In August, game director Chris Roberts said that Star Citizen's singleplayer component, Squadron 42, was being delayed out of 2026 to avoid clashing with Grand Theft Auto 6. There was a certain amount of skepticism about the reason for the delay, thanks in part to a recent Star Citizen livestream being declared a disaster, but also because, well. These games have had so many release dates the changes have their own wiki page.

There's something concrete about having Squadron 42 getting a Steam page though, with system requirements and everything. Those system requirements are charmingly old-fashioned, with no mention of ray tracing-capable GPUs or DirectX 12. Although the install size of 150GB is still pretty hefty. (Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is apparently going to be 200GB, oof.)

There's also a new trailer, which leans heavily on the oorah stuff that's always a bit of a turn-off in military science-fiction. Privateer was my favorite Wing Commander game because it left out all the Top Gun nonsense, but of course it's front-and-center in Squadron 42.

So too are the celebrity actors, with appearances by Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman, Rhona Mitra, that guy who played the Onion Knight in Game of Thrones, and other people who probably filmed most of their scenes a solid decade ago now. We also get to see a fair bit of the male version of the player-character, who will doubtless BroShep his way into most of the promos even though I'll be picking the one voiced by Alix Wilton Regan instead.

The Steam page lists Squadron 42's release date as Q2 2027, and I'd love to see it actually release on that date and be the solid combo of Wing Commander and Half-Life 2 that happens to have Gillian Anderson and Henry Cavill in the cutscenes that's being promised here. It could happen.

Just as Star Wars Zero Company was set to launch earlier this year, developer Bit Reactor furloughed over 80% of its staff over sales uncertainty. In other words, much of its staff were receiving no pay, despite technically being employees, right when players were getting their hands on the game. Earlier this week on Bluesky, the studio announced it had begun undoing this "difficult decision" (via gamesindustry.biz).

Bit Reactor CEO Greg Foertsch said in the statement that the decision was made in response to "unexpected business developments outside of our control," but that it was "necessary to help us eventually bring as many people back as possible."

According to Game File, an unnamed source "familiar with the situation" has said that the developer's payroll is back up to more than half what it was before the furloughs. When this first happened, Game File reported that 80 percent of Bit Reactor employees were affected, hamstringing any sort of support following the game's release, and that the decision fell with Bit Reactor, not publisher EA.

While the launch had some issues, some of the most prominent of which were addressed in a patch shortly after release, the game shot up the Steam best seller's list and got a glowing review from PC Gamer associate editor Ted Litchfield, who called it "a new all-timer Star Wars game and a stunning debut for Bit Reactor."