StarCitizen:Star Citizen

Star Citizen is a crowdfunded StarCitizen:MMO first person space simulator game for Windows, developed by Chris Roberts' company Cloud Imperium Games, to be published by Roberts Space Industries.

It was announced Template:Years or months ago on October 10th 2012, is currently playable in alpha and there is no official StarCitizen:release date as of 2025.<ref name="ReferenceA"></ref>

The development includes a standalone single-player campaign titled StarCitizen:Squadron 42.<ref name=":3" />

Story

Star Citizen is a science fiction game, with players taking the role of humans in the milky way 930 years into the future, with the StarCitizen:United Empire of Earth ruling over dozens of systems, worlds and moons in the 30th century, and [[StarCitizen::Category:Alien Races|aliens]] controling their own systems and worlds. While billions of Humans live within the Empire, only a small percentage have earned the right to call themselves StarCitizen:Citizen.<ref name=":5"></ref>

Gameplay

The game will be a sandbox featuring 100 StarCitizen:planetary systems to explore in their entirety, and a large variety of StarCitizen:careers. Besides space itself, players can also play aboard StarCitizen:space stations and on the surface of StarCitizen:planets. A large number of diverse space and ground [[StarCitizen::Category:Vehicles|vehicles]] are or will be available to pilot, ranging from personal ships to large industrial ships or carriers, via tanks or an exosuit. Many vehicles require to be multicrewed by players acting as a team to be operated optimally, with the planned possibility to hire NPCs. Players can freely move around their vehicles and enter or exit them at will including in space, and spaceships can be boarded. Specific components can be destroyed and affect the functioning of the vehicle. Similarly, localized damage applies to players themselves, and prosthetics are planned to replace destroyed body parts.

Immersion is an important element, affecting aspects of the game such as avoiding displaying health points or damage percentages in the UI. It favors a first person universe approach, where players pilot and interact with spaceships rather than playing as the spaceships.

Development

Star Citizen is created by StarCitizen:Chris Roberts, who is known for creating the Wing Commander games as well as for games such as Starlancer and Freelancer, and who described Star Citizen as Wing Commander and Privateer blended together.<ref name=":2" />

Pre-production started towards the end of 2011, with development starting in late 2012.<ref>How indie film financing could shape the future of games, StarCitizen:Ortwin Freyermuth, gamesindustry.biz, June 23, 2014</ref><ref>"When I was first prototyping Star Citizen back in 2011 I did a lot of research on various LOD processes", Cloud Imperium games chooses Simplygon, simplygon.com, 28th April 2014, archived</ref><ref>"Basically I’ve been working with a small team over the course of the past year to get the early prototyping and production done. The team has varied in scale from just me, essentially, to about 10 people. That’s just the actual work though.", Exclusive Interview: Star Citizen's Chris Roberts, themittani.com, 2012-10-19, archived</ref>

Initially intended to release in 2014, following the massive success of the crowdfunding, several stretch goals were added, and in September 2013 a poll was held including whether the fundraising should be stopped when reaching 23 millions, mission achieved, or if it should be kept up through development and continue to offer stretch goal rewards in addition to extra features and development milestones. The vote ended with 87% for the latter.<ref></ref><ref></ref> In December 2014, the fundraising reached 65 millions, reaching the last stretch goal.<ref name=":4" /><ref>Star Citizen sets crowdfunding record as players spend $65m on spaceships, The Guardian, 3 December 2014, archived</ref> Over the development, several modules and patches got delayed, and Chris Roberts eventually stopped announcing any release dates.

The team constantly share updates, behind the scenes videos and developer commentary, and makes early builds of the game available, so that the backers can test and provide feedback while the game is in open development.<ref name="ReferenceA" /><ref>Star Citizen, YouTube</ref>

Star Citizen development is currently taking place across five studio, CIG Austin and CIG Los Angeles in the USA, CIG Manchester in the UK, CIG Frankfurt in Germany, and Turbulent in Canada.<ref>Join Us, cloudimperiumgames.com</ref>

Funding

The development of Star Citizen is funded by a record-breaking crowdfunding campaign. It is the largest crowd funded project and game in the world, earning a Guinness World Records in 2015, with more than $900 million raised by November 2025.<ref name=":4"></ref>

The game costs 45.00 USD to buy and comes as a starter package with a ship.<ref></ref> Despite being an StarCitizen:MMO there is no subscription model to keep playing the game over time.<ref>"No Subscriptions", Star Citizen Kickstarter</ref> Anything bought beyond the starter package which includes the digital download itself is unnecessary and considered as a donation to support the game development, with a ship gifted as a thank you. This originates from the early game crowdfunding with crowdfunding tiers.<ref>Sandi Roberts Interview Part One...How Star Citizen Came To Be, Inforunners, YouTube, 25 Apr 2022</ref><ref>Star Citizen: An Interview With Chris Roberts , Forbes, 18 May 2013</ref>

Non-development related content such as behind-the-scenes [[StarCitizen::Category:Video series|shows]] or digital publications are funded by optional StarCitizen:subscriptions revenue from subscribers, who receive complimentary rewards such as access to Jump Point magazine and flair items every month.<ref></ref>

Alpha modules

In 2013, Cloud Imperium Games began releasing parts of the game, known as modules, for players to try gameplay features before release.

