Star Citizen isn’t just being developed by Cloud Imperium. The Star Marine FPS module, for example, was outsourced to IllFonic, a studio with CryEngine experience. Yesterday, IllFonic announced some layoffs, stating that half of them were due to the studio finishing up their work on the module.
The implication was that the FPS module was almost completed, but it turns out that is not the case, and Cloud Imperium is just bringing more Star Citizen development in-house.
“In the early days of Star Citizen’s development, we were still quite small and needed the assistance from several external studios to help us build Star Citizen’s core functionality in a timely fashion,” GamesIndustry.biz was told. “IllFonic, who had previous CryEngine experience, was one of the developers that we tapped, specifically for help on the FPS game systems and mechanics that would be inside Star Citizen.”
But as the Star Citizen studio has grown, it’s started to put internal teams in charge of these aspects of the game.
“This has always been our plan and Global Production Head Erin Roberts is currently undergoing a review of all our projects in order to streamline Star Citizen so the project is more dependent on our internal development teams,” the Star Citizen representative continued.
The module is now being handled by the Frankfurt and Manchester studios, and Cloud Imperium promises backers that they’ll be able to get their hands on it “soon”.
We got Richie Shoemaker to figure out if, in its present state, Star Citizen is worth playing. Here’s what he had to say.
“It’s arguable however whether the game is currently worth the £35 entry price, for whilst it seems that many have been happy to spend much more and feel more than justified in their purchases, against the current and immediate feature set (a social module is coming soon) and taking into account the competition, there’s just not quite enough in the game nor is the pace of feature releases enough to ensure sustained enjoyment.”