Star Citizen continues its march towards becoming the most expensive thing in the history of the universe as it has now passed $100-million via crowdfunding, having just entered Alpha 2.0. The new update brings with it multi-crew ships, planets and first-person combat.

To play the game you need to pick up one of the many packages available These packages start at $54 for a ship, some cash and access to the Squadron 42 games, which is Star Citizen’s singleplayer component, and run all the way up to several hundred dollars.

At this point the levels of hype and money seem to be guiding Star Citizen toward becoming a huge disapointment unless it can somehow be the greatest game to ever exist. Even if it turns out to be great will people still view it as a failure thanks to its vast development budget? Or will it be hailed as a success, a prime example of what crowdfunding is capable of.

Time will tell.

It does raise the question of whether the developers should have stopped taking money, though. As more cash is pumped into the project we have to question where its all going. Is all of it being used for development? If so is the game simply going to become a bloated mess as the developers attempt to add more and more in order to spend all that crowdfunded money? Or is it all going somewhere else.

At this moment in time money is being generated through the sale of ships, subscriptions and merchandise. Interestingly the game is a sort of playable state, but most of the ships don’t actually exist yet, and can also be unlocked via just playing the game, when it eventually comes out. People are still being sold a dream, rather than a reality, and its surprising to see it continue to generate so much revenue. At this point the game is two years overdue, and players who have invested a good bit of money into the project are too far immersed to back away from what is looking a lot like a black hole. In the mean time a steady stream of ships are being announced that cost absurd amounts and promise to be even better than the previous promised best ships. A cast of pretty big name celebraities has been announced for the singleplayer side of things. Gard Oldman was hired, too, as shown in a released cinematic back in October that was incredibly pretty, but again raised questions about what was going on. Should money real be spent on Oldman when the core gameplay wasn’t even near finished?

Star Citizen has been a controversia subject for many, and this new milestone will undoubtedly continue to fuel that debate until the game finally launches. Hopefully it’ll feel like it was worth all of that cash.