Frontier Friday Summary - 2026 End Of Year Roadmap Update

The beginning of EVE Frontier's Cycle 7 begins on Tuesday. Just because I had difficulty with the movement controls in Cycle 6 doesn't mean I want to give up entirely on covering Frontier's development. I understand that Cycle 7 is changing the controls again so I still have hope playing the game won't bring me pain afterwards.

But I don't have a lot of time to actually do a proper review of each week's Frontier Friday stream. Instead I am going to turn to the Unofficial Official AI Sponsor of Fenris Creations: Google DeepMind. I've discovered that when Gemini gives a summary of a YouTube video the AI also provides links to the original spot in the video where something was said. Given the concern with AI hallucinations a very good feature!

I do want to make one point clear. I only plan to use this technology on official developer streams and YouTube videos. That means no reviews of videos from Frontier content creators like Daemonxel. He is my favorite YouTuber for Frontier content and his weekly news show is a great watch or listen. However, I do reserve the right to link his channel Echoes from the Front so everyone knows where to go for news on Friday nights.

Below the line is the summary from Gemini.

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The video is "EVE Frontier | Frontier Friday - 2026 End of Year Roadmap Update!" from the official EVE Frontier channel [00:00:03], hosted by FC O, FC Bowman, FC Overload, FC Goodfella, and FC Yikes [00:00:12].

The stream covers development updates, design philosophy, and release milestones leading up to December 2026.

Key Takeaways & Discussion Points

1. Cycle 5 EVE Points Error

• The team addressed community reports regarding an issue with Cycle 5 EVE Points calculations, confirming that an error occurred on their end [00:05:06].

• An internal investigation is underway, with a formal statement and corrective remedy planned once the root cause is determined [00:05:12].

2. Core Pillars & "Closing the Gap" on the Vision Trailer

• The team reaffirmed the core design pillars: hard sci-fi grounding, digital physics, digital chemistry, cruel survival MMO mechanics, and rebuilding a broken world [00:09:32].

• Rather than adding raw features on top of legacy EVE mechanics, the focus has shifted toward building tactile, intimate moment-to-moment interactions directly into the 3D scene [00:18:08] (e.g., physical docking collars instead of menu-based warping/teleporting into stations [00:25:32]).

• The HUD is seeing a major decluttering pass ("the war on brackets") to replace dense window overlays with direct world context and in-world interaction widgets [00:28:01], [00:34:19].

3. Flight Controls & Mining Rework

• Flight Physics: Ship handling is shifting from abstract controls to direct, mass-and-thruster physics [00:48:36]. This includes strafing (up/down/left/right), roll controls, and drift maneuvers [00:48:49]. While loop-the-loops still hit a barrier, barrel rolls and 5.5-DOF flight maneuvers are now functional [00:49:10].

• Selective / Cavity Mining: Asteroid mining is moving toward targeted resource extraction (drilling directly into specific mineral pockets inside asteroids) paired with contextual scanning menus [00:31:14], setting the foundation for the future Digital Chemistry system [00:33:27].

2026 End-of-Year Roadmap Timeline

• Cycle 7 Launch (September 29, 2026): [00:35:48]

  • Core Experience Refinement: Physics-based flight controls [00:48:27], HUD/bracket decluttering [00:37:30], starter region expansion [00:37:43], initial contextual mining changes [00:50:02], and introductory Fog of War [00:50:18].

• Cycle 7 Midcycle (November 3, 2026): [00:42:26]

  • Small Group Play: Group objective sharing, shared communications, resource pooling [00:43:03], community challenges [00:43:18], and modularity groundwork [00:43:22].

• Cycle 8 Launch (December 2026): [00:43:46]

  • Full Modularity & Social Systems: Full ship, structure, and social modularity [00:43:56]; player-defined social primitives replacing legacy corp structures (no rigid "tribes") [00:45:11]; collaborative base building [00:50:32]; data and digital item trading [00:51:03].

