‘Star Citizen’ Crosses $75M, FPS Mode Discussed, Multi-Crew Ship Shown And More

Spurred on by both PAX 2015 and the SXSW weekend celebrations, the “Star Citizen” crowdfunding juggernaut just keeps on trucking. Creator Chris Roberts recently announced that the game has pulled in more than $75M from backers and divulged details about the upcoming FPS Module, as well as the impending release of a prototype multi-crew ship.

As previously reported, “Star Citizen” crossed the $72M mark in mid February, meaning the game has racked up more than $3M in just over over a month. The latest figures come via the “Star Citizen” website’s built-in crowdfunding tracker, which shows that over 800,000 backers believe in Chris Roberts’ vision.

IGN reports that Roberts, speaking during a panel the recently concluded SXSW show, divulged that his initial plan was to raise between $2-4M, with the rest of the development funds coming from private investors. He intended to launch a scaled back version of “Star Citizen” and then add more content, such as the First-Person Shooter Module after release.

Speaking further about the FPS Module, Roberts touched on some of the planned features, stating that non-player characters could play roles during missions and gamers can also get a friend to control an NPC character if they need an extra hand to man a gun turret in a fire fight. Roberts also reiterated the team’s support of the Oculus Rift VR headset, noting that support for Oculus was built into the latest iteration of the Cryengine, which “Star Citizen” runs on.

In a video posted on the IGN YouTube channel, Roberts went ahead to show off the latest build of the game, on the “Star Citizen” Persistent Test Universe, which lets testers gain early access to less stable builds of the game. During the video, Roberts shows off “The Retaliator,” a Millenium Falcon-esque prototype multi-crew ship which allows up to five friends to man turrets while one player acts as the ship’s pilot.

Gamers will be able to explore the Retaliator multi-crew ship in the hangar, as part of the “Star Citizen” 1.1 Arena Commander update. In his latest post on the “Star Citizen” website, Roberts notes that the update was delayed to ensure the multiplayer free flight mode and manual take-off and landing features, both part of 1.1, were as polished as possible. He went on to add that beyond the more visible features included in update 1.1, the groundwork was being laid for rapid expansion of the core “Star Citizen” game, including the “Star Marine” FPS Module due in update 1.2, as well as future modules further down the line.