Star Citizen is the ambitious space exploration title that is currently in development by video game veteran Chris Roberts, via his studio Cloud Imperium Games. Although the concept of the game is a dream come true for avid gamers and space enthusiasts, Star Citizen, which will feature Star Wars actor Mark Hamill, has unfortunately found itself in a never-ending development black hole that is starting to worry the gaming industry and even some of its backers.
Ever since its announcement some seven years ago, Star Citizen has managed to garner widespread attention that easily makes it as one of the most crowdfunded video games of all time. Now, after Cloud Imperium has managed to pull in $240 million from its generous backers alone, a report from Forbes reveals that the studio is quickly losing money while making little progress on the game's development.
Forbes revealed that out of the total $288 million that has graced Cloud Imperium's bank account, only $17 million remained at the end of 2017. Roberts was then able to rake in more money by selling spaceship models that range up to thousands of dollars. Unfortunately, even after seven years, Star Citizen is still far from finished, apart from rough demos, and appears to have stagnated in its development process.
Several former employees of Cloud Imperium revealed that much of the lag in the development was due to Roberts' "meddling" and "micromanaging." The former lead character artist of Star Citizen, David Jennison, explained that it took him 17 months just to complete the designs of five character models. "All the decisions for the character pipeline and approach had been made by Roberts. It became clear that this was a companywide pattern."
In previous promotions for the game, Roberts, who recently gave BioWare advice on how to fix Anthem, has teased players of the vast content that will be available in Star Citizen such as a playable universe with "100 star systems." Unfortunately, Forbes uncovered that Cloud Imperium has not even completed a single one, and only "has two mostly finished planets, nine moons, and an asteroid." While from the outside looking in, Star Citizen may seem like a Ponzi-scheme, Forbes reassures backers that no fraud is committed and Roberts is actually using the budget to work on the game. Unfortunately, its long development is due to micromanaging and poor stewardship of resources.
Hopefully, Star Citizen will prove everyone wrong by releasing the game that its loyal backers have been dreaming of. Given the vast amount of money, dedication, and heart poured into the game by its fans prior to release, the stakes are higher for Roberts and Cloud Imperium to ensure a fair return on investment to everyone involved.
Star Citizen is currently in development but has no clear release date.
Source: Forbes