Star Citizen is just shy of $50 million, but needs additional funds to “sustain this level of development”.
Star Citizen is the world’s most successful crowdfunding project, and promises to be an incredibly engaging space simulation to boot. But with a crowdfunding model that shows no sign of slowing down, the question of exactly how much money the project needs is a common one. Upon reaching the $49 million mark, Chris Roberts addressed the issue by stating that crowdfunding is essential to Star Citizen‘s continued development.
“We’ve had a lot of questions about why we still need to continue crowd funding,” Roberts writes. “The answer is that that money is letting Star Citizen tackle longer term features and content sooner than we normally would. To sustain this level of development, we need to keep bringing in additional funds.”
To Roberts’ credit, Star Citizen‘s production values are incredibly expensive, reaching as high as $150,000 per ship. On the other hand, Star Citizen has already seen delays despite its crowdfunding model, and continued timeliness is far from guaranteed.
Regardless, Roberts’ plan is to scale Star Citizen‘s development team based on crowdfunding, assigning resources to key areas as necessary. “If we need more artists to produce additional ships, we’d like to be able to hire them,” he explains. “Or if we need more engineers to get a head start on some longer term technical issue before it blocks other parts of development, we want that option! It’s the new players hearing about Star Citizen and Arena Commander for the first time and jumping in as well as sales like the M50 that enable us to continue to chase our shared dream of the BDSSE to the highest fidelity. So thank you for your support.”
On that note, Roberts announced that instead of offering new in-game stretch goals, Star Citizen will give donors control over its production schedule. Leading up to the $51 million mark, backers are able to vote on upcoming features that would be given top priority. The current list of features is as follows:
- Orgs Drop 2 – Divisions, jobs and the 3D Organizations browser.
- Orgs Drop 3 – Private forums for each Star Citizen Organization.
- Galactapedia – Your guide to the Star Citizen universe which ties directly into Star Citizen’s persistent universe.
- Web Scoreboards – Want to see your Arena Commander history on the website, or find out how you stack up against other Citizens?
- Known Universe Map – An interactive map of Star Citizen’s known universe which will expand along with the game.
As of writing, the Known Universe Map is currently in the lead with 54% of the vote.
Source: Roberts Space Industries
