Star Citizen Breaks New Fundraising Records Fuelled by Player Hope
Although Cyberpunk 2077 surprised many players with the number of bugs, it remains in the shadow of the „master” in terms of development time and condition - Star Citizen. The latter, although still in alpha phase, is raising more and more funds.
- Star Citizen is commerially successful despite remaining in the alpha phase, having raised nearly $79 million in 2020;
- The funds raised through crowdfunding allow for the development of another game by Cloud Imperium Games - the single player-focused Squadron 42.
"Always two there are; no more, no less. A master and an apprentice," as the knights of a certain order said a long time ago. I don't know if this quote can be used in good faith to compare Cyberpunk 2077 and Star Citizen, but there certainly are analogies between them. Both titles have been developed for a very long time (CD Projekt Red is working on a lot of patches, so in a sense we can say that the cyberpunk game is still in development), and are still drowning in bugs and glitches. They are also successful in the financial field, although Chris Roberts' work does so in a different way. In 2020, the game's crowdfunding collected almost 79 million dollars. So who's the master and who the apprentice here?
This sum is even more impressive if we compare it with the results from 2019 - almost $48 million. This means that in 2020 Star Citizen received more than $30 million more from players and sponsors. Thus, the total funds raised for the game exceeded 340 million dollars. The data comes from a community data sheet. As you can see, despite still being in the alpha phase (current version 3.12.0) the title has a large number of fans who appreciate it with their wallets.
The crowdfunding success of Star Citizen enabled Cloud Imperium Games to start working on another title set in the same universe. Squadron 42 was initially just the name of a single-player story campaign, but was promoted to an independent title. It will be focused on single player gameplay and cinematoc narrative. It will be released... when it's done, and it seems to be still a long way from that.