Upcoming Schedule

• Next Stream: Deep dive into Cycle 7 features and mechanics [00:52:06].

• Following Week: Founders Q&A session post-Cycle 7 launch [00:52:14].

— Coverage Note: The summary and timestamp links above were compiled using Gemini to parse the raw broadcast transcript from the official EVE Frontier stream. The Nosy Gamer utilizes AI tools to index and structure long-form developer videos for quick community reference.

EVE Online Crimson Harvest And Winter Expansion Dates?

Tuesday the release of EVE Online's Cradle of War's Major Update. I know that the most important items, at least in the developers' minds, were the changes to the Ansiblex jump bridges. But before I jump into some of the other changes introduced this week, I want to speculate a little bit about what is coming up over the next two months: Crimson Harvest and the winter expansion.

Introduced in 2015, Crimson Harvest is the first and perhaps most popular seasonal event in EVE. Since the return of the two expansions per year release schedule, New Eden's Halloween event increased to four weeks in duration.

• 2023: October 5 – November 6, 2023
• 2024: October 3 – November 5, 2024   
• 2025: October 6 – November 4, 2025

A funny thing about the Crimson Harvest. The end dates of the event fall in the first full week of November. In 2023 the event ended at downtime on a Monday while the past two years Crimson Harvest has ended on a Tuesday. If the pattern holds we should see the event run from October 6th to November 3rd this year. Correlation does not equal causation, but did Blizzard delay the launch of WoW Forever to November 4th to avoid conflicting with EVE's Crimson Harvest event?

What about the winter expansion? Is Fenris going to delay the launch until December to avoid the launches of both WoW Forever and GTA 6? I think the Major Update dev blog put to rest that question.

The AIR Career Program (ACP) migrates to Paragon Services achievements in November. Anyone with unfinished ACP tasks should complete them and claim the rewards before the move. Once those tasks become achievements, they can be completed again through the new system, so there's a second run at them waiting on the other side. 

In addition to the new achievements system the first military campaigns will also end with CoW. So trying to figure out when the winter expansion will launch actually has a useful component to it. Here are the launch dates of the last four winter expansions.

• Uprising: November 8, 2022
• Havoc: November 14, 2023
• Revenant: November 12, 2024 
• Catalyst: November 18, 2025   

Except for last year the winter expansion has fallen on the second Tuesday of the month of November. Last year I think was delayed one week to avoid falling on a day with so many holidays.

• UK - Remembrance Day
• US - Veterans Day
• France & Belgium - Armistice Day
• Germany - The first day of the Carnival season for Catholic and Rhineland areas of Germany.

So I'm fully expecting Fenris to return to the schedule of the previous three years and launch the 2026 winter expansion on November 10th, right between the launches of WoW Forever and GTA 6. Because let's face it, EVE is 23 years old. The purpose of expansions is to maintain player interest. With these two huge games releasing in November, the expansion is coming just in time to keep the player loss to the new games to a minimum.

What Fenris Creations Is Telling The World About The Cradle of War Major Update

Today is the release date for EVE Online's Cradle of War Major Update. Unlike some companies that engage in making games involving internet spaceships, Fenris Creations puts out press releases aimed at major media companies. Don't get me wrong, patch notes and dev blogs are great, but perhaps not for video game journalists doing drive-by write-ups of new content.

What am I talking about? The CoW update rated its own press release for the wider world. So if I say the major feature in today's content patch concerns force projection, I can point to the press release. Of course, history may show players chose otherwise, But we haven't reached that point of time yet.

To avoid the necessity of having to follow a trail of hyperlinks I'll copy the press release to the blog. I'm pretty sure the PR team won't mind.

