Star Citizen Hits Massive New Crowdfunding Milestone

Summary

Star Citizen hits $800 million in crowdfunding, all while still not having any sort of release window.
Cloud Imperium’s game continues to set records both in development time and budget.
Fan anticipation remains high, but the game has suffered recent job cuts and further delays.

Star Citizen has hit yet another crowdfunding milestone, surpassing $800 million in contributions despite still having no release date. Few, if any, games have had as long a development cycle as Cloud Imperium’s space-faring MMO, but the wait has not stopped fans from supporting it financially. With no end in sight yet, Star Citizen is quickly nearing the $1 billion mark.

The much-delayed early access title is no stranger to setting records. In 2023, Star Citizen became the most expensive game ever made, surpassing the development costs of Red Dead Redemption 2, Grand Theft Auto 5, and Cyberpunk 2077 combined. Notably, all of those games also had relatively long dev timelines, but none of them come close to Star Citizen, which is now going on 13 years and is still in Alpha.

star-citizen-monster-hunting-feature-announcement

Star Citizen Update Adding Monster Hunting Feature

Cloud Imperium Games announces that monster hunting is coming to its in-development space simulator Star Citizen in a future update.

At the time of writing, Star Citizen has raised over $802 million, thanks to investment from over 5.5 million contributors. The game’s budget swelled by over $9 million in March 2025 alone, which means the crowdfunding campaign saw more than four times its original goal of $2 million in a single month, and that was far from the title’s biggest funding period. Still, things have not been all rosy for Star Citizen and the studio behind it. In November of last year, Cloud Imperium laid off roughly 1% of its workforce, which was just one in a series of job cuts the company has suffered throughout its long development. The cause behind these cuts is unclear, as is when the crowdfunding period will finally end.

Star Citizen Passes $800 Million in Crowdfunding Contributions

As Star Citizen‘s budget keeps skyrocketing, its future remains uncertain. Its last major update, version 4.0, came out in December 2024 and included a full wipe of players’ acquisitions and stats. Cloud Imperium has said that full wipes will become less frequent after Star Citizen 4.0, which could suggest that the team is gearing up for an official full release, but without any confirmation from the studio, that may be little more than wishful thinking. The first pre-alpha build of the game came out in 2013, and multiple builds have experienced delays since then, so it’s difficult to say when fans can expect the next phase to start.

Other games have survived decades-long development hell in the past. Notably, Mother 3 was in development for 12 years before releasing and is now one of the most beloved GBA titles. Star Citizen has now passed Mother 3‘s dev timeline, so it’ll be interesting to see when it will finally get a full release and what its legacy will be afterward.