You know…this game, man.

Pledge lockdown

Last week CIG instituted a “lock down” for our account libraries. This is a pretty confusing situation in part because CIG isn’t known for maintaining a single thread throughout the lifecycle of SQ42/Star Citizen, and in part because they’re simply not communicating the reasons for their actions (:shockedface:).

Game packages explained

At it’s most basic, a Star Citizen supporter has a “game package”. This grants them access to play Star Citizen right now. Elder backers might have pledged for a game package which includes a copy of SQ42, but that option was removed from the store at some point so folks rolling up to the storefront right now won’t see that option available to them; in fact, SQ42 is currently unavailable for purchase in any form. In addition, supporters who have reached certain pledge milestones were given the option to melt their game package, the rationale being that they’ve pledged enough money to access Star Citizen “for free” going forward. Some of those people — like me — might have melted their original game package which included SQ42 and since that package is no longer available, cannot reclaim that configuration. However, if those people have spent more than a certain amount before a specific cut-off-date, then they will still get SQ42 when it releases. Yes, also like me.

What does this mean? Players can “melt” pledges, which is basically returning a pledge for store credit. This then puts the package into a “buyback” state which allows a player to reacquire the original pledge for the original amount, even if the pledge is not available in the pledge store. The exception is the SQ42 package, which we’ve established. This system has been used by many players to “mothball” pledges, free up cash, and acquire newly released pledges as they become available. Buybacks have also been used by players in the “grey market” as pledges can be gifted to other players, albeit with some loose restrictions. Players will sell pledges for less than they might be going for on the market, making things a win-win all around.

I said it was confusing.

With the library lockdown update, players are being forced to designate one pledge in their hangar as their game package, making it un-meltable and un-giftable. If they don’t have an official game package pledge already, because they reached that pledge milestone and returned their original package, then they will need to designate some stand-alone pledge as their primary package. If they have more than one game-access pledge they can choose which one they want to be frozen. Same goes with elder game-access pledges that include SQ42, allowing them to choose which SQ42-bearing package should be frozen.

So if you’re new to this system and your brain isn’t trying to escape through your nostrils, here’s the punchline. Many people assumed this was to nip gifting and the grey market because CIG didn’t make any money from those back-alley sales, but they aren’t removing gifting; they are trying to get their storefront to coalesce around a standard, it seems.

Why now? Squadron 42 is my guess.

Squadron 42 on the move

As I write this post, CIG is making big moves with Squadron 42 (SQ42). On October 9th, CIG is welcoming select members of the public — primarily “content creators” and “community organizers” — to it’s offices in Manchester, UK for a multi-hour hands-on experience with the game. This is the first time anyone outside of the company will have seen or played the game so anyone who’s interested in SQ42 will have their ears and eyes plastered to the Internet this weekend.

The assumed vibe here is that CIG is looking to preach to the converted, specifically Star Citizen supporters, and especially those who may have demonized SQ42 for taking the lion’s share of the company’s focus (a figure that Chris Roberts denies). This is not a press event and instead may be an invite-only opportunity for those who will use their platforms to disseminate how awesome SQ42 is now that they’ve seen it first-hand. Hopefully.

The upside is that there’s no blanket NDA. Attendees can talk about their experience and their thoughts about the game, it’s design, performance, and opinions on whether or not the 14-year wait was worth it. The downside is that the attendees can’t leave with anything in hand other than what they remember (or maybe wrote down) as screenshots, videos, or audio recordings are not allowed to leave the venue.

Sales imminent?

SQ42 was originally set to release in November. I can’t imagine that setting a date for the game’s release was something done in a weekend, so there must have been a lot of work done to get everything originally squared away, including the decision of when to put SQ42 back into the store.

While the release was moved to Q2 2027, that doesn’t necessarily involve the need to move the storefront date. Assuming that putting the game in the hands of players is the only (or the most important) thing that was moved, then it’s entirely possible that Squadron 42 will be making an appearance on it’s own website in the immediate future. The SCLeaks channel had reported that data-mining operations on the current SQ42 website — currently visible but only as a billboard — indicated that something had updated recently, and thus implied that something would be happening in the near future. It would also make sense that if CIG wanted to stop the grey market from trading SQ42 packages currently owned by Star Citizen players, they would nail that down as close to SQ42’s pre-purchase date as possible so as to not create a frenzy of cash-trading that they had no part in.

This is speculation, of course, and a bit of wishful thinking because the kind of content I create is apparently not good enough to get me invited to Manchester. So there’s that.

Speaking of leaks…

This is not me; I am not in the Evocati class (the sub-set of players who are in the top-tier of bug and issue reports or are, again, “content creators”…FFS) but right now the tech preview channel hosting the stage-one of the Genesis planet generation tech and it looks amazing. I only know because someone broke the NDA and there are images and videos all over the internet right now. Don’t be That Guy, kids, but also, thanks for being That Guy, That Guy.

While I haven’t logged into SC for any appreciable length of time in recent weeks, PTV5 is probably destined to be my re-entry point (though I just saw a notice that they might be including physics updates in the much closer 4.10.2 patch, which is a Big Deal(tm) and something worth checking out).

I have written about my love of staying put, and what I’ve seen so far from the tech preview channel makes me feel like that’s not just going to be my hope, but a certainty. The ground is smoother than ever, which will make ground-level traversal a lot easier once they get vehicle physics sorted out. Different biomes will provide different experiences which will certainly play a part in where I’ll want to spend most of my time, planet-side. The density of the forests and the sickly appearance of the swamps looks to be exactly what CIG promised, yet no one believed they could do.

While this preview is just to get feedback on the rough-draft of PTV5 — reports report that performance is not that great, and the “Starchitect” system isn’t part of the test — I’m already feeling the feelings of wanting to get back into the game in some way.