Cloud Imperium Games has hit a major new milestone as part of its ongoing crowdfunding process for sci-fi simulation game Star Citizen. According to its funding goals page, the studio has now raised over $1 billion in funding from across 6.5 million players. Despite having generated substantial funds to support development, the company has yet to announce a definitive release date for Star Citizen.
As can be seen from the crowdfunding timeline graphs present on the page, there have been quite a few major donations made. In recent times, the number of donations had seemingly spiked back in November 2025, when it saw over $32 million in donations. Taking a closer look at just the week, the weekend saw almost $21 million in donations alone.
Some of the biggest spikes in donations for the crowdfunding campaign for Star Citizen happened during 2022 and 2023, with the title breaking the $100 million barrier in those years for the money it was raising on a yearly basis. 2025 had seen its biggest spike yet, with more than $230 million being raised.
Interestingly, the recent spike in funding over the weekend coincided with Star Citizen going through a free period that started on May 18th and will end on May 27th. The free period likely had a role in convincing players who were previously on the fence to buy into the game, since playing on a regular basis requires a player to buy at least one of the in-game space ships.
Last time we reported on Star Citizen‘s crowdfunding, we had noted that the title had made almost $900 million through donations alone.
Star Citizen was originally announced with a crowdfunding campaign all the way back in 2012. Since then, Cloud Imperium Games has continued to rely on crowdfunding to develop the title. Development of its earlier builds seemingly took four years, with the first playable build being released in 2016. The studio has continued to support the game with regular updates, with 2025 marking the release of version Alpha 4.4, which introduced the Nyx system.
Alpha 4.0 was also a major release for Star Citizen, since it introduced a major upgrade to the title’s server infrastructure. As noted by the studio, “Each planet, landing zone, or major station is now covered by different game servers.” This means that the workload can be spread across several machines without the players having to think about whether they’re switching servers.
Chris Roberts, the game’s creator, had spoken about a potential 1.0 release window for Star Citizen. In an interview, he said that it might officially launch in either 2027 or 2028.
Cloud Imperium Games has also been working on a sister game to Star Citizen – the more narrative-focused Squadron 42. Back in December, Roberts had said that the title had become fully playable and will offer players over 40 hours of play time. In the meantime, its developers are working on “remaining polish, optimization, and bug fixing.” The studio had also said in 2024 that it was aiming to release Squadron 42 in 2026.