The space MMORPG Star Citizen is still in development 13 years after its launch. Currently, it even looks like fans will reach a significant funding milestone before the game is released.
What is the donation status? Star Citizen has raised nearly 900,000,000 USD (approximately 775,000,000 Euros) according to the official website RobertsSpaceIndustries.com since the game was announced in 2012. A significant amount, especially considering that the project is still in alpha development after 13 years, with no end in sight.
Through the sale of constantly new spaceships, offered over the years to finance the game, the developers have collected so much money that it can now be expected that one billion USD will be reached before the full version is released.
This is mainly due to the current state of the alpha version, which is described by tech4gamers.com as “buggy and problematic” and still needs a lot of work before the issues are resolved.
Star Citizen can also get creepy:
2026 could be a good year for Star Citizen
What’s coming in 2026? As 2025 slowly comes to an end, 2026 could be an exciting year for Star Citizen. The space MMO is planning to release the single-player mode Squadron 42 next year.
However, whether the campaign will actually be released after 14 years is still up in the air. The game director Carl Jones, who was responsible for it, has recently quietly left the developer studio Cloud Imperium Games. As tech4gamers.com reported at the beginning of the year, the company’s CFO was removed from the website after 10 years.
However, the year 2026 still stands as the start date for Squadron 42 on the official game website (robertsspaceindustries.com).
How are fans reacting to the long development time? For years, criticism of developer CIG and the long wait for the game has been growing. A current Reddit thread brings up the issue of the funding status and the unfinished game again. Players comment as follows:
- upcek: “If you were six years old, just learned to read, and the first thing you read was the announcement of Star Citizen, you are now an adult.”
- Mopman43: “They would probably make less money if they actually declared something as ‘release version’. This way, people can just dismiss all obvious errors with ‘it’s early access/it’s alpha/etc.'”
- ios_static: “I don’t understand who keeps giving them money.”
- eeke1: “There is no reason for Star Citizen to change anything about what they are doing. The fans enjoy what they have and seem happy to give them more money. Whether it is a scam or not is irrelevant at this point – they have already won.”
In the community, some players refer to Star Citizen as a scam because they believe that the long development time is a ploy by the developers to earn even more money. However, the reason why it is taking so long to finish the game is unclear.
With nearly 900 million USD in funding, Star Citizen is among the games with the largest budgets ever. This makes the space MMO almost as expensive as the major GTA 6, which is also set to release in 2026. At least that’s what an expert estimates: Experts expect new record costs for GTA 6 – For you gamers and for Rockstar
