Cloud Imperium Games Refocuses Its Efforts To Get Star Citizen To ‘Commercial Release’

Star Citizen has been in alpha testing for over a decade now, with the finish line still seemingly far out of sight. Cloud Imperium Games, however, reports that its now making headway on the multiplayer space sim’s development and that it’s closer than ever to the game’s long-awaited Version 1.0 “commercial release” with just few more major hurdles to overcome.

The studio is currently tackling one of its most ambitious goals yet: bringing all the game’s servers together into one persistent universe through server meshing, which it started testing earlier this month. The studio is also refocusing its efforts to finally get the game out of alpha testing and onto the next phase of development.

“While we recognize that there is no definitive finish line in an online MMO, and that we will always be adding new features and content for many, many years to come, Star Citizen 1.0 is what we consider the features and content set to represent ‘commercial’ release,” says Chris Roberts, Founder and CEO of Cloud Imperium Games. “This means that the game is welcoming to new players, stable, and polished with enough gameplay and content to engage players continuously. In other words, it is no longer Alpha or Early Access.”

“This begins with identifying what features and content are required to create a fully realised space MMO while laying the foundations for future updates,” adds newly appointed senior director Rich Tyrer. “To be 100% clear though, this doesn’t mean going back to the drawing board or totally changing the vision of what SC currently is. With this aim, Chris and I have overseen the creation of a roadmap that takes us all the way up to 1.0 and outlines all the features and content we need, and just as crucially, the ones that will come post full release.”

Star Citizen’s single-player spinoff, Squadron 42, is also on its way to full release. The studio says that its now feature-complete and will soon be entering its polishing phase. Like the MMO, it still has no release timeline though.

In the meantime, you can learn more about Star Citizen’s latest alpha update in the new Q&A video below.