5 days, there goes $25 Million

It’s been 5 days since Star Citizen crossed the $24 Million funded mark….and at somewhere around 2:00 AM (Mountain time) this morning, the ongoing Hornet sales pushed Star Citizen over the $25 Million line.

From a fund raising perspective, October has been very good to CIG.  We passed the $21 Million mark on the 8th, and we just passed the $25 Million mark.. that means if we ignore the last part of the $20 -> $21 Million chunk, we’ve still raised $4 Million this month alone.  From a quick glance at the funding tracker on the RSI site… That makes this the best month ever for fund raising.  Last month was pretty impressive at $3.7 Million raised, and with the Hornet sales ongoing, we can probably cross the $4.5 Million raised in October.

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As a reminder, now that we’ve crossed the $25 Million mark, here’s the stretch goal we’ve unlocked:

  • Enhanced Alpha – We will use additional funding to build a wider alpha test than we had originally intended for the first phase of Star Citizen’s launch. The initial plan was to first launch servers in North America and then expand to areas such as Europe and Australia to decrease latency in these areas, perfecting the game as we improve the experience around the world. This funding will allow us to invest in a wider infrastructure for our early testing, spinning up remote servers earlier. Hitting this goal will also allow us to increase the number of remaining alpha slots. Extra alpha slots not only means more Star Citizens will travel the ‘verse at launch, but that we will receive more feedback and more stress testing. This in turn will allow us to better balance and enhance the Star Citizen experience!

This means another 50,000 alpha slots getting added to the ‘available slots’ counter shortly (my guess is Monday after everyone is back in the office).

I am still concerned that having regional servers will result in the splitting of the player base, and potentially, making the game feel less like a MMO, and more like an online single player game.  If you go days without seeing another player, that’s no good.  Hopefully, CIG will address this concern as we get closer to the launching of the dog fighting module.

The next goal has also been revealed, as is tradition now:

  • Banu Merchantman Unlocked – Banu traders are renowed for their merchant prowess, traveling the spacelanes and trading with everyone from humans to the Vanduul! Their sturdy, dedicated trading ships are prized beyond all other transports, sometimes passing from generation to generation of Banu. At $23 million we dedicated additional resources to making Xi’An spacecraft a unique experience. At $27 million, we will expand that same thinking to the Banu! Starting with the merchant ship, the design team will expand Banu technology to offer players a completely different way of experiencing their universe.

So..yeah… that ship sounds pretty cool based off that short description.. so, if everyone could go spend tons of money, so we get to $27 Million and I can have a Merchantman ship, that’d be great!

Any bets on how long the next million dollars takes?  We seem to be averaging about 5 days per million lately, so, we might still hit another million here in October.