The latest drama consuming the Star Citizen community centers on the complex world of “buyback pledges”.

What are Buybacks?

To understand buybacks, you have to understand how Star Citizen’s “pledge” system works.

Star Citizen and the single player game Squadron 42 are funded, in large part, by selling players “pledge packages”. The majority of these grant a player a single ship that can be flown in-game, but there are also pledge packages for ship skins, armor, and weapons.

As a way of possibly staving off requests for refunds, CIG has implemented a system whereby any player can “melt” a pledge, recovering the original cost of the package in the form of store credit which can later be used to purchase a different pledge package. Players use this system in many ways, like to try out new ships, or just to get store credit for an interim purchase.

Pledges that have been melted are conveniently placed into a “buyback queue” for that player. Players are then granted “tokens” several times a year which can be exercised to re-acquire any pledge package in their buyback queue, using store credit or additional money.

Why Buybacks are Important

Being a game in development, not all ships that CIG have promised are currently available in Star Citizen. Until recently, CIG offered “concept ship sales” which allowed players to pre-purchase upcoming ships, most of which had no firm release date, and some of which have been in the pipeline for at least a decade. Many players treat buybacks as “cold storage”, buying ships which aren’t yet available so that when they do become available, a player can thaw that package and enjoy their ship.

Buybacks are also important because CIG adds and removes certain ships from the market several times a year. Large or “important” ships are often only available during Invictus or the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo, Star Citizen’s two largest annual sales events. Buying a ship that is unavailable during most of the year and putting it into buybacks ensures that a player can have access that ship — should they want it back — during the off-cycle when that ship wouldn’t normally be available.

Finally, buybacks are important to the “grey market”, which is a player-to-player marketplace that operates in the open, but without CIG’s involvement. I am not 100% sure how the grey market works, but it does involve players selling their buybacks to other players for real cash, and works because buybacks can be re-acquired at the original price of the game package. This usually saves grey market buyers some money, and also gives them access to off-cycle ships.

Game Packages and Squadron 42

In order to get into Star Citizen outside of the occasional “free fly” events, a player needs a “game package” pledge. This is different from any other pledge in that it includes the Star Citizen game as a line item. Not all ships include the game, so buying a $500USD pledge package might grant a specific ship, but not actual access to the game. Game packages start at around $60USD and include at least one ship, a set of armor, a skin for the ship, and some in-game seed money.

For the longest time, all players had to own a game package in order to access the game but a few years ago, CIG decided that “concierge” players — those who have spent at least $1000 in real money — could melt their game package and continue to play the game. Many players who had been sitting on game packages in their original forms (i.e. hadn’t upgraded them to larger, more expensive ship packages) did so as a way of freeing up cash for credit.

Game packages of a certain age once included a pre-order of Squadron 42. While these packages were priced higher than similar game packages, that was offset by a discount on Squadron over the eventual box price of the game when it released. Those who had these game packages and who later melted those game packages also melted their pre-order of Squadron. The good news was that this complete game package was available in buybacks should the player decide they wanted to re-acquire it later on.

At least, it was available until recently.

Exceptions Apply

Last week, players started receiving error messages when they attempted to re-acquire their Star Citizen game packages which included Squadron 42 from their buyback queue. This info quickly made the rounds in the community, angering many players who were trying to exercise their buyback tokens in much the same ways as they had been able to do for years.

Yesterday (or thereabouts), the buyback queue was updated to completely block a player’s ability to re-acquire melted Squadron game packages. It also included a small popup note stating that the pledge is unavailable for reacquisition because “it includes physical items that are no longer – it was a special discounted or limited offer available…” (that’s the actual wording, not me having a stroke).

Squadron 42 had been available for pre-order for years, but had been removed from the online store in May 2023 with a note that it would be returning at a later time with an expected price hike. Considering that Squadron had been at probably at a price which reflected the financial state of the games industry during that time, this makes some form of sense: the game wasn’t yet available, so removing it shouldn’t have been an issue. Aside from the usual low-level grumbling in the community, this situation kind of blew over.

Why Now?

