Star Citizen Has Raised Over $350M In Funds, Still No Release Date

In spite of its overly-long development process, Star Citizen continues to bring in money from supporters and backers to fund its ongoing production. In the latest Robert Space Industries blog post, developer Cloud Imperium Games reports that they’ve received over $350 million in pledges after nearly a decade of crowdfunding with $5 million raised in February alone.

The game has been in development since 2011 and was initially funded through a Kickstarter campaign that netted them over $2.1 million. After the Kickstarter campaign, the developers continued to raise funds through microtransactions, eventually setting a Guinness World Record in 2014 and the title of the highest crowdfunded video game to date. The studio also received external investments in addition to the money raised through crowdfunding and the sale of in-game content and ships.

Squadron 42, a spin-off single-player title featuring Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman, and Gillian Anderson among others, has also been in development since 2016 and is also being funded from the Star Citizen pool. Both games have no release date as of yet which has sparked legal issues and criticisms from the community.

“Squadron 42 will be done when it is done, and will not be released just to make a date,” said creator Chris Roberts in a letter to the community back in December. “[. . .] I have decided that it is best to not show Squadron 42 gameplay publicly, nor discuss any release date until we are closer to the home stretch and have high confidence in the remaining time needed to finish the game to the quality we want.”