Star Citizen executive producer leaves Cloud Imperium Games

Cloud Imperium Games has confirmed that Star Citizen executive producer Alex Mayberry left the company in June "for personal reasons." The bulk of his duties will now be assumed by Erin Roberts, the global head of production at Cloud Imperium and brother of studio founder Chris Roberts, whose previous production credits include Wing Commander: Privateer, Strike Commander, and Privateer 2.

The studio emphasized that Mayberry's reasons for leaving the studio are "not connected at all to anything having to do with Star Marine," the FPS module of Star Citizen that was recently delayed indefinitely. That postponement has attracted a considerable amount of scrutiny and commentary thanks to the roughly $85 million (that's right, $85 million) that Cloud Imperium has raised for Star Citizen through internal crowdfunding. It's been almost three years since the ongoing funding campaign began, and so far precious little has been released to backers (the main attraction is still Arena Commander, its dogfighting simulation).

Mayberry's is the second high-profile loss that Cloud Imperium has suffered recently: Also in June, Senior Producer Travis Day left the company to take up employment at Blizzard, as did "associate concierge" Chelsea Ann Day.

In a coincidental bit of timing, Cloud Imperium also [edit: formally] announced today that it has opened a new development office in Frankfurt, Germany, which will be staffed by "some of the top game developers in this part of the world." Many of those developers were involved in the creation of the CryEngine, the game engine underlying Star Citizen.

"We are extremely pleased to have them on our team and working with CIG in all aspects of creating Star Citizen. Their experience in working on CryEngine will pay huge dividends for us in the very near future," Chris Roberts said in a statement. "Some of their contributions are already showing up in in our single player game, Squadron 42, and our first person shooter elements."

Cloud Imperium recently put a new Star Citizen ship on sale, the Genesis Starliner, which can be purchased for $400.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.