As of May 24th, 2026, the open-world MMO Star Citizen has officially reached $1 Billion in funding. This marks the 14th year of development for this game that has been in the works since 2012. And despite all of this, the game is still not technically “finished”. And despite this, Cloud Imperium Games’ (the studio behind Star Citizen) director, Christ Roberts, the man behind games such as Wing Commander from the 90’s, says the game is still nowhere close to being finished, or at least its finalization in terms of development is still years to come. In an interview with Variety, Roberts stated that, “A lot of people want to spend time adventuring out in the virtual world of something that’s like ‘Star Citizen,’ and that’s really what’s helped get us to where we are, because the dream so big that it’s something that you don’t get in any other other game. It’s not something that would be able to be done under a traditional big game publisher funding it, or private equity”.
All the while during this, the developers for Star Citizen have also released ship “concepts” that while you can technically buy, you cannot actually use. The latest is that of “Anvil Oden”, which as of now costs, believe it or not, $5,000 dollars. That’s right- you can spend $5,000 on ship you can’t even currently use in the game. While this isn’t the same for every ship in the game, Star Citizen, despite being a technically incomplete game, still has a $10-20 month subscription bundle while the full game itself is $45.
The developers of Star Citizen have also been developing Squadron 42, which is a stand-alone game in the Star Citizen universe which as of now has many celebrity cameos, including Mark Hamill, Gillian Anderson, John Rhys-Davies, Gary Oldman, and Andy Serkis. And yes, despite all of this, the main game is still not complete. And as a reminder, it’s been worked on since 2012- I can still remember being in high school when this game was announced and some of my friends wanting to invest in buying ships.