Home Gaming Surprise! Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 delayed

Surprise! Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 delayed

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StarCitizen

Star Citizen is one of the most ambitious games ever made. It’s the most crowd-funded game – so there’s cash enough to help the game live up to its lofty ambitions. Maybe.

The game is also the root of some fair criticism, as feature creep and ever-expanding scope have ensured that the game is continually delayed. While most fans have come to terms with the fact that the game won’t be out for a while yet, many were eagerly anticipating its impending alpha.

Only that Alpha has been delayed. Originally due for release at the end of last year, the new alpha was delayed until June, and then August. It’s now due in September. It’s a small delay, but a delay nonetheless.

“This week, we entered the optimisation, polish, and bug fixing phase for the 3.0 feature set. As there have been so many features and content implemented, we’ve encountered some stability issues that we want to address before going to a wider test audience,” Roberts Space Industries said on its site (via Eurogamer).

“The ongoing work on the new Patcher system (that will save you from having to completely re-download each build) and some new bugs with CopyBuild3 (our internal version of the patcher) have also slowed us down. Because of this we have pushed back the Evocati and subsequent date ranges to reflect the additional time needed to get Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 ready for prime time.

“Naturally, many of the game’s backers were unhappy with reports of the delay, prompting Star Citizen director of player relations, Will Leverett, to proffer a more in-depth explanation for the delay.

“When venturing off into uncharted territory, one does not always see or know all of the challenges ahead of them,” he said. “When venturing off into uncharted territory, one does not always see or know all of the challenges ahead of them; they are often complete unknowns until they present themselves along the way.

Working on 3.0 has certainly introduced variables and challenges that we could never have anticipated, and these just do not always cater to a tidy date on a calendar. As gamers, we are conditioned to consider all dates as static points in time that we can wrap our heads around and plan for in advance. The nature of this project does not neatly fit into that mould…

The scope of 3.0 is not insignificant … it introduces a level of tech and infrastructure that’s an order of magnitude larger and more complex than all of our previous versions combined. Integrating all of this has revealed to be MUCH more of a bug fixing project than anticipated, which obviously reshapes those estimates and changes those dates.

There’s certainly no malice behind it and anyone who makes that claim is providing an uninformed opinion. Ask any project manager or developer who worked on sophisticated software or has been involved on a complex project with lots of dependencies and moving parts, they’ll gladly share how challenging a task of estimates can be.”

The new alpha is the long awaited one, which enables players to explore the surface of planets. Star Citizen is shaping up to be an amazing game when it’s finally out, roughly never.

Last Updated: August 1, 2017

11 Comments

  1. cloudzn

    August 1, 2017 at 13:50

    The forever delayed game

    Reply

    • Donald Trump's Trumpet

      August 2, 2017 at 13:00

      every game is forever delayed as all game get internal delays

      Reply

      • cloudzn

        August 2, 2017 at 13:21

        But not as bad as this game, the original release date was 2014.

        Reply

  2. I_am_Duffman!

    August 1, 2017 at 14:48

    Well. Even The Last Guardian got released eventually. Everybody just had to wait.

    Reply

    • BakedBagel

      August 1, 2017 at 16:34

      Difference is, people paid early with the hope of having a released game before they passed the age of retirement

      Reply

      • Donald Trump's Trumpet

        August 2, 2017 at 13:00

        um…..its been 4 years dude. Beyond good and evil 2 has been in development for the same time…….its still years away. games arent made in a weekend dude.

        Reply

        • BakedBagel

          August 2, 2017 at 13:11

          Beyond good and evil 2 is being made by Ubisoft. No crowd funding.

          Had ubisoft crowd funded the development of BGE2 they would receive the same scrutiny. Its gone from a 2 year project to an x number of years project.

          The amount of missed deadlines and lack of communication is telling.
          Again. If this was inhouse, no problem. But its crowdfunded. Completely different enviroments. dude.

          Reply

          • Joe_Blober

            August 2, 2017 at 20:58

            Beyond good and evil 2 as started in 2008… in 2017 no date of release. From a multi-billions $ company with thousands of devs.

            I will certainly play this game whern out but compared to CIG with 12 guys in Nov. 2012 and 6 M$… they are doing good.

  3. Joe_Blober

    August 2, 2017 at 11:17

    An independant journalist Christopher Livingston did played already 3.0 before everybody:

    http://www.pcgamer.com/first-man-on-the-moon-hands-on-with-star-citizen-alpha-30/

    Trolling is hard those days… 🙂

    Note: by the way: CIG received + 260K$ in 4 days… a tragedy 🙂

    So yes this is coming and not late for a company which has 12 guys and 6M$ end of Nov. 2012

    Reply

  4. iratepirate

    August 2, 2017 at 21:01

    Fun. The umpteenth delay. Starting to get the feeling this game is never coming out as promised?

    Consider a refund citizen! r/starcitizen_refunds

    Reply

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