Star Citizen has been in development for over 10 years, and it's just passed $750 million in community funding, but there's still no release date in sight
Star Citizen is a crowdfunded space MMO that's been in development for over a decade, and it just passed an unbelievable milestone, raising $750 million. It was originally supposed to launch in 2014 but after several delays, there's no firm release date anymore.
As reported by PCGamesN, the website of developer Robert Space Industries shows hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly data for how much money it's raised. You can check it out here. Over 5 million people have given their money to the cause. Back in 2016 it was the most crowdfunded project ever when it had raised $124 million, and now it sits only behind EOS, an ethereum blockchain project.
There have been playable alpha builds of Star Citizen made available, but there's still no actual release date for the game. Last year's Alpha 3.18 update crashed the servers for a while. Fans were unable to try the "immersive careers, stunning locations, and thrilling gameplay" due to the outages.
The alpha is currently in version 3.24.3 and is free-to-play until December 5 if you want to check it out for yourself. Find out how to download it here. It may be your last chance to play this build as 4.0 is "tentatively" planned for the end of this year.
Star Citizen is infamous for just how long it's taking to make and the huge sums of cash it has raised. In fact, a single-player spin-off starring Mark Hamil, Squadron 42, that's also being made has been delayed due to the devs trying to make "bedsheet deformation" look more accurate.
Some of the methods it uses to get money are seen as dubious, too. One ship pack costs a whopping $48,888. Who's buying these things? Send me an email, I've got a bridge to sell you.
If you're hungry for some interstellar action, here are some of the best space games you can play right now. FTL: Faster Than Light, my most-played Steam game is on there.
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