Star Citizen Just Shy of 50 Million USD

Star Citizen should be a title every PC gamer in the world knows—not only is it the most fantastically successful crowdfunded anything in history (It currently JUST hit $49 million USD in fundraising) but it’s used that money to create one nice-looking, deep-as-the-ocean space simulator that have people frothing at the mouth to get their hands on it.

But it’s still an indie game.  So you’re probably wondering—where’s the line?  Because even after hitting 49 million, they are STILL taking and asking for donations from fans like you.   Don’t these usually stop after reaching some amount of money or some amount of time has passed?  

Apparently Star Citizen disagrees, because the money ya’ll have been giving it has turned it into an unstoppable money-sucking train.  In an open letter celebrating hitting the 49 million USD mark, the chairman himself wrote the following:

“To sustain this level of development, we need to keep bringing in additional funds. Star Citizen is still much less than the other published backed AAA games that have similar levels of ambition like GTA V, Watch Dogs or Destiny.”

He continued, revealing how most of the money now would be going into hiring people to help speed up development.
 

“Our plan is to scale the team based on the crowd funding, with the goal to be able to double down on development wherever it’s possible to do so. If we need more artists to produce additional ships, we’d like to be able to hire them. Or if we need more engineers to get a head start on some longer term technical issue before it blocks other parts of development, we want that option.”

To that end, traditional “stretch goals” have now come to an end, in effect: rather, people who donate will be able to vote on what feature they want prioritized in development.  Currently, there are 5 choices to pick from—and of the five, the “known galaxy map” is currently leading the votes.

It’s interesting to see just how far Star Citizen can go before the donations begin to dry up.  49 million for what amounts to an indie game for high-end computers certainly is an enigma in the industry, but with any luck it’ll all work out in the end.