Star Citizen has raised over $700m in crowdfunding, even though it still lacks a full release date.
As spotted by Neowin, the funding tracker for Cloud Imperium Games’ space sim has seen an uptick in donations recently. On 25th May alone, almost $3m was raised.
This has coincided with Star Citizen’s free play period which kicked off earlier this month, and allowed non-backers to give the game a whirl for themselves. At the time of writing, Star Citizen has raised a whopping $702,634,839. And – again – it isn’t even fully out yet, and is still in an early access build.
Star Citizen is notorious for its long development – having been in the works now for over a decade, and its ‘whale’ status in the video game world. For example, back in January, the team released a DLC pack costing almost £46,000.
Alas, all of this funding hasn’t avoided job cuts at Cloud Imperium Games. In February, it was reported the Star Citizen developer had suffered layoffs amid unrest due to relocation and accusations of a “highly toxic company”.
As for when Star Citizen may get its full release, this remains unconfirmed. The studio’s progress tracker says Star Citizen’s Alpha 4.0 update is scheduled for Q3 of this year, but this is still listed as “tentative”. However, in March, Cloud Imperium Games’ CEO Chris Roberts said Star Citizen is pushing towards the “finish line”..
In a letter shared with the game’s community, Roberts said “2023 marked the beginning of a transformative chapter for Cloud Imperium”, and “all of this points towards 2024 being our biggest and best year yet in the universe of Star Citizen”.
