Star Citizen’s 4.0 update supports 500 players per server

By Patrick Hearn Published December 20, 2024

Star Citizen is the stuff dreams of made of, even if the long development time may feel more like a never-ending fever dream. Cloud Imperium Games has raised more than $750 million in funding and spent over 12 years building up Star Citizen’s world piece by piece, and now up to 500 players can wander across the same galactic server in the new Pyro system.

One thing to note: this isn’t the full release of the game. Cloud Imperium says it still has improvements it wants to make before releasing a stable version, so consider Star Citizen 4.0 something like an alpha. Even if it isn’t all the way finished, this latest update gives more of a glimpse into the final vision that Cloud Imperium has for the title.

The only currently playable star system in the game is Stanton, so introducing a secondary playable system is a big step. However, Pyro isn’t a wondrous frontier waiting to be explored; it’s more like the Wild West, and even getting to it will pose a challenge. Ships that aren’t prepared or lack defenses might break apart during the jump, emerge millions of miles from their intended destination, or even be assaulted by bandits and other players.

The Pyro system is far beyond the reach of the law, so it’s every pilot and ship for themselves. The system introduces six new planets, six new moons, and a whole lot of random locations like asteroid bases to explore.

Star Citizen‘s larger player counts owe their existence to server meshing. Previously, each server could only support 100 players. While 500 players is a huge improvement, it’s not yet the persistent universe Cloud Imperium has promised from the start — but it is closer than it has ever been.

In October, Cloud Imperium Games revealed that the single-player experience Squadron 42 was almost complete and had an estimated release window of 2026. Now that Star Citizen 4.0 and Star Citzen Alpha 3.24.3 are both running simultaneously and can be accessed with the same launcher, Cloud Imperium hopes to let players experience as much of the game as possible. “By running both builds on the live environment, we can take steps to ensure that your progress will carry over. Our goal is for anything you do and earn in the 4.0 Preview to persist without further wipes,” the company said, according to PCGamesN.