Cloud Imperium Games announced that Squadron 42, the highly anticipated Star Citizen spinoff, has been delayed to 2027.
Cloud Imperium Games dropped a new blog post announcing the delay to 2027. Chief Executive Officer Chris Roberts detailed in the post that the aim was to launch in 2026, as they announced at CitizenCon 2024. Roberts specified the reasons why, singularly focused on the upcoming launch of gaming juggernaut Grand Theft Auto VI. Roberts said “At CitizenCon 2024 we announced we would ship in 2026. Our plan was to release in Q4 around IAE. But much like the rest of the industry there is no way I want to launch my spiritual successor to Wing Commander, a game that has had twelve years of blood, sweat and tears invested into it (we started Squadron 42 development in 2014 as 2013 was opening studios, hiring people and getting the Hangar module out for Star Citizen) launching into the attention buzz saw of GTA6. While GTA6 isn’t launching on PC this November, pretty much all outlets and most content creators will be all over it, not leaving a lot of room for other coverage.”
Roberts continued that Squadron 42‘s new release window lands in Q2 of 2027, making the delay not a massive one, but substantial enough to notice. The studio’s focus is split between Squadron 42 and getting Star Citizen to 1.0, where about 55% of the studio is on the former and the rest on the latter. As soon as Squadron 42 is done, the full weight of the studio will be put on Star Citizen. There will be a select number of original backers and content creators that will go hands on with Squadron 42 on October 9th and 10th, so we can probably expect some level of coverage in mid October.
Squadron 42 has been in development since 2014, making it a long road to launch. While you wait, Star Citizen continues to drop new content, just entering Alpha 4.10 a few days ago. Cloud Imperium Games will provide more details on launch dates in the future.
