Crowdfunding campaign

In October 2012, Cloud Imperium Games started a crowdfunding campaign on their own website for Star Citizen. The Original Site showcased a trailer for Star Citizen with lore and an original goal of $2,000,000 USD for development.

$577,984,094 USD later (As of May 25, 2023 ), Star Citizen is one of the largest crowdfunded projects in the world and it continues to steadily grow. Additional Stretch Goals were developed beyond the original $2 million with expanded systems, ships, mechanics, and other features. Kickstarter was used in parallel with early crowdfunding, with all current funding managed through the RSI Website Funding page

Crowdfunding Timeline

 * Original Site
 * Kickstarter
 * Continued RSI site funding

Why Crowdfunding?
Chris Roberts didn't see any benefits to a traditional publisher for an online game.

The original plan was to raise some money from private investors to build a sort of alpha that didn't have everything Chris Roberts wanted in it but would have been enough that he could give it to someone and they could play it and give him a reduced amount of money he could use to continue adding features until he built it to his final feature set. Wing Commander I was similarly funded by showing basic gameplay first. It would prove to investors that there was a player base.

At most Chris Roberts hoped to bring in $2 million to $4 million with crowdfunding and add in another $10 million from investors to pay for a functional alpha. Then he planned to use that to start bringing in revenue which would be used to finance the rest of the game.

He was inspired by examples such as Minecraft and League of Legends.

As new year came and 7 or 8 millions had been raised securing investors, Sandi Gardiner said that no investors were needed and that at least 20 millions could be raised by the end of the year. Chris Roberts said she was crazy and she asked him to give it a few months to prove it.

There are many benefits to crowdfunding. First of all it allows Cloud Imperium Games to break any ties with the standard triple-A developers and publishers. This means that Star Citizen has no deadlines or constrains, the stretch goals can be increased and most importantly, there are no shareholders expecting to earn a big cut of profits, nor are there emotionally disinterested publishers forcing decisions, or wanting to sell the studio to a bigger one.

Also important, is the fact that backers expect to be given constant updates about the game's development state. Star Citizen accomplishes this through their Comm-Links and the Youtube page.

Crowdfunding Rewards

 * Stretch Goals
 * Early backer rewards

Current Funding

 * Basic ship packages
 * Ship Sales
 * Squadron 42
 * Monthly Subscription
 * Merchandise
 * Extras (Skins, Hangars, UEC, add ons)

Trivia

 * Star Citizen holds the Guiness World Record for Most crowdfunded Videogame
 * It was unexpected that individual players would want to buy a lot of ships and have various professions.