The ever-escalating Star Citizen production budget has become a thing of legend, even outside of the space game‘s dedicated community. Players have been waiting over a decade to venture into the depths of Cloud Imperium’s iteration of the galaxy, and given it has been ten years since development began, Star Citizen has racked up an eye-watering budget that now exceeds that of multiple triple-A games combined.
Star Citizen has been in production for well over a decade now, accumulating over $580 million for its development cost in that time, as detailed on its funding page. To better put this amount into perspective, take a few of the biggest and most notoriously expensive triple-A games, combine them, and stare in awe at the outcome. Reportedly, Grand Theft Auto 5’s development cost came in at $137 million, Red Dead Redemption 2’s at $170 million, and Cyberpunk 2077’s at $174 million (thanks, PlayerAuctions).
This means that even added all together, three of the largest videogames ever made still cost less combined to develop than Star Citizen has to date, with no firm release date in sight.
Given that all of this money has been crowdfunded, it’s a pretty impressive feat. I love a good indie game crowdfunder, but at this point Star Citizen is effectively a triple-A game. In turn, this raises the bar for what we expect it to look like and deliver. As time goes by and expectations continue to rise, I wonder if Star Citizen be up to the challenge – especially with the Starfield release date looming on the horizon.
While we wait for Star Citizen to launch in full, we have a list of other upcoming PC games you may want to check out in the meantime, as well as all of the best multiplayer games to keep you and your friends busy while you wait.