Star Citizen splits single-player, MMO into separate games

 

 Chris Roberts’ Star Citizen announced a significant change to how it will sell access to the game in the future, though the new changes won’t impact anyone who previously backed the game on Kickstarter. Starting on Sunday, Star Citizen will be split between the single-player game (dubbed Squadron 42) and the persistent universe / MMO, still called Star Citizen.

Up until now, backers of the game could pay $45 and receive both halves, and people who paid for copies of the game that way will still receive the entire product. New customers, however, will pay $45 for the option of their choice, then pay an additional $15 for the other campaign. Roberts’ Space Industries is spinning this as a way to ensure that gamers who only want one section of the game can get it at a cheaper price, and claiming that it was the original plan all along.

When we started Star Citizen’s crowdfunding campaign, the plan was that earlier backers would get a lower price on the Star Citizen starter package than those that backed later. The plan was to first gradually increase the price and then split up various modules for “a la carte options.” This gave backers who joined the project early on and helped get it off the ground an advantage. With the package split, we’re accomplishing this objective without increasing the amount of money needed to join the persistent universe. The ‘package split’ is the first introduction of the anticipated a la carte option: you can pick which part of the game you’re interested in, for now the single player campaign or the persistent universe, and then can choose whether or not to purchase the other module as an add-on.

If you want Star Citizen for $60 now, you’d best buy it today. The implication of the move to a la carte content is that the company is reserving the option to charge more for other modules — in fact, by referring to this as the first of introduction of the a la carte concept, it’s virtually guaranteeing that it will eventually do so.



I’m honestly not surprised to see RSI taking this step. Star Citizen, as described by Chris Roberts, is absolutely mind-boggling. It’s not an exaggeration to say that there’s never been a game built to capture the scope and scale of what Roberts wants to create. It’s an FPS, a space sim, an economic and shipping simulator, a space-combat game, an MMO (or at least, a persistent universe with some MMO DNA) and a single-player game.

Regardless of the view you take on Star Citizen as a whole, Roberts’ vision is going to require insane amounts of money, even in an industry where game development has been known to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The reason so many people are dubious about Star Citizen isn’t that they hate Roberts or gaming, but because Star Citizen, as planned, is probably the most complicated, resource-intensive game ever proposed relative to current titles.

The fact that Roberts needs more money doesn’t mean Star Citizen is failing. Feedback on the recent play tests and alpha releases has been fairly positive. But clearly the content creation beast still needs fed, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Star Citizen’s a la carte packages turned into something like how EA currently sells access to Battlefront 4.

This is how EA sells Battlefield 4

Every DLC can be packaged up in the name of flexibility, sold in bundles when required to stimulate sales, and sold individually to maximize profits in between. Companies that adopt these kinds of models always sell them by claiming they have no intention of nickel-and-diming gamers, but the proof is inevitably in the pudding. We’ll see how this plays out and whether or not players actually benefit as a result.