Games like Mass Effect and No Man’s Sky open the virtual universe to millions of players day after day. Star Citizen, the ambitious space sim from Cloud Imperium Games (CIG), has taken players on a different kind of voyage. Unfortunately, that voyage is down a seemingly endless rabbit hole of delays and shifting priorities. True to form, a recent blog post from the CIG team informed supporters that the roadmap used for tracking development progress would soon provide less overall visibility.
The roadmap provided a release view to give users a peek into upcoming changes while educating supporters on the ins and outs of game development. Some supporters reviewing the roadmap have become understandably vocal as CIG’s priorities and deliverables continuously change. Rather than clarify the roadmap, the team decided to stop providing information on any deliverable beyond the next scheduled patch. The decision was driven by the perceived “noise” from the community when feature releases were moved, which the CIG team labeled as a “distraction.” The community pushback comes as no surprise given the project’s number of delayed or abandoned development expectations. The fact that Roberts Space Industries (RSI) will provide less development progress will no doubt anger more supporters. For the last several years the team has faced lawsuits regarding refunds as well as increasing scrutiny around CIG’s management of the already astronomical funding goals and budget.
