Star Citizen dev opens Frankfurt studio

Star Citizen executive producer Alex Mayberry has quit his position at Cloud Imperium Games, with multiple reports stating the departure is for personal reasons. The two will work together on Star Citizen and its single player element, Squadron 42. Considering the ridiculous size of the game, expected to require a 100GB install when it it’s all said and done, there are bound to be some hiccups along the way.

Mayberry’s is the second high-profile loss that Cloud Imperium has suffered recently: Also in June, Senior Producer Travis Day left the company to take up employment at Blizzard, as did “associate concierge” Chelsea Ann Day.

Mayberry was hired at Cloud Imperium Games in May 2014, after working for Blizzard for more than a decade on projects that included World of Warcraft and the Diablo franchise. So either it’s a really daft clerical error, or Star Citizen isn’t looking too hot to developers and public alike. Following that, the FPS module for the game was delayed last week, with no estimate as to when it will be available for enthusiastic backers. Once UK-based Erin Roberts joined in 2013 to contribute his extensive background in game production, the Roberts and Freyermuth added CIG’s worldwide operations in Manchester, United Kingdom to develop the mission driven Squadron 42 which is set in Star Citizen’s first person universe.

In a coincidental bit of timing, Cloud Imperium also [edit: formally] announced today that it has opened a new development office in Frankfurt, Germany, which will be staffed by “some of the top game developers in this part of the world”. In any case, the game has a huge, dedicated group of fans that have invested large amounts of money into the highly ambitious project through Kickstarter as well as other crowdfunding avenues.

Star Citizen itself is due out in 2016 and has crowdfunded over $84m to date. First, the FPS module Star Marine was put on hold/delayed, and now it looks like the executive producer has left the project.