The SciFi MMO Star Citizen has broken the next historic crowdfunding milestone, having raised about 10 million US dollars alone in March 2025. A final release is still not in sight.
What is this milestone? On December 2, 2024, MeinMMO reported that the current revenue status from supporters of Star Citizen was at 758 million US dollars. Now, four months later, it has reached 800 million US dollars – as of April 3, 2025, at 8:40 AM, exactly 800,300,803 US dollars have been raised (via robertsspaceindustries.com).
What is remarkable is not just the figure itself, but also the fact that the project leaders can still enjoy strong payments even 14 years after the start of development. In March 2025 alone, supporters are said to have invested about 10 million US dollars in Star Citizen (via nosygamer.blogspot.com).
- Since Cloud Imperium Games was founded, there has reportedly never been a month with 10 million US dollars in revenue from cash shop sales.
- In total, about 25.5 million US dollars were raised in the first quarter of 2025, which represents an increase of 47 percent compared to the first quarter of 2024.
- The crowdfunding revenues do not yet include earnings from other sources like subscriptions or investors. According to a financial report by the developers (via cloudimperiumgames.com), these additional sources are estimated to have generated about 157 million US dollars by 2022.
In total, Star Citizen has therefore had at least 957 million US dollars available so far, plus the revenues from subscriptions, investors, and such that have made their way into the coffers after 2022.
“Pyramid scheme or cult”
How does the community react to this? On Reddit, the new milestone is being discussed heatedly.
- No_Summer4551 critically reflects on Reddit: “Pyramid scheme or cult. I don’t believe Chris [Roberts, the studio head – editor’s note] originally intended to scam anyone. But there’s a reason he has had issues with so many projects: he is excessively ambitious, and once the machine was running, he didn’t want to stop.”
- Vahn84 writes on Reddit: “I supported it in 2017 and the game still plays worse than 99% of the early access games I’ve played in my life. Some people enjoy playing tech demos… I respect that. But the game is objectively bad because, after all these years, it is still not a game. I defended Star Citizen until I couldn’t anymore. They improved it. But time passes, and looking at the status of the game from the outside is just ironically sad right now.”
- gears19925 defends the project on Reddit: “To build a studio from scratch. To develop 2 games, a proprietary engine, and a new form of seamless network transition that no game has achieved before. And all while providing the community with consistent, somewhat current news, which they often fail to do, but they try.”
Where does Star Citizen currently stand? With Alpha update 4.0, a significant tech milestone for the SciFi MMO was achieved last year. On March 27, 2025, Alpha update 4.1 was finally released, which included the launcher 2.0, dynamic NPC conversations, new fauna, and much more.
You will still not find a release date in the current version of the roadmap (via robertsspaceindustries.com). The pre-production for the ambitious project began as early as 2010. Actual development started in 2011, back then still in CryEngine 3. In 2012, the announcement and the start of the Kickstarter campaign followed.
Fun fact: Duke Nukem Forever, which became a running gag for its incredibly long development, was also in development for 14 years (from 1997 to 2011).
Now, 14 years after the start of development, fans of the game can look forward to a playable, albeit still very buggy and incomplete universe, in which new features are continually added that none of the supporters thought about in 2012 – such as Wikelo, the first alien NPC who is supposed to take on a particularly important role in the game.
