Private Server

Private Servers are a planned feature which will allow players to run their own private Star Citizen servers, including modding them and playing offline.

Those servers won't have the same scope and scale as the Persistent Universe as the PU uses a structure of hundreds and potentially thousands of servers that spin up dynamically, with different levels of servers from the economy simulation to the matchmaking via the system via the database or the AI. It's not possible for an individual to run the PU.

It will be closer to the way the Freelancer offline servers work, with a more static universe and the server able to handle a fixed amount of players, modding, changing stats. It will also not be able to always be at the latest game version. It wont be as full featured as the PU but should have more functionality and persistence than just a multiplayer battle instance à la Battlefield 3 or World of Tanks.

Being able to keep private servers running was one of the reasons Chris Roberts went with crowdfunding and avoided using a big publisher such as EA or Activision, as this avoids the publisher shutting down the game servers if they are not profitable anymore.

Jared Huckaby stated that Private Servers are the absolute last thing on the list, with nothing coming after them. The game will be fully released and in operation for some time before anybody even looks at private servers. Nobody at CIG is even thinking about it at the moment.