The infamy of Cloud Imperium Games’ Star Citizen has reached new heights, as the crowd-funded game has now crossed the US$1 billion milestone, a staggering amount for a game that doesn’t seem to be anywhere close to release.
As seen on the studio’s website, where it makes its earnings publicly available, Star Citizen’s funding has now crossed the US$1 billion, thanks to its in-game DefenseCon event, which helped the title raise over US$6 million in just one hour. For context, the game is technically already “released”, as players can hop on right now, but it is nowhere near complete, still lacking many basic features like a proper narrative, and still featuring tons of bugs and performance issues that have yet to be ironed out.
Apart from being one of the most controversial gaming projects in the history of video games, thanks to its lengthy 14-year crowdfunding run, which has led to many outright calling it a scam, the game is also infamous for selling digital in-game spaceships for astronomical prices, such as the recently “released” Anvil Odin capital ship, a pricey US$5,000 ship that players currently cannot even fly in-game. According to Cloud Imperium Games, the ship went on sale as a “limited vehicle concept pledge”, which is just a fancy way of saying that they are making people drop thousands of dollars for a concept rather than something actually usable, as the ship is not even in the game yet, with no news on when it will release.
While fans continue to fund and support a game that might not even come to fruition, the studio’s single-player spin-off title, Squadron 42, is still set to launch this year, at least according to studio chief Chris Roberts. During an interview with Variety, Roberts said that the title was “in the closing stages” of development, which hopefully means it’s very close to launch. Compared to Star Citizen, Squadron 42 seems more like a real video game, with a lengthy gameplay trailer released in 2024 that showcased flashy cutscenes with its heavy-hitting cast of Gillian Anderson, Henry Cavill, Gary Oldman, and Mark Strong, alongside first-person shooting segments, space battles, and an on-rails turret sequence.
For now, Squadron 42 is still set to launch sometime in 2026, with Star Citizen set to follow one or two years after its release, but this is Cloud Imperium Games we’re talking about, so we just have to wait and see.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
