Another week has gone by, and Star Citizen fans have something else to look forward to. Sean Tracy and Chris Roberts return this week in the newest Around the Verse video for Star Citizen.
This newest video talks about more in-game events with a pretty funny and lighthearted tone. Things like racing and other events are also getting some love. The video also discusses ongoing polish work on various vehicles and ships in the game. It’s pretty cool to see the gameplay feature teams progressing nicely on mining and other industrial pursuits in Star Citizen.
In other areas, the concept work on various planetary and lore environments is ongoing as well. The CIG and RSI devs are really giving it their all to make the game as immersive as possible, that’s great for someone like me who can’t get enough of that gritty and more realistic feel in MMOs.
But is isn’t all sunshine and rainbows in the Star Citizen community this week though. That’s because of a recent announcement concerning access to livestreams of the upcoming CitizenCon events. Originally, CIG announced plans to create a rather massive production of the streaming of the CitizenCon stages. This also coincided with an announced plan to charge for premium access to the streams.
The original listing for CitizenCon tickets included references to paid stream access for the event. Obviously fans got rather angry about being paywalled out of watching a livestream by a company that’s raised nearly $200 million for their game. The fervor was palpable and almost immediate.
Eventually, things got bad enough that CIG had to respond. Chris Roberts pushed out a pair of posts explaining the “mea culpa” and backpedaling on the plans to offer paid access. Here’s the relevant blurb:
Nothing was ever planned to be pay-walled or withheld form the community, and honestly I like the idea of most people seeing the presentations in their own time as a high quality video rather than a stream of potentially questionable quality. The live-stream aspect was always intended for the most ardent community members that want to see it live as it unfolds but can’t make it to the event to be there in person. We’re not likely to cover the costs of the additional coverage and live-streaming but I felt we should be fiscally responsible and try to defray at least some of additional costs, which is how the current plan came to be.
After sleeping on this, I am going to chalk this one up to experience. We’re going to cut back on the live-streaming crew / costs but have both stages streamed for anyone with a Star Citizen user account. Star Citizen Content Creators are welcome to rebroadcast our stream live. If you would like to support the additional costs of streaming all the presentations, you can support the show by purchasing the CitizenCon digital goodies package (Imperators still get this as their October flair).
Check out the most recent Around The Verse from CIG down below. You can check out the broadcast from last week over here too. Check out the latest patch notes on the official site. Cloud Imperium Games has currently raised $193,204,395 from 2,093,355 backers overall.
To see more Star Citizen news, check out some of the other Around the Verse videos, or maybe you want to see some Squadron 42 gameplay. CIG has also responded to ongoing player outbursts over “Pay-to-Win” currency systems, and finally, you should see some really cool ships being build to Star Citizen.
