Star Citizen SMASHES $500 Million In Funding… BUT IT’S A LOT MORE!
Star Citizen has now officially crowd funded over $500 Million from it’s players.
And there are a whole host of (mostly) copy paste articles that have appeared online that largely share the same… that Star Citizen has raised over half a billion dollars but there is no release in sight. Actually most of the article are surprisingly accurate and fair just stating the facts of the games development, funding and current playability. Media over the last year and a half have really softened on Star Citizen & SQ42.
Star Citizen hit that mark Officially on the 20th September 2022.
However it’s worth knowing that there are other income and funding sources that aren’t part of that $500m figure.
There is a private investment of $63.25m from the Calders who invested in 2 rounds one of $46m and another of 17.25m.
There is also subscription money which doesn’t seem to be counted here over the length of the project that’s likely to have hit around $32m based on CI’s financials shared at the end of 2021.
Other Income, incentives and sponsorships has again likely hit around $55m over the length of the project based on the same figures.
There have been cases of funds being removed from the Funding Tracker in the past… which may of been refunds… I’d expect refunds to be less than .5% anyway.
So overall roughly Star Citizen & Squadron 42 has raised over $667 Million so far…
And I think it’s easily going to hit $1b in funding during it’s development and before it goes live… it could hit that around the release of Squadron 42… as you can probably expect sales for SQ42 and SC interest to rocket around that time.
There are over 4m player accounts that have been made for Star Citizen… many players have a second or multiple accounts but there are probably at least 3m unique players that have made accounts and either bought something or tried a freefly event.
It’s also worth mentioning that Star Citizen is about to have CitizenCon and the IAE in October and November respectively and these events ARE HUGELY profitable events, with last’s year raising over $21.5m in November alone… Star Citizen is on it’s way to making a record breaking amount of money this year… You can expect Star Citizen to have raised over $700m from all sources by the end of the year.
Now this is a staggering amount of money… and Star Citizen has been in development for 10 years. They do run a live product… Star Citizen is very much playable and has major updates multiple times a years as well as various events throughout.
And it’s not just one game, it’s 2 Sq42 is a single player campaign set in the same universe as Star Citizen MMO and connected BUT markedly is set before the current year in Star Citizen.
Sq42 is where most of that development focus is… but there are no release dates… it could be 1 year it could be 2 before it’s actually out the door.
The scope of Star Citizen has certainly grown as it’s funding has. Originally planned to be a much smaller spaceship combat multiplayer game and single player campaign closer to something like Wing Commander / Freelancer and Elite Dangerous but now being this incredibly high fidelity MMO Space Life Simulator with SC and massive AAA Single Player Game SQ42 packed full of celebrities.
CI have also been massively expanding their studios over the last year…
With an office for over 1000 staff in the UK that they have signed a 10 year lease for and that they plan to fill with staff over the next 4 years. However the studio is being built currently… I am not sure if CI will get in there before Q2/3 2023…
But they are also expanding out in Montreal (Turbulent Studio), Frankfurt and looking to expand in Austin too. This is obviously motivated by the massive amount of funding money that CI have and a long term plan for the games development and support. But Star Citizen suffers from a slow development cycle… it’s getting there but it’s still going to be a while yet.
Thursday, we have Inside Star Citizen. We will meet the Localization Team and have a Siege of Orison Review.
Friday, we have Star Citizen Live on the Star Citizen Twitch channel this time it’s a Q&A with members of the AI Teams.
Star Citizen Alpha 3.18 is expected to go to evocati Next Week to start it’s early testing with Persistent Entity Streaming. Gamestar.de seem to have jumped the gun somewhat and reported that it’s supposed to be released September 30th recently.
BUT CI have also said they plan to have it out by Mid November for the IAE.
Something else to look forward coming on the 8th October (so only 2.5 weeks away) is CitizenCon, this year being an all day live streamed event… with big juicy panels throughout the day on a whole host of Star Citizen Tech, Features and the Journey to Star Citizen Alpha 4.0.
Star Citizen is ploughing forward with it’s development, major events, milestone tech and a whole host more coming in Q4 2022 and I am much excite!