Star Citizen is currently still being crowd-funded directly from the official website.
The pledge packages contain a wide selection of bonuses, including ships, multiple levels of citizenship for your character, which defines your place in the social class within the game world, as well as a few physical goods and some extra in-game currency to begin with.
2011 - Development started in 2011 on a modified version of CryENGINE 3
October 2012 - The developers of the game started a crowdfunding campaign on both the project website and Kickstarter. Funding quickly surpassed the initial target goals and subsequently additional stretch goals were added to the funding campaign, most promising more or expanded content at release.
The Kickstarter stretch goals:
November 2012 - The initial end date of the funding campaign on the RSI website was later extended by 10 days to match the Kickstarter end date, both to enable additional funding as well as a joint special event for the end of the crowdfunding campaigns.
November 2012 - Two days before crowdfunding closure, the game achieved the record for highest crowd-funded game-project ever with over $4.2 million (210% of the initial funding goal).
The crowd funding campaign still continues, the total funded by backers has been $7,382,050 from 106,677 backers as of January 17th 2013.
2041/15 - The game has an expected release date of sometime between 2014 and 2015. Chris Roberts currently plans Star Citizen to remain DRM free.
When asked why they didn't go through a publisher, Chris Roberts stated: "We want to build a PC game and publishers increase costs because of their need to recoup their sizable overhead. We want to make sure all the money raised goes directly to the development of the game. The game will cost less, be more creatively pure, and, most importantly, be built for the real “core” audience."
Chris Roberts estimates Star Citizen will require $12-14 million in funding to fully develop. His studio has already spent $1-2 million developing what is currently being shown in demos. Chris has also stated that outside investors are interested in funding the remaining development costs if he can prove there is sufficient interest in the game.
