Star Citizen Raises $55 Million, Making it The Most Crowdfunded Anything, Ever

[Steven Bogos]

Star Citizen Raises $55 Million, Making it The Most Crowdfunded Anything, Ever

And opponents of Star Citizen tried to say there was no market for a PC-only space simulator...

We all knew that Chris Roberts' Freelancer spiritual successor, Star Citizen was a big deal, but did you know that it has now sailed past $55 million in crowdfunding? This milestone means that not only is it the most crowdfunded video game, but it is now officially in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most crowdfunded anything, ever.

Roberts, in a blog post [https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14184-Letter-From-The-Chairman] on Robert Space Industries responding to the new world record, tries to ascertain just where all this money is coming from, and why people keep dumping more and more into the still unreleased title.

"The answer is that Star Citizen isn't a normal game," he said. "It's not being developed like a normal game and it's not being funded like a normal game. I've had to toss aside a lot of my knowledge from the old way of developing and embrace a completely new world. There is no publisher. There is no venture capitalist wanting a massive return in three years."

"There is no need to cram the game onto a disc and hope we got it all right." He continued, "Star Citizen is not the type of game that will be played for a few weeks, then put on a shelf to gather dust. Instead of building a game in secrecy we can be fully open with you as a community who have made this game possible."

Roberts also announced that the team building Star Citizen has now increased in number to 280, which is quite a sizable team to be working on the game.

From the sounds of things, Roberts is definitely in it for the long haul, and Star Citizen will most likely be the game to look out for this generation. Backers can already alpha test the dogfighting module [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/130613-Star-Citizen-Dogfighting-Module-Delayed-to-Early-2014] of the game, and the FPS module is expected to be revealed at this year's PAX Australia expo in November.

Just don't hold your breath on the title coming to next-gen consoles [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/136143-Star-Citizen-Too-Much-Game-for-Consoles-to-Handle], as it is apparently too big of a game for Sony and Microsoft's machines to handle.

Source: Games.on.net [https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14184-Letter-From-The-Chairman]

Permalink

 

[P-89 Scorpion]

When he runs out of money for this game people are going to be so pissed and I will sit here laughing my arse off.

 

[RA92]

It's probably irrelevant, but... is the game any good?

 

[P-89 Scorpion]

It's probably irrelevant, but... is the game any good?

There is no game yet and won't be till 2016 at the earliest just a race that no one can get on and a hanger were people look at their $100 DLC ships.

 

[GrimSerious]

This is the next gen Duke Nukem Forever we've been waiting for.

Stop me if I'm missing something here...
Literally tons of money +
no responsibility to anyone +
no feature freeze, ever +
no "real" gameplay yet +
a catastrophic presentation some month(s) ago =
this is never coming out. The best case is that it's going to be a shitty game full of bugs with lot's of broken stuff.

Keep nailing those tentacles on to that dog, some day it's gonna be an octopus(you just have to believe it and pay enough).

 

[josemlopes]

It's probably irrelevant, but... is the game any good?

There is no game yet and won't be till 2016 at the earliest just a race that no one can get on and a hanger were people look at their $100 DLC ships.

So it isnt that the market for it is big but that the people in that market are desperate as fuck

 

[Floppertje]

When he runs out of money for this game people are going to be so pissed and I will sit here laughing my arse off.

That's not going to happen. they bring in about 3 million every time they release a new ship or during sales of non-standard ships and that's not counting the people that will come on board once the persistent universe and the single player campaign launch.People have dropped 15k on this, with about $100 on average. does that sound like it's about to 'run out of money'?

It's probably irrelevant, but... is the game any good?

Yeah, dogfighting is fun. It's tricky, the flying takes some getting used to but it's a lot of fun. Only single-seaters now, but multi-crew ships and FPS are coming.

 

[P-89 Scorpion]

When he runs out of money for this game people are going to be so pissed and I will sit here laughing my arse off.

That's not going to happen. they bring in about 3 million every time they release a new ship or during sales of non-standard ships and that's not counting the people that will come on board once the persistent universe and the single player campaign launch.People have dropped 15k on this, with about $100 on average. does that sound like it's about to 'run out of money'?

"Roberts also announced that the team building Star Citizen has now increased in number to 280, which is quite a sizable team to be working on the game."

280 is a huge staff and I'd be surprised if the average wage isn't at least $80,000 each ( http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/04/03/how-much-do-game-developers-make ) that's 50% of the money on 1 year of salary.

