Star Citizen raises $25 million, wider alpha testing now on the horizon

Another week, another million-dollar milestone for Star Citizen . With $25 million now raised, "galactic" seems too small a word to describe the scale of the in-development space sim's crowdfunding effort. Beyond the big number, developer Chris Roberts reports in announcing the funding goal that as many as 50,000 more testers could be added to the game's first alpha testing phase thanks to the massive recent fundraising success.

"Even though we've fully funded the base game, every extra dollar helps to make the experience better," writes Roberts in his latest update."The content we talk about in these stretch goals isn't 'feature creep'; it's elements we've been building and planning that will be all that more impressive with additional resources. In essence, you're putting things we've already discussed for the future into development now. The extra funding means we're secure in assigning resources to go ahead and begin developing that richer content we had initially planned to fund through the game's success upon release."

Roberts revealed a new Banu merchant class ship in the update, whose design and construction, along with additional Banu culture technology, will be financed should Star Citizen reach the $27 million stretch goal. Beyond the massive numbers it says to anyone listening that there's at least a fierce demand for the potential, be it as a salvage pilot or ground combatant , that so many supporters see in Roberts' ambitious project.