People are looking at this all wrong. What you have here is a 13 year old business that makes about $100M per year. Nothing to sneeze at, but when compared to successful live-service games and MMOs, it’s peanuts. The cumulative revenue is irrelevant, and again, peanuts compared to successful games. Genshin Impact made $100M per month when it was released. World of Warcraft is a few decades old and still made $680M in 2024 (the most recent numbers I could find).

What makes Star Citizen unique is that it was crowd-funded—it started taking money before any features were available at all, and released to buyers (“backers”) in an unusually incomplete and buggy state. But all that revenue is turned around and plowed right back into development. (Their finances are publicly available.)

The game remains incomplete and buggy to this day, but with lots of stuff to do and clear forward progress, and, from what I hear, it offers a uniquely immersive experience. People like it enough that revenue keeps increasing, with nearly every year setting new records.

So that’s all this is: a moderately successful company with big ambitions, a lot of bugs, and a passionate fan base. Its annual revenue is nothing special. Don’t fall the sensationalism of the way its modest lifetime revenue numbers are shared.

(Just an interested observer with no horse in this race. I’ve never played the game or spent any money on it.)