Massive update to controversial space MMO causes chaos after "super rough start"

News
By published

Star Citizen has been in development for over a decade and has amassed more than $500 million through crowdfunding

Star Citizen
(Image credit: Cloud Imperium)

The latest update for the controversial space MMO Star Citizen has been causing all kinds of chaos for players.

Last week developer Cloud Imperium Games rolled out what it describes as Star Citizen's "biggest update yet". According to the game's website, "Alpha 3.18 throws open the door to the next stage of Star Citizen's groundbreaking universe. Alongside adding immersive careers, stunning locations, and thrilling gameplay, the latest patch holds the key to true in-game persistence". While it all sounds very exciting, unfortunately, fans have been unable to properly try out these new additions due to server outages and other issues. 

As reported by VGC, Star Citizen's server status page informed players of "partial" outages due to increased traffic not long after the latest update went live. Over the following days, many players were left unable to log into the game, and those that managed to were met with lengthy queues, error messages, and major bugs. 

That brings us to today, where a message on the server status page reads, "The environment has been in the process of recovering from the slow / non-responsive state it was in but we wanted to advise that, while this recovery effort is in-progress, players will experience periods of extreme difficulty getting into the PU."

Over on the Star Citizen subreddit, players have been sharing their frustration at the situation. "I've never seen it this bad before ever," writes one fan. "Not even when 2.0 came out. I've not been able to login since Saturday morning due to the 19004 error... It's now Monday night and I am still unable to login due to the 19004 error. This is a dumpster fire that is unprecedented in dumpster fire scales." Another says, "It's definitely a game changer, it changed so much I can't even play".

Hurston Dynamics Remembers from r/starcitizen

Developer Cloud Imperium Games has apologised for the situation and says that it's working hard to get things back to normal. In a tweet, it wrote, "We're sorry for the super rough start - our team is all hands on deck working to get things running smoothly as quickly as possible. We'll keep you updated!"

Star Citizen was successfully funded on Kickstarter all the way back in 2012 and has managed to raise $500 million through crowdfunding so far. All these years later, it's still in the alpha phase of production with no release date in sight.

Looking for something that's out of this world? Check out our guide to the best MMO games.

Anne-Marie Ostler
Anne-Marie Ostler
Freelance Writer

Originally from Ireland, I moved to the UK in 2014 to pursue a Games Journalism and PR degree at Staffordshire University. Following that, I've freelanced for GamesMaster, Games TM, Official PlayStation Magazine and, more recently, Play and GamesRadar+. My love of gaming sprang from successfully defeating that first Goomba in Super Mario Bros on the NES. These days, PlayStation is my jam. When not gaming or writing, I can usually be found scouring the internet for anything Tomb Raider related to add to my out of control memorabilia collection.