Star Citizen production costs have ballooned past Cyberpunk 2077, GTA 5, and RDR2 combined

Development on Star Citizen continues and according to the latest reports, production costs have now ballooned past those of Cyberpunk 2077, Grand Theft Auto V, and Red Dead Redemption 2 combined.

Star Citizen, Cloud Imperium Games’ upcoming space trading and combat simulation title, has developed somewhat of a notorious reputation in recent years. A generous $500,000,000 was eventually raised by supporters to fund the project after a crowdfunding page was opened back in 2010. By 2019, an estimated $320,100,000 had been spent but predominantly on marketing, publishing, and administration costs, as per a report by BoredGamer. Earlier this year, players were invited to partake in an alpha test but that resulted in a mass outage leading many to wonder just how much money would need to be thrown at this game before the eventual full release. Well, those costs continue to swell.

Take a look at Star Citizen in action below.

As reported by PCGamesN, it’s believed that Star Citizen has now accumulated $580,000,000 in total, as detailed on its funding page. To get an idea of what an incredibly large amount that is, Grand Theft Auto V reportedly cost $137 million to develop, Red Dead Redemption 2 cost $170 million, while Cyberpunk 2077 cost $174 million. In total, they add up to $481,000,000 - far less than Star Citizen.

Surely, the game must be close to being released. In fact, some players have been saying it’s been in a releasable state for years. The alpha test earlier this year introduced “immersive careers, stunning locations, and thrilling gameplay.” Once the initial outages were fixed, partial stability issues remained but many actually praised the general performance of the game.

I’d imagine there’s only so long that fans are willing to wait though. A decade is a long time to spend developing a game. We’re also now very close to the release of another space epic, Starfield, which will launch this September. We’ll be keeping an eye on further Star Citizen updates.