The most obvious cause of October's decline involve the cancellation of the annual celebration of the launch of the Star Citizen/Squadron 42 project. The annual in-person CitizenCon event was replaced by a private event for some of CIG's most loyal customers to present Squadron 42 for play outside CIG for the first time. The next major cause was the developers' continued issues attempting to deliver patch 4.11 to the Persistent Universe. Originally slated for a September 2026 launch, the earliest customers can expect PU access is sometime in December after the big Intergalactic Aerospace Exposition event. Both of the above reasons decreased traffic into Star Citizen and thus reduced opportunities for customers to make further purchases.
The $1059.7 million ($1.06 billion) displayed on the Roberts Space Industries funding page at the end of October was not a comprehensive accounting for all of CIG's revenue since the project's Kickstarter in October 2012. Overall, the company has recorded $1,214.8 million ($1.21 billion) in confirmed revenue (the funding page & the 2024 financial report).
- Sales/Pledges: $1059.7 million ($1.06 billion) (through 31 October 2026)
- Other cash shop revenue: $2.7 million (through 31 December 2024)
- Subscriptions: $46.8 million (through 31 December 2024)
- All other sources: $105.6 million (through 31 December 2024)
In addition, the company has received a total of $68.25 million in outside investment. According to the 2023 financial report, $4.8 million of the amount was returned to investors in 2020 and another $3.1 million in 2023-2024. Including the outside investment money, the total amount raised by CIG to create Squadron 42 and Star Citizen is $1,283.0 million ($1.28 billion), or $1.275.2 million ($1.28 billion) when excluding the returned funds. An additional $12.6 million in loans issued in March 2025 and due for repayment on 31 December 2027 are not included in the total.
The number of new user accounts was down year-over-year for the fourth consecutive month. The same factors that led to declining cash shop revenue also were major contributors to the 60.5% decline in new account creation. I would maintain that at a time the developers are deploying new systems like Starchitect and planetary server meshing lower player counts are probably desired.
What to watch for: With the upcoming IAE event November and December sales turn into one block of data. Traditionally IAE begins on the third Thursday of November and runs 14 days, meaning the event should end mid-day on 3 December UTC time. For November, I expect year-over-year revenue to increase as this November will have one additional day of the IAE as compared to 2025.
I expect sales this month to increase by 10% over 2025, meaning 2026's cash shop revenue at the end of the month should exceed the total for the entire year of 2025. If not, I have some serious reconsideration of CIG's financial position going forward into 2027.
