Star Citizen reworks its roadmap and insults its players
A strained relationship
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Star Citizen is a game seemingly permanently stuck in development. After years in development, in 2020 the Star Citizen team attempted to be more transparent with fans moving forward. A roadmap system was implemented, outlining upcoming goals and progress. But in communicating changes to that roadmap, the Star Citizen team have potentially upset a fanbase whose patience was already strained to breaking.
Development Eternal
Star Citizen has been in development for over a decade now. And in that time it has raised an absurd amount of money. Over $400 Million has gone into keeping the project running.
Many games in development this long would have turned into vapourware – or highly-profile distasters that weren’t worth the wait, such as Duke Nukem Forever. But while too rough to be considered anything other than early access, Star Citizen does exist in a playable state. And it is a state that is being continually updated by the developers. At the very least, the star citizen team remains engaged with development and communication, as opposed to simply staying quiet and vanishing.
But the added transparency in recent development will soon be a thing of the past. Star Citizen is throwing out its roadmap feature. From now on, the team will only be disclosing its immediate next goals and updates. As part of an update on the Star Citizen site, developers detailed their dissatisfaction with the ‘release view’ roadmap. But this dissatisfaction contained complaints that the fanbase is likely to take very personally.
“The general focus of many of our most passionate players has continued to lead them to interpret anything on the Release View as a promise. We want to acknowledge that not all of you saw it that way; many took our new focus and our words to heart and understood exactly what we tried to convey. But there still remains a very loud contingent of Roadmap watchers who see projections as promises. And their continued noise every time we shift deliverables has become a distraction both internally at CIG and within our community, as well as to prospective Star Citizen fans watching from the sidelines at our Open Development communications.”
Star Citizen: The final straw?
If it were just a fanbase being vocal with their complaints at having waited this long for a game, that would be one thing. But Star Citizen exists in large part due to the contributions of those fans. Without continued interest and funding, the project would likely have been pulled long ago. As a result, it comes across as somewhat tone-deaf to cast those fans as ‘loud’ and ‘a distraction’. It remains to be seen if the community will remain loyal to Star Citizen, or if its patience has run out at last.
