People just keep on giving to Star Citizen, the most successful crowdfunding project ever.
The massively multiplayer online space-exploration game — first announced back in 2012 — has now raised over $100 million through crowdfunding, despite still being in an alpha testing state (an updated 2.0 alpha build released a few days ago).
Creator Chris Roberts — also behind the legendary Wing Commander games — first raised $2 million for Star Citizen via Kickstarter, but that figure is dwarfed by the $100 million that his continued fundraising efforts have now raised. Over one million backers have now bought into the Star Citizen project, in exchange for game packages (which include a ship and access to the game), development subscriptions, and additional in-game ships. Back in January, Roberts predicted hitting the $100 million mark during 2015, but he told Polygon that building a community was more important than the money. “Yes, the money is nice,” he said. “Yes the money enables you to do some of these things you do, but it’s really about bringing people in to create this community and have them sort of share that experience with you as you’re building it.”
Over $30 million of Star Citizen’s total funding has come during the past year. It’s the same year that Star Citizen lost its executive producer, and shortly afterwards, Roberts wrote an open letter to the community explaining how the project had grown way beyond his original expectations and how crowdfunding — which doesn’t rely on publishers needing a quick return on their investment — was the only way this growth would have happened.
“You didn’t back Star Citizen because you want what you’ve seen before,” said Roberts. “You’re here and reading this because we are willing to go big, to do the things that terrify publishers. You’ve trusted us with your money so we can build a game, not line our pockets. And we sure as hell didn’t run this campaign so we could put that money in the bank, guarantee ourselves a profit and turn out some flimsy replica of a game I’ve made before. You went all-in supporting us, and we’ve gone all-in making the game. Is Star Citizen today a bigger goal than I imagined in 2012? Absolutely. Is that a bad thing? Absolutely not: It’s the whole damn point.
“We genuinely want people to be happy with their decision to back Star Citizen because I and everyone else on the team passionately believe in Star Citizen,” he continued.” This is the dream game that all of us have wanted to build all our lives. And while I can’t promise you everything will always go smoothly, or features or content won’t arrive later than we want them to, I can promise that we will never stop until we have achieved this dream.”