Roberts also noted that Squadron 42 measures in at over 40 hours in length, and that the developers are now working on “remaining polish, optimization, and bug fixing.” He also wrote about how Cloud Imperium Games had worked throughout 2025 to build on the development progress it had made on Squadron 42 back in 2024, with a focus on “bringing the game to content complete and closing out remaining core tasks in preparation for Beta.”

“A big part of what makes this possible is the technology we’ve built at CIG over many years,” wrote Roberts. “The ability to move seamlessly from on foot, into a vehicle you can fly and move around inside, down to a planet or across star systems, all without loading screens, creates a level of immersion that’s very difficult to replicate. That combination of close-up interaction and galactic scale is at the core of what will make Squadron 42 so unique.”

“Equally important is the quality of the content itself. From writing and performance capture to characters, environments, ships, lighting, sound, cinematics, and design, the level of care across the entire game is something I’m incredibly proud of. Combined with deeply interactive systems, it creates an experience that pulls you into the world and keeps you there.”

As for Star Citizen, Roberts also wrote about a recently-released experimental update released for the game’s Alpha 4.5 build which brings in support for VR headsets. He noted that this “Christmas Surprise” originally started as a passion project and started getting the attention of developers as well as fans of Star Citizen.

As part of this VR mode, “almost everything” has been physicalized, which means that it can be interacted with by players with their own hands regardless of whether they are playing in first or third-person views. The VR mode, he noted, also helps further justify the work that Cloud Imperium Games has put into detailing its various environments, props, ships and gear, since players can now experience these things at true scale. The VR mode is still considered “an early and experimental step,” however, and the developers are still working on more ways to improve it.

Looking to the future, the studio plans on bringing in a number of improvements to the technology it has already introduced to Star Citizen and Squadron 42. Among these making Server Meshing—first introduced to Star Citizen through an update earlier this year, allowing the server meshes to automatically reconfigure themselves in real-time based on player activity and server load. There will also be more in-game content introduced over the next year to Star Citizen’s alpha. Squadron 42, on the other hand, is currently moving towards its Beta release. However, Cloud Imperium Games hasn’t confirmed when this Beta release is slated to happen.

The core theme in the main region of Nyx – Levski – is the idea of freedom. As the trailer puts it, Levski is special precisely because it was made by regular people, and is free from the control and tyranny of others. Levski is located in the Glaciem Ring, and has been described as having been founded centuries ago by a revolutionary group called the People’s Alliance who were fed up with the Messer regime on Earth.

As for the kind of content that players can expect from Levski, a military subcontractor dubbed InterSec has several missions available for players. Part of this will involve investigating abandoned QV stations to gather as much intelligence as the player can.

Levski itself also has all the amenities that players might need, including a hospital, a marketplace, and even a bar, Café Musain, where players can go to gather more intelligence or even simply just hang out. Those looking for a new ship can also hit up Teach’s, which also happens to be home to Levski’s Talkin’ Shop show.

“Many wanderers find themselves searching for a new system when the controlling grip of oppression clutches too tightly,” reads the official description of the new system. “That system is Nyx, removed and untethered from an overruling establishment. Home to Levski, a settlement built on a belief in equality for all sentient beings, Nyx is a beacon of hope for any traveler still longing for freedom.”

Celebrating the major update, Cloud Imperium Games has also released a host of new gear bundles that can be purchased with real-world money. These are the Epoque Aves and the Epoque Dust Devil bundles, which offer medium and heavy armour respectively, along with matching backpacks, and a Behring P8-SC SMG. Along with this, the bundles also offer Crusader Intrepid paint that features the same “Epoque” design as the armour sets do.

Cloud Imperium Games had recently hit a major landmark when it comes to the development and funding for Star Citizen. Earlier this week, the company had managed to raise over $885 million through crowdfunding alone. At the time of writing, this number has gone up by another million, and it is quite likely that the funding will cross the $1 billion in just a matter of months.

