Star Citizen was first unveiled to the world back on October 10, 2012, with a promise to revive the space sim genre on an unprecedented scale. Cloud Imperium, the studio behind the game, initially chose to crowdfund it through Kickstarter but switched to its own platform later once the project expanded in scope. Nearly 14 years later, Star Citizen has just crossed $1 billion in total funding, and there's still no release date in sight.
To be clear, you can play Star Citizen right now; the game does exist in an alpha state with most of the promised features already included, but it's riddled with bugs. Cloud Imperium releases timely updates to add new items and gameplay, along with some very expensive microtransactions. If you back the project, you're given a pledge ship that should be playable in-game... in most cases.
Recently, during the DefenseCon event, the studio revealed the "Anvil Odin" ship that costs $5,000, even though you can't fly it yet. It's supposed to drop via a content patch later on as the team continues development. That's been the story of Star Citizen in general forever — the game seems to be stuck in a perpetual development cycle with over 1,000 employees across various studio locations working on it together.
To put the numbers into context, GTA VI (based on reports) is the only other game in history to have a $1 billion budget. Ubisoft's Beyond Good and Evil 2, originally announced back in 2007, is perhaps the only project predating Star Citizen. It's still unreleased, but unlike Star Citizen's crowdfunded approach, Ubisoft has been working on that game behind closed doors with a private payroll.
Moreover, when Star Citizen was announced, the PS3 and Xbox 360 were nearing end-of-life, and now the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S are nearing end-of-life. This game's development has already spanned across three different console generations. By the time it's out, it would need to be released on PS6 and Xbox Helix as well, which itself raises questions about whether we'll get an outdated product at the end.
Christ Roberts, the architect behind Star Citizen, has hinted at a 2027-2028 release date, saying that the studio plans to formally launch it in a year or two after 'Squadron 42' is out. Squadron 42 is a single-player cinematic adventure set in the same universe. It was announced alongside Star Citizen as a linear, story-focused experience, with both titles originally carrying a 2014 release window.
What changed between now and then is, seemingly, the scale of the project. There was an engine switch from CryEngine to the in-house StarEngine to allow for 64-bit precision. Cloud Imperium added Persistent Entity Streaming (PES) to track object locations in real-time across servers. To make that seamless, Server Meshing was introduced, stitching multiple servers into one universe, dynamically switching players between them as they pass planets.
Squadron 42 is currently aiming for a release sometime in 2026, but there's no concrete release date, which is concerning given its unique track record. Star Citizen is by far the most expensive crowdfunded game in history, but also one of the most successful ones, since people just keep giving these guys more and more money. Fun fact: Tom's Hardware covered Star Citizen for the first time in late 2012, almost 14 years ago.
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