Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games released new videos about its growing game, showing off upcoming features and developer commentary.
The first video features an overhaul to mining scheduled to go live in the upcoming Alpha 3.19 later this year. The overhaul will bring several changes to make mining more interesting and it will encourage cooperative mining on top of simply carrying around the mining attachment for your multi-tool when you explore a cave.
Speaking of updates, the upcoming (and rather massive) Alpha 3.18 is finally available for all backers on the PTU, which means that it should be finally close to release.
You can watch it below.
We also get a second video with developer commentary about the river tech on top of the game's QA process.
In the meanwhile, Star Citizen's growing crowdfunding campaign continues to achieve new milestones and the game has passed $550 million ($551,580,224 at the moment of this writing) from backers.
The number of registered users has also recently passed 4.4 million and it's now at 4,423,158, albeit not all of them are paying since many register accounts to access the popular free fly events that provide a chance to test the game without pledging any money. According to the latest information that creative director Chris Roberts himself shared in October 2022, 1.7 million players are actually paying customers. Of course, that number is a few months old, so it could be higher now.
Star Citizen recently ended its best year ever in terms of crowdfunding, with a staggering $113 million pledged in 2022, marking a 31% increase over 2021. The tally has been consistently increasing year-on-year since 2018.
Full disclosure: the author of this post has backed Star Citizen all the way back when its crowdfunding was first launched in September 2012.
