Star Citizen has become almost a legend at this point, the extremely ambitious Sci-fi RPG has seen numerous delays including their spinoff title Squadron 42. Yet updates keep getting added and the game is nowhere nearer to release, and now fans seem to be fed up of it. In a recent update to Star Citizen’s roadmap, many players have voiced concerns over cancelled content that was planned in previous roadmaps, only to be removed in the next update.

Every week the devs release an update on the game’s development roadmap, stating what has been changed, delayed or removed. Yet some of the more arguably important improvements are consistently delayed/removed. The most recent roadmap update has shifted many important roadmap features to Alpha 4.0, when many of them were planned for the start of Alpha 3.0 already.

“Each and every week, we accompany the Roadmap update with a brief explanatory note to give you insight into the decision-making that led to any changes,” says the official Roadmap Roundup post. “This is part of an effort to make our communications more transparent, more specific, and more insightful for all of you who help to make Star Citizen and Squadron 42 possible.”

The biggest problem is a lack of gameplay loops to keep players, well, playing. Many updates improve upon mediocre things like updated UI, graphics or controls. Though that’s not to say that these aren’t important improvements, but a lack of actual content is what’s infuriating to most supporters.

One of the most important features to be delayed is the Server to Client Actor Networking Rework, which many players have voiced concerns about lag, stuttering and desynchronization when playing with friends. Another example was salvaging that was supposed to be only temporarily removed almost half a year ago, and has yet to resurface on any roadmap updates since.

Many of the gameplay features that have been removed, or delayed indefinitely, since Alpha 3.0 include: Repair Bot, Repair Ships, Refuel Collection, Service Beacon Refuel, Service Beacon Repair, Salvage Scanning, Salvage Selling, Salvage Processing, Salvage Extraction, Manual Repair, Buy/Sell Fuel, Fuel Transfer, Land Claim Purchasing, Land Claim Register, Land Claim Legal, Gameplay, Land Claim Creating Missions, Liquid/Gas Exploration, Expanded Cargo, Data Running, Long Range Scanning, Ship To Ship Refuel, Repair V1, Salvage V1, NPC Healing, Player Swim, Mag Boots and Zero-G Push, to name just a few.

This is all to say that Star Citizen is having some difficulty actually becoming a game for fans to play, and whilst the developers are sure to have some problems along the way, one has to think that they should be a little less ambitious for roadmaps in the future. Delays from the recent COVID-19 pandemic are almost certain, but these delays/removals have been happening since the beginning of 2019.

The questions raised here are ethical ones indeed, with one of the biggest video game crowdfunding projects out there, shouldn’t the developers take more responsibility from players who are actually supporting the project with their own money?

What do you guys think? Have you supported Star Citizen? What updates have you noticed to be removed and never seen again? When will the game actually come out? Let us know your thoughts!