Legendary computer game developer Chris Roberts and his newly formed company, Cloud Imperium, announced today that the crowd funding efforts for Star Citizen, the company’s ground breaking space sim game currently in development, have surpassed three million dollars in pledges. The pledge totals are a combination of a Kickstarter campaign (now at more than one million dollars in pledges) and a self-managed crowd funding program (more than two million dollars in pledges) underway at Cloud Imperium’s Roberts Space Industries (RSI) site. There are now nearly 44 thousand backers of the project. Both crowd funding projects will close in 10 days.

‘It’s hard to believe we’re already at this important milestone,’ said Roberts. ‘It’s far beyond our initial objective and well into some of the stretch goals’and we still have 10 days left in the campaign. This amazing success is all thanks to our incredible fans.

‘This is extremely exciting for me and our team because it will enable us to create the game we’ve been talking about to our fans over the past month. But we can do even more. I’m still hoping that we’ll reach four million dollars before we close. This will allow us to do more sooner, especially on things like our modder tools.’

Part of the plan to help reach the four million dollar goal is a pledge referral program, launched just this week. Current backers are encouraged to enlist their friends in the crowd funding efforts. They’ll all have chances for amazing prizes including an Alienware Aurora desktop computer, Oculus Rift headsets, NVIDIA Geforce graphics cards and Logitech joysticks and gamepads.

Roberts is making his return to gaming after spending 10 years in the Hollywood film industry. He made his mark in computer games in the 1990s with such highly successful titles as Wing Commander, Privateer and Freelancer. Star Citizen, already 12 months into production, will be launched on the PC and will include all the Chris Roberts hallmarks that fans of his games have come to expect over the years: high quality cutting-edge visuals and technology, a virtual world that is immersive and detailed, a sophisticated storyline that is wide in scope and visceral, heart-pounding space combat.

More information about Star Citizen, including videos and trailers of the game, regular communications from Roberts to fans, community forums, game fiction and art can be found at www.robertsspaceindustries.com.