PC space sim Star Citizen hits a mind-blowing $42 million

Another week, another funding milestone for PC space sim Star Citizen. The game's already wildly successful crowdfunding effort has now reached a mind-blowing $42 million. This comes just days after creator Chris Roberts demonstrated the game's epic dogfighting mode at PAX East in Boston, Mass.

Roberts said in a statement that, "I can't think of a better symbolic victory than reaching that number in crowdfunding. The 'meaning of life, the universe, and everything' is now the amount pledged to let us build a new universe!"

The number 42 is popular with science-fiction fans based on its inclusion in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a means to explain what life is all about.

At $42 million, the game's backers will receive an Updated Observist Guide (featuring holographic ships, items, and navigation interface in 3D), as well as the Explorer-class mobiGlas Rig--available to all players who backed before the campaign reached $42. In addition, now that the campaign has reached $42 million, developer Cloud Imperium Games will add a new fighter ship called Gladius, as well as a towel for their hangar.

Cloud Imperium did not say what the $43 million stretch goal is, but outlined plans for $44 million and beyond. Players will receive an additional hangar room at $44 million and you can vote right now on what you want for the $45 million goal. The options are a new ship's gun, updated scanner software, a new role-specific outfit, an engine tuning kit, a ship skin, a space plant, or a "mystery object."

To put Star Citizen's $42 million into context, Epic Games revealed in 2006 that development on the original Gears of War cost $10 million, while Tim Schafer's 2008 action game Brutal Legend had a budget of around $25 million. It's still well below, however, the development budget for MMOs, which can run into the hundreds of millions.

Star Citizen is due to launch in full sometime in 2015. A total of 429,367 people have backed the project so far.