Star Citizen, the controversial MMO space simulator, just crossed yet another important crowdfunding milestone. Developer Cloud Imperium Games announced that Star Citizen has raised over half a billion dollars in crowdfunding. Despite this huge amount of money, there is still no release date or clear schedule for the future of Star Citizen.
The pre-production of Star Citizen began in 2010. Production started in 2011, and Star Citizen launched its Kickstarter page a year later on October 18, 2012. The first campaign drew in over $2 million from over 34,000 backers.
When this first Kickstarter campaign ended, developer Cloud Imperium Games stated that they “have already raised enough money to ensure this project will happen.” However, almost ten years later, Star Citizen is still nowhere to be seen.
Star Citizen was originally scheduled to release in 2014. The game was repeatedly delayed, leading backers to ask for refunds on their pledges. Cloud Imperium Games released parts of the game to give players a preview of Star Citizen but hasn’t yet announced a full release date.
These delays didn’t stop players from hoping Star Citizen would eventually see the light of day. Almost ten years after its initial crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, Star Citizen just reached a major milestone. The game has raised over half a billion dollars in crowdfunding, becoming the highest crowdfunded video game and the second highest-funded crowdfunding project overall.
The only project that raised more than Star Citizen is EOS, a blockchain operating system. EOS raised over $4 billion, but since this project ended in 2018 and Star Citizen is still collecting funds, the game could potentially catch up with this sum. Even if Star Citizen managed to somehow raise $4 billion, that may not bring the game closer to a commercial release.
The latest milestone reached by Star Citizen was raising a total of $400 million last November. Ten months later, Star Citizen pulled $100 additional million, crossing the half a billion dollars threshold. According to the official website following the development of Star Citizen, the game raised $500,109,039 from 4,096,686 backers at the time of this writing.
Even if Star Citizen is breaking crowdfunding records and is now long overdue, developer Cloud Imperium Games seems to have other priorities than releasing the game. Earlier this year, Chief Operating Officer Carl Jones shared that the company was planning on “the sequel and sequels for Squadron 42,” the long-awaited and long-overdue single-player adventure set in the Star Citizen universe. Squadron 42 was originally part of Star Citizen, before becoming a stand-alone project.
With over half a billion raised in crowdfunding, Cloud Imperium Games doesn’t lack the resources to release Star Citizen and Squadron 42. Unfortunately, we have been hoping for these releases for years now, with no update on the horizon. Time will tell if Cloud Imperium Games will eventually release Star Citizen, or if this game is a fairytale we will tell our grandchildren – if they don’t crowdfund the game themselves.
