Squadron 42 is coming to Steam: Release Now Scheduled for 2027, and PC Requirements Revealed

Star Citizen ’s single-player campaign has reached a new milestone with the launch of its Steam page for Squadron 42 and the confirmation of its release window.

After years of development and successive delays, could Star Citizen finally be taking a decisive step toward release? That certainly seems to be the case for its single-player campaign, Squadron 42. A true standalone game developed by Cloud Imperium Games, Squadron 42 has just reached a major milestone with the launch of its Steam page, which, incidentally, confirms a release window set for the second quarter of 2027.

Once presented as a simple module of Star Citizen, Squadron 42 became a standalone game when it became clear that the project as a whole was becoming too massive. The game aims to immerse players in an action-packed experience blending space combat, on-foot action sequences, and cinematic storytelling, in the true spirit of the famous Wing Commander series. The project has been spearheaded for many years by Chris Roberts, founder of Cloud Imperium Games, and has generated as much anticipation as skepticism due to its long development cycle. Just think—the project was the subject of a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter more than twelve years ago!

However, the schedule changed in late summer 2026. Originally expected before the end of the year, the game was postponed yet again, this time to the second quarter of 2027. Chris Roberts explained at the time that he wanted to avoid the launch of Squadron 42 being overshadowed by that of GTA VI, scheduled for November 2026. This reasoning wasn’t entirely convincing, as the two titles aren’t aimed at the same platforms at all: Chris Roberts’ game is a PC exclusive, while GTA VI is, for now, only coming out on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series.

Still, the launch of the Steam page is a concrete sign of the project’s progress. Furthermore, it provides access to the first official details about the game, particularly regarding the system requirements. These include a Sandy Bridge-generation Intel Core i7 processor or a Bulldozer-generation AMD processor, 16 GB of RAM, and a DirectX 11.1-compatible graphics card with 8 GB of video memory. The required operating system is Windows 11, and 150 GB of available storage space is needed. In reality, only this last piece of information is truly interesting: everything else seems like filler, especially since the initial demos shown to players ran on much more powerful machines.

In fact, on October 9, Cloud Imperium Games hosted a presentation at its offices in Manchester, UK, for a group of invited guests. According to reports from numerous media outlets, this demo highlighted the progress made on several aspects of the game, particularly the quality of the animations, facial expressions, and soundscape. Squadron 42 also features a star-studded cast, including well-known actors such as Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman, and Gillian Anderson. However, the demo was run on a high-end system consisting of an AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D processor, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card, and 64 GB of RAM. This is a far cry from the configuration—admittedly the “minimum requirements”—listed on the Steam page.