Star Citizen has raised over $200 million since Cloud Imperium Games started looking for funding in 2012, and a financial breakdown from late last year reveals how a lot of that money has been spent between 2012 and 2017. In that time, Cloud Imperium has spent over $193 million, and almost $50 million just in 2017.
If you’ve thrown your own money at Star Citizen, or if you’re just interested in how all this money we keep writing stories about is getting spent, it’s pretty informative. One of the graphs shows costs split up into salaries, publishing and marketing, developer costs and more.
Salaries are where CIG is spending most of its cash, though this wasn’t always the case. Salaries became the largest expense in 2014, with contracted developer costs being the highest the year before. In 2016 and 2017, contracted developer costs dropped considerably, from $14,103,000 in 2015 to 3,313 in 2017 as CIG brought in more full-time developers.
Over the past few years, CIG has been spending more than it's earning, but pledges, subscriptions and other revenue streams are still high. In 2017, income reached almost $44 million, though 2016 was slightly better. Across all years, crowdfunding pledges contributed the most, by quite a significant amount.
Star Citizen is still far off, but the singleplayer Squadron 42 will be ready for beta testing in the second half of 2020.
Cheers, Gamasutra.
