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Former CIG employee comments on Star Citizen’s progress

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Reddit’s ‘Ryden-55‘, a former CIG employee, has shared his thoughts about the progress of Star Citizen and Squadron 42. According to this ex-CIG employee, although the team has created amazing systems that work well for the future of gaming, it has not yet stitched it together into its own game.

According to Ryden-55, both Star Citizen and Squadron 42 suffer from mismanagement. The former CIG employee believes that the company has incorrectly calculated their trajectory and player spending through 2023 and beyond.

The future of Star Citizen is also in a really weird state. As Ryden-55 claimed, those who buy the items that CIG is currently offering are basically contributing to the game’s delay.

As an example, Ryden-55 used the Cutlass Steel.

“I was there during the Cutlass Steel pricing. I suggested a ceiling figure of the ship based on its capabilities in comparison to the other Cutlass ships and its competitors (The Cutlass Black is notoriously undervalued, but still….). Despite my recommendation, the price got HIKED because “Surely people will buy it, it’s a Cutlass”.

This is a perfect example of what happens when people vote with their wallets – it makes them realize that it was a bad decision and that they should learn going forward. I think this is the key to going forward for the entire project. I think that the team can deliver key gameplay improvements going forward that encourage players to play and return, rather than trying to drip-feed concepts to people who may never fly them (I’m looking at you BMM). People “play the CCU game” to get a $500 ship for $250. Thats insane. I personally won’t be spending a nickel or dime until the game is delivered, because I became a concierge backer over a period of 5 years and I still don’t want to play the game as it is today, which hurts me because I contributed directly to it and want it to succeed. I’m just not going to perpetually test a product that, at this point, should be released.”

The former employee believes that CIG should focus on delivering both Squadron 42 and (at least) high-quality playable patches for Star Citizen. And, we wholeheartedly agree with this. Squadron 42 was first showcased in 2017, six whole years ago. Also, in 2020, this single-player mode of SC was nowhere close to completion.

“To date we have had nothing but buggy patches for SC on the live branch. Despite the game is in early access, the live branch needs to be the dedicated branch for stable (FULLY stable) builds where you can play with your friends and enjoy the gameplay loops currently present without thinking of losing your gear/ship/items.

Likewise with SQ42 they need to deliver on that project – its been in development for many years now and people are beginning to think it isn’t coming out. I’ve seen the progress, I know it wil be great, but that isn’t enough now and it needs to be showcased and a solid deadline put in place to ensure everyone has confidence in its deliver (NOT at the expense of dev crunch).”

For what it’s worth, Reddit’s moderators were able to confirm Ryder-55’s identity. So no, this isn’t a random Redditor. This is indeed a former CIG employee.

To be honest, I’m not shocked by these latest revelations. We’ve known that Star Citizen has been mismanaged and that it’s in development hell. We also know that it features cutting-edge technology. And yes, we all know that CIG is milking this golden cow with its skins and ships. But hey, as Ryden-55 said, why shouldn’t they? People are buying them and they are making a lot of easy money. From a business perspective, this is a smart move and, unfortunately in this case, it works!