Persistent Universe

The Persistent Universe is the core MMO component of Star Citizen in which players can create their avatars, freely navigate around the released parts of the universe, and play the sandbox as they wish including for example trading, mining, fighting, criminal activities or missions.<ref name=":5" />

It is the spiritual successor to Freelancer and Privateer.<ref>Happy Hour Museum: Wing Commander Privateer, Star Citizen, YouTube, 31 march 2017</ref>

Arena Commander

Arena Commander is a competitive in-fiction arena-based space combat simulator currently available, in which players can fly ships in several game modes, be it against other players or AI opponents.<ref></ref>

Star Marine

Star Marine is a competitive in-fiction arena-based ground combat simulator, in which players can fight each other with [[StarCitizen::Category:Personal weapons|personal weapons]] on several maps in several game modes, such as elimination, last stand or capture and hold.

It has been available since January 2017 Alpha 2.6.0.<ref></ref>

Hangar Module

The Hangar Module enables players to explore or modify their released vehicles and to interact with the ship's systems. The hangar also features decorations and flair that can be placed and arranged within the hangar.<ref></ref>

Private Server

Star Citizen will let the players run their own private servers, including modding and playing offline, which will be implemented after the game has been released and running for some time.<ref>StarCast 108 - Disco Lando, Cap Richard, Bzerker, Cliffy & Domo, geekdomo, YouTube, 10 janv. 2016</ref><ref></ref><ref></ref>

Squadron 42

Squadron 42 is a separate, standalone cinematic singleplayer campaign featuring space combat, FPS, and a branching plotline, taking place in the Star Citizen universe, and in which the player incarnates a member of the armed forces.<ref name=":3"></ref><ref>Wingman's Hangar ep011 March 8, 201 3, Star Citizen, YouTube</ref>

It is notable among others for its cast which includes among others Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill, Gillian Anderson, Mark Strong, Liam Cunningham, Andy Serkis, John Rhys-Davies, Jack Huston, Eleanor Tomlinson, Harry Treadaway, Sophie Wu, Damson Idris, Eric Wareheim, Rhona Mitra, Henry Cavill, and Ben Mendelsohn.<ref>Squadron 42 Full Cast & Crew, imdb</ref>

It is the spiritual successor to Wing Commander.<ref name=":2" />

Squadron 42 was announced as feature complete at StarCitizen:CitizenCon on October 22, 2023 and having entered the polishing phase, and at CitizenCon 2024 the release date was announced for 2026.<ref>CitizenCon 2954: Day One [Full Broadcast], Star Citizen, YouTube, 2024-10-19</ref><ref></ref>

Soundtrack

The Star Citizen Soundtrack by StarCitizen:Pedro Camacho is also available separately on the RSI Website<ref></ref> and was available as a kickstarter reward for some tiers.<ref>Star Citizen, Kickstarter</ref> It has yet to be released. However numerous tracks are already available in game or have been released for various videos such as ships commercials.<ref>Pedro Macedo Camacho, soundcloud</ref>

It's separate from the Squadron 42 Soundtrack by StarCitizen:Geoff Zanelli.<ref>Star Citizen, geoffzanelli.com</ref>

Hardware requirements

Star Citizen is being developed for PC with planned StarCitizen:Linux support.<ref>PAX East 2014 Panel - "The (Incredible) Future of PC Gaming", StarCitizen:Chris Roberts at Pax East 2014, PC Gamer on YouTube, 12 Apr 2014</ref><ref></ref> The developers have stated that bringing Star Citizen to the consoles is not planned.<ref></ref> Telemetry is available to get a rough estimate of the performance of most system configurations so players can get an idea of what to expect.<ref></ref>

Minimum

Operating System	64-bit Windows 10 (Latest Service Pack)
Processor	Quad core
	Intel: i7 or later
	AMD: Bulldozer or later
Graphics Card	DirectX 11 with 4 GB VRAM
RAM	16 GB
Storage Space	100+ GB SSD

Recommended

Operating System	64-bit Windows 10/11 (latest service pack)
Processor	Quad/Eight Core
	Intel: i7 or later
	AMD: Bulldozer or later
Graphics Card	DirectX 12 with 8+ GB VRAM
RAM	32+ GB DDR4
Storage Space	100+ GB SSD

Trailer

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Trivia

• Star Citizen was originally called Space Trader.<ref name=":1">Sandi Roberts Interview Part One...How Star Citizen Came To Be, Inforunners, YouTube, 25 Apr 2022</ref><ref name=":0">Star Citizen Addicts Anonymous - Interview with Sandi Gardiner pt 1, Nichole D'Angelo, YouTube, 2 Mar 2015

</ref><ref>SCAA Interviews 001 Ben Lesnick, Nichole D'Angelo, Nichole D'Angelo</ref> The final name was chosen the night before the kickstarter, other names not working out for various reasons such as being existing company names or because of porn or the way it sounded etc. Star Citizen wasn't originally a favorite but it grew over time and felt right after the fact.<ref name=":0" />

• Star Citizen was the original idea, the idea for Squadron 42 came afterwards.<ref name=":1" />
• Chris Roberts said that if he still owned the rights to Wing Commander this would definitely be Wing Commander: Star Citizen or something like that. Star Citizen really is the spiritual successor to all of his work with Wing Commander, Freelancer and Privateer. It is essentially Wing Commander and Privateer blended together.<ref name=":2">Exclusive Interview: Star Citizen's Chris Roberts, themittani.com, 2012-10-19, archived</ref>
• It is sometimes incorrectly referred to as Space Citizen.
• The laurels in the logo are for the Roman empire stuff that was bigger early on.<ref>"The laurels are for the Roman empire stuff that was bigger early on.", @banditloaf, Discord, 2/10/2025 </ref>

References

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