Fenris Creations’ EVE Online: Cradle of War Update Makes It Harder for Alliances to Rush Fleets Across Space, Shaking Up War Strategies

Launching September 22, Ansiblex jump bridges now run on a distance-scaled charge, alongside Pirate Insurgency changes, wormhole combat site overhaul, Pochven updates, and more

REYKJAVÍK, Iceland – September 22, 2026 – Today, Fenris Creations launched the next major update for EVE Online: Cradle of War, the latest expansion for the iconic sci-fi MMO EVE Online. Centered on a revamp of Ansiblex jump bridges, the player-built gates that let nullsec alliances project force across huge stretches of space at short notice, the update also iterates on Pirate Insurgencies, improves low-class wormhole combat sites, and rebalances ships across New Eden. It represents the most impactful step in Fenris Creations’ ongoing work on force projection and nullsec sovereignty since the Equinox expansion, and addresses a long-standing community call for changes to force projection. 

“Ansiblex jump bridges – player-built stargates – have worked the same way for years, and players got very good at using them to be everywhere at once,” said Bergur Finnbogason, Creative Director for EVE Online. “Adding a cost to project force over vast distances changes the paradigm and makes moving a large fleet more deliberate and predictable. Changing how groups travel leads to interesting knock-on effects; for example, a smaller alliance might be able to hold ground without a fleet from the other side of the map landing on top of it. No matter the outcome, every group will have to rethink how it moves and solve a new set of problems. This is where EVE players are at their best.” 

Against a backdrop of strange shifts affecting the fabric of New Eden and wormhole space, even established technologies are being forced to adapt, with Upwell’s Ansiblex network among those feeling the effects. 

Until now, Ansiblex networks have let alliances move large fleets without this kind of constraint. Each gate now holds a limited pool of energy that drains with every ship that passes through and refills slowly afterwards. Once it’s empty, the gate is unusable until it recovers. Jump cost depends on the destination, distance from an alliance’s capital system, and the ship itself, with different ship types carrying different costs. Journeys that carry a fleet far from its home territory drain the gate far more than trips heading back toward it. Only subcapital ship classes can use the network, and each gate is now restricted to members of the alliance that owns it rather than its wider network of allies. 

Alliances can still reach anywhere in New Eden, but the cost climbs with distance, giving every group a practical operating range for its Ansiblex network. The benefit is greatest for smaller groups. Where a much larger fleet could previously arrive from the far side of the map with little warning, players will now have a much clearer sense of what may reach them, from where, and in what numbers. Ansiblexes remain only one of several ways fleets can project across space. 

Other key features of the Cradle of War major update include: 

• Pirate Insurgency Changes: Pirate Insurgencies in low-security space are now shorter and spread faster, giving players greater control over how and where corruption spreads. A new battlecruiser-sized “Moderate” combat site, the Insurgency counterpart to Cradle of War’s battlecruiser Factional Warfare site, joins reinforcement-cycle changes that reward winning an Insurgency outright over farming the sites around it. 
  
  
• Wormhole Combat Site Overhaul: Encounters across Class 1 to Class 3 wormhole combat sites have been modernized with smarter enemies, clearer objectives, and a refreshed visual pass. 
  
  
• Pochven Updates: More roaming enemy fleets with smarter behavior, adjusted wormhole connections in and out of the region, and revised fleet-size caps, with Vigilance Point increasing from 10 to 12 ships and Observatory Flashpoint dropping from 15 to 12. 
  
  
• Ship Balance: Marauders and Black Ops battleships are now lighter for easier wormhole travel. Underperforming heavy assault cruisers, assault frigates, and railgun ships have been buffed, lancer dreadnoughts are more durable, and a cheaper Zero-Point Field Manipulator is expected to lower Tech II Triglavian production costs. 
  
  
• Rampant Drone Fabricator Rewards: The challenging Rampant Drone Fabricator – a new piece of wormhole content introduced this summer featuring a ‘horde mode’ mechanic – becomes more rewarding, yielding additional Fabricator Data that can be exchanged in the Pochven LP Store for powerful new drone upgrades. These include four new mutaplasmids for customizing drone support modules and an exclusive Hybrid Drone skill book that increases hybrid drone damage by 3% per level. Quality-of-life changes also make it easier to bring interdictors into Fabricator fleets. 

