How sci-fi game maker Chris Roberts crowdfunded $72.3M from 750,913 supporters

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
February 10, 2015
Updated June 18, 2025
12 min

Chris Roberts has broken all the records for crowdfunding. As of this report, His Roberts Space Industries raised an unprecedented $72 million from 750,913 supporters for his upcoming Star Citizen sci-fi space combat sim and its related games. He did that by starting with an ambitious idea and then staying in constant touch with his supporters.

It’s hard to imagine anybody in any industry raising $72 million for a cause, but that tells you how starved players are for something different. And with the cool 3D graphics and intricate universe of Star Citizen, Roberts hopes to tap into the nostalgia that people have for his old space dogfighting games like Wing Commander.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.