FFXIV Cosmic Exploration: A Fishing Hyperrod Delayed

The title of the post might be a little misleading when looked at a certain way. I felt like I really started flying through the grind of leveling each of my cosmic tools once I received the 150% progress bonus for having upgraded 5 tools. Going into last night I definitely felt I could complete upgrading my last two tools, the Cross-pein Hyperhammer for blacksmiths and the Fishing Hyperrod. Of course something had to come up to delay those plans. That's right, server maintenance. 

The maintenance began at 9pm Pacific/midnight Eastern time. That's right, right in the middle of prime time for those who live west of the Mississippi (and some of use who live east of the river as well). But unlike the 5-10 minutes of downtime the poor EVE players in Australia have to put up with, these updates usually take hours. While annoying, an EVE-style shortage today gives me time to go downstairs and fill up my drinks. With Final Fantasy XIV updates I just go to bed (or log into EVE).

I really can't complain too much because a couple of issues with Cosmic Explorations were fixed. The first one is an annoyance and hasn't affected me let on Oizys: the screen would fail to fade out during the cutscene after completing Cosmic Exploration Projects. I haven't been online to see that bug in patch 7.4.1 but I have another 13 opportunities to do so.

The second bug is a lot more serious, I think. Cosmic Exploration Projects and Red Alerts would occur simultaneously. Yikes! Failing to finish off the exploration project would delay progress for the whole server. I'm not sure for how long, but usually its harder to get everyone back together for a second try, especially for the smaller population worlds. At least, that's what I've heard.

As for my progress last night? I finished off upgrading the blacksmith cosmic tool. As for the Fishing Hyperrod? I'm two Class A fishing missions away from completing the set of Hypertools. I should have that completed tonight. Then on to grinding for the mechanical spider.

Flying Solo In EVE: The 2026 Roadmap

I always start these posts with a look at the weekly average number of concurrent users based on the data from Chribba's EVE-Offline.net. 

The average concurrent user count for the week ending 1 Feb 2026

The average line dropped by 1000 users last week. Yes, some technical difficulties resulted in service interruptions on both Thursday and Saturday but I don't think by enough to drop the number by itself. 

The PLEX market thru 2 February 2026

The price of PLEX remained steady lastweek, only dropping 1% in price during the week. The sales in the cash shop concentrated on mastery packs and remastered value packs. One interesting detail to observe in the near future is whether the first week of the month results in higher PLEX sales.

The reason for wanting to highlight the above information is the leadership of EVE's development seem pretty pleased with themselves with the state of the game.  I'll drop the video into the post below.

The video is part of the introduction of the roadmap for EVE Online for 2026. 

The roadmap is pretty basic and gives a 30,000 foot view (10,000 meters?) of what players can expect over the next 11 months. First, we get two expansions in the now familiar second and fourth quarters of the year. The word is the expansions will concentrate on factional warfare, meaning the Q1 entry for the Gallente election will probably impact at least the summer expansion.

In addition to the two expansions, expect four other major content drops in 2026. The first two will appear in the next few weeks. The EVE Evolved initiative is usually used to update the code base and functions of this game that will celebrate its 23rd year of operating in May. The last EVE Evolved in August of last year concentrated on updating the ESI as well as Upscaling & Ray-traced Shadows as well as an initiative from the art team titled Smoke, Fire & Smart Lights.

In addition to one in March will be another set of updated planned in the third quarter ahead of the winter expansion. The developers are only planning one major mid-expansion patch, this one for the Catalyst expansion, coming up in the next few weeks.

In addition to EVE Online, 2026 is the year EVE Vanguard enters Alpha. The roadmap shows a major event occurring in Q3 while Steam lists the same time period as the release of CCP's new first-person-shooter on the platform. The roadmap lists Vanguard as beginning a playtest on Steam in the final three months of the year.

Finally players will see the usual events such as Capsuleer Day celebrating the anniversary of the launch of the game, the Crimson Harvest and the Winter Nexus.

The post and video had more information but I just wanted to provide a quick road map. We'll probably see more details as time goes on.

Ashes Of Creations And Intrepid Studios Shuts Down Today

 Over the weekend stories were published about the shut down of the crowdfunded MMORPG Ashes of Creations that launched as an Early Access game on Steam on 11 December 2025. 

As seen on Steam on 2 February 2026

The accusations are flying around that the game is a scam. Perhaps the game started off as an honest project. Honestly I haven't enough research into the history of the game to make that kind of determination. I do know that the Warn Act is a federal law that requires employers give 60 days written notice before closing a single site workplace with over 100 employees. 

To meet the requirements of the Warn Act, Intrepid Studios would have had to issued the written layoff notices by 3 December 2025, a full week before the game launched on Steam as an early access title. 

