Star Citizen $425 Million Funding
I’ve been seeing some articles and celebrations of Star Citizen hitting $300 million in funding as of the Middle of June 2020 however that funding by my count is actually closer to $425m.
Star Citizen hit $300 million on it’s funding tracker on the website that’s for ships, vehicles and extras from the website BUT it’s actually raised a lot more than that.
What CI show on their funding goal tracker is just pledges made via the website.
2018 Financials we have show that they have a few other sources of income RSI Voluntary Subscriptions as well as Other Income from Partnerships & Incentives from AMD, Intel and Sponsorships that is not shown on that funding tack.
Please take these numbers with a little guestimate of salt as we only have some of them up to the end of 2018 accurately. I’ll link all the source material in an article down below.
RSI Subscribers were last shown as generating around $3.3 Million for the Year for 2018.
I’d expect that to hit $3.5m in 2019 and be on it’s way to $4 to 4.5 by the end of 2020.
That doesn’t sound like a lot BUT if you then add all the Sub money together from 2012 to date it’s probably at least $20 million.
CI’s “Other Income” had totalled almost $29 million by the end of 2018. It’s likely that 2019 saw around $8 million and $4million so far in 2020 so that’s another $41m.
Private Investment Money
Cloud Imperium Received $46 Million in Investment from the Clive & Kieth Calder well known figures in UK Music Business in exchange for 10% of CIs Shares in 2018. At this time the business was loosely valued at half a billion $$$.
March of 2020 the Calder’s invested another $17.25 Million exercising a one-time option to purchase further shares in the company at their “original price”.
Cloud Imperium said that one of the major uses of this investment was for marketing.
And CI have been putting together a marketing department over 2019 and todate which seems to be paying dividends… potentially…
By my estimates Star Citizen, Squadron 42 and CI have raised over $425m to date from ALL SOURCES I can find.
This is a staggering amount of money but is very much being utilized by CI to make their games as they are spending what they are making on Development and the business.
Star Citizen’s Financial Success is a mixture of their marketing with ship sales, their open development & regular updates to their Playable Alpha. As
Star Citizen made $15 Million in May 2020 from Pledges… and since November 2019 has been making more money in pledge funding month on month compared to previous years in fact twice that of the same month in 2019 AND almost 6 times of what it made in May 2019 in May 2020 AND I will be very interested to see their 2019 and 2020 financials when they release them. This is not just an explosion of funding but also an acceleration.
In fact when you look at it, Star Citizen has been made on longer term investment with their software & company. They built a studio starting with 13 people in 2012 now at around 600 with 5 Studios around the world. They invested in tools, pipelines & tech for their engine (tho you could certainly argue that building an engine from the ground up could of been an alternative).
CI have also Invested in Turbulent by purchasing 25% of their shares, they manage their website, forums, community tools, helped create the starmap and assist with the Sale Campaigns of New Ships this is interesting as CI have moved away from external contracts and companies where possible over the last few years.
Previously CI had contracted out a lot of work to companies like Moon Collider, Behavior, Illfonic, various Concept Artists… BUT have been bringing more and more of that under their own control and umbrella, even with their own MoCap Rigs.
They are still hiring more employees despite the lockdown their company is still growing and with the potential now of having more employees working remotely BUT still as part of the company rather than contractors it might save CI a lot of money in the forms of needing Office Space and some people might even be more efficient working remotely too.
This type of development and way they have built their studio and games appears to be paying off financially for CI and with Alpha 3.10 on the Horizon hopefully it will start paying dividends to the playability & accessibility of the game.
Star Citizen has certainly been a slow burn for a development BUT it looks like some of that setting up for tooling is paying off in at least some areas of their business.
I am interested to see what is happening with the Faceware FOIP Cameras as well the Star Citizen HOTAS & Control Devices that got canned…
Also Star Citizen has started to cross over more to the mainstream, over the last few years SC has received a lot of criticism from the media BUT this only seems to have got more people watching and involved with the project.
Even the Crytek v Star Citizen Lawsuit that was settled earlier this year seemed to help Star Citizen’s Image throughout it’s drama… Drama means more more for SC it seems.
And as Squadron 42 gets closer to reality and other space games like ED get more updates it seems to make the gaming community more thirsty for the Space MMO & Combat genres.
Theatres of War the new SC gamemode could further appeal to gamers IF it’s actually good and polished when it goes live.
There are no hard release dates for Squadron 42 OR Star Citizen yet….
Star Citizen Alpha releases a major update every Quarter but is 3+ years away from a LIVE release and Squadron 42 is waiting on roadmap updates to be reworked for that to see how it’s development is going hopefully with a 2021 release.