Star Citizen Has Now Earned CIG Over $800 Million
Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) has hoovered up another $100 million from its extremely patient fanbase, breaching the $800 million milestone. This continues its streak of massive funding boosts in recent years, somehow accelerating even after 12 years of not delivering any of the complete game projects it promised. If Star Citizen continues to rake in an average of around $300,000 a day, it's on track to become the first official billion-dollar game project ever.
Star Citizen was a once wildly ambitious space combat and exploration game developed by famed Wind Commander creator Chris Roberts. His company, Cloud Imperium Games, held a massively successful Kickstarter and crowd-funding campaign in 2012, raking in a few million dollars and promising a full game release by 2014. It went on to mostly release roadmaps. To date, Star Citizen is in Early Access at version Alpha 4.1.1, while the single-player Squadron 42 is allegedly on track to launch in 2026.
While the story surrounding Star Citizen in its early days was its incredible visuals and expansive scope, that's evolved over the years to focus more on its bizarre levels of funding. CIG stopped publishing crowd-funding stretch goals for the project years ago at $65 million, but it has had no trouble raking in much, much more than that—and indeed, almost more than any other gaming project ever. At over $800 million, Star Citizen is a more expensive game than anything outside of the rumored cost of GTA 6. It's double the cost of some of the most expensive movies ever made.
And 11 years on from the original promised launch date, there's still not even a finished game to show for it.
If Star Citizen does anything well, it's good hype trailers.
There are long and detailed breakdowns of what's gone wrong at CIG over the years that have led to this point, but none of it appears to have slowed the money-earning space train. The funding total reached $700 million in July 2024, so it's still accelerating—despite the game having milked hundreds of millions from its fanbase already. It's still selling ships for hundreds of dollars a piece, or you can even buy Star Citizen accounts with high-end hardware outright for thousands of dollars on eBay.
Although the outside view of Star Citizen isn't rosy, and the game and its developers deal with their fair share of criticism and derision, the game still maintains a dedicated fan base, and clearly they're still willing to spend.
If you've put money into Star Citizen and want to get it back out, you might find some help on the Starcitizen_refunds subreddit.
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