Earlier this month, Star Citizen also saw the release of a major new update, bringing its version up to Alpha 4.0. The update brought with it new behind-the-scenes improvements to the game that essentially eliminated “server boundaries” while still ensuring different things run on different server shards. This also ensures that one sever going down doesn’t impact gameplay in other servers.

Star Citizen was originally announced all the way back in 2012. Since then, developer Cloud Imperium Games has largely relied on crowdsourcing to fund the ambitious title. While it has been in development for over a decade, 2016 also saw the release of the first playable version. Since then, the space-based title has been getting regular updates, including a major one at the start of this year, which brought it up to Alpha 4.0.

The update brought with it a major new feature that allows the studio to run different parts of the games across different servers while still keeping these “server boundaries” essentially invisible to players. Through this update, issues that would affect the stability of any server would be localised only to that server, with the rest of the game being unaffected.

“Each planet, landing zone, or major station is now covered by different game servers,” wrote Cloud Imperium Games boss Chris Roberts when announcing the feature. “Thanks to this technology, server boundaries are effectively invisible, even at our high levels of fidelity, ensuring smooth, uninterrupted gameplay. This means that server performance, playability, and overall health are now local to each of the nodes in the server mesh.”

In the meantime, the studio has also noted that its primary focus of development for Star Citizen in 2025 has been “improving playability” while improving performance and stability. Of course, it’s also keen on content.

“As we jump into the new year, our primary focus across our Star Citizen teams is clear: improving playability,” wrote Roberts earlier this year. “Our drive for playability surrounds three critical areas – performance, stability, and content. We understand that the Live environment must be far more reliable and consistent, and we are determined to deliver on this.”

When it comes to funding, Star Citizen had crossed the $750 million mark back in December 2024. It is also worth noting that just about every stretch goal that the company had announced since the title was first announced has been reached, with the highest one coming in at $65 million, which would offer the studio the funds it needs to work on “enhanced ship modularity”.

Back in August, Roberts had also spoken about the potential release windows for Star Citizen, as well as its spin-off Squadron 42, with the latter aiming for a 2026 release. Star Citizen, however, would need even more time in development, with Cloud Imperium Games aiming to launch it in either 2027 or 2028.

For the sake of context, development on Star Citizen had begun over a decade ago, with the game having gone through several rounds of crowd funding to further help its development. Since development started, the studio has continued to release early builds of the title for some time, with 2017 marking the release of the game’s persistent universe module.

Roberts had spoken earlier this year about plans for Star Citizen in a Letters From the Chairman from back in January. In the letter, Roberts wrote about wanting to focus on getting Star Citizen to a state that can be referred to as playable. As part of the this, the studio has decided to run two versions of the games in parallel, each one having its own progression.

A big release for Star Citizen this year was Alpha 4.0. At the time, Roberts had noted that it wasn’t a hundred percent complete, and that the studio was also focusing on bringing in some of the mission types that were missing. For context, the title is currently in Alpha 4.3.0. Players that would prefer to access the missing missions and other content can switch to an older Alpha branch of the title.

One of the key features of Alpha 4.0 for Star Citizen is the ability for players to travel back and forth between the Stanton System and the Pyro System through a Jump Point. To make this journey possible, players will end up jumping through the various server layers that power the entirety of the game.

“Each planet, landing zone, or major station is now covered by different game servers,” wrote Roberts. “Thanks to this technology, server boundaries are effectively invisible, even at our high levels of fidelity, ensuring smooth, uninterrupted gameplay. This means that server performance, playability, and overall health are now local to each of the nodes in the server mesh.”

As for single-player title Squadron 42, the game was described by Cloud Imperium Games as being feature complete all the way back in 2023. Since then, however, the studio has continued to work on the game without revealing more details. At the time, senior game director Richard Tyrer said that Squadron 42 had entered into the final stage of game development, revolving around stability improvements and optimisations to ensure that the game runs well.

October 2024 also saw a major trailer released for Squadron 42, giving us a look at more than an hour of gameplay from the upcoming shooter. The game will feature quite a star-studded cast, including Mark Hamill, Henry Cavill, Gary Oldman, Andy Serkis, and Gillion Anderson among others.

