Yes*

After 14 years in development for both Star Citizen and Squadron 42, we are seeing glimpses of their individual summits. Squadron is slated to release in Q2 2027, and community members who have had hands-on previews have come away impressed and hopeful for the game’s release. Star Citizen is making great strides with it’s updates and is promising to close 2026 with an absolute deluge of features once the first stage of Genesis planet tech is released in November.

Not going to lie here: there’s a long way to go for both projects, but I think the nay-sayers confidently scoffing at the projects and calling them “scams” is starting to sound a lot like sour grapes. Squadron could underperform once it becomes available (I still expect review bombing on release) and Star Citizen could fail to launch into 1.0, but neither of these potentials can be attributed to the projects being a scam.

That being said, if you’ve held off on taking either project seriously these past many years, is this time you consider changing your tune? I’m certainly not the boss of you, and if you have read any of my posts or seen the adverts you know where I stand on both projects. I like to think that I can provide balanced overviews for anyone who wants them because while I really want these projects to succeed, I don’t want to blow smoke up anyone’s ass. I feel that I am capable of being a fan while also being honest, because I make decisions with eyes wide open, and have made my peace with the worst possible outcomes.

State of Star Citizen

You can take it from me when I say that Star Citizen is in the best place it’s ever been in. Prior to 3.0, the game was little more than a poorly performing tech demo. I had tried it a few times and even though it was limited to walking around my pledge ship in the hangar — no flight, no gameplay, just walking and admiring the scale — it was both abysmal and thrilling. Things improved for a while, until patch 3.18 which pretty much bricked the game for everyone. As time went on, things recovered and CIG’s missteps were frequent but not earth-shattering until patch 4.8 once again cratered everyone’s ongoing gameplay.

The adage “you have to break some eggs to make an omelet” seems apt. Because Star Citizen has been publicly available for so long, consumers are seeing the kinds of ups and downs that other game developers would usually experience behind closed doors. It might be that CIG is experiencing an abnormally high volume of missteps, or maybe this is the kind of process that happens more often than we know. As of right now, CIG is learning from 4.8 and making good choices. For example, in 4.8 they released the Ironclad, but did so without releasing it on the PTU first; as a result, it launched to production with tons of issues. In 4.10.2, they released the Constellation Mk V, put it in the PTU, and then only released it to production as a rental for the first few days before putting it into the pledge store. The reason — as I see it — is that the rental phase gave them breathing room to either release it for purchase or hold it back to fix production problems. While some would suggest they shouldn’t release it at all if they aren’t 100% confident, I do not disagree, but we’re talking about CIG here, and believe me: the way they handled it was a step up from how they have handled things like this in the past. Progress is progress, not an absolute.

Why Now?

The asterisk on the initial “yes” above is my usual level of trepidation when recommending Star Citizen to anyone. As often as people say it, and as often as people refute it, the game is still in development which matters because CIG believes that it matters, and because they believe that it matters they can prioritize which bugs get looked at and which have to take a number. Nothing in the game is perfect by any means, so the only people who should consider jumping into the Star Citizen shaped pool at this point are those who have been on the fence for a long time, but who really, really understand that “dumb shit will happen” when you least want it to. Not always, but it will happen.

This post was spurred less by the fact that the game is in it’s best state ever (which is saying a lot, but also not saying everything) and more by the fact that CIG has been making many non-development-related moves recently, shifting the ground beneath the feet of current and potentially future supporters, and because they haven’t been telegraphing these moves, I’m not certain if they’re done shifting things around, or if we’re due for more shake-ups as they get ready for the release of Squadron and continue the march towards Star Citizen 1.0.

The first move was removing Squadron 42 from their store a few years back. Squadron had been available for pre-order for quite some time, until one day CIG just…pulled it. People who had purchased it or had it as part of their Star Citizen pledge retained the grant, but no new purchases could be made. This may have been to prepare for their internal release target for the game, but since that never came to pass, the status remained quo until recently, with the wish-listing option on Steam.

The second move was recent, when CIG told current backers that we had to identify one of our pledge packages to be “the” pledge package for our account. CIG has sold both game packages — access to the game with one of several ships of your choosing — and stand-alone pledges for individual ships that required a purchaser to have also acquired a game package. This is how so many people own so many ships, and CIG wanted everyone to have one single defined “point of entry” in order to ensure that everyone with a pledge had a “Star Citizen Game Package”. This also prevents the game package from being “melted”, or turned into store credit, as doing so would once again leave a player without an identifiable game package.

The third move happened without fanfare, and that’s the reduction of the starter packages from several to just one. If you choose to jump into Star Citizen, it’ll cost you $45USD instead of the regular $60USD. Your purchase will grant you access to Star Citizen, and an Aurora Mk II, a modular light fighter that allows for expansion to haul light cargo or enhance your combat ability with a dedicated missile rack. On top of that you get 30 days free access to three different classes of ship: a Drake Golem for mining, a MISC Fortune for salvaging, and a Crusader Intrepid for cargo running. You would also get 6 months of insurance (though you will never lose access to your pledge ships in-game, because could you imagine?), and 10,000 UEC (in-game cash) to start with

The reason I thought this might be a good time to get into the game is because $45 for a ship and 30 day rental on three others is a pretty good deal compared to the individually priced game packages CIG used to offer. I also don’t know if this “$60 on sale for $45” is permanent or if it’s truly a limited time offer, so consider yourself warned. I don’t know if other game packages will eventually return to the shop or if this is the only way to get into Star Citizen, either. As always, if you do decide to take the plunge, you can use this referral code to get yourself 50,000 UEC additional in-game starter cash.