Cloud Imperium Games have confirmed that external contractor Illfonic will no longer be working on the Star Citizen FPS module Star Marine, with work to now be completed in-house.
In a follow-up with GamesIndustry to yesterday’s reports of Denver-based Illfonic laying off staff (and unconfirmed statements that many others have been ‘reassigned’), Cloud Imperium state that Star Marine will be finished up by internal teams.
The official line on this is that “IllFonic’s part in FPS is coming to a close” and “As Cloud Imperium Games and Foundry 42 in Europe have continued to grow, we’ve begun pulling in some of those external projects to reside with our internal teams”.
“This has always been our plan”, the Cloud Imperium representative insists. “In the early days of Star Citizen’s development, we were still quite small and needed the assistance from several external studios”.
According to the company, this is part of a review of all Star Citizen projects with a view to ‘streamline’ as much as possible. Other external studios currently contracted to work on the game (as of the last financial report) include Behaviour Interactive, Turbulent, and Moon Collider.
The game has come under increased scrutiny in recent months, and, reading between the lines, this restructuring process appears to be a move to reduce overall expenditure.
