As of now, Star Citizen has raised $769,261,551. Three quarters of a billion dollars.
And now they say they need to fire the QA department to "laser focus" to meet the deadlines of the release. That's when you need QA the most. Otherwise that release is going to be a fucking mess.
I call bullshit. This is a money saving decision, which means they've blown through their $760 million dollar bank account. Insane.
The last game he was in charge of was Freelancer, a highly ambitious game for the time and he never finished it. His company, Digital Anvil, started to have financial woes due to the long development of Freelancer and was acquired by Microsoft. He left the company and then a couple years later Freelancer was released!
It was very different from what it was supposed to be, but it was still an awesome game, imo.
I think the same thing will happen to Star Citizen. The money will dry up and they'll be forced to sell. The buyer will kick Chris out and then have the team make a finished product.
I'm pretty happy with 4.0. They sucked all the features from it, and the missions are having problems. But the game fucking works, finally. Or at least it did during the first 24 hours of the patch. About fucking time.
That being said this whole shake up was clearly a cost saving strategy, since most of 2024 was not the best in term of making money, a LOT of people jumped shit this year, and I don't blame them. CIG messed up so much this year. They have alot of goodwill to re-earn from the community and 4.0 is a start but only that.