Squadron 42 Finally Hits Steam After 14 Years, $1 Billion and Nine Promised Dates

On October 10, Squadron 42 got a Steam page, and its release date field reads "Q2 2027". This is the single-player campaign set in the Star Citizen universe that Chris Roberts announced on October 10, 2012 and promised for November 2014. If the new date holds, about fourteen and a half years will separate the announcement from the launch, and by the studio's own tracker the project will have raised over a billion dollars from players before it ships. Here is the whole story: how it started, when the first trailer and the first gameplay appeared, which Hollywood stars signed on and how the dates kept slipping.

2012: the Wing Commander creator comes back

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To understand where Squadron 42's ambition comes from, you have to go back to Chris Roberts. In 1990 he made Wing Commander, a space combat game with story scenes between missions. By Wing Commander III in 1994 those scenes were played by real actors: Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, John Rhys-Davies. Then came the studio Digital Anvil, the 1999 Wing Commander movie Roberts directed himself (it flopped), and Freelancer, which shipped in 2003 without him at the helm. After that, a decade as a film producer, including Lord of War with Nicolas Cage.

On October 10, 2012, at GDC Online in Austin, Roberts unveiled Star Citizen, with Squadron 42 as its single-player campaign and a direct heir to Wing Commander. Above is the official Squadron 42 cinematic trailer, uploaded on October 15, 2012: CryEngine 3 and a couple of pilots in a hangar. Three days later the Kickstarter went live.

Roberts later admitted that real development on Squadron 42 only started in 2014, after 2013 went into opening studios, hiring and the Star Citizen hangar module. In other words, by the promised date the game had barely begun.

2015: Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill and eleven more stars

On October 10, 2015, at CitizenCon, Cloud Imperium Games revealed a cast that made jaws drop. The scenes were captured at The Imaginarium, Andy Serkis's performance capture studio, with the actors performing on the stage in marker suits, just like on a film set. The same day the studio released Admiral Bishop's Senate speech performed by Gary Oldman, below.

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Jonathan Bailey, Damson Idris, Eleanor Tomlinson and Gemma Whelan joined later. The player character is voiced by Ian Duncan and Alix Wilton Regan. In January 2015 Roberts still talked about a fall 2015 launch, and after CitizenCon the game's site showed a new number: 2016.

2016: a standalone game and a demo that never happened

In December 2015 the studio announced that Squadron 42 would become a separate product, and from February 14, 2016 it was sold as a standalone game for $45, with the other game available as a $15 add-on. Earlier backers kept both.

The big letdown came on October 9, 2016. CitizenCon was supposed to show a Squadron 42 mission, the so-called vertical slice, a piece of the game at final quality. It was pulled at the last minute. Roberts said most of the base technology was done but the game had grown in scope, and it would not ship in 2016. No new date was given. In October 2017 the studio ruled out 2017 the same way.

December 22, 2017: the first gameplay video

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The first real Squadron 42 gameplay appeared five years after the announcement, on December 22, 2017, in a holiday episode of Around the Verse. It was that vertical slice, more than an hour long: walking around the ship, talking to the crew with Mark Hamill's Colton already speaking with the actor's voice and face, flying and fighting. All marked "pre-alpha, work in progress". That was a long time ago, almost nine years, and the game has changed beyond recognition since.

2018-2020: Henry Cavill, a beta "in 2020" and no more dates

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On October 10, 2018, CitizenCon brought a cinematic teaser with Hamill, Anderson, Oldman, Strong and, for the first time, Henry Cavill. In December the studio published a public roadmap: alpha in early 2020, beta in Q2 2020. In August 2019 the beta slipped 12 weeks to Q3. In October 2020 Roberts admitted the beta was still a way off.

Then, on December 23, 2020, a Letter from the Chairman produced the line that became a meme: Squadron 42 "will be done when it is done". Every date was removed from the roadmap, and the studio promised no public showings or dates until the home stretch. It kept that promise for three years.

2023: "feature complete"

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At CitizenCon in Los Angeles on October 21-22, 2023, the studio announced that Squadron 42 was feature complete and had moved into polishing. It showed the 26-minute video I Held The Line, above. There was still no date.

2024: an hour of live gameplay and a promise of 2026

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On October 19, 2024, at CitizenCon in Manchester, Roberts did what people had been waiting eight years for: more than an hour of live play through the first chapter on stage, bugs and crashes included, which honestly made it more convincing. A window was named too: 2026, with a 30 to 40 hour campaign. That show had a cost: according to press reports, the studio worked seven-day weeks for the two weeks before CitizenCon.

In December 2025 Roberts wrote that every chapter was playable from start to finish, the game ran over forty hours, and the goal was still beta and release in 2026. By May 2026 he sounded more careful: the plan was the end of the year, but he could not guarantee it.

2026: a delay because of GTA 6, Steam and The Oath trailer

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On August 27, 2026, in a Letter from the Chairman, Roberts announced the delay. The original plan was Q4 2026, around Star Citizen's in-game IAE expo. The reason was stated plainly: he did not want to launch into what he called "the attention buzz saw of GTA6", and decided Q2 2027 was a better fit. In the same letter he talks about twelve years of blood, sweat and tears and says more people now work on Squadron 42 than on Star Citizen, roughly 55 to 45.

On October 9-10 outsiders got their hands on it for the first time: a small group of original backers and long-time Star Citizen content creators played it at a closed event. On October 10 the Steam page opened and The Oath trailer appeared on a new official Squadron 42 channel, above. The studio promised a specific release day after that event, but as of October 12 there is none.

Every promised date

Counted from the first promise, the game is twelve and a half years late. And almost every delay came with the same explanation: the game got bigger.

A billion dollars and a thousand employees

According to the Roberts Space Industries tracker, Star Citizen and Squadron 42 had raised $1,051,302,172 as of October 12, 2026, crossing the billion mark at the end of May. That is player money and excludes private investment: the Calder family put in another $63.25 million in 2018-2020. The studio has never published a separate Squadron 42 budget. Its reports show Cloud Imperium spent $193 million in 2012-2017, and in 2024 costs were $161 million against $146.6 million in income. At the end of 2024 the company had 1,031 employees.

Fourteen years in one list

My feelings here are mixed. The 2024 demo looked like a real, big game, and a Steam page with a trailer and specs is more than a promise on a slide. But Squadron 42 has had nine targets by now, and until the page shows a specific day and a price, I would not bet everything on Q2 2027.