If you hadn’t heard, Robert Space Industries made the decision last year to separate Star Citizen into two parts — Squadron 42 and uh, Star Citizen. As to when the split will occur, that’s no longer a mystery — mark 14 February in your calendars, so you can cut a cake, bake a fridge or drive a motorcycle off a jetty.
However you choose to celebrate (or un-celebrate), you can also try and get your friends into the game. The latest round-up from RSI includes news that the game will be enabling “Free Fly access to all accounts” for the next week. So all you have to do is sign-up and you can give Star Citizen a go.
As for the split, here’s exactly how that will work:
Squadron 42 will be available as either a stand alone game or an optional addon for Star Citizen rather than be included by default. If you want to lock in both games for the lowest possible price, consider pledging before this deadline. You can learn more about Squadron 42, our thrilling single-player adventure, here.
Roundup: Free Fly, 2.1.2 Patch and Other Updates! [Robert Space Industries, via Blue’s News]
Comments
30 responses to “RSI Announces February Split For Star Citizen (And Free Week Of Play)”
So my initial pledge wasn’t enough? How about you finish the game you promised me years ago before getting too crazy.
Do people who pledged initially still get Squadron 42 AND Star Citizen MMO for what they initially pledged?
Yes. All packages that contain star citizen and squadron 42 prior to the split keep both. If you check your package, it lists everything included and star citizen and squadron 42 have always been listed as separate items in packages.
Thank God for that. I thought they were trying to pull a swifty there for a sec.
How do you check that? I looked around “My RSI” and I can see the amounts I pledged and the ship upgrade I made but I can’t really see what the “Digital Scout LTI” pledge entitled me to…
Even on KS it never specifically stated it was a separate product.. closest thing I can find is:
ORIGINAL AND VETERAN BACKERS REWARD
ATTRIBUTED
Created:
June 27, 2013
Contains:
3 items
Items
AMX-1 Repair Bot
Record Breaker Skin
Squadron 42 Mission Disk
Is that it?
I’m honestly confused by the entire layout of their website. In the end, if I miss out on Squadron 42, I’ll live. It’s the whole reason I backed the game in the first place.. but I’ll live and move on with life.
No. That’s a bonus you got for backing so early. Go to your hangar on the website. If you expand your package in there you can see what it contains.
Even better. You backed so early, you get SQ42, and the mission disk for SQ42 is now planned as a fully sized sequel. You´ll basically own 3 games on your account.
1. SC
2. SQ42
3. SQ42 II (formerly called mission disk)
4. plus a truck load of early backer rewards
Yes they do.
Out of interest, how long do you think game development takes?
Especially a game with a fairly large scope.
Surely it shouldnt take more than 6 to 8 weeks…
Well, to be fair, CIG originally promised to finish the game it originally promised years ago by November 2014. Also to be fair, CIG decided to change what was promised and then had to change the delivery date. I guess if you were a very early backer, you’d be quite entitled to complain that what was originally promised hasn’t been delivered. Apparently a few people have gotten refunds for that very reason. However, it seems that now even early backers can’t get refunds before CIG considers it has already delivered enough of what was originally promised to justify turning down refunds.
Yes, it’s literally in the article.
“If you want to lock in both games for the lowest possible price, consider pledging before this deadline.”
Reading is hard.
Mockery isn’t though, it’s incredibly easy.
Yes.
People who pledged still get access to both “modules” without having to pay anything extra in the future…
I wouldn’t bother with it yet. Pledged last week based on all of the marketing hype, then quickly realised that you’re basically paying $60 to be a test mule.
Then you obviously didn’t read anything anywhere (not even on the store page) as it is pretty widely known that right now all that is available is an alpha.
You’re doing the lords work.
See you in the ‘Verse CItizen!
Do you want me to list the things that the store page doesn’t tell you?
– Zero game progress whatsoever. Every time you start the game you basically start at ground zero.
– Zero UEC credits. The credits you get when you pledge are actually only for when the game is released.
– Squadron 42 (whilst very flashy in their marketing) doesn’t actually exist yet.
– Digital Star Citizen Manual also doesn’t seem to exist. If you want to figure out what the hell to do in the game you have to spend a lot of time asking around,
If I had known these things I probably wouldn’t have pledged yet.
You could try asking for a refund.
I’m happy to sit on it for a while and see where it goes. I just feel like they should be a bit more open about the alpha’s limitations. It’s all well and good to just say “duh it’s alpha” but the marketing hype portrays something very different.
The zero progress is simple, this is not designed for you as a demo or a beta. It is a REAL alpha, it is not designed for you to start making a tonne of progress on the real game, it is what an alpha is actually meant to be; an enclosed environment where you are essentially trying to find bugs and smoothen out game systems.
As for claims of content release, where has anyone made claims that either the Squadron 42 or the manual (will not likely release until the full game is ready for release so it doesn’t contain missinformation) have been released? You are pledging support, not buying a completed product; there is a very real difference in the context of both words (buying =/= pledging).
Honestly mate, I would go as far as to assume you have never been a part of a REAL alpha or beta, the majority of betas the public can apply for these days are nothing short of advertising and hype train attempts. As someone who has done (only) a couple of real early closed alphas (League, Vengeance and Wildstar), I can tell you that most of the time updates would come in the form of completely new installations and that most of the early releases never had a bootstrap (the first screen you see when starting most online games).
If you go to the website and have a look at what your “pledge” involved. Nowhere does it say “You will receive these upon release”. It gives you a wonderful list of what is included in alpha 2.1, with very little description about what to look for, where to go, what to do etc. I would be happy to test out a tonne of things and give feedback, but there is literally NOTHING said about it once you have pledged. I had to spend ages hunting around for information on youtube and forums before I could get a grasp of what the hell was going on. Hell I am paying for the privellige of testing it for you, give me some freakin direction on what you’re trying to achieve.
Ok I call bs… straight up. Go back to the store, to the very page you bought the package from and tell me what it says in bright letters literally right bellow the “add to cart” icon.
Better yet, let me do it for you;
“The game is currently in alpha version. It will be constantly expanded as we move toward the completed game.”
I’m not debating the fact that it is in Alpha version. What I am saying is that once you have pledged they give you ZERO information about what to do from there. The only way to figure out what is going on is to open the chat window and ask other players who similarly have no idea what’s going on but have figured out things by playing for hours on end. If the whole point of Alpha is fault finding and testing, give the pledgers a better indication of what the Alpha’s limitations are, what is available to do, what type of missions are available etc. You only get this information from third party sources.
Pays for Alpha access, get’s annoyed it’s in Alpha.
If you haven’t signed up yet, do it now (it’s free and quick) and use a referral code like STAR-96MW-465H on the registration page for 5000 free UEC!
This allows you to get ~5$ worth of in-game money immediately, it’s only if you buy a game package that it will give the referrer little rewards in the future.
And then you too can badger your friends and complete strangers with your own referral code!
Too good!
Or you can use the referral code randomizer on the subreddit which is what we recommend these days.
I thought this was how the Kickstarter was always planned from day 1, people should go back and read the original KS. There was always going to be a S42 mission disc that had its own price, some of the KS buy-ins had it included while others were just persistent universe access.
These are the same people that complain about them bringing in known actors and doing high quality motion capture. Nobody ever goes back to read the kickstarter or early stretch goals.
Everyone who already backed owns both SC and SQ42 by default. Nothing will change.
People who will back after the cutoff date, can choose one, or add on the other for 15$