From practically the moment its Kickstarter was launched, Cloud Imperium Games' Star Citizen seemed destined for the record books. Within a few days, the game blew well past its $6 million goal, and several months later it was pushing $30 million. Now, the game has generated so much money from crowdfunding that it really has broken a record.

According to Star Citizen developer Chris Roberts, he of Wing Commander fame, the game has become the Guinness World Record holder for largest crowdfunded project ever. Not largest crowdfunded game, but project.

Roberts made the announcement in conjunction with Star Citizen's latest crowdfunding milestone: $55 million. And the project's record will only continue to grow, as Star Citizen funding still regularly rolls in. Sure, funding has slowed considerably as of late, but not enough to keep it from earning about $1 million every month.

As far as the crowdfunding record goes, Star Citizen was already number 1 way before Guinness made it official. The next closest crowdfunding project, a publishing platform called Ethereum, topped of at $18 million.

Other notable projects in the crowdfunding Hall of Fame include the Pebble watch ($10M), the Ouya console ($8M), and the space trading and combat simulator Elite: Dangerous ($2M). But none have come even close to the numbers Star Citizen continues to improve on.

More important than Star Citizen's accomplishment, though, is what Roberts had to say about the crowdfunding money in his post. He reveals that he plans to take every cent earned from the crowdfunding campaign and put it back into the game's development. In his mind, the money isn't profit, but an investment from gamers into a project that they want to see get better and better.

He admits that some might see this as an admission that the game will never be finished, but he doesn't see it that way. In fact, he believes that the Arena Commander module is proof that Star Citizen is already starting to come together.

In addition to announcing the Guinness World Record, Roberts also revealed that an Arena Commander patch is on the way that delivers two new guns to all gamers who backed prior to the $54M milestone. And those who want to consider backing have a new stretch goal to look forward to, as Roberts and Cloud Imperium Games reveal wave four of ship voting is on the way.

Did you help contribute to Star Citizen's Guinness World Record? Are you surprised Chris Roberts isn't planning on taking profit from the crowdfunding?

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Source: Cloud Imperium