After nearly a decade of being in development, Cloud Imperium Game's Star Citizen has surpassed $300 million in its crowdfunding campaign. Star Citizen is an online multiplayer space simulator that has infamously gone through a lengthy developmental cycle, with multiple different controversies over the years.
The list of setbacks Star Citizen has faced is a long one. From controversies over misuse of crowdfunding money, to having to deal with a year long lawsuit with Crytek, to multiple delays and accusations of "feature creep" plaguing the development of the game, the list of fan grievances has been as long as the title's development cycle. This has caused the game to garner something of an infamous reputation over the course of its development cycle despite the promise it initially showed.
Still, Star Citizen's official page announced that it has now surpassed $300 million in it's crowdfund page, with over 2.7 million backers, dubbed as "citizens." In fact, adding up numbers from 2018, 2019, and 2020, the total budget has reached over $334 million, with possibly even more when considering investment amounts from the developers. Not even Grand Theft Auto V has reached that level of expensive, a game that had a budget of $265 million and is still receiving support now and in the future with the PS5. It's an earth shattering record on multiple levels.
The game was originally set to be released in 2014, but several of its modes got pushed back, causing the game to not reach that initial mark. Star Marine for instance, an FPS mode that was scheduled to be released in 2015, was released in December 2016. Most recently, the beta of the Squadron 42 mode was delayed to the 3rd quarter of 2020. One Reddit post even posted a graph citing that features that were cited in the 3.9 roadmap of December 2019 had most of said planned features removed come April 2020.
Will Star Citizen ever see an official release? That remains to be seen. Even with these controversies, the game is still an incredibly ambitious project that has garnered plenty of attention thanks to its scale. Not only are there a variety of modes to choose from when playing, but the appeal of flying out into space while racing with and shooting down other spaceships is clearly a profitable one. It speaks volumes to the appeal of the project that despite all of its setbacks, consumers are still willing to provide more funding.
Source: Robert Space Industries