Squadron 42 Purchase Page Is Down

Throughout 2022, the one bit of server tech that worked for Cloud Imperium Games was the Pledge Store. No matter what happened on the Star Citizen game servers, customers always had the ability to spend money on CIG's products. Until yesterday.

A commenter over on MassivelyOP noted that all mention of purchasing Squadron 42 from the RSI website around 1900 UTC. The report wasn't quite true, as looking on the Squadron 42 page did indeed show buttons to purchase the single player game. But I went one step farther and pushed the "Pledge Now" button. I received a 404 error. Chris Neal, the MassivelyOP writer who covers Star Citizen, confirmed my findings.

One can't pre-order Squadron 42 from this page

While the 404 page is impressive, one can't pre-order Squadron 42 from the 404 page. For those not aware, Wikipedia defines a 404 error as:

In computer network communications, the HTTP 404, 404 not found, 404, 404 error, page not found or file not found error message is a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) standard response code, to indicate that the browser was able to communicate with a given server, but the server could not find what was requested. The error may also be used when a server does not wish to disclose whether it has the requested information.

The website hosting server will typically generate a "404 Not Found" web page when a user attempts to follow a broken or dead link; hence the 404 error is one of the most recognizable errors encountered on the World Wide Web.

The really cool 404 error page indicates the problem is server-side, not something wrong with my laptop.

What does the error mean? My experience tells me someone was doing an update on the page. Either someone posted the update and put in the wrong link, or someone decided that showing the 404 error page for a day or two was better than posting the updated page.

Anything further speculation turns into conspiracy theory land. The theories could range from CIG is doing a price hike to coincide with the beginning of Invictus Launch Week tomorrow to the lawyers telling CIG to stop selling Squadron 42 NOW!!!. But the fact that, as I write this post, the pledge page issue has last for over 16 hours does lead to some speculation. CIG not fixing a problem that prevents people from giving them money is very unlike them.