Many game developers are thrilled when they can raise a few thousand dollars on crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter PBC, but for Star Citizen creator Cloud Imperium Games, Kickstarter was only the beginning.

The ambitious starship game raised over $2.1 million on Kickstarter in 2012, but since then, Cloud Imperium has continued raising additional funds from fans through its own website. Now, after only three years, Star Citizen has successfully raised over $100 million in total funding, making it not only the most-crowdfunded game of all time, but also the most-crowdfunded product period, surpassing the Pebble smartwatch by nearly $80 million.

Almost perfectly coinciding with the $100 million milestone, Star Citizen also recently released its Alpha 2.0 version, which introduces numerous new features to the current test version of the game.

“Star Citizen Alpha’s 2.0 update sets the stage for Star Citizen’s persistent universe, offering players access to multi-crew ships, large world maps and FPS combat for the first time,” Star Citizen’s alpha update says. “Citizens can look forward to additional ships, locations and game mechanics being built on top of this foundation as development progresses. Alpha 2.0 offers your first taste of Star Citizen’s living, breathing world… so get out there and explore the ‘Verse!”

Is it still really “crowdfunding?”

Star Citizen is unusual as far as crowdfunding models go. Its Kickstarter and early independent campaigns followed the usual formula closely, but since then, it has become harder and harder to determine whether people still giving money to Cloud Imperium are backing a crowdfunding campaign or simply pre-ordering the game.

At tens of millions of dollars, there is little doubt that the game is going to be completed, and at a certain point, Cloud Imperium gave up on creating new stretch goals.

As the saying goes, mo’ money, mo’ problems, and many gamers who had been following the progress of Star Citizen worried that Cloud Imperium may have been letting the scope of the game get out of hand. Accusations of “feature creep” have been fairly common throughout Star Citizen’s development.

Of course, whether or not the money that is continuing to go into the game can really be called “crowdfunding” in the traditional sense, it is hard to ignore $100 million raised by a game that could still be two years or more from release.

Screenshot via Star Citizen | YouTube