Star Citizen Developer Cloud Imperium Games Closes Its Los Angeles Office

Cloud Imperium Games, the studio behind Squadron 42 and “the most expensive indie game of all time,” Star Citizen, continues its internal shifts in preparation for Star Citizen 1.0’s official release, announcing the closure of its Los Angeles office in the latest edition of the studio’s Chairman’s Club newsletter 

The team stated that they are currently taking steps to ensure Star Citizen’s developers are where they need to be for the final stretch, which involves relocating key staff to be closer to their teams and counterparts in other studios – such as those in Manchester, Montreal, Austin, and Frankfurt – and shutting down the LA branch.

To honor the contributions of the Los Angeles studio, CIG is also gifting all Chairman’s Club members an in-game replica of the Constellation artwork that hung above Game Designer Chris Roberts’ desk for many years.

At the moment, it remains unclear whether the office’s shutdown will result in layoffs for its former employees, however, given Cloud Imperium’s widespread job cuts last year – reportedly carried out “with zero compensation” – and the termination of several top executives, a new round of job cuts certainly seems like a highly probable scenario.

The silver lining for those waiting for Star Citizen’s release appears to be that the office closure won’t have much, if any, impact on the development pipeline, as according to an earlier 2024 Letter From the Chairman, the LA branch primarily focused on marketing, legal, finance, and HR rather than the actual game development, serving in a supporting role to other offices.

One way or another, it seems highly unlikely that the office was closed due to a lack of finances, as Cloud Imperium Games has by now raised a jaw-dropping $795 million, making it not only the most expensive indie game of all time, but also one of the most expensive video games overall, standing alongside such titans as Call of Duty and Genshin Impact, known for throwing exorbitant piles of cash at the development and marketing departments.

Interestingly, Cloud Imperium Games is not the only developer downsizing its California-based teams recently, with the other one being Sony, which recently conducted two separate rounds of layoffs, affecting the company’s global headquarters in San Mateo and the San Diego-based Visual Arts studio, responsible for producing art, animation, and providing technical support for first-party game studios like Naughty Dog.

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