Cloud Imperium Games has hit a major new milestone as part of its ongoing crowdfunding process for Star Citizen. According to its funding goals page, the studio has now raised over $1 billion from across 6.5 million players. Despite having generated substantial funds to support development, it has yet to announce a definitive release date for the space sim.
As the crowdfunding timeline graph indicates, there have been quite a few major donations recently. The number of donations spiked in November 2025, crossing $32 million. May 21st alone saw almost $21 million in donations.
Some of the biggest spikes in donations happened during 2022 and 2023, with the title breaking the $100 million barrier. 2025 had seen its biggest spike yet, with more than $230 million raised.
Interestingly, the recent spike in funding over the weekend coincided with Star Citizen’s free period that started on May 18th and will end on May 27th. It likely convinced players who were previously on the fence to buy in, since playing regularly requires buying one of the in-game spaceships.
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 back in 2012. Development of its earlier builds seemingly took four years, with the first playable build 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 is 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.