The most successful crowdfunding project of all time now stands at $195 million
How much was that Star Citizen trailer this week worth? Nearly a million dollars.
Donations to the crowd-funded space combat video game, which has been in development since 2012, spiked on Wednesday, the day Cloud Imperium Games issued a three-minute trailer for Squadron 42 from CitizenCon 2018. Roberts Space Industries (the parent company) reported $379,254 taken in on Oct. 10, plus another $600,000 over the next three days combined.
Putting that in perspective, Star Citizen took in $692,406 seven weeks ago, its best in the past two months. The project’s lifetime funding now stands at $195,768,020. Star Citizen is the most crowdfunded venture — video game or otherwise — of all time.
This week’s donations may have shot up because of the announcement of a new ship for the game, the “Anvil Valkyrie.” It costs $330 and does not include access to Star Citizen itself. The Anvil Valkyrie is currently available on test servers and will join Star Citizen ’s “persistent universe” alpha module when its 3.3 update launches. There is no launch date for the 3.3 update.
Cloud Imperium Games began sharing a production schedule for Star Citizen and other ongoing development notes back in 2016, but hasn’t committed to a launch window for any component of the game since. Star Citizen creator Chris Roberts at the time said the public and games press “ treated my comments nonetheless as a promise. ” in explaining why he was no longer giving deadlines or launch windows for his game.
Roberts pioneered the Wing Commander franchise on MS-DOS PCs in the 1990s. Star Citizen attracted numerous fans of the neglected space combat genre when its crowdfunding campaign was announced on Kickstarter.com in 2012.34,397 people donated $2,134,374 to begin its development.