For more details about Squadron 42, here are 15 things you should know about it.

In the letter, Roberts explains that it plans on letting players get a taste of the gameplay demo from back in 2019 with Star Citizen Alpha 4.0. As part of the release, Star Citizen will run two versions in parallel with each having its own progression. The reason for this is the studio wants to test not only the new content but also how well its test servers can handle high player traffic.

Alpha 4.0, however, will not be a hundred percent complete when it comes to the new content it will feature and will be missing a few mission types from previous releases. Players who want to check out the new content can play the Alpha 4.0 Preview, while players interested in having access to all previous mission types can stick to playing Alpha 3.24.3.

For context, a key new feature of Star Citizen with its 4.0 Preview will be the ability for players to travel back and forth between the Stanton System and the Pyro System by making use of a Jump Point. The studio points out that in making this journey, players will also be travelling through different server layers that make up the whole game.

“Each planet, landing zone, or major station is now covered by different game servers,” wrote Roberts. “Thanks to this technology, server boundaries are effectively invisible, even at our high levels of fidelity, ensuring smooth, uninterrupted gameplay. This means that server performance, playability, and overall health are now local to each of the nodes in the server mesh.”

It is worth noting that, thanks to this technology, issues that affect server stability will be localized to only the specific area hosted on the server. Players elsewhere in the game will be unaffected by these server issues.

On the gameplay front, 4.0 Preview will also bring two new competing mission chains, allowing players to align themselves with two distinct factions: the Headhunters or Citizens of Prosperity. There will also be new Contest Zones in the Pyro system with its own gang factions, all offering their own rewards.

“As we jump into the new year, our primary focus across our Star Citizen teams is clear: improving playability,” wrote Roberts, talking about the studio’s main goals for 2025. “Our drive for playability surrounds three critical areas – performance, stability, and content. We understand that the Live environment must be far more reliable and consistent, and we are determined to deliver on this.”

To help in this goal, the studio is splitting its development efforts by decoupling feature development from new content and bug fixes.

“This means new features will no longer hold up content delivery or risk destabilizing the Live environment,” wrote Roberts. “This approach will leverage the Tech Preview Channel, which was reserved for major new pieces of technology, like the Replication Layer and Server Meshing, but will now extend to gameplay feature testing too.”

For Star Citizen players, this means that the game will get more content and have more bug fixes without one being held at the release schedule of the other. This will ultimately lead to the game being more playable, with better performance and more content.

Roberts closes out the post by thanking Star Citizen players for their support, and revealing that more than a million players spent 32 million hours in the game over the previous year.

As part of this, executives who weren’t laid off have instead been assigned to different roles in the studio. The studio has also laid off employees from other departments, including QA. The new direction for the company was reportedly announced internally by studio boss Chris Roberts through an internal memo.

Roberts reportedly stated the desire to meet the release schedules for both games under development as a reason for the management changes.

“To achieve this laser focus [of meeting the release of SQ42 and Star Citizen 1.0], it is more important than ever to ensure we have high-performing and efficient teams working throughout the company,” said Roberts. “In order to achieve this, I have had to make changes to the structure of our teams from the very top of the company and downwards to ensure we have the right people in the right roles, working in person as much as possible from our most critical year yet.”

Changes to the Cloud Imperium Games website also indicate that one of the members of upper management, Chief Strategy Officer Carl Jones, was laid off from the company after having worked there for more than a decade.

Star Citizen has been in development for quite some time, being one of the most ambitious games out there. Since its announcement, the game has raised more than $750 million in funding through various methods of crowdfunding. The 1.0 release for the game is reportedly coming soon, but Cloud Imperium Games has yet to announce an official release date.

Squadron 42 is a single-player action title where players control ships in smaller-scale battles. The game is set to be a companion to Star Citizen, and will also feature actor Mark Hamill as one of its characters. The game is slated to be released in 2026.

