Star Citizen reaches $350m in crowdfunding after record 2020
Cloud Imperium's space franchise rumbles on despite absence of solid release dates
Star Citizen has now earned more than $350 million, according to the latest data from Cloud Imperium Games.
The long-in-development title reached the new milestone in February, when it brought in around $5 million.
In November 2020, it had one of its biggest ever months, with $16.9 million in revenue. That was due to its annual International Aerospace Expo, which opens up the game and its full roster of 100 ships to new players.
Star Citizen saw a similar boost in November 2019, when a $9 million haul pushed the game past $250 million. It reached $300 million in June 2020.
Cloud Imperium describes a significant portion of its income as "crowdfunding," despite it mainly coming from the sale of starter packs and in-game items -- common among live-service games, which generally do not classify such revenue as crowdfunding.
However, despite having been in production for ten years, Star Citizen has yet to receive a full commercial release. The single-player spin-off, Squadron 42, which has been sold separately since 2016, does not yet have a release date.
Nevertheless, it continues to generate money at an impressive rate. According to Polygon's calculations, Cloud Imperium brought in $77 million in crowdfunding in 2020 alone -- its most successful year to date.
For sure it is not for everyone but also a good sign for official release, with way more players eager to play the final version.
CIG is also the single company offering to everyone the possibility to test the latest version of SC several weeks per year for free, so each one can decide whether or not they want to join now or support a game with no competition what so ever.
True in 2020 and before, even more in 2021 with twice the contents, 3 more new gameplay and core tech implementation compared to the two last years!
All for 45$ as all flyable ships can be bought in game with credits.
Meanwhile, Publishers keep delivering the same re-skinned gameyear after year, or to deliver totally crap unfinished game (Fallout76), removed them from store (Anthem) or released a year or two before completion ( CP2077). Do not forget either more remaster of older game. Ambition and novelty are not on the table at all. Publishers care about quick profit, not ambition toward gamer community.
By the way CP2077 took 8 years from a well established studio with all up-to-date pipelines and hundreds of devs at day one, for a game which is a fraction of ambition of SC+SQ42.
Don't look further why CIG keep gathering more New backers every quarter :)