What to know
The release date for Star Citizen and Squadron 42 has been announced and changed several times. Key sections include Star Citizen, 2014, Initial release date, and Community votes.
The release date for Star Citizen and Squadron 42 has been announced and changed several times.
Star Citizen
Star Citizen was first revealed at GDC on October 10th 2012, which is also the start of the crowdfunding campaign and the game production.
2014, Initial release date
The original golden ticket mentioned that the development would take 24 months, putting the release at October 2014.
Community votes
In September 2013, a first Community poll on what to do after the crowfdfunding goal was reached was held, with 21510 people participating and with 87% votes to keep the crowdfunding up through development and continue to offer stretch goal rewards in addition to extra features and development milestones.
In June 2014 a second Community vote on whether to continue to offer stretch goals was held, with 55% of 35243 participating people voting yes.
Those community votes meant increased scope, and therefore increased delay. There exists criticism over the low percentage of voters compared to the amount of backers.
After the implementation of more stretch goals (the last stretch goal was achieved 2014-11-10) the release was subsequently postponed.
2016, second release date
At BAFTA LA in January 2015 Chris Roberts talked about a fall 2016 commercial launch.
Current release date
There is currently no official hard release date for 1.0.
Squadron 42
Squadron 42 was announced on October 10th 2012 together with Star Citizen at GDC Online 2012.
2015, second release date
At at BAFTA LA in January 2015 Chris Roberts talked about a fall 2015 release.
2016, third release date
After CitizenCon 2015, a new homepage "Answer the Call" showed the date 2016, including an 'Opening Cinematic' speech of Admiral Bishop.
At CitizenCon 2016 Roberts confirmed it would be delayed.
After the 2016 delay, CIG has avoided giving any fixed release dates. In a Letter from the Chairman, Roberts reiterated that 'it is too early to discuss release or finish dates on Squadron 42.
2023, Feature complete
Squadron 42 was announced as feature complete at CitizenCon on October 22, 2023.
2026, fourth release date
. During CitizenCon 2024, the release date was announced to be 2026. The CIG financials for the year ended 2024 name Squadron 42 as the "nearest term priority, with a targeted release in 2026, followed by the 1.0 multiplayer version of Star Citizen thereafter." In May 2026 Chris Roberts said that the plan is for the end of 2026 but he can't 100% guarantee it, citing "a certain thing in the industry that we, like everyone else, we have to pay attention to", understood by most as referring to the release of Grand Theft Auto VI in November.
Memes
The delays, and more importantly the actual amount of time involved, have given birth to a number of memes among players.
Source: StarCitizen.tools. This article includes adapted Star Citizen Wiki content shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. The Impound has added formatting, navigation, summaries, related links, and shopping links.