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Development team

From the Star Citizen Wiki, the fidelity™ encyclopedia
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For a list of all developers on the wiki, see Category:Developers.

The development team working on Star Citizen and Squadron 42 consists of over a thousand people spread around the world.[1] On top of Cloud Imperium Games' in-house studios, many contractors and partners have contributed into the project.

In 2020-12, CIG itself had a total of 695 staff. 512 of whom were developers.[2] As of July 2023, 1100 CIG staff were working on Star Citizen, not counting third party partners.[1]

Studios

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Cloud Imperium Games, LLC

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Location: Santa Monica (Los Angeles), California, USA
CIG Los Angeles Team Photo 2018

Located in sunny Los Angeles, California, CIG LA is Cloud Imperium's flagship studio. Home to Chris Roberts and much of the company's leadership, CIG LA represents a cross-section of the company and includes the ship development pipeline, technical designers, high level engineering, community, marketing and more.[3]

Notable members

Former notable members

Cloud Imperium Games Texas, LLC

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Location: Austin, Texas, USA
CIG Austin Team Photo 2018

The team at Cloud Imperium Games Texas' Austin studio (Bee Cave, Texas) is responsible for making the Star Citizen persistent universe. The DevOps team is also located in Austin, keeping servers running and building out the infrastructure needed for Star Citizen.[4]

As of 2018-02-16, CIG Austin has a total of 71 staff working on Star Citizen.[5]

Notable members

Former notable members

Cloud Imperium Games Ltd.

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Location: Wilmslow (Manchester), Cheshire, UK
Foundry 42 Wilmslow Team Photo 2018

Formerly known as Foundry 42, Ltd. The heart of Manchester, England is also the heart of Star Citizen's Squadron 42 single player game. This fully-equipped development team is responsible for creating a unique cinematic experience in the Star Citizen world.[6]

As of 2018-02-16, F42 Manchester[7] had a total of 234 staff working on Star Citizen.[5] In 2021 CIG announced the future opening of a new studio in Manchester Goods Yard, in the Enterprise City district.[8] In early 2024, a relocation of staff to the Manchester studio took place, bringing the number of CIG staff there to 600.[9][10]

Notable members

Former notable members

Cloud Imperium Games Ltd.

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Location: Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany
Foundry 42 Frankfurt Team Photo 2018

Formerly known as Foundry 42, Ltd. Frankfurt, Germany is home to Cloud Imperium's latest internal development studio. Staffed with top CryEngine development experts, Foundry 42 Germany is responsible for developing the pioneering backend technologies.[11]

As of 2018-02-16, F42 Frankfurt had a total of 80 staff working on Star Citizen.[5]

Notable members

Former notable members

Cloud Imperium Games Ltd.

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Location: Derby, UK

Formerly known as Foundry 42, Ltd. An official satellite studio of Foundry 42 Manchester, the Derby office is a small team looking after all aspects of the facial pipeline. From taking delivery of the Face Rigs from 3Lateral, implementing them in-game, taking all the face animation from Cubic Motion and also creating all the Facial animation for the PU that Cubic aren't doing.[12]

As of 2018-02-16, F42 Derby has a total of 15 staff working on Star Citizen.[5]

Cloud Imperium Montreal / Turbulent

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Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Turbulent has been working with CIG since November 2012.[13][14] They develop web platforms such as Spectrum, the Starmap,[15] Issue Council, the website,[16] and the launcher, [17] as well as the Concierge program, telemetry system, community Hub, Galactapedia and Roadmap, while being part of the CIG efforts on cloud services, Persistent Entity Streaming, and Server Meshing. [15][16][17][1]

In 2019 CIG went through a mutual investment with Turbulent.[18] In 2020, Turbulent announced that the company will open a Montreal game studio focusing on building star systems for Star Citizen.[19] Cloud Imperium Games acquired Turbulent on 2023-07-02[20][1]. The CIG merger with Turbulent brought the headcount to 1110 at the time.[1]

in 2025 part of Turbulent became Cloud Imperium Montreal, focusing on the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42.[21]

Current Partners

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3Lateral

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Location: Novi Sad, Serbia

3Lateral works with Cloud Imperium Games on character faces in Star Citizen.[22]

Amazon

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Location: Seattle, Washington, USA

Amazon works with Cloud Imperium Games on the development of Amazon Lumberyard since 2015, which is what Star Engine based on. Amazon also provides game servers for Star Citizen on a cloud-based service called Amazon Web Services (AWS).[23]

Entangled

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Entangled Studio created 3D models for Star Citizen.[24]

Faceware Technologies

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Location: Los Angeles, California, USA

Faceware Technologies works with Cloud Imperium Games to develop the Face Over Internet Protocol (FOIP) feature that was built with Faceware's LiveSDK. A facial motion sensor specifically for Star Citizen was also in the works. However, since late 2018 no mention of the product has been made by either CIG or Faceware.[25][26][27]

