Star Citizen's Kickstarter campaign happened so long ago that some of the alpha's younger players weren't even born when it first appeared, 12 years ago. And we still don't have a clue when it will be released. But apparently the singleplayer component, Squadron 42, will actually launch in a future that isn't too far off: 2026. Unless it gets delayed, which, let's face it, there's a very high chance of happening.
CIG's chief dream-spinner Chris Roberts said he was "confident" that Squadron 42 would hit this incredibly broad release window during CitizenCon over the weekend (cheers, IGN). This announcement came after a showcase of the game's first hour, featuring lengthy cutscenes filled to the brim with famous actors who did their mo-cap performances a decade ago, some flashy-but-linear space battles, an FPS section, a bunch of bugs, and several crashes.
This was all played live at the show, hence the issues, but you can watch a more stable version of the demo below—though it's still titled "Live Gameplay Reveal".
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Games are gonna crash, and they'll do so for any number of reasons—especially when we're talking about PC games, where you've got all manner of hardware configurations to consider. But this was also a demo that CIG had prepped for ahead of time, of only one brief section of the game, and Squadron 42 has been in the "polish phase" for an entire year.
That the polish phase is going to continue until some point in 2026, three years later, might have raised some eyebrows if the fiasco of Star Citizen's development hadn't kicked off well over a decade ago.
This hour represents only the game's prologue, with the full game expected to be a 30-40-hour cosmic romp. "We feel confident we can bring the quality of the game up to the level we've just shown and more, without crashes," Roberts said.
He went on to thank backers for supporting the studio and for "allowing us to build such an ambitious game", but this ambition isn't especially obvious from the prologue. It certainly looks like it cost a lot of money to make, and it's a very cinematic introduction, full of celebrated actors taking things very seriously between explosive set pieces, but there isn't much we haven't seen plenty of times before—it's a linear, heavily scripted, but certainly exciting, hour.
Crucially, though, I do still want to play it. Though perhaps not as much as the people who spent money on it 12 years ago. Only a couple more years to go, folks. Maybe.
