We’ve been covering the crowdfunding escapades of Star Citizen for quite some time now, and while it was anyone’s guess just how far they would go in sheer totals of dollars, it’s quite staggering to see them come this far.

The current totals of Star Citizen’s earnings have surpassed $40 million dollars. Let me spell that out for you: forty million dollars. In comparison, games like Shenmue ($70 million at the time) and Grand Theft Auto V ($265 million) had extremely large budgets thanks to their publishers having deep pockets.

The fans of Chris Roberts’ new baby have proven that space simulators are not dead, that there is a demand for them, and that they are willing to spend their