I think we’re all running out of ways to explain how long and disastrousStar Citizen’s development has been. It’s been more than ten years since its initialKickstartercampaign went live. When it started, I wasn’t even old enough to buy an energy drink. I hadn’t even picked my GCSEs. Babies born in 2012 are turning 11 this year, for Christ’s sake. All the while, Star Citizen kept trucking along, continuing to raise absurd amounts of money regardless of the bad press.
Now, we’ve reached new heights, as Star Citizen has just reached the $600 million mark. No, it still doesn’t have a release date. This amount was raised by 4,760,845 backers, or “Star Citizens”, who have successfully brought its crowdfunding well over the half-a-billion mark. The project already had the most successful crowdfunding of all time, so this is just another record broken by the team over at Cloud Imperium Games.
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This news was spotted on thewebsitefor Star Citizen and its single-player spin-off,Squadron 42. Here, we can see that $600,019,451 has been raised at the time of writing. This is well above any of the stretch goals, with the last one being $65,000,000. It doesn’t seem that there will be anything extra for reaching this new milestone, other than the fact that it gives Cloud Imperium Games more money to play around with.
This amount also helps Star Citizen maintain its huge lead for the most expensive game to develop of all time. It’s now almost double of second placeCyberpunk 2077’s budget, coming at $357 million. Even the budget forThe Last of Us Part 2, which shocked many fans recently, falls behind at $249 million.
Without stretch goals, ongoing crowdfunding efforts are helped by the fact that the team is charging around $52 for Star Citizen’s early access. It’s not clear how many fans are optionally donating on top of this, but its followers are remarkably dedicated, so we can’t rule that out.
Outside of this fanbase, however, it’s projects like Star Citizens that had long given Kickstarter games a poor reputation. While Star Citizen may be the most infamous, since many assume it will never launch, those that did manage to stick to a release date didn’t fare much better. From Mighty No. 9 toYooka-Laylee, a slew of disappointing releases tarnished the idea of funding games through services like Kickstarter. It took hits likeUndertale, Divinity: Original Sin andShovel Knightto salvage the practice. Now, many titles opt for Early Access if they can, such asBaldur’s Gate 3.
It remains to be seen if Star Citizen gets a release date anytime soon. As for now, neither that nor Squadron 42 have a launch window, but there are updates over on the developer’s YouTube channel.
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