Star Citizen has raised more than $350 million

Star Citizen has shot through the $350m milestone, setting more records, and breaking fan expectations. And let’s be honest, that breaking isn’t happening in a good way. The game’s official website announced the new milestone being crossed.

Star Citizen has floundered for years since its announcement, and initial Kickstarter, in 2012. The last milestone crossed in terms of funding was $300 million as of June 2020, and for all that, the game is still years away from a full release. The launch of the game was originally anticipated for 2014, but every facet of the game has been hit with some kind of delays. This has led to tons of fan and media backlash against the title.

Users and fans have complained for years about the glacial progress of development. After an initial release planned in 2014, every part of the game has felt some kind of delay. Whether it’s Star Marine, the ground combat module, or the expansive singleplayer of Squadron 42, there has been seemingly little progress.

The last major news came in December on that latter front, when the singleplayer campaign missed yet another planned beta. Fans are now getting more and more vocal about the potential for this game to turn into vaporware. The last major release for the game was the pushing out of the “Assault on Stanton” Dynamic Event, which had also been delayed.

With the whole game currently considered in Alpha 3, there are plenty of things for developer Cloud Imperium to do. Star Citizen and chief developer Chris Roberts have routinely skated by on the goodwill of fans, and of course their purses.  The game rakes in millions in fan funding every month, and that total only continues to grow higher. According to the live feed of ongoing funding, CIG received more than $6 million this past December. And months following that have brought in another $3-$5 million per month.

Developer Cloud Imperium Games has a reputation for releasing buggy and unoptimized releases, and users and media are clearly fed up. The game has been lingering on the edge of playability for years. This biggest example of this is how long it has taken CIG to implement any kind of persistence. Persistence is a key part of living worlds, and so far, only player’s purchases and credit earnings persist between servers wipes, among a few minor other elements. How are we expected to believe the game is even remotely close to release when core features aren’t even in testing. CIG is seemingly constantly adding new ships to the game, with the express intent of selling these models to backers, but has little interest in finishing the gameplay.

Star Citizen is currently in alpha version 3.12. CIG tentatively predicts the game will hit alpha 3.16 by the end of 2021.