By Swikblog Gaming Desk | Updated December 2025
Star Citizen has passed the staggering milestone of roughly $900 million in lifetime crowdfunding and early access sales, more than many Hollywood blockbusters and AAA game franchises combined. Thirteen years into development and still officially in alpha, the space sim has once again set off a fierce debate online — and nowhere louder than on Reddit.
Under a now-viral thread titled “Star Citizen Hits $900 Million in Crowdfunding After a Record-Breaking Year”, players are trying to explain how a game they describe as “mindblowing” and “unlike anything else” can also be something they warn friends not to buy.
‘My Favourite Game That I Don’t Recommend’
The most upvoted reaction in the thread perfectly captures the split personality of Star Citizen. One long-time backer calls it their favourite game of all time — then immediately adds that they wouldn’t recommend anyone spend money on it. For many supporters, the problem is not the dream itself, but the way that dream is being funded and delivered.
Players describe a project that can feel breathtaking one moment and broken the next. Contract missions bug out, elevators and hallways feel endless, and basic systems still wobble after more than a decade of patches. One veteran warns newcomers bluntly: if you’re a casual player with only a few hours a week, “you’re going to have a rough go. Do not play Star Citizen.”
When It Works, There Really Is ‘Nothing Else Like It’
The praise, however, is just as intense as the criticism. Reddit users talk about seamless travel from planet surfaces to orbit, huge capital ships you can walk through room by room, multi-crew missions where friends gun from turrets while others pilot or board enemy vessels, and emergent stories that feel closer to a sci-fi movie than a traditional MMO.
One player recounts stealing a cargo-laden ship with a friend after losing a space battle: drifting through space, breaching the airlock, fighting room-by-room, killing the pilot mid-escape, and eventually selling the captured vessel for profit. Another compares Star Citizen to the famous “you see that mountain, you can go there” promise — except here, it’s “you see that planet, station or distant star system, you can go there.”
Fans also praise the graphics and art direction, comparing rival titles like No Man’s Sky or EVE Online and insisting that, with the right PC, Star Citizen looks like a high-end shooter merged with a flight sim and industrial sandbox. For enthusiasts, it’s a once-in-a-generation experiment they’re happy to dip into every major patch, even if the final release date is still a question mark.
Thirteen Years, Hundreds of Dollars — and No Release Date
The $900 million figure doesn’t come from a single Kickstarter pot. Instead, it’s a cumulative total from the original crowdfunding campaign, years of game package sales, and a thriving market for in-game ships and extras. Some redditors admit to spending well over $2,000 across 13 years, but argue that spread over a decade, it feels closer to a long-running hobby than an impulse buy.
Others are less forgiving. They point out that much of the funding has arrived after the original Kickstarter, meaning buyers knew they were paying into an unfinished alpha — yet still question whether a project this big should be leaning so heavily on aspirational ship sales rather than a finished, shippable product.
One commenter jokes that Star Citizen has become “development as a service”, while another dryly labels it “agile” taken to the extreme: always updating, always adding, never quite done.
Why Players Keep Backing the ‘Sagrada Família of Games’
So why do people keep paying? Supporters in the thread point to several reasons: improved stability in recent patches, new star systems and ships, and the sense that the world is slowly, visibly expanding. For them, the game has already delivered hundreds of hours of value, even if many features are provisional or half-finished.
There is also the simple fact that there’s no direct competitor. Other space games offer pieces of the fantasy — trading, or dogfighting, or planetary exploration — but not the full “walk everywhere, fly everything, board anything” package Star Citizen is chasing. That uniqueness may be why, even as critics call it a cautionary tale, loyal fans still log in for 40-hour stretches and describe it as the most immersive experience they’ve ever had.
Is Star Citizen Worth Trying in 2025?
For curious newcomers, Reddit’s verdict is complicated. On one side are players urging people to use free trial weeks, see the spectacle for themselves, and then decide whether it’s worth the $45 starter price. On the other are long-suffering veterans warning that unless you have time, patience and a high tolerance for bugs, you may be better off watching from the sidelines.
The safest takeaway from the thread is this: Star Citizen is not a normal purchase. It’s closer to backing an ongoing experiment than buying a finished product. If you do jump in, the community’s advice is to spend the minimum, treat each big patch as a fresh sci-fi weekend, and avoid chasing expensive ships with real money.
If you prefer your sci-fi adventures with a clearer end date and a more traditional release plan, you might be more excited about upcoming titles like the new dinosaur-hunting reboot. You can already read a full breakdown of another fan-favourite comeback in our explainer on Turok: Origins and its planned 2026 release.
The Billion-Dollar Question
With funding curves still pointing upward, most observers now believe Star Citizen will eventually pass the $1 billion mark. Whether that makes it gaming’s ultimate success story or a warning about endless early access will depend on what Cloud Imperium delivers in the coming years.
For now, Reddit’s verdict stands: there really is nothing else like Star Citizen — but that doesn’t mean you should rush to buy it.
The reactions quoted in this article are drawn from a highly active discussion on Reddit’s PC gaming community, where hundreds of players debated Star Citizen’s funding milestone. You can view the original thread and full conversation on r/pcgaming on Reddit.
