Earlier this month it was reported that Cloud Imperium Games have asked developers to work 7 days per week ahead of CitizenCon 2024, and as is the case with all crunch news, it made a lot of noise.
At the time, it was also revealed that CIG had apparently considered special gifts for developers committing to their job on the weekend days in this 2-week-long crunch. That secret gift is now being sent out to the developers, and they seem pretty happy with the compensation.
Earlier today, some of the developers at CIG shared images of their new employee gift, and it is an incredibly detailed 3D-printed Cutlass Black. From the front nose to the rear ramp, everything looks detailed and polished on this miniature Cutlass Black, which probably makes it a worthy gift for the developers, especially the team of artists.
Next to a printed model of Drake’s beloved ship, each developer has also received a Squadron 42 identity card with their face printed on it.
Now, the developers are surely the ones who should say if the two-week crunch is worth it to get these special rewards, but I would opt-in for 14 days of consecutive work to receive those gifts, surely. However, it doesn’t change the ugly nature of crunch, and CIG is definitely not forgiven for that!
To be frank, the developers behind Star Citizen have been busier than ever this year. Not only they must prepare for the upcoming CitizenCon event on October 19, but also they already have a new patch in the PTU that should be released into the live servers with the least possible bugs and issues pretty soon.
Aside from the above, CIG is still committed to delivering Alpha 4.0 before 2025, and knowing how big of a patch it is, there seems to be more than enough on each developer’s plate at the moment.
In the recent version of This Week In Star Citizen, it was revealed that Alpha 4.0 is making progress towards Evocati testing in the near future. So, it is expected that Evocati members get to play Alpha 4.0 a few weeks after Alpha 3.24.2 makes it to the live servers.