It has, for instance, now surpassed $750 million in crowdfunding across its lifetime. More specifically, as per the game’s official website, at the time of writing, it has generated $758,329,602 in crowdfunding. That’s up from $700 million in June earlier this year. Clearly, the fact that the game has been in early access for what feels like forever and shows no signs of releasing in full anytime soon hasn’t had much effect on its crowdfunding momentum.

Officially, Star Citizen still has no release date, while its standalone single-player narrative-driven spinoff Squadron 42, also long in development, is due out sometime in 2026- though that game has also been known for delays, so that might not necessarily be set in stone.

For instance, as per the developer’s official website, Star Citizen’s crowdfunding has now surpassed a whopping $700 million. To be precise, at the time of writing, the online title has raised $705,321,458 in crowdfunding.

And when exactly is Star Citizen coming out? Well, that’s the thing. Having entered development all the way back in 2010, Star Citizen is still without a release date. Developer Cloud Imperium Games said earlier in the year that following the game’s upcoming Alpha 4.0 release, the next target would be a full, global launch– though there’s still no word on exactly how long the wait for that will be.

Interestingly enough, that will be changing in the near future. Cloud Imperium Games boss Chris Roberts has confirmed in a blog post that Star Citizen is finally approaching its 1.0 launch. Though we still don’t have a date for when it’ll release in full, Roberts says that following the game’s upcoming Alpha 4.0 release, the next target will be 1.0.

“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,” Roberts says. “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.”

Similarly, the Wing Commander-inspired standalone single player game Squadron 42 is also now moving from being “feature complete” to becoming “content complete”, with the development team “ensuring the game has the necessary polish and feels worthy of being the spiritual successor to Wing Commander.”

“To this end the team is hard at work, heads down, driving towards the finish line. I am incredibly excited about how the game is shaping up and we will have more to share with you at this year’s CitizenCon, which will be held in Manchester, England,” Roberts says.

Meanwhile, more gameplay features from Squadron 42 will also now be integrated into Star Citizen “at an accelerated rate.” Roberts says, “As part of this, towards the end of last year we decided to re-organize the Star Citizen and Squadron 42 teams to be more integrated, to facilitate bringing several years’ worth of feature work and polish to Star Citizen, and finally set our sail out for Star Citizen’s own finish line.”

Roberts says Cloud Imperium Games has been “busily planning the upcoming major milestones” for Star Citizen. More details on that roadmap will be shared later this year.

After 12-ish years in development, it’s understandable Star Citizen has its fair share of detractors. And, with this video being a technical demonstration and not actual in-game footage the usual caveat with this sort of thing remains. Until we see it in situ, until we breathe in the air of its biome’s, until we walk its space station corridors, until we trailblaze through billions of kilometres of open space without encountering a loading screen (as the showcase has us believe is possible) then we must take this demonstration with a pinch of salt. Even if everything promised in CIG’s self-declared glimpse of the future were technically possible, how would it perform for the player. Is modern hardware up to the task? Gut feeling is this window of the future isn’t on the horizon, but still very much a distant speck in the far reaches of the universe. It’s a hi-res infrared of the Horsehead Nebula, crystal-clear as if you could disperse its graceful billow with the palm of your hand, but still so achingly far away.

But just imagine for a second if every feature presented in CIG’s StarEngine showcase was a reality. Ignore the doubts in your mind for a moment and allow yourself to be enraptured by the possibilities. This trailer, after all, presents a visage of interstellar travel in one continuous, thrilling experience. The transition from space to ground is seamless: seemingly effortless, even. Its sequences are undeniably awe-inspiring, taking in snow-capped mountain ranges and icy metropolises, subterranean mining operations, verdant pastures complete with grazing fauna and agriculture, waiflike cloud cities, wormhole adjacent neon-daubed gas stations, and enough outposts to fill a sci-fi feature length. Dynamic environmental weather sprinkles every vista in natural beauty: shafts of sunlight beam through planet-scale volumetric clouds, fog fully integrated into the atmosphere cloaks valleys shaped by rivers, planets harbour full day and night cycles depending on the rotation and proximity to their star. Terrestrial environments are malleable via physically based destruction too, although it’ll be interesting to see just how much of the universe can be blasted into smithereens.

