Cloud Imperium January 2025 Sales Revenue Up 44.2% Year-Over-Year

After a year in which cash shop revenue held steady, Cloud Imperium Games' began 2025 with $7.8 million in sales according to the CCU Game dashboard. The amount was a 44.2% increase in sales compared to January 2024.

The $781.8 million displayed on the Roberts Space Industries funding page at the end of January was not a comprehensive accounting for all of CIG's revenue since the project's Kickstarter in October 2012. Overall, the company has recorded $872.6 million in confirmed revenue (the funding page & the 2022 financial report).

• Sales/Pledges: $781.8 million (through 31 January 2025)
• Subscriptions: $33.0 million (through 31 December 2022)
• All other sources: $65.6 million (through 31 December 2022)

In addition, the company has received a total of $63.25 million in outside investment. According to the 2022 financial report, $4.8 million of the amount was returned to investors in 2020. Including the outside investment money, the total amount raised by CIG to create Squadron 42 and Star Citizen is $943.6 million, or $938.8 million when excluding the returned funds.

The Funding Plateau - Over the last three years, Cloud Imperium has faced a sales plateau in the company's sales of virtual good like internet spaceships. Sales have fallen withing 3% of the average of $115.9 million between 2022-2024. I believe the ongoing shakeup of upper management is designed to break through and increase revenue for the company. So in addition to providing year-over-year metrics I will also comparing the previous month's sales to the average sales for the month from the years 2022-2024. I believe if sales continue to fall within the range of $112.4 million and $119.4 million the C-Suite at CIG, if not the board of directors, will not be happy.

In January the Marketing Masters In Manchester had a lot to smile about. Not only did sales rise 44.2% YoY, but increased over the previous 3-year average for January by 16.6%. Sales really benefitted from the release of Alpha 4.0.1 on 28 January and the accompanying sale of both the MISC Fortune and the Red Letter event. Over the last three days of the month, the company recorded almost $1.5 million in sales according to the CCU Game dashboard.

New Account Creation - From 2022 to 2024 CIG saw the number of new accounts created each year fall by 44.5%. I'm assuming that part of the shakeup is aimed at improving that performance as well. So I came up with a simple predictive formula to estimate how big of a drop in new player account creation is expected based on historical trends. For the year, my formula comes up with a 19% drop in new user accounts created in 2025, which is twice as much as I predicted at the beginning of the year.

As good as the sales numbers for January were, the new account creation figures are as poor. Year-over-year last month saw a 35.3% drop in new account creation. Not the way I believe the marketing department drew up the plan. The numbers indicate sales are coming primarily from what is known in the industry as "whales". Or, in other words, not much has changed so far.

Ongoing Concerns - The big question going into February is whether the Calders will exercise their put option in 2025 or wait until the first quarter of 2028. While I fully expect the Calders to choose to wait another three years in order to benefit from the release of Squadron 42, I see a non-zero chance of the second largest shareholders pulling the trigger.

Another concern is the lack of financial information for 2023 available. With my experience covering CCP Games the lack of posting information is a bit puzzling. The Icelandic studio only stopped posting financial information on its corporate website when it briefly didn't have outside investors or was bought by Pearl Abyss. I really don't see either condition existing at the moment.

A bigger concern is the late filing of CIG's accounts to UK Companies House. For the second year in a row the filings will occur after the 31 December deadline. The 2022 filings showed some issues with the accounts from the new auditors, including accessing the liability for the put options for 2024, 2025, and 2028 correctly.

Finally, will CIG announce the reorganization plan? We've heard about the upper management shakeup. How much will the company reduce its presence in the United States, especially in the high cost/high tax state of California?