Squadron 42 is set to release in 2026, and although there have been no signs that anything has changed in that regard, I think we’ve all be around video games long enough to understand that games usually miss their intended release window; I wouldn’t be surprised if it slipped to the first half of 2027.

Squadron’s removal from CIG’s storefront was just a precursor to what I think we can assume is the company’s ramping-up of their marketing efforts for the single-player game. In October 2024, the release window was announced at CitizenCon, a solid year and change after the game was delisted.

Now, as we plow through 2026, bets are on Squadron’s release coinciding with CitizenCon at the earliest (October), or IAE at the latest (November-December) — assuming it releases in 2026.

Speculation in the community is that the removal of the buyback Squadron-inclusive game packages for Star Citizen is a bid to keep those packages off the grey market ahead of Squadron’s release.

Community Reaction

As with any online community, there are supporters, and there are detractors, and the side which one occupies depends on whether or not the situation hurts , benefits, or has no effect on a person.

Those who melted their game packages with Squadron seem to be of two minds. The first are not happy with the situation, but they melted their packages and were fine with not having the discounted Squadron so the situation is what it is. The second group are those who are not happy, and want everyone to know it. Those who never had a Squadron game package or who still retain ownership of their game package are chiding everyone else as having “fucked around and found out”.

What seems to unite these three factions, however, is the fact that CIG did not communicate that buybacks for Squadron-inclusive game packages were being disabled. CIG’s response (parroted by many who still have their packages, natch) is that buybacks were never meant to be forever, and that players shouldn’t rely on items in their queues to remain there indefinitely.

I do not think that this is a sentiment that the community misunderstood, but the sentiment this message seems a bit off to me. For one, buybacks are still in effect for other game packages, so the buyback system itself is not in question right now (though there was a brief glitch that made people believe all buybacks were shutting down). For another, if CIG was concerned about game packages with Squadron in the buybacks, they should have removed the ability to buy back those pledges when Squadron was removed from the store; it wasn’t, and if I remember correctly, the removal of the game from the store wasn’t announced before it happened, either.

What looks to be happening is that CIG is trying to get the financial cart before the community horse by “correcting” situations of their own design, when even they were unsure when Squadron would release. Having the game on the store was another way to get players to fund both Star Citizen and Squadron, but it’s been so long that the original price and the original circumstances surrounding the terms of the pre-order couldn’t be maintained by CIG in 2026, so they removed the game in the dead of night and asked for forgiveness rather than permission. Whether that situation was a lack or insight into how the community would react or a hopeful vestige that players would have rushed to their buybacks to spend real money to re-acquire their Squadron-laden game packages, we won’t ever know. Now, however, CIG is once again surreptitiously pulling the rug out from under players. CIG is actually one of the most transparent developers I have encountered; they are always offering insight into the development progress and glimpses into “how the sausage is made”, which is why making these changes without telling the community they were going to happen is a real dick move.

Would I have reacquired my Squadron game package had an announcement been made? I doubt it. I melted it knowing that I was OK effectively re-buying the game when it released, as I viewed the release window as being so far away from the day I melted the package that I would be thinking of it as a completely disconnected event. Although technically I did already buy Squadron, so it’ll be more like buying the same game twice.

What does concern me is that those who did not melt their Squadron packages are — as far as we know — set to eventually receive their copy of the game when it releases. That’s a customer service schism that I don’t think the community has moved on to yet. Is it fair? In my eyes, not really. To those who retained their packages, I’m sure they’re smugly secure in saying that it’s totally fair; I and people like me made our decisions and now we have to live with them. On one hand, I agree, and I am at peace with it. On the other hand, that CIG removed Squadron from the store but not the buyback queues or from people’s packages had already created an uneven situation. What I think would be fair would be that if CIG removed Squadron from everyone and instead gave those who had a Squadron-inclusive package a discount towards the final game commiserate with the original discount that the Squadron game package provided. That would, of course, flip the script so that people like me who are looking down the barrel of paying full price for the game would be happy to get a discount, while people who probably view their boon as “a free copy of Squadron” would be upset as they’d had to lay out new money for the privilege now.