 

[RA92]

So it isnt that the market for it is big but that the people in that market are desperate as fuck

Considering the raft of space games being released - Kerbal Space Program, Homeworld HD, Star Citizen, Elite: Dangerous, Eve Valkyrie, No Man's Sky, Limit Theory, Enemy Starfighter, Space Engineers, Rodina, StarMade, Kinetic Void - I would say the market thinks otherwise.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

So they have been at it for a year or two now, they have no real release date and no real playable content. What state is this game in that they have thrown millions at it and nothing has shown up?

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Phew! For a second I didnt see that grinning taconews.
Still, great reporting!

 

[Floppertje]

When he runs out of money for this game people are going to be so pissed and I will sit here laughing my arse off.

That's not going to happen. they bring in about 3 million every time they release a new ship or during sales of non-standard ships and that's not counting the people that will come on board once the persistent universe and the single player campaign launch.People have dropped 15k on this, with about $100 on average. does that sound like it's about to 'run out of money'?

"Roberts also announced that the team building Star Citizen has now increased in number to 280, which is quite a sizable team to be working on the game."

280 is a huge staff and I'd be surprised if the average wage isn't at least $80,000 each ( http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/04/03/how-much-do-game-developers-make ) that's 50% of the money on 1 year of salary.

Well... yeah, salaries are what the majority of the money goes to. To pay the people actually making the game. Also, that 280 includes the studio's they're outsourcing to. That is a lot of employees, but then again it's a large project.
In the end it all comes down to a matter of faith; you trust the devs that they know what they're doing, that they're going to deliver a good product and that they won't run off with the money. If you don't, you don't pledge and that's that. I am in no way worried that they'll run into financial problems.

 

[P-89 Scorpion]

So they have been at it for a year or two now, they have no real release date and no real playable content. What state is this game in that they have thrown millions at it and nothing has shown up?

There are 4 hangers to walk around in ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aUVup0p7y8&index=8&list=PLSPT1I-KtyUFSXRUPe5eq7MotSr1IuwI1 ).

 

[Blarg Blargson]

So it isnt that the market for it is big but that the people in that market are desperate as fuck

Considering the raft of space games being released - Kerbal Space Program, Homeworld HD, Star Citizen, Elite: Dangerous, Eve Valkyrie, No Man's Sky, Limit Theory, Enemy Starfighter, Space Engineers, Rodina, StarMade, Kinetic Void - I would say the market thinks otherwise.

There are about 464K people backing SC. I don't know how that compares to the sizes of other gaming populations, but to me that sounds like a lot.

I am one of those backers, and believe it or not I got into this because I anticipate them eventually releasing a really good SINGLE-PLAYER game: "Squadron 42." Everything I have seen so far tells me that this game will come out in the next year or two (probably two, given how Chris Roberts moves everything back when he thinks releases aren't ready instead of releasing first and patching later), and it well have more interesting features than any other space sim I've played.

Also, there is playable content, albeit not a huge amount of it: I did the dogfighting module too. It's pretty cool - very promising.

 

[Zacharious-khan]

I wonder if there was a phone call to the Ouya people that went something along the lines of "Suck it"

 

[Rufus Shinra]

I wonder if there was a phone call to the Ouya people that went something along the lines of "Suck it"

They have enough money to get an intern or two whose job is to call them 24/7 just to do this.

 

[toms]

Oh my...
People are going to be so disappointed when it finally comes out and turns out to be a video game.

 

[coheedswicked]

I see a lot of skepticism regarding this game in this thread. I would just like to say that I've been following this game for a while now and I am not skeptical at all that it will release and it will be good. One of the major things that inspires this confidence is that they have a more or less completely transparent development process, giving the community updates on their progress at least once a week.

As far as playable content there is a good amount already considering how early in the process everything still is. There is single player and coop swarm mode, multiplayer pvp (all the standards battle royal, team deathmatch, capture the flag), as well as a racing mode. As they complete new game modes or new game assets they continually add them in. As of right now only 5 ships are in a playable state but more ships are expected to be added soon.

If anyone likes space sims, flight sims, or just an awesome open world experience I highly recommend checking it out. They tend to reward people for backing the game earlier (just litle flair items and such) if you're into that kind of thing. But regardless I would say at least check out the website, watch some videos (people stream their dogfights on twitch) and give it a chance.

 

[JayRPG]

I don't know if it's just me but I think Star Citizen is going to be just OK, while the similar No Man's Sky being developed by Hello Games looks like it's going to be infinitely better and it doesn't have 280 developers, and I'm quite sure it doesn't have a budget of over 55 million.