Wing Commander developer Chris Roberts and his new company Cloud Imperium said on Thursday that their cloud-funding efforts for the upcoming space sim for the PC, Star Citizen, has surpassed three million dollars in pledges.
According to Cloud Imperium, this is a combined number stemming from the company's self-managed crowd funding program which has received more than 2 million pledges, and the Kickstarter program which has brought in more than 1 million. So far there are around 44 thousand backers, and both crowd funding projects still have another 10 days to go.
"It’s hard to believe we’re already at this important milestone," said Roberts. "It’s far beyond our initial objective and well into some of the stretch goals…and we still have 10 days left in the campaign. This amazing success is all thanks to our incredible fans.
"This is extremely exciting for me and our team because it will enable us to create the game we’ve been talking about to our fans over the past month. But we can do even more. I’m still hoping that we’ll reach four million dollars before we close. This will allow us to do more sooner, especially on things like our modder tools."
The support Cloud Imperium has received should speak volumes about the PC gaming community's desire for more AAA, high-class titles. For years PC gamers have seemingly been tossed aside as publishers and developers have flocked to the consoles, citing piracy among other hardware and financial reasons. Even Microsoft, which launched Windows 8 a few weeks back, released the fourth installment of its flagship Halo franchise just days ago without producing a PC counterpart.
After spending ten years in the Hollywood film industry, Roberts has returned to the PC gaming sector to create the game he wanted to make back when he was still developing the original Wing Commander in the early 1990s. His current endeavor, Star Citizen, has been in the works for the past 12 months, and will be launched exclusively for the PC platform.
"[It] will include all the Chris Roberts hallmarks that fans of his games have come to expect over the years: high quality cutting-edge visuals and technology, a virtual world that is immersive and detailed, a sophisticated storyline that is wide in scope and visceral, heart-pounding space combat," the company said on Thursday.
Earlier this week, Cloud Imperium launched a pledge referral program. Current backers are encouraged to enlist their friends in the crowd funding efforts. In turn, they'll have a chance to win prizes like an Alienware Aurora desktop computer, Oculus Rift headsets, Nvidia Geforce graphics cards and Logitech joysticks and gamepads.