Much of today’s update was shaped directly by feedback from the Council of Stellar Management and player groups, including Wormhole UN and FW Parliament, and shares a common thread: revisiting systems players have optimized over the years to create room for new strategies. Pirate Insurgencies now move faster and place greater emphasis on winning the conflict. Pochven’s fleet-size and reward changes create new challenges, while Class 1 to Class 3 wormhole combat sites modernize some of EVE’s oldest PvE content with smarter enemies, clearer objectives and refreshed environments, bringing them more closely in line with the rest of EVE’s PvE experience. Ansiblex jump bridge changes cut deepest into that established order, reshaping how alliances move and forcing groups across nullsec to reconsider how they project power, hold territory and respond to threats. 

No Changes To Cloud Imperium Ownership In 2026

On Wednesday Cloud Imperium's confirmation statement was posted by UK Companies House. For the first time since 2022 the company was able to file the form without updates. From my perspective, not needing to update any information is a good thing.

But what exactly does a confirmation confirm? UK Companies House provides a nice page about confirmation statements.

• Registered office address and single alternative inspection location (SAIL), if applicable.
• Officers: Names, dates of birth, service addresses, and residential details of directors and company secretaries.
• Persons with Significant Control (PSC): Individuals or legal entities holding more than 25% of shares or voting rights, or who otherwise exercise control.
• Principal business activities: Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes describing what the business does.
• Share capital and shareholder information: Total number of shares issued, aggregate nominal value, currency, and a list of shareholders (including changes in shareholdings since the last statement).
• Registered email address: A valid contact email for Companies House correspondence (introduced under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act).
• Lawful purpose statement: A formal confirmation that the company's intended future activities are lawful.

In 2023 Cloud Imperium needed to provide an update to the shareholder information. In October 2022 the company conducted a 10:1 share split which was recorded the following year. In July 2023 the company allocated 30,120 shares to the founders of Turbulent in association of the Turbulent acquisition.

In 2024 the retirement of CIG co-founder Ortwin Freyermuth resulted in wholesale changes to ownership. The Calders' ownership stake in CIG rose to 23.1%, with Keith Calder's Indus Management holding 20.7% of the company's shares.

In 2025 Indus Management purchased 247,520 shares of CIG for $5 million, pushing the Calder's combined ownership of the company up to 23% and Keith Calder's shares accounting for 22.4%. According to the UK Companies House information on confirmation statements, Keith Calder's name will have to appear if Indus Management reaches 25% of the shares. The additional £10 million loan presumably also from Indus does not need to be disclosed in confirmation statements.

But as of last week the Calders combined and individual stakes don't reach the level of requiring such disclosure to the UK government. Of course, we do have the example of 2022's stock split that was performed a month into the next year's disclosure window. But as of now everything looks relatively stable financially.

BlizzCon 2026 - WoW Forever Goes Realmless

I did find one fascinating thing about the new World of Warcraft Forever infrastructure I wanted to post about. No realms. But that doesn't mean the game is played on a single giant realm like a fantasy EVE Online. According to the presentation I watched, a player just picks a ruleset and starts playing. An associated article indicates the same thing. I'm not exactly sure, but other sources indicate players are placed into shards in their own geographic regions.

Looking at the article, the devs place a large amount of the reason for the change from Retail WoW as social interaction.

World of Warcraft: Forever is also taking a new approach to how players choose where they play. For many players, that first realm choice has always carried a lot of weight: pick the right one and you can adventure with your friends, join the right community, and find groups more easily; pick a different one and you might discover too late that the people you wanted to play with are somewhere else entirely.

Instead of asking players to make that decision before creating a character, World of Warcraft: Forever is going realmless, making it easier to connect with friends while still preserving the community feel that has always made realms memorable.

I should mention that throwing all players together by region and playstyle also helps prevent the need for the dreaded server merge.

