Dual Citizenship: ‘Star Citizen’ Splitting Singleplayer and Multiplayer into Separate Purchases

Citizenship in RSI’s nebulous online universe is about to get a bit more expensive.

Roberts Space Industries has increased the base price of Star Citizen from $45 to $60 USD. The increase comes along with a product split. You can still opt in to either the Squadron 42 singleplayer campaign or the multiplayer Persistent Universe for the $45 that the starter package cost in total before Valentine’s Day, but to get the other you’ll need to pony up an additional $15.

Both modes are accessed through the same client, so it’s less a division of two distinct games than a new paywall to lock away one of the modes. People who’ve already funded the game will still get both, as the new pricing only affects purchases going forward.

Not that anyone looking to fund Star Citizen seems to worry much about money. The perpetually developed space sim raised over $5.3 million in January alone, and is — as of the time of this writing — sitting at a very healthy $108,661,969 in user funding. The game was priced at $30 when it originally blew up Kickstarter, and the price has been steadily increasing amidst stories of its rocky development.

According to the official announcement, gradual price increases were always a part of the plan:

When we started Star Citizen’s crowdfunding campaign, the plan was that earlier backers would get a lower price on the Star Citizen starter package than those that backed later. The plan was to first gradually increase the price and then split up various modules for “a la carte options.” This gave backers who joined the project early on and helped get it off the ground an advantage.

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