Star Citizen developers raised $34.9m in 2017

Now approaching six years since it was successfully Kickstarted for $2 million, the developers behind Star Citizen claim to have raised $34.9 million from additional crowdfunding in 2017 alone.

Although the figure is down slightly from 2016, which saw Star Citizen secure an additional $36.1 million, the total amount raised now exceeds $175 million as the campaign continues outside of Kickstarter.

Through the sale of pre-ordered in-game items, Star Citizen has now raised more money than every other video game on Kickstarter combined for the second year in a row, based on data released to Polygon.

In 2017, the amount pledged to video games on the platform reached $17.25 million, down slightly on 2016 which saw $17.6 million raised in total.

According to Polygon the figures are complicated by two significant factors. Firstly the development teams, Roberts Space Industries (RSI) and Cloud Imperium Games (CIG), declined to say how much money they have returned to backers.

Secondly, Kickstarter claims that 85% to 88% of money pledged in 2016 went to successful campaigns and Polygon has used slightly higher numbers in its calculations for 2017.

Even with those caveats however, the amount raised by Star Citizen continues to dwarf Kickstarter and the hundreds of projects appearing on the platform each year.

Despite the runaway success of the crowdfunding campaign, RSI and CIG face a number of problems including requests for significant refunds from backers still awaiting the game's release and, more recently, a lawsuit filed against the developers by Crytek for breach of contract.