Squadron 42, Star Citizen's single-player campaign, has been in polishing mode since late 2023, and Cloud Imperium Games has repeatedly stated that it will finally launch next year. However, a fresh comment made by Content Director Jared Huckaby has worried fans that there might be another delay after all. During the latest Star Citizen Live videocast, he said:
There will be no Squadron 42 presence at CitizenCon Direct this year. That team is heads down. We drew a line in the sand when we said 2026. I don’t know that we’re gonna make it; I just know that we’re going to do every single thing possible to make it, and part of that is not taking time for the distraction of CitizenCon. It's why we're not doing a larger event this year. It's why we're doing a smaller, more focused thing. Even when we did digital CitizenCon, those were still these big 6, 8, 10-hour things. This is not CitizenCon, it's CitizenCon Direct. It's a much smaller, more focused thing, specifically on the work of the Star Citizen team and what they plan for the next year of development.
As mentioned above, the statement quickly started a bit of a panic among the fanbase, whom Huckaby tried to reassure with a forum post explaining that he was talking in general terms about the unpredictability of game development, which can always lead to a relatively last-minute delay, and not of specific issues for Squadron 42, which currently remains on track.
Cloud Imperium Games founder and director Chris Roberts recently spoke of Squadron 42 as a mix of Star Wars and Top Gun. He also shared the team's hope that its launch might be a GTA VI-like event in terms of hype, touting it as the biggest AAA release scheduled for 2026 after Rockstar's behemoth. When it comes to game budgets, he may very well be right; we don't know exactly how much Squadron 42 is going to cost, but we do know that Star Citizen has received $865 million in crowdfunding, and the campaign's star-studded cast (Gary Oldman, Henry Cavill, Mark Hamill, Gillian Anderson, Ben Mendelsohn, John Rhys-Davies, Andy Serkis, Mark Strong, and Liam Cunningham, just to name a few) certainly cost the developer a pretty penny.
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