Honest PR

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Location: London, UK

Honest PR is doing Public Relations work for Cloud Imperium Games since at least 2020.[28][29][30]

Intel

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Location: Santa Clara, California, USA

Intel works with Cloud Imperium Games to promote the Intel Optane series SSD for desktop users and workstations. They also sponsored hardware to CIG and also their conventions.[31]

One PR Studio

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Location: Oakland, California, USA

One PR Studio is a Public Relations organization that has been working with CIG since at least 2022 to 2024.[32][33]

Perforce

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Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

Cloud Imperium Games utilize Perforce Helix to support its DevOps.[34]

Tobii

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Introduce official head and eye tracking support for the Tobii Eye Trackers.[35]

Twin

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Location: Bois d’Arcy, France

Twin does character modelling for Star Citizen.[36][37]

Versa Studios

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Location: Manchester, UK

Versa Studios does motion capture and has built the bespoke technical infrastucture to meet Cloud Imperium Games requirements.[38]

Gamerizon

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Location: Montreal, Canada

Gamerizon developed the interactive 3D part of the front-end javascript client for the Starmap.[39]

As of July 2022 they are helping build Quantum.[40]

ElevenLabs

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Location: London, UK

ElevenLabs is a company that has built an AI voice platform and has partnered with Cloud Imperium Games.[41]

Other Partners

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Past Partners

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Advanced Micro Devices

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Location: Santa Clara, California, USA

AMD partnered with CIG to promote their Radeon™ R9 or R7 Series graphics cards with Mustang Omega, as a part of the AMD Never Settle Space Edition promotion.[42]

Airship Images

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Location: Blackpool, Lancashire, UK

Airship Images is specialized in character arts and worked on characters, hairstyles and R&D tasks for CIG in the years 2016/2017.[43]

Atomahawk Design

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Location: Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, UK

Atomahawk design did concept art for Foundry42.[44]

Behaviour Interactive

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Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Behaviour Interactive (BHVR) is responsible for art production for Star Citizen since 2012-12-12.[45][46] It was Behaviour Interactive that referred Turbulent to CIG to help work out website issues.[47]

CGBot

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Location: Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico

CGBot was responsible for the early concept arts and assets production for Star Citizen and Squadron 42.[47][48][49] It is run by an Art Director who used to work with Chris Roberts at Origin Systems and Digital Anvil.[48]

Clear Angle Studios

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Location: Pinewood, London, UK

Clear Angle Studio did head scanning for the DNA pool.[50]

CNCPT

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John Griffiths and Chris Wolak from CNCPT were brought in to handle all CIG commercial needs in June 2014.[51]

Confetti SpecialFX

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Location: Encinitas, California, USA

Confetti SpecialFX are a thinktank for advanced graphics technology that worked on a capital ship damage system and nebula effects for Star Citizen between the end of 2013 and end of 2014.[52]

Crytek

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Location: Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany

Crytek was the game engine developer of CryEngine, the base game engine for Star Engine before the switch to Amazon Lumberyard in 2016.[53] In 2017-12, Crytek filed a lawsuit against CIG on breach of the game license agreement (GLA). The case was dismissed with prejudice in March 2020.[54]

Elite3D

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Location: Valencia, Spain

Elite3D was a studio which worked on Star Citizen commercials, in-game characters, and helped with the first versions of the Argo MPUV and Bengal Class Carrier.[55]

Firesprite

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Location: Liverpool, UK

Firesprite is contracted to Cloud Imperium Games in 2017-01-11.[56] On 2021-03-18, CIG and Firesprite publicly announced the collaboration on the PvP combined-arms multiplayer mode, “Theaters of War”, which began in early 2019.[57] In April 2021 CIG stated that development of Theaters of War was transfered to an internal team.[58] Firesprite later reported that the company was acquired by PlayStaion Studios.[59]

IllFonic

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Location: Denver, Colorado, USA

IllFonic was responsible for the initial FPS module and the FPS components of the game.[60]

Massive Black

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Location: San Francisco, California, USA

Massive Black did concept art and ship design for Star Citizen, including the design of the 300i by Kemp Remillard in 2013.[61]

Mercuna

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Location: Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

Mercuna is a developer of AI navigation middleware tasked with dogfighting AI and 3D pathfinding in a dynamic environment for Star Citizen.[62]

metricminds

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Location: Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Germany

metricminds is a animation studio specialising in cutscenes, they aided CIG with the Freelancer commercial.[63]

Moon Collider

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Location: Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

Moon Collider was responsible for the Kythera AI development prior to the development of Subsumption. CIG started working with Moon Collider in Spring 2013.[64]

Rmory

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Location: Memmingen, Bavaria, Germany

Rmory was responsible for early weapon concept arts for Star Citizen and Squadron 42.[65][66]

