After 14 years in development and $860 million racked up in crowdfunding, Star Citizen director hopes single-player spin-off Squadron 42 will be "an event almost as important" as GTA 6

Star Citizen director Chris Roberts has astronomically high expectations for the 2026 launch of the game's single-player spinoff, Squadron 42, saying he hopes it's almost as big an event as GTA 6's release the same year. And as it turns out, he's not entirely unreasonable in saying that.

For one, this GamesRadar+ article reporting on Star Citizen's announcement is old enough to start high school, and even that says the game had already been in development for a year. If that's not enough, according to the latest publicly available funding stats, Star Citizen has raised a staggering $859 million in crowdfunding, making it one of the most expensive video games ever made.

That amount is dwarfed by GTA 6's speculated $1-2 billion budget, but it's also not accounting for contributions from developer Cloud Imperium Games and private investors.

Regardless, the time and money being invested into Star Citizen and Squadron 42 is enough to warrant this on-the-surface outlandish comment from Roberts made in an interview with French-publication La Presse, translated by GamesRadar+.

"We hope [Squadron 42] will be an event almost as important [as GTA 6]," Roberts said. "Apart from GTA 6, it's probably the most important AAA-budget game."

Now, GTA 6 is widely expected to be one of the biggest launches of an entertainment product of all time, so it's not really possible to shoot any higher in terms of comparisons, but if there was a game to deserve that comparison, it would be Star Citizen.

With Roberts re-committing to a 2026 release for Squadron 42, you can pretty safely expect that single-player component to land sometime next year, likely way out of GTA 6's May 26 orbit. Star Citizen 1.0, however, is currently targeting a 2027 or 2028 launch, and that seems a lot more shaky due to its ambiguity.

Another key difference between GTA 6 and Star Citizen? You can try out Star Citizen for free right now via its latest "free fly" campaign.

Otherwise, here are the best sci-fi games ever made.