While we often have to be content to measure the success of Star Citizen by the amount of its crowdfunding, which exceeded the $500 million mark last month, we now know that 1.7 million players have purchased the game, out of the 4.1 million accounts created for free, as reported by Giuseppe Nelva on the Twinfinite site.
According to Chris Roberts, the community shows no sign of discouragement, despite the work that still needs to be done before this space exploration simulation is considered a finished game. In fact, Star Citizen’s attendance has reached a daily average of 50,000 unique players, with peaks of 130,000 players on the most eventful days. For comparison, this daily average was 10,000 players in 2017 and 32,000 last year.
The good health of the game is also reflected in the average playing time of users, which is currently 180 minutes per day compared to 48 minutes in 2017, 64 minutes in 2018 and 120 minutes in 2019. Since the beginning of 2022, Star Citizen players accumulate 36 million hours of play, we are also told. For Chris Roberts, the increase in playtime reflects Cloud Imperium Games’ efforts to make the product more efficient and stable, knowing that the game is still in the alpha stage of its development.
Funded by private investors in addition to the famous crowdfunding, Cloud Imperium Games now has no less than 835 employees worldwide, 500 of whom will take up residence this week in brand new premises located in Manchester. Finally, note that the game’s YouTube channel has published many videos giving an overview of the work in progress for version 4.0 of the alpha.