How Will COVID-19 Affect Star Citizen’s Development?

Welcome to some more Star Citizen and I wanted to talk about the Corona Virus and what this could mean for Star Citizen’s Development. It is one of the most asked questions I have seen in my comments, I am certainly not a medical expert so please bear that in mind.

CIG said on Monday – Due the situation surrounding COVID-19, we’ve taken extra precautions to ensure the safety of all our developers. We’re still in the process of figuring out how those precautions will impact our regularly scheduled live shows. Keep an eye out for more information concerning this week’s planned Star Citizen Live.

So it’s very possible that Star Citizen Live and other videos may be affected there in the short to medium term. However expect other types of content to potentially replace it, CIG are still going to keep us up to date on SC’s Development, even if that means more Written Content than video.

I have talked to a couple of CIGs employees about what’s happening in their offices and with virus advice.

Is the current situation going to cause delays… well even if they are minimal it will cause some tasks to be delayed or some disruption. Some CIG Employees are working from home, either in self isolation or because it’s just sensible to do so.

In this regard CIG is very lucky as Most CIG Employees can work from home without it having a drastic effect on their work.

They already have the infrastructure with all their cloud stuff

I doubt there is anything that is “not accessible” (offline local only) date wise and if it is, it can be made accessible.

They used to have loads of contractors working remotely and are used to this.

The only real issue would come from certain employees not having hardware they need. BUT then they could have their work rigs shipped to them / come in and pick them up.

CIG are pretty lucky in that regard. They are a global set of studios.

There will be some disruption from people being ill.

And then there is an interesting discussion to be had about whether people are more or less efficient while working from home. I am very much in favor of letting people work from home if they can prove to be effective… virus or no.

Something that is in an a UNKNOWN spot at the moment is CitizenCon, a lot of Events in a lot of Countries are cancelled & the future is uncertain with how long that will last for. This could certainly see

CitizenCon as a potential a casualty this year… but what would that mean.

That would almost certainly mean that CIG would do a LIVESTREAM or VIDEO instead… 

It’s possible that by October 10th that the worst of virus will of passed and life may be back to normal HOWEVER confidence is a big part of that and it’s possible that people will still not want to go to large events and mingle if there is still a risk.

The other thing is, if CIG had a presence planned at any other events OR had Squadron 42 announcements at events like E3 or other cancelled events then that could cause some changes in plans.

From what I can tell CIG seem to prioritizing employee health and safety while also watching the situation unfold and will be updating us on anything that affects development or events in the future as and when they know for sure.

More generally I’d like to say a few things, I am sure a lot of people are sick of hearing about Corona… pardon the pun BUT it is a global pandemic and has affected the world, it’s people and economic stability HOWEVER don’t panic, be sensible, wash your hands, avoid licking people… Giant Gatherings of people probably should be avoided imo, in the UK we are self isolating if we are anyone in our household is sick for 7 – 14 days, order in groceries but don’t panic buy, keep in contact with the world BUT educate yourself… don’t just worry about panic headlines.

Work is progressing on vaccines for the virus BUT they take time to do safe testing with experts suggesting 18 months away is a reasonable time frame for a vaccine to go to market. Every day we are getting better at understanding and treating it tho.

More generally i do think there is a worry that some businesses could go bankrupt, like takeaways, small businesses, travel companies, more airlines.

My father is over 70, immunocompromised and has respiratory issues… so I don’t want him to get it, if he does I want it to be when we know as much as possible about the disease.

I know a few people online that have it and are mostly recovered now.

There is a bit of a break in supply chains in my area as people panic buy BUT if people order sensibly and fairly then we easily have enough for everyone grocery wise! 

The cause of panic buying… is panic buying… AT LEAST where I am in the world, I can’t speak for everywhere

The UK Government have recommended not taking ibuprofen and instead take paracetamol as a painkiller if you trying to alleviate symptoms at home.

This is very much a time to help your fellow humans rather than try to turn a profit, I am in one of the extremely luck positions of not really feeling the economic pinch as I am able to work from home and more over more people might even be at home to watch my videos during the days.

Playing Computer Games on Voice Comms, social media and chatting has helped keep me sane… for the last 5 or so years, so make sure you reach out for some human conversation or help if you need to!

Something that you can get involved with as well is Folding@Home which basically is like bitcoin mining but uses your processing power to help research viruses and diseases… like the Corona Virus BUT also even after this is all passed it’s something to help with with Cancer and Alzheimer’s research. I’ll leave a link to that below… there is a boredgamer team for that as well.