Side

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Location: London, United Kingdom

Side was tasked with casting over 40 actors for Performance Capture shoots, its audio team was on-location to record all dialogue in sync to Mocap during the shoots, and provided characters and props for Star Citizen.[67][68]

Streamline Studios

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Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Streamline Studios worked on Squadron 42 art assets, such as the Vanduul ship models in 2014 and 2015, a number of their assets were leaked to the public in 2015 as part of the "Lando Leak".[69][70]

The Imaginarium

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Location: Ealing, London, UK

The Imaginarium was responsible for the motion capture mainly for Squadron 42, but also for the Persistent Universe.[71]

Warhorse Studios

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Location: Prague, Czech Republic

Warhorse Studios, makers of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, proceeded to a sharing of Cryengine technologies and knowledge in 2014. On its end, CIG was particularly interested in the layering of cloth.[72] As of 2016 CIG the collaboration had ended and CIG was working on its own solution, which has become StarCloth.[73]

Wyrmbyte

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Location: Louisville, Kentucky, USA

Wyrmbyte was responsible for early network engineering for the Persistent Universe in 2014.[74]

Virtuos

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Location: Shanghai, China

Virtuos was responsible for the early ship and prop assets in 2014.[66]

voidALPHA

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Location: Emeryville, California, USA

voidALPHA was responsible for environment art till the end of 2015.[75]

