The beta test for Squadron 42 has been pushed back by three months.
In a blog post on developer Roberts Space Industries' website, director of community Tyler 'Zyloh' Witkin said that the beta Star Citizen single player game Squadron 42 - featuring the likenesses of actors including Mark Hamill (pictured) - will now be launching between July and September 2020 following the studio's transition to 'staggered development'.
In English, this means that the development team is now split in two - one half working on one of the game's quarterly updates while the other starts work on the next one. Witkin says that this is a good thing for Squadron 42 as it shares features with Star Citizen so new features will roll out faster moving forward.
"Ultimately, this is a really good thing for Squadron 42 development as well," the post read.
"Both Star Citizen and Squadron 42 share a codebase and as features come online for both games, they will be in a more stable/playable state, reducing potential blockers that can hinder and slow down development. You will, of course, notice that our target Beta date for Squadron 42 has moved back by 12 weeks in today’s Roadmap update, but this is a necessary step as a result of changing the overall development cadence, which we expect will create positive results in the overall delivery and experience of Squadron 42."
At the end of 2018, Star Citizen attracted $46m in private investment to get Squadron 42 out in beta by late 2020. That's on top of the $233.7m the game has raised from 2.4m users since its crowdfunding push kicked off in 2012.
At the start of this year, the game's funding total stood at $214m, meaning that the ambitious sci-fi title has brought in around $19.7m in 2019 to date.
In May, an exposé from Forbes revealed that the United States Federal Trade Commission had received 129 complaints about Star Citizen's crowdfunding. The title was initially set to launch in 2014 but has continuously been pushed back with staff who previously worked on the project describing a chaotic development process.