Increasingly impressive is the demonstration’s interiors: bustling urban areas brim with life, public transit flows to its own timetable, multicrew spaceships work in the stratosphere, industrial, gas venting space stations orbit distant planets. There’s even an unfortunate ship on a downwards trajectory owing to a raging internal fire, with fire extinguisher clad NPCs a nice addition to StarEngine footage previously shared. The attention to detail seeps into the minutiae too: physically based water FX curl puddles and lake surfaces in the stream of a passing Gladius thruster, sweat and tears seep out of an explorer’s pores; skin appears freckled, scarred, tattooed, glistening.

It’s as if Cloud Imperium Games have covered everything there is to cover in the universe. However, it’s not even clear if this footage is 100% real-time. If we were to accuse CIG of misleading us, then we might say some of those wormhole transitions may harbour a loading screen. We’re not saying that, of course, but billions of kilometres of vast, unexplored universe can’t be rendered in seconds, surely?

The footage shared is inarguably impressive, with no doubt a ton of hard graft from CIG’s workforce going into the presentation. It’s just… it’s a little too good to be true, isn’t it? Many of the features presented, such as the seamless transition from space to ground and vice versa are already possible in Star Citizen’s playable alpha, but the experience is oftentimes accompanied by stuttered spaceflight. Just because the bulk of the features here are playable, it doesn’t make this technical demonstration 100% representative. This level of simulation and attention to detail is going to inevitably encounter problems, with even this tech demo showing its limited draw distance from time to time. But, after all, StarEngine is Cloud Imperium Games’ proprietary tech, and if anyone’s going to wrestle the best out of it, it’s them.

Star Citizen started life on a customised version of CryEngine 3. Before long, development transitioned to Amazon’s LumberYard Engine, which itself is a derivative of CryEngine. The alterations made by CIG in the years succeeding have evolved into its own breakaway game engine. CryEngine does have its own usability issues, so there is promise if nothing else that Cloud Imperium Games have enhanced it enough to make it their own, and thus continue to furrow away behind the scenes ironing out kinks before the game eventually releases. CIG is clear that StarEngine is for their use only and will not be put up for sale to third party studios. In the works is a new ‘Gen 12 Renderer’ that’ll enhance the performance of Star Citizen and its companion single player spaceflight sim Squadron 42. Integral to this update is improvements to CPU scalability, meaning both experiences should be able to better harness available CPU cores. Ray tracing – a feature promised to crowd funders – is still reportedly in the pipeline. By the time Star Citizen eventually comes out, real-time path tracing will probably have arrived, soon to be usurped by some even fancier tech.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Yes, Cloud Imperium Games are likely right in declaring their StarEngine showcase as the future of gaming. But the question is: how long into the future are we talking? It’s going to need some nifty servers to smoothly generate all this content. Yes, it’ll be using a client-server model to generate a planet’s surface but there’s so much that needs to be done instantaneously to convincingly convey the illusion of a fully explorable planet: real-time biome generation, dense environmental procedural generation, terrain tessellation, dynamic planetary weather systems, ecosystem generation, space stations streaming on demand… the list is unfathomably large. In fact, it’s a whole universe available on demand, a bazillion channels on TV with only barebones programs scheduled. The rest is made up on the fly. Improvisation from an encyclopaedia of rules.

It’s no wonder the game is reportedly at only 25% completion (although the standalone single player component Squadron 42 is locked in a polishing phase right now). Star Citizen is such a gargantuan undertaking, it’ll be a miracle if CIG ever pull this off.

Other games – Elite Dangerous, No Man’s Sky, Starfield – are attempting the limitless space explorer sim to varying degrees of success. None are as enveloping as Star Citizen though. There’s hope that we can see StarEngine’s tech demo for what it is: a glimpse into the far-flung future, a distant promise of technical abundance and ultimate freedom.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.