Each ruleset functions more like its own large ecosystem than a single traditional realm. This is not one giant realm for everyone, and cross-ruleset grouping is not supported. Factions remain separate, so Horde and Alliance players still cannot group together. Players can group, run dungeons, and raid with others who have chosen the same ruleset. Hardcore will remain a fully enclosed ecosystem, but if a Hardcore character dies, that character can transfer to another ruleset, including PvP.

Also, the devs are introducing something I never really thought about in my 17 years of playing EVE and 7 years of playing Final Fantasy XIV, selecting two names.

As part of the server updates, characters will also use two-part names, similar to having a “first name” and “last name.” Because names will be unique per region, this gives players more room to create original character names, such as “Ana Forever,” while keeping those identities recognizable across the larger connected environment.

Above were just the impressions I had after thinking about the situation for a couple of days. Below are Gemini's highlights on how the system will work.

• Rulesets are strict silos: Realmless does not mean universal cross-play. You cannot group, run dungeons, or raid across ruleset boundaries (e.g., a Normal player cannot group with a PvP player). Faction walls (Horde vs. Alliance) also remain firmly in place.  
  
  
• Shared economy: Each ruleset ecosystem maintains its own regional Auction House and mailing network. A single macro-economy handles materials and consumables per ruleset rather than fractured local realm economies.  
  
  
• Social clustering & sharding: Because everyone on the same ruleset shares one macro-population, the backend sorts who you see in the open world. Priority clustering groups you with guildmates, friends, and players you recently interacted with to recreate the feeling of a local community without server caps.  
  
  
• Two-part character names: Without realm suffixes to distinguish identical names (e.g., Shadow-Illidan), Forever requires first and last names (such as "Ana Forever") that are unique across your entire region.  

Having played EVE and FFXIV for so long I've forgotten some of the pain points I experienced when I played Vanilla WoW back in 2005-2006. EVE doesn't have server merges because the game runs on a single shard, two if you include the Serenity shard required by the Chinese Community Party and only runs in China. As for Square Enix' global servers, they haven't had to conduct a server merge since the relaunch of A Realm Reborn back in 2013. I'm interested to see how the new innovations for WoW Forever work out.

BlizzCon 2026: WoW Forever Makes November Crazy

I have to say the biggest news out of BlizzCon over the weekend was the news of World of Warcraft Forever. No, Fenris Creations' CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson has not conducted a hostile takeover of Blizzard Entertainment. If I understand the concept, the player cap will forever be set to 60 and all further progression is horizontal. Kind of what I remember from Elder Scrolls Online. Also, players will remain within the lands of Vanilla WoW exploring all the mysteries the developers had planned but never got to use.

I'm not really qualified to opine on the new version of WoW right now since I stopped playing the game back in 2006. But I think I am qualified to anticipate what WoW Forever will do to the video game release calendar.

Any company that bailed on releasing a game in the final three months of 2026 is breathing a sign of relief they made the right choice. On top of the release of Forever on 4 November comes the much anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto VI on 18 November. Between the release of new entries from two classic franchises I'd say little attention will be available for other games in the releasing in the fourth quarter.

My favorite games hopefully shouldn't have an issue. Final Fantasy XIV's Evercold expansion is scheduled to launch sometime in January 2027. EVE Online's winter expansion hopefully will not launch in November. I think Fenris could get away with releasing the expansion on 8 December, giving curious people a month to play the new game before the series business of internet spaceships. And Cloud Imperium? They had already delayed the launch of Squadron 42 to the second quarter of 2027. But I wonder the effect on the biggest sales event, the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo. Something to watch out for in 8 weeks.

BlizzCon 2026: Putting Diablo Into Perspective

The news coming out of BlizzCon in Anaheim this year has me posting on a Sunday. While I am not the target audience for American triple-A games, I have to appreciate the longevity of one of Blizzard Entertainment's classic game franchises, Diablo.

Probably the biggest Diablo news was the announcement of Diablo V coming out sometime in 2029. I've never played a Diablo game but have seen enough clips over the years to kind of understand what is going on in the trailer.

