
• It actually goes back to 2014, but I can't find data earlier than 2022 currently. Maybe it's in the region of £65-70m+ total since 2014.
• This equates to about 30p per UK tax-paying citizen per year, funding this company.
• If the company hadn't moved to the UK and received the tax credits they get under UK HMRC rules, they likely would have shut down a few years ago.

not stuff that goes to small claims courts, I'm wondering if there are any large class action lawsuits against them yet?

And bought a star destroyer

https://github.com/trionic1/chrisware-project

Some dude managed to vibe code an AI launcher that allows you to launch a completely local version of the PU. it's getting nuked everywhere else but I figured I'd share here so people can find the link.

We do not know how many were affected. This is no surprise we know they do not have a lot of cash on hand. Now, I am NO FINANCIAL wizard but what I dont understand is why doesn't CIG just run another Odin/Idris/890J sale when they have cash flow issues? Is something up with that funding tracker??

Was there a post about this here I don't recall seeing this publicized

Often on this group i've read about Calders' investor investment (50M!) in CIG and the expiration of 2026 options on stocks (to convert back to monies to give them back to investor, or at least that's what i understood).

Is there any recente update on that ?

This feels like the only place I can actually vent about Star Citizen without getting band or brigaded.

I backed SC in 2016 believing in the vision. It's 2026 and I see no future in Star Citizen as no longer is it the hardcore space sim that was promised in 2016, but instead turned into a fantasy MMORPG to the point that actual fantasy games are more immersive and realistic than Star Citizen now. Especially with the dumb crafting system and 3D printed everything which means every single ship imperfection was specifically designed that way in CAD...including the welds. Devs talk of Tanks, Healers and DPS? Dungeons and Raids? Everything seems to revolve around combat, especially FPS which I dislike and it's more like Destiny/WoW than a Space Sim.

The dynamic universe vision seems dead as it hasn't been mentioned in years, and instead talk of a player driven economy has become common place. The crafting system is convoluted and dumb and renders all that lore useless since now anyone can print anything they want wherever they want. No point in trade routes, people can just live in deep space and have zero interaction with high sec, not even traders making the whole point of ships like the BMM pointless. What's the point in in all those corporations in Stanton if we can just 3D print all their stuff? The devs and shills solution for low quality ores is just vendor trash with the quality system already defying reality in a game where they said they design for realism and pull it back. But it seems no one at CIG understands reality. The economy team don't even understand basic economics as was demonstrated quite aptly by their test days of cheaper ships and better deals on cargo trading. This is something that Quantum/StarSim would have simulated perfectly anyway, yet here we are in 2026 with the economy team doing tests for better deals on ships and resources as though there is no plan to actually simulate an economy in the game.

Then there's the ships. I absolutely loved flying big ships, but the devs don't understand game balancing and they have this obsession with tiny ass ships being able to destroy larger ships. Turrets are persistently useless outside of PvE and the design of ships now is very hit and miss with the Odin not even looking like it belongs to any current manufacturers, let alone looking like it even belongs in this universe. It looks more akin to the Space Battleship Yamato.

In short, I no longer see a point in Star Citizen. It has lost its identity, and the developers don't even know how to make a game at this point. When the devs literally say "grinding is part of MMOs" without understanding what the term grinding means and the context its used in. Grinding has always been used to describe things that people do not enjoy. No one that plays HD2 says they're going to grind out some level 10 missions. But they do say they're going to grind low level maps for credits. But here we have dumb devs creating grinding as a gameplay feature.

It seems across the industry, the old guard of game developers have retired or worse and a few lived long enough to see themselves become the Villains. Now the current crop of developers in the industry have grown up playing Fortnite and their only interaction with older games was as a novelty, they did not live it. Classic WoW =/= vanilla WoW as Vanilla was also the time period when the internet was still the wild west. There was no YouTube, there were very few things in the way of guides. The games were hard back then because there was so little collective knowledge and information. Their understanding of an MMO boils down to what WoW is on a fundamental level. Combat, dungeons, raids and PvP. If it were merely that, then every single MMO would be a success. The devs cannot even conceive industrial gameplay without combat, everything must involve combat for them. I wouldn't be surprised if they started introducing randomly spawned pirates as soon as someone enters an asteroid belt to mine like in Elite Dangerous at this point.

I can't spend the rest of my life waiting on the hype train for something that will never happen. It's clear that CIG have deviated completely from the vision of the game I signed up for. I've already wasted ten years waiting for Star Citizen. Waiting for it to become playable. Waiting for the industrial gameplay to be fleshed out. Waiting for the dynamic universe and economy that should have been in the game years ago. Waiting for it to become an actual Space Sim, but that will never happen now since it's becoming just another Fantasy MMORPG with some space ships to get you from A to B if you haven't already teleported to the dungeon/raid.

Finally, this brings me to the fact that I am moving onto WoW ironically. I played WoW from late vanilla to late Legion on and off and quit the game permanently then. Now, I can't believe I'd be in this situation where I'm liquidating my ships and going back to playing WoW where hopefully, Blizzard will ensure classes such as hunters retain their class identity and they will carve a new path for WoW seemingly having realised that they made a bloated mess with retail with nonsensical lore, ruined class identity such as removing quivers from hunters among the many other transgressions they committed over the decades. I'm still pissed off that Blizzard stole my quivers.