Now over ten years into a development cycle of cancellations and delays, refund dramas, and litigation, Cloud Imperium Games has announced that the pre-launch demo of its spaceship model DLC sim has banked more than $350 million from suckers, I mean investors.
Star Citizen was funded with $2 million on Kickstarter in 2012, but started pre-production in 2010 already. Originally expected to launch in 2014, then 2015, then 2016, and so on up to who even knows, the game exists instead as a series of “modules” in various states of unfinished, $100 polygon-promises, and this three-minute cinematic trailer for its Squadron 42 single-player campaign that’s been sold separately since 2016 and was supposed to launch into beta in 2020 but – guess what, you guessed it – didn’t. As of today, 15 March 2021, the game’s core “Universe” module is at alpha version 3.12.
Despite CIG consistently missing its deadlines and even studio employee claims that the project is a hot mess, however, players keep spending cash on it. In December, for example, Star Citizen’s two-week Intergalactic Aerospace Expo marketing campaign in-game event opened up access to the game’s 100 spaceships for players to test, and generated some $16.9 million in extra revenue. According to the game’s website, total revenue at publish time is $351,029,243. Wait, no, I refreshed the page and it’s up to 351,033,732.
Y THO?