The long-delayed crowd-funded video game, Star Citizen, now has the biggest budget of any video game in history. Currently, the price tag for the game exceeds that of Red Dead Redemption 2, Grand Theft Auto 5, and Cyberpunk 2077 combined. It is the latest in a long line of crowd-funded records Star Citizen has set.
Star Citizen launched its original Kickstarter campaign with a relatively modest goal of $2M. The game was pitched as a spiritual successor to the Wing Commander games, with the project being led by series lead Chris Roberts. For reasons that remain a source of debate and controversy, the development of Star Citizen and its single-player campaign, Squadron 42, has gone on for over a decade. Production on the game, however, has not stopped as the developer has continued to get funding from various sources.
In September 2022, the crowdfunding budget of Star Citizen finally crossed over $500M. As of this writing, that amount has increased to nearly $600M with no release date in sight. For some perspective, the budget for Grand Theft Auto 5 was around $137M, Red Dead Redemption 2 was $170M, and Cyberpunk 2077 was around $174M. What this means is that the cost of Star Citizen now exceeds the combined budgets of three of some of the most expensive video games of the past decade.
Even before it hit the 500M mark, Star Citizen was already the most expensive video game ever made. The only game that comes close to its budget was the MMO RPG Star Wars: The Old Republic from BioWare which was estimated to cost roughly $200M to make. Even with that massive price take, it's barely more than a third of what it's cost to make Chris Roberts' Wing Commander successor. However, the game has, at the very least, given gamers the ability to play in some form for several years.
The first version of the game went live all the way back in 2013. Since then, the developer has gradually updated the game and added new content while charging players the ability to buy new ships. The latest update for Star Citizen was released in March and not without its own share of controversies. The price tag for the game will very likely continue to increase as time goes on and more updates for the game are released. Whether a full version of the game will ever hit digital storefronts remains to be seen.
Star Citizen is available on PC.