Developer Cloud Imperium Games has now raised an eye-watering $400,000,000 for its space trading and combat sim Star Citizen – a game that's now been in development for the best part of a decade.
According to Star Citizen's official website, the game has now generated more than $400,000,000 from fan-raised funds. Despite its community's generosity, however, Cloud Imperium Games is still yet to release a full version of the game even though its crowdfunding campaign started back in 2012 – you know, the same year that Bethesda released Dishonored and Ubisoft made waves with Far Cry 3.
While it could be argued that Star Citizen's lengthy delay in development is in part down to its long list of community-led stretch goals, the developer's last date-marked funding target was reached in 2014 as the game eclipsed $63,000,000.
Last year, Star Citizen creator Christopher Roberts explained to fans that features promised in the game several years ago were "not a pipe dream" and that they would not take another "10 to 20 years" to implement into the game. Since then, the developer has made further efforts to update fans on the latest changes that it's making to the game – CIG's last update post came on November 17 and includes a number of notes detailing the latest build for the game's alpha.
Despite the updates, earlier this year, fan frustration around the game peaked as one Reddit user reported the company to the UK Advertising Standards Agency for a lack of transparency over its sale of "concept ships" for the game. Following the complaint, which claimed that the studio had misled its customers by not clearly indicating that the concept ships on sale weren't actually available in the game, the studio was issued with an Advice Notice from the ASA explaining that it must be more transparent in the future.
For more on CIG's space trading and combat sim, make sure to check out our official IGN page for Star Citizen where you can find a range of the latest news, clips, and features from the game.
Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.