Wing Commander creator beats funding record with Star Citizen

Cloud Imperium games, the new company headed by Chris Roberts of Wing Commander fame, have announced that the crowdfunding campaign for in-development space sim Star Citizen has wrapped up with over $6 million in pledges, setting a new record. The previous record for a crowdfunded game was set in October by Osidian’s Project Eternity, which recorded $4.16 million pledged.

Interestingly, only a minority of the funding pledged to Star Citizen came through the Kickstarter platform. Cloud Imperium reported $2.13 million in pledges, around four times the original goal of the project, and around 34% of the total. The majority of the money was collected through the company’s own Roberts Space Industries site, which may indicate a growing willingness among consumer backers to give directly to a developer, rather than relying on third parties.

 

 

The company were kind enough to share a few stats from the campaign whcih show the scale of the undertaking:

• Kickstarter backers– 34,397
• Kickstarter funds pledged – $2,134,374
• Roberts Space Industries backers – 55,270
• Roberts Space Industries funds raised – $4,104,189
• Total backers – 89,667
• Total funds raised and pledged – $6,238,563

Unsurprisingly, Roberts himself is jubilant.

“I am absolutely elated by the incredible outpouring of support for this project,” said Roberts. “It’s clear that space sim fans have just been waiting for a game like ours to come along and rekindle some of the excitement that’s been missing from PC games and the space sim genre. With the resources that our fans have provided, it means the team will be able to provide more features in Star Citizen and deliver an even better game.”

It has been a few years since we’ve seen a competent open world space opera, so I for one am looking forward to seeing what the team come up with.

It’s not immediately clear when we can expect to see Star Citizen in playable form, although it is hard to see the project stalling with this kind of financial backing. It is important to note however that putting a project up for crowdsourcing doesn’t translate into a cast-iron commitment to getting a product out on store shelves. Many things can go wrong in development, and watching what the company say about future plans is key for anyone who’s money is tied up in a pledge.