Star Citizen Moves To Amazon’s Game Engine

Cloud Imperium has announced that it has moved its game, Star Citizen, over from CryEngine 4 to Amazon’s Lumberyard engine. The change, which went smoothly according to the developer, was done to ensure the long-term future of the project with Crytek ongoing financial difficulties. It also means that thye can integrate things like Twitch streaming directly into the game through Amazon Web Services.

Star Citizen has been in development since 2011 and originally started out on CryEngine 3 before it moved onto the fourth generation of the engine. The developers began a crowdfunding campaign for the title in October 2012, though, they used IgnitionDeck on their own website rather a traditional site such as Kickstarter. By the end of this initial campaign, they had set a record for the highest funding amount ever received for a game, with a total of $6.2 million. By December 2016, more than $140 million had been pledged by fans towards the development of the game.

Recently, Chris Roberts revealed on his site that the studio was looking to release its weekly schedule to players to ease complaints about transparency. This will allow fans and backers to keep track of development and see if there have been any major setbacks. The move was designed to fight back against criticism that the game was delayed significantly.