Part of the story doesn't sound right. According to PCGamesN Intrepid Studios founder Steven Sharif made a post on Discord that didn't exactly clear up matters in my mind.

Not long after this, Sharif shared a short post to the game's Discord, seemingly confirming the reported layoffs. "I can make a limited statement in my personal capacity and not on behalf of the company, regarding the situation." He claims that "Control of the company shifted away from me, and the Board began directing actions that I could not ethically agree with or carry out.

"As a result, I chose to resign in protest rather than lend my name or authority to decisions I could not ethically support," Sharif claims. "Following my resignation, much of the senior leadership team resigned. Following those departures, the Board made the decision to issue WARN Act notices and proceed with a mass layoff.

When did the leadership resignations occur? Just from the sound of the statement I would guess before the game launched on Steam. And with this limited knowledge I would not blame anyone for believing the Steam launch indeed was a last gasp for one last money grap before Ashes of Creation jointed the rest of the games that never reached a commercial release.

Cloud Imperium January 2026 Sales Revenue Up 8.1% Year-Over-Year

Year 2 of the new leadership team's reign over Cloud Imperium Games began on a solid note, recording an 8.1% year-over-year increase in cash shop sales. Last month set another record for January with $8.4 million in sales according to the CCU Game Dashboard. While not explosive growth like January 2025's 44.2% YoY growth in cash shop revenue, the growth is in-line with my expectations of a 10% growth in sales in 2026 if sales of Squadron 42 are not included in the cash shop total.

As a note for 2026 I will continue the practice of adding the previous year and the 3-year average in the monthly sales chart. I like the three year average because I feel it gives a longer-term historical perspective. I have the feeling the metric will make CIG's marketing department look good in 2026. For January, sales were 20.6% over average sales in January for 2023-2025.

The $937.6 million displayed on the Roberts Space Industries funding page at the end of January was not a comprehensive accounting for all of CIG's revenue since the project's Kickstarter in October 2012. Overall, the company has recorded $1,061.9 million ($1.06 billion) in confirmed revenue (the funding page & the 2023 financial report).

• Sales/Pledges: $937.5 million (through 31 January 2026)
• Other cash shop revenue: $2.3 million (through 31 December 2023)
• Subscriptions: $39.5 million (through 31 December 2023)
• All other sources: $82.6 million (through 31 December 2023)

In addition, the company has received a total of $68.25 million in outside investment. According to the 2023 financial report, $4.8 million of the amount was returned to investors in 2020 and another $1.9 million in 2023. Including the outside investment money, the total amount raised by CIG to create Squadron 42 and Star Citizen is $1.130.1 million ($1.13 billion), or $1.123.4 million ($1.12 billion) when excluding the returned funds. An additional $12.6 million in loans issued in March 2025 and due for repayment on 31 December 2027 are not included in the total.

I realize that including data from 2023 in an article covering the first month of 2026 isn't great, but Cloud Imperium has a history of not providing financial data in a timely manner, even to governments. For example, CIG has failed to submit its financial accounts to UK Companies House by the 30 September deadline in 5 of the last 6 years. Stale data is just a fact of life when observing CIG.

New user accounts - For those interested in the number of new accounts created, January was the 8th month in a row the number of new accounts rose year-over-year. The streak began one month before the implementation of the new referral system in July 2025. 

In January new user account creation increased by 71.8%, to 58,423, compared to January 2025's 34,005 accounts. The major change in the monthly charts in 2026 is the removal of an attempt to project the number of accounts created in a month. Between the effectiveness of the new referral system and the expected release of Squadron 42 sometime in 2026 I couldn't come up with a way to model the result.

What to look for - I see three things observers should be on the lookout for that might affect the numbers.

1. Fallout from the shutdown of Ashes of Creation. Tomorrow Intrepid Studios shuts down operations, thereby killing the game, such as it was. Will any of the fallout from AoC's collapse splash onto Cloud Imperium Games and Star Citizen? Theoretically no, but if Squadron 42 does not launch this year, expect the cries of "Scam Citizen" to echo even louder than in the past.

2. Publication of 2024's financial report. Cloud Imperium is in a bit of a Catch-22 situation. Don't release the report in February and get accused of hiding bad news. Not a good look following the collapse of Intrepid Studios. But due to Cloud Imperium's practice of greatly delaying financial news, a release now would probably be bad as the company is expected to have lost millions of dollars in 2024.

3. The new patch release cycle. The constant release of new content last year helped retain interest and increased spending to new heights. Will the new bi-monthly (every other month) release schedule slow down interest? I believe February is the first month without a scheduled patch release in quite awhile. Will  year-over-year revenue decrease?