Cloud Imperium Games has already raised more than $900 million from players for the development of Star Citizen – the money has brought more than six million fans who continue to believe in the project, which was officially launched in 2017 but is still stuck in eternal alpha. In 2025 alone, the developers have raised more than $100 million, as back in April the total amount of funds raised exceeded $800 million, and at the time of writing, the donation counter stopped at $927,616,773 – and this is without a single full release.
Initially, Star Citizen was developed as a classic crowdfunding project, but over time, it has evolved into a financial ecosystem of microtransactions, paid access to alpha testing, and in-game purchases, where the main product is spaceships costing from several hundred to tens of thousands of dollars. The irony is that the $1 billion budget that the game will almost certainly raise in 2026 would allow for the creation of at least five full-fledged blockbusters on the level of God of War: Ragnarök, while the Cloud Imperium Games project itself has been stubbornly in alpha status for eight years.
At the same time, Cloud Imperium Games is developing Squadron 42, a single-player storyline game in the Star Citizen universe, which is currently promised for release in 2026, although the last time the project was shown in detail was at the end of 2023. It is noteworthy that Squadron 42 was not mentioned during this year’s CitizenCon, which only fuels doubts about the realism of the stated deadlines. Meanwhile, Star Citizen itself is planned to reach version 1.0 in 2027, exactly ten years after the start of alpha testing, which seems to have become a trademark of the project.
As a result, Star Citizen has evolved from an ambitious game into a unique industry phenomenon-a project that has existed for years between dream and release, consistently raising hundreds of millions of dollars. If in 2026 the amount of fees really exceeds $1 billion, it will be not so much a triumph of development as a proof of the endless patience of players and the fact that in the modern gaming industry it is possible to achieve financial success without ever releasing the final version of the game.
