Squadron 42 will launch with English voices only, and backers are pushing back hard on Spectrum

Squadron 42 is going to launch with English voice acting only, and the Star Citizen community has spent the week arguing about it. The biggest thread on the official forums is now one asking Cloud Imperium Games to change course.

What the Steam page says: The Squadron 42 Steam page, which opened for wishlists on October 10 with a Q2 2027 release window, lists 10 languages. Only English has a check in the Full Audio column. French, Italian, German, Spanish (Spain and Latin America), Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese and Simplified Chinese get the interface and subtitles, but no dubbed dialogue.

CIG confirmed it. Many players hoped the table was a placeholder. German outlet GameStar asked CIG’s press team, and the studio confirmed the campaign won’t have German voices. Its answer, translated from German: because the game has “such great actors,” Squadron 42 will “rely on subtitles in some languages for its first release instead of being dubbed.” The cast includes Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman, Gillian Anderson and Henry Cavill. GameStar also points out that Germany is the second-largest backer country, according to Chris Roberts. The words “first release” leave room for dubbing after launch, but CIG hasn’t promised anything.

Spectrum’s response: The thread Squadron 42 Deserves Full Voice Localization has been the most active topic on the forum all week. It had more than 550 votes on October 16, per Cavalera’s daily digest. It’s now at more than 830 votes and 430 replies, Cavalera reports today. A few things to know:

• Volunteer translators feel snubbed. A thread from the French, German and Spanish communities points out that fans have translated CIG’s content for free for more than a decade, Cavalera noted on October 17.
• Not everyone wants dubbing. Other players say English-only is fine because the performances were motion-captured with the original actors. A newer thread argues CIG shouldn’t spend development time on translations while other features are still missing.
• CIG hasn’t replied. As of this morning, no -CIG account has posted in any of the threads.

Why fans expected more: CIG has talked about localized dialogue for years. A community-built timeline on r/starcitizen collects mentions going back to 2015 and 2016, plus job listings that included dubbing work. None of it was ever a firm promise, and CIG still hasn’t said whether any language will get dubbed later.

PPR take: Subtitles with the original cast is a reasonable call for a story built on Hamill and Oldman’s performances. But CIG’s best communicators are backers who’ve been translating for free since 2013, and leaving them to hear about it through a store page and a press reply wasn’t a good look. A dev reply on Spectrum, even just “not at launch, here’s why,” would calm a lot of this down.