Squadron 42's new launch date, 2026, will miss its original goal by 11 years

That module's planned May 2014 release was ultimately delayed until December. At the time, we noted that “a full release of the MMORPG Star Citizen [would be] “Expected near the end of 2016,” a date that now seems as naive as the original 2015 release window for Squad 42.

“We will build the game you dream of”

By 2014, Roberts Space Industries had raised just $67 million from crowdfunders eager to see Roberts' lofty vision for a new era of space simulation games. Now, that funding has surpassed a staggering $731 million from players purchasing expensive virtual ships in a game that still exists only as an unpolished alpha version and plagued by major gameplay issues.

Roberts said in a March update that the team had “spent a lot of time looking at what Star Citizen 1.0 and what it would take to get there.” For now, however, the team “is working hard, heads down, driving toward the finish line” to Squad 42as highlighted by the game's public progress tracker.

The very long path of development for Star Citizen and Squad 42 has become something of a joke in the 12 years since it first became a crowdfunding darling. But it's not that we haven't been warned. In 2012, Roberts Space Industries publicly committed that using crowdfunding meant the developer would “focus on quality without the pressure to deliver in a given financial quarter.” The team also warned that “there may be delays and changes; we recognize that such things are inevitable and we would be lying to you if we claimed otherwise.”

“You have done your part and now we will do everything possible to live up to your expectations,” the team wrote in that commitment that is now in its 12th year. “We will build you the game you are dreaming of.”