See also

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References

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  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Turbulent Joins Cloud Imperium Games. Transmission - Comm-Link. Retrieved 2023-07-13
  2. ↑ Cloud Imperium Financials for 2020
  3. ↑ Los Angeles Office on Cloud Imperium Games
  4. ↑ Austin Office on Cloud Imperium Games
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Star Citizen and Squadron 42 Staff Grows to 475 Employees Working on the Game
  6. ↑ Manchester Office on Cloud Imperium Games, cloudimperiumgames.com, archived
  7. ↑ Hub Crawl Hero - Fireside Chat with Carl Jones - Cloud Imperium Games: "Why Manchester?", YouTube, 23 May 2023
  8. ↑ Cloud Imperium Games to Open New Videogame Development Studio in Manchester, UK, in 2022, cloudimperiumgames.com, Nov 9, 2021
  9. ↑ Letter from the Chairman. Transmission - Comm-Link. Retrieved 2024-03-14
  10. ↑ Some Star Citizen devs reportedly laid off as Cloud Imperium restructures, videogameschronicle.com, 28th Feb 2024
  11. ↑ Frankfurt Office on Cloud Imperium Games
  12. ↑ Development comments on Foundry 42 Derby
  13. ↑ "We started this i think it was end of novenber 2012", Benoît Beauséjour, Star Citizen Live: Gettin' Turbulent, Mar 10, 2023
  14. ↑ Turbulent - Case Studies: Star Citizen
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 David Ladyman, "The Starmap Team". Jump Point. Vol. 03 no. 12. pp.52–65.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 David Ladyman, "Website Revamp: Turbulent". Jump Point. Vol. 03 no. 06. pp.32–40.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 [Replay] Un développeur Star Citizen sur la chaîne ! #1 Interview in French with a Turbulent technical artist
  18. ↑ Cloud Imperium & Turbulent Extend Their Long-Running Partnership Through Mutual Investment
  19. ↑ Turbulent creates new game development studio in montreal to make worlds for Star Citizen ​​​​​​
  20. ↑ Turbulent rejoint Cloud Imperium Games, Benoit et Marc, Medium.com, 2023-07-13
  21. ↑ Deux entités, deux missions, une passion commune, linkedin post, 28 August 2025
  22. ↑ Monthly Studio Report: January 2017. Transmission - Comm-Link
  23. ↑ Star Citizen and Squadron 42 Utilize Amazon Lumberyard Game Engine. Press - Comm-Link
  24. ↑ In-game character asset for Star Citizen, Entangled Studio, Artstation, 25 November 2025
  25. ↑ Faceware: "Our soon-to-be-released facial motion sensor enables #StarCitizen players’ facial expressions to be translated onto their avatars’ face", Twitter, 26 Aug 2017
  26. ↑ Cloud Imperium Games and Faceware Bring Real-Time Character-to-Character Chat to Star Citizen, Archived at archive.org January 18 2019
  27. ↑ Faceware Technologies Announcement. Transmission - Comm-Link
  28. ↑ Press Contact, Cloud Imperium Games to Open New Videogame Development Studio in Manchester, UK, gamedeveloper.com, November 10, 2021
  29. ↑ "Honest PR working with lovely folks like CI Games Chucklefish, Cloud Imperium, Newfangled Games, Paradox Tectonic and Phoenix Labs", @charreynoldson, Twitter, Feb 9, 2024
  30. ↑ "The Intergalactic Aerospace Expo is the biggest Star Citizen event of the year!", @honestvideogame, Twitter, Nov 21, 2020
  31. ↑ Blazing-Fast Gaming with Intel's First Client Optane SSD
  32. ↑ "Calling all citizens! The Esperia Prowler has landed in #StarCitizen!", @ONEPRStudio, Twitter, May 1, 2020
  33. ↑ "Foundation Festival returns to #StarCitizen!", @ONEPRStudio, twitter, Jul 12, 2024
  34. ↑ Case Study: Cloud Imperium Games on Perforce
  35. ↑ Tobii Eye Tracker 5. Transmission - Comm-Link. Retrieved 2020-12-22
  36. ↑ Character Modeller for Star Citizen while working at Twin. NDA, Sian Warren, Artstation, February 6 2026
  37. ↑ TWIN is thrilled to be contributing to Cloud Imperium Games 'Star Citizen', linkedin post, twin, December 2025
  38. ↑ VERSA launches Motion Capture Studio in Manchester, televisual.com, 21.09.23
  39. ↑ Gamerizon worked with Turbulent and Cloud Imperium to produce the Web Starmap for Star Citizen. Our contribution was the development of the interactive 3D part of the front-end javascript client.
  40. ↑ Star Citizen Live: All About 3.17.2
  41. ↑ "ElevenLabs is a growth-stage startup that has built the most realistic AI voice platform [...] and partnered with [...] gaming studios (Paradox, Cloud Imperium Games, Don’t Nod).", elevenlabs.io, January 2025
  42. ↑ AMD Never Settle Space Edition promotion, Archived 2014-09-06
  43. ↑ [1]
  44. ↑ Star Citizen Portfolio
  45. ↑ BHVR Portfolio - Star Citizen. Archived 2018-01-24
  46. ↑ Behaviour Interactive teams with Cloud Imperium to help create new space sim game with legendary designer Chris Roberts. Archived 2015-05-19
  47. ↑ 47.0 47.1 Star Citizen Live: Meet the Devs - Publishing and Corporate Technology, Star Citizen, YouTube, 9 February 2024
  48. ↑ 48.0 48.1 SGJ Podcast #04: Chris. Freaking. Roberts., Space Game Junkie, 03/12/2013
  49. ↑ CGBot Portfolio - Star Citizen
  50. ↑ CitizenCon 2953: Character Advancement, Star Citizen, YouTube, 25 oct. 2023
  51. ↑ David Ladyman, "CInematics & Commercials: The Team". Jump Point. Vol. 02 no. 12. pp.38–47. Retrieved 2014-12-19.
  52. ↑ Confetti SpecialFX Star Citizen work
  53. ↑  Clarification by Chris Roberts on the switch to Lumberyard
  54. ↑ Crytek CIG lawsuit documents
  55. ↑ Star Citizen heavy outlaw, Elite3D.com, archived, June 3 2023
  56. ↑ Get to know Firesprite, a new CIG contractor. on Reddit
  57. ↑ UK-based Developer’s Key Role in Development of Star Citizen Combined Arms Multiplayer Mode Confirmed Ahead of Community Playtest
  58. ↑ Zyloh Spectrum
  59. ↑ Sony Interactive Entertainment to acquire Firesprite Games
  60. ↑ IllFonic Portfolio - Star Citizen
  61. ↑ Star Citizen among other portfolio work
  62. ↑ The origins of Mercuna, mercuna.com, 21 February 2017
  63. ↑ David Ladyman, "Making the Freelancer Commercial". Jump Point. Vol. 02 no. 06. pp.53–70. Retrieved 2024-09-.
  64. ↑ Moon Collider Case Studies - Star Citizen
  65. ↑ Rmory Portfolio - Star Citizen
  66. ↑ 66.0 66.1 Monthly Report: July 2014. Transmission - Comm-Link
  67. ↑ Side & Star Citizen Squadron 42, side.com, February 2016, archived
  68. ↑ Star Citizen, side.inc
  69. ↑ Star Citizen, Streamline Studios, Artsation
  70. ↑ Streamline Studios post about the Vanduul Void Bomber
  71. ↑ Inside CIG: Imaginarium. Engineering - Comm-Link
  72. ↑ Welcome Star Citizens!, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Kickstarter, 18 février 2014
  73. ↑ Reverse the Verse: January 29th, 2016, Star Citizen, YouTube
  74. ↑ Monthly Studio Report: April 2015. Transmission - Comm-Link
  75. ↑ voidALPHA's tweet on departure of SC
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All game content and materials are copyright of Cloud Imperium Rights LLC and Cloud Imperium Rights Ltd.. Star Citizen®, Squadron 42®, Roberts Space Industries®, and Cloud Imperium® are registered trademarks of Cloud Imperium Rights LLC. All rights reserved. Other content is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike unless otherwise noted.