But the following trailer hyping up 30 years of Diablo really got me to thinking. I never played but the game is an all-time classic. So I decided to take a look at what was going on 30 years ago with the franchises I cover.

First up is EVE Online. I know, I know, EVE did not launch until 2003. But Fenris Creations will also celebrate its 30th year of operations in 2027. According to official Icelandic business records, FC was originally incorporated on 16 July 1997. 

Next comes my current main game, Final Fantasy XIV. The game dates back to its original start in 2010, but the Final Fantasy franchise dates back to 1987. I do have to say that Diablo's launch month was a very good month for video games. Four weeks after Diablo launched on 3 January 1997, Square released Final Fantasy VII in Japan. For those wondering, Final Fantasy VII release in the U.S. in September and Europe in November. An interesting fact is that FFVII was the first Final Fantasy game to release in Europe.

Finally, I have to mention Star Citizen because of Chris Roberts. If Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are the spiritual successors to the Wing Commander series, then I'd be remiss in not pointing out that the last Wing Commander game Roberts released,  Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom, released on 8 February 1996, almost a full year ahead of Diablo's launch. 

I do want to point out something about the cost of developing video games back in the mid-1990s. When Wing Commander IV launched, Origin bragged that the $12 million development cost, the record at the time, was "the price of freedom." Of course, Wing Commander IV was a bit unusual as 90% of the development cost was shooting the cutscenes.

That record only lasted a year as 1997's Final Fantasy VII took $40-$45 million to develop with another $40 million spent in marketing the game. Meanwhile, Diablo only needed to sell 20,000 copies to break even.

Those were the days.

The Steam Achievement Leaks: News About Squadron 42 Not From Cloud Imperium

I've watched the news over the last few days of a leak of information about Steam achievements for upcoming games. Apparently an issue cropped up involving the API that led to sites like Exophase and SteamDB collecting all the Steam achievements from Valve, not just games that currently are live. And the Star Citizen community is going just a little crazy.

Gemini is getting much better with providing me with news so I'll just use part of the output the AI provided yesterday.

How the Leak Occurred: Following routine maintenance, Steam’s API briefly removed privacy barriers protecting backend achievement lists. Automated tracking databases and aggregators—most notably Exophase—regularly poll the API for new data. Because the backend suddenly returned the private data as public, Exophase automatically indexed and displayed the full achievement sets for various AppIDs, many of which had not even been formally announced or given public store pages.  

Exophase owner Mike Bendel clarified that this was not a malicious security breach or targeted hack, but rather an error on Valve’s end where private attributes were unintentionally exposed to standard API queries. 

The list was pretty extensive, but the one game I'm focusing on today is Squadron 42. I didn't head down the rabbit hole to find out details about the SQ42 achievements themselves. I think the bigger story outside the Star Citizen fandom is that the achievements exist in the first place.

First off, Squadron 42 is not vaporware. I don't think anyone can now argue that the news was just another CIG's marketing department effort to deceive its customer base as part of a decade-long scam. I wrote back in June about the possibility of CIG including Steam as part of the launch of the game.

Instead, I see the event as a kickoff to marketing the game to people outside the Star Citizen community. My big prediction is the announcement that CIG will sell the game on Steam and that players can begin pre-ordering Squadron 42 at that time on both Steam and the traditional RSI website. Since I am assuming a Steam launch, CIG would need to follow Steam's policies. These policies include having a "Coming Soon" page up for a minimum of two weeks before buyers can press they buy button. Steam also requires a build review to ensure the game boots up properly and doesn't contain malicious files.

These Steam requirements explicitly details that Valve requires 3-5 business days to review the store page and a separate 5 business days to review the actual game build. I really don't see CIG setting things up ahead of time and stepping on their big announcement. CIG probably will also want to avoid the launch of GTA VI so I imagine a launch window of June or July 2027 would work well in also meeting all of Valve's requirements to list the game on Steam.

I posted the minimum requirements but apparently CIG is way past doing as little as possible.

Second, not everyone possibly diverted to work on SQ42 was taken from Star Citizen development. CIG needs to integrate their backend systems to work with Steam's. Honestly, that's another reason Chris Roberts may have purchased Turbulent. The Canadian-based subsidiary has worked on CIG's websites, including the cash shop, since 2012. Keeping that activity within the company probably was attractive to Roberts' famously controlling mindset. The fact the work is probably being performed in lost-cost Quebec instead of a high-priced location like the United States is also a plus in saving money.

Third, the move has caught a surprisingly large number portion of Star Citizen customers off-guard. And I consider 10% a surprisingly large number. So many white knights and other hard-core backers have compared the Star Citizen project to Rockstar games (first Red Dead Redemption 2, currently Grand Theft Auto VI) that the attribute the power, size, and wealth of Rockstar Games. And if one looks, RDR2 and the GTA games on PC are all on Steam.

Sorry folks, but CIG does not have the money to conduct a traditional marketing campaign like a major studio. The reason CIG reached out and received outside investment in 2018 was because the company needed $46 million to advertise the 2020 launch of Squadron 42. But with a cumulative net position of $27.1 million at the end of 2024, CIG only had a 2-month cash reserve. 

Thus, an earned media marketing campaign is called for. Avoiding periods where everyone will disregard SQ42 to talk about GTA 6 is one obvious move. The other is to sell through Steam. An actual no-brainer but I've seen some think the idea is horrible.

I've believed for a couple of years now that the latest CIG could launch Squadron 42 was the summer of 2027. The news about the leak shows that Squadron 42 is close to a state to release to the public. While I believe the game is still not ready, I now believe the work is the typical polishing up done by game devs as the game gets closer to release. I really, really hope the game is not in a state to induce panic. But given CIG was incorporated in California on 10 April 2012, the lack of a track record of successful game launches may leave some to wonder if Squadron 42 is solid.

Dawntrail: When The Last Content Drops

Tuesday witnessed what I am assuming is the final content patch for Final Fantasy XIV: Dawnwalker. We might see a patch 7.58 as a preparation for the next expansion, Evercold, in order to clean up a few things, but the content is done. Despite the fact I'm still stuck in the patch 7.4 MSQ I'm still not in a big rush to do the rest of the content. Trying to get the final Cosmic Exploration mount while the content is still relevant? Oh yes! I do need to speed up the grinding for that. But the rest of the content? No.

That also includes the new beastmaster limited job introduced in patch 7.56. I spent years before touching the original limited job, blue mage. But the fact we have four months to go until the launch of the next expansion won't stop many from rushing through the beastmaster leveling grind. I even see multiple people advertising the "fastest beastmaster leveling guide" on YouTube less than 24 hours after the job was introduced. Color me skeptical, but I don't exactly trust guides that come out that fast. But the demand for those types of videos is there.

Looking through the patch notes, the only other content in the expansion (not just patch) is the final four quests of the expansion. Sure, we haven't seen the return of all the crossover content yet, but for all intents and purposes we won't see any new content apart from seasonal events until January. 

The one remaining big event on the calendar is the Tokyo Fanfest on Halloween and All Hallows Day (aka October 31st & November 1st). I might need to actually finish the MSQ before then, but I really hate trials and still need to do the last two. That's right, I'm 11 quests away from finishing and I'm hung up on doing trials. I've been told in the past to just go in as a DPS job, try not to die, and get carried. It feels wrong but I may wind up doing that.

I also need to finish up the Hildebrand questline. I still need to do the last two quests from patch 7.55. Those I like. In fact, I may try to go back and replay each series using New Game+. 

And that's one of the challenges for game developers. They don't need to worry about players like me. I never keep up with the content so always have something to do. But all those people who race ahead and vacuum up all the content in a week? I can expect those people to start complaining by the end of the month, if not sooner.

Chris Roberts Needs A New Ortwin Freyermuth

I've covered Cloud Imperium Games and Star Citizen for quite a few years now. Out of all the figures who have left the company in the past 5 years or so the one I miss most is CIG co-founder and former legal consul Ortwin Freyermuth. The long time entertainment lawyer first worked with Chris Roberts on what I consider Roberts' most successful moving, Lord of War. That 19-year partnership ended when Freyermuth sold off his share of CIG back in the summer of 2024. Freyermuth wore a lot of hats at CIG and, in my eyes at least, some stability and a check on Roberts' worst impulses outside of game development. After reading the latest Letter from the Chairman, I think Roberts needs to find a new Ortwin Freyermuth.

I realize Roberts had to address the 800 pound gorilla in the room: the game engine. After the embarrassing stream of the Siege of Orison run-through with 4 CIG employees one could naturally wonder how an engine designed for FPS games could operate so poorly. But the subject did bring back memories of the CryTek lawsuit.

The basis for the CryTek lawsuit was CIG switching to Lumberyard and CIG creating a second game based on CryEngine 3 (Squadron 42) without a license. As late as January 2020 CIG argued in court that Squadron 42 and Star Citizen were one game as they were accessed from the same launcher. But in February 2020 the two sides came to an agreement, still largely under an NDA, bringing the lawsuit to a close with prejudice, meaning CryTek cannot sue again.

But the following paragraph from the latest Letter from the Chairman had me wondering if Roberts had violated the NDA.

In 2020 we came to agreement with Crytek that gave us a perpetual license for the branch of CryEngine we were on for all our current and future games, giving us full control over the use of Star Engine going forward, which you can appreciate is important due to the investments we have made into our technology.

Then the word "gave" induced a flashback to The Princess Bride.

I've covered CIG long enough to remember this passage from the 2020 financial analysis published on CIG's corporate website.

Capex spend in 2020 was significantly up on 2019, which in part was driven by the headcount increase, but in the year we also purchased a perpetual worldwide license for use of the CryEngine, which provides us greater flexibility in how we develop and deploy the engine within our existing and planned future business.

Perhaps if Roberts had someone like Freyermuth to run the letter against the wording wouldn't have come close to raising any red flags. Just on the face of it, Crytek didn't give CIG anything. CIG had to purchase a second license.

The section of the letter, however, that really raised eyebrows was the claim of when development on Squadron 42 began.

At CitizenCon 2024 we announced we would ship in 2026. Our plan was to release in Q4 around IAE. But much like the rest of the industry there is no way I want to launch my spiritual successor to Wing Commander, a game that has had twelve years of blood, sweat and tears invested into it (we started Squadron 42 development in 2014 as 2013 was opening studios, hiring people and getting the Hangar module out for Star Citizen) launching into the attention buzz saw of GTA6. While GTA6 isn’t launching on PC this November, pretty much all outlets and most content creators will be all over it, not leaving a lot of room for other coverage. [emphasis mine]

Is it true that development of the single player campaign really didn't begin until 2014? Or did Roberts really just make something up to avoid people thinking that Squadron 42 took longer to develop than Duke Nukem Forever? 

I ask because the date matters. The original Kickstarter campaign gave an estimated date of release of November 2014. In my opinion, not starting development on the single player campaign until 2014 meant Roberts knew that November 2014 date was made up out of thin air and not possible to achieve.

So what should I believe? That Roberts is lying now in order to avoid embarrassment? Or that the original release date was thrown out there in order to entice people to give him money because 2 years doesn't sound that far off? What's the difference if the second case is true? About $35 million, the amount collected from the launch of the Kickstarter to the end of 2013. Without that, does CIG wind up selling $1 billion in digital assets and last 14 years?

Of course, if Roberts had a trusted advisor or lawyer he could run statements past maybe he could avoid making stupid statements that raise more issues than they put to bed. But as long as Roberts continues to make statements in an effort to avoid short term embarrassment, perhaps the staff at CIG should do their best to keep Roberts away from the public. I don't see another Ortwin Freyermuth coming along anytime soon.