Every crowdfunded game wants to be Star Citizen when it grows up. After earning over $2.1 million from a Kickstarter campaign, the game continued raising money through its website, and so far it has received well over $87 million in total funding. At one point, the game held a Guinness World Record for the most crowdfunded project ever. This means there are quite a few backers waiting for the game to release, and many of them have become frustrated with the near constant delays that have plagued its development.

While the delays have many backers worried about the eventual state of the game, creator Chris Roberts assures fans that delays are not only common in game development, but they are often expected.

“People aren’t aware of some of the risks of developing a game,” Roberts said in a recent interview with Kotaku. “It might take longer than you estimated. There might be some aspect of the game that doesn’t turn out as fun as you thought. Features might get changed or canceled. Most of those things happen frequently in the game business.”

He added, “A lot of people just aren’t aware of it because, in the past, you’ve been shielded from the mechanics of how games get made. With crowdfunding, they’re getting an on-the-front-lines experience.”

In June, Roberts announced that the studio would be delaying the release of Star Citizen’s FPS module, Star Marine, explaining that the module had significant technical issues that needed to be addressed before it could be released in a playable state.

Roberts told fans at the time, “I can’t promise you we’ll meet every internal deadline or that every decision we make is something you’ll agree with. There will be challenges that we struggle to overcome, and we will never be able to predict all of these with certainty…but I can promise you we will keep you informed and that we will not stop working until the game is done right.”

Roberts told Kotaku that despite the often negative reactions his studio receives when it announces a delay, he is dedicated to maintaining a completely transparent development cycle so that backers can see exactly where their money is going.

Photo by Mr. Roboto.