How much money has Star Citizen made? — 2024 statistics

Star Citizen has raised $600 million through crowdfunding.

(Source: Kotaku)

• The original Kickstarter campaign for Star Citizen launched in 2012 raised $2.1 million.
• At the time of writing, the total funding stands at $597 million.
• The developers set up funding milestones that would add more features to the game, from ships to star systems and more.

The most prominent thing that people talk about regarding Star Citizen is the fact that that game gets most of its money through crowdfunding, from backers and interested players that want to see the game prosper. The original funding started in 2012 and saw a very impressive start, raising a couple of million dollars easily. Since then, the total funding for the game has absolutely skyrocketed, amassing over a billion dollars in the span of 11 years. If it continues at this pace, we could well see the total funding reaching $1 billion.

2019 was a record-breaking year for Star Citizen, with $60.7 million.

(Source: Bored Gamer)

• $47.6 million was raised through crowdfunding and backers.
• $9.4 million was raised through incentives, sponsors, licensing, and partnerships.
• $3.6 million was raised through subscriptions.
• The total earnings were up by 24% compared to 2018’s $48.9 million.

The total funding is impressive, there is no denying that, but it is also important to take a look at specifics regarding single years of development, and the profits that come from them. 2019 was a monumental year for Cloud Imperium Games as the total profits were $60.7 million, a record number for the company. Of course, most of the money was generated through crowdfunding, a staple of Star Citizen.

Cloud Imperium Games spent $70.4 million in 2019.

(Source: Bored Gamer)

• $39.7 million was spent on employee salaries.
• $11.4 million was spent on publishing and marketing.
• $5.6 million was spent on contracted dev costs.
• $8.9 million was spent on other dev costs.
• $2.2 million was spent on general & admin.
• $2.4 million was spent on Capex trading.

With strong earnings comes strong spending. CIG ended up spending more money than it earned but that is to be expected as the developers of the game are obviously trying to increase the quality of the game substantially with each passing year, and we can only wait and see what they bring to the galactic table in the coming years.

Players earned 29.2 billion credits across a single month of playtime in 2019.

(Source: Infographic)

• Total earnings:
  • 22.5 billion from cargo transactions
  • 5.2 billion from mission rewards
  • 986.3 million from service beacon contract payments
  • 320.1 million from refinery transactions
  • 37.5 billion in commodity value earned by players
• Earnings breakdown by activity:
  • 18.6 billion (49%) from trading
  • 15.6 billion (42%) from mining
  • 3.2 billion (9%) from hand gathering
• Total player spending: 43.2 billion aUEC
• Spending breakdown by category:
  • 69.3% on commodities
  • 18.2% on vehicles
  • 4.3% on vehicle equipment
  • 3.5% on vehicle weapons
  • 1.5% on armor
  • 1.4% on FPS weapons
  • 0.6% on miscellaneous goods
  • 0.5% on apparel
  • 0.4% on FPS attachments
  • 0.12% on tools
  • 0.08% on ammunition
• Most purchased ships: Anvil Hawk, Drake Caterpillar, Origin M5, Anvil Valkyrie, Anvil Hurricane
• Most purchased weapons: P4-AR Ballistic Rifle, Custodian Energy SMG, P8-SC Ballistic SMC, Scalpel Ballistic Sniper Rifle, Devastator Energy Shotgun

Here are some spacey financial statistics taken from a chunk of the playtime that players invested in Star Citizen way back in 2019. There’s not much to say about this aside from establishing a broader perspective on the sheer scale that is Star Citizen and everything its players can accomplish by simply enjoying the game.

Players spent 1,064 years playing Star Citizen between January and October 2019.

(Source: Reddit)

• Players spent the most time (31.33%) in Area 18, in regards to stations.
• Players spent the most time (27.69%) in Hurston, in regards to planets, asteroids, and moons.
• The most-flown ship was the RSI Aurora.
• 17.6 million kills were made.
• 83.5% were PvE kills, while 16.5% were PvP kills.
• The most lethal weapon was the Behrine P4-AR Ballistic Rifle, with 1.39 million kills.
• The most lethal ship was the Anvil Arrow with 1.49 million kills.
• The top 3 countries for Star Citizen were the United States, Germany, and France, in that order.

More player stats! This time, a bit more murderous and time-consuming. Ten months of playtime yielded one thousand years of gameplay, which is quite substantial for a game that is in active development. Despite the time that players spent during this period, the total number of kills is relatively low compared to other games similar to Star Citizen. This further emphasizes the fact that this is a space sim focused on exploration more than player conflict.

Star Citizen had 18.1 million hours watched on Twitch in 2022.

(Source: SullyGnome)

• The game had 673,045 broadcasting hours.
• There were 2,074 viewers watching the game on average.
• There were 76 channels streaming the game on average.
• It had a viewer ratio of 27.
• Its max viewer count was 269,842.
• There were 26,439 broadcasters that streamed the game.

Many people who prefer to watch games instead of playing them will find a great deal of entertainment from Star Citizen as it is a very complex game that can take hundreds of hours to fully explore and play through, and as such, is ideal for Twitch streaming. Of course, it did not gain the same viewership as some of the top games on the site, but it still does quite well for its genre and its niche.

To sum up

So, we’ve managed to condense the vastness of the cosmos into a… ten-minute read? Yeah, just about. From the statistics we’ve presented here, we can see that Star Citizen is a truly monumental project that has been built upon and improved for over a decade, resulting in an exceptional game that is a marvel of its craft and one of the best examples of space simulation available. An ever-growing project, we cannot wait to see where Star Citizen is in a year, two, five, or ten from now. In each case, we’ll be sure to update this with any new information made available over time.