Cloud Imperium has received over $1 billion in funding for its MMO Star Citizen. The game was first announced in 2012, and more than a decade later, it is still under development.
The developer had raised $2 million in the initial Kickstarter campaign but continued to crowdfund over the years. During the early days of development, the developer was targeting a 2014 release. Fourteen years after the first announcement, the game still doesn’t have a definite commercial launch date.
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Chris Roberts co-founded Cloud Imperium with his wife, Sandi Roberts. Together, they ditched traditional funding from publishers and settled for a crowdfunding campaign. The couple quickly raised $6.2 million after showcasing the prototype for “Star Citizen”.
They have continued to develop the game “in front of fans through weekly livestreams and blogs, regular roadmap releases,” and a recent playable access for the alpha build, which receives frequent updates. Star Citizen studio said every dollar raised so far has been reinvested directly into the game’s development and operations.
Squadron 42
“I think that the goal that everybody is supporting is pretty ambitious and huge, but also a pretty exciting one,” Chris told Variety.
“A lot of people want to spend time adventuring out in the virtual world of something that’s like ‘Star Citizen,’ and that’s really what’s helped get us to where we are, because the dream so big that it’s something that you don’t get in any other game. It’s not something that would be able to be done under a traditional big game publisher funding it, or private equity.”
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Chris said they want Star Citizen to be a “place for people to adventure together, meet up together, and have fun together”. He compared the experience the studio wants to deliver to World of Warcraft, which has been running for over 20 years.
“I fully believe that we’ve still got a long time, even after we’ve got what we call 1.0 out, and we’re not considering an alpha anymore, that we’ll be adding and building on the universe and the world…”
Cloud Imperium is also simultaneously working on ‘Squadron 42’, a cinematic single-player game set in the Star Citizen universe. The cast for the game includes Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman, Gillian Anderson, Ben Mendelsohn, and Henry Cavill. You can learn more about Star Citizen here.
