Although, $75 million is still impressive.
Edit: I stand corrected. I simply looked at the website which listed the stretch goals to $65 million and missed the $750 million total. Cowabunga.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-funded_crowd...
They also claim around 5 million backers which puts the average donation at around 150 dollars. That seems really high.
From the wikipedia article, the next highest game is Prison Architect at a comparatively paltry 20 million.
It's still possible. On the other hand, it could all be completely PR bull crap since there's no way to audit them.
+ the $750m only includes ship sales. If you include other revenue (subscriptions) and investors, they are likely at $900m+ now.
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
EDIT: From Companies House Next accounts made up to 31 December 2023 due by 31 December 2024.
So I guess we'll find out in roughly a month.
Check out the store, its absurd what they are able to charge for completely digital assets that don't even exist in game yet
10 years of development, 750 millions budget and people are still not convinced it’s a scam ? They want it so much, damn.
On the other hand we have the Asmodee Digital business model: release an (initially) broken game somewhat on schedule with tons of bugs (Terraforming Mars) and only start fixing a few of the bugs if you sell enough copies [0]. But don't fix enough of them to the level where the digital version is as playable as the physical version, not for 5 years at least... in all sincerity I don't know why it's not acceptable to call something a beta release, price it and set expectations accordingly - but with a defined timeline (or revenue goal) to when it should become fully playable.
I'm also reminded of the failed Mycroft AI voice assistant [1].
[0]: https://videogamegeek.com/thread/2206151/cthulhu-reviews-ter... [1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=mycroft+ai
if the people involved in the management were half decent at their jobs they would have stopped expanding the scope and shipped the originally promised game 5 years ago, and then carried on releasing expansions like elite does.
Chris Roberts might be a huge con artist, but there's no doubt he's mastered the art of milking gullible whales for all of their cash.
Also, I always laugh when I see people talking about buying copies of Star Citizen for their kids so they can play together when the kid grows up. Seems pretty unlikely that the game will be out by then, given they've spent 10+ years with no meaningful progress.
I'm really surprised that they are still raising money this fast. I would have thought people lost interest. Most of the discussions online are negative. There was fans buying ships, but I can't see that generating that much money.