Today, Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games announced that the annual CitizenCon event won’t be in-person this year, while the game has reached another massive crowdfunding milestone.
The event was hosted in Manchester last year and provided plenty of reveals, including the plans for Star Citizen 1.0 and a release window for the single-player campaign Squadron 42, alongside a massive gameplay reveal.
While the chance for the most hardcore fans to gather at a single venue won’t happen in 2025, the reveals will still be provided in the form of a “CitizenCon Direct” livestreamed event, which will happen on October 11.
According to the announcement, the event promises “plenty of reveals, exciting surprises, and a fun way for many of you to take part in the festivities alongside CIG developers, no matter where you are in the world.”
There will indeed be in-person events scattered around the world in the form of “Bar Citizen” watch parties, with more details to be shared soon.
The event will be streamed on Twitch and YouTube, with replays uploaded immediately after the stream concludes for those who miss it. Of course, all the streams will be free to watch.
The reason behind the decision not to host a big in-person event is pretty simple as the developer is focusing on the development of Squadron 42 ahead of next year’s release and on the ongoing effort to improve the overall playability of Star Citizen with monthly patches focused on content and quality of life.
If you’re unfamiliar with Star Citizen, it’s a crowdfunded project directed by Chris Roberts of Wing Commander fame. It’s a multiplayer sandbox space simulator that has been in development for over a decade and in alpha for several years. It’s available exclusively for PC and just received update Alpha 4.1.
In the meantime, the crowdfunding total continues to overtake milestones, and it recently passed $800 million, and it’s currently at $800,767,429. The game also has 5,572,097 registered users, albeit not all of them are paid customers. Many simply create an account to enjoy the occasional free-to-play periods.
Incidentally, 2024 was the second-best year ever for Star Citizen’s crowdfunding campaign, missing the record only by roughly one million.
The single-player campaign titled Squadron 42 is also in active development starring an exceptional cast of famous actors, including Mark Hamill, Henry Cavill, Gary Oldman, Liam Cunningham, Gillian Anderson, and more.
Since the project has been in development for over a decade, you can see how Squadron 42 has evolved since its first reveals.
Full disclosure: the author of this article has backed Star Citizen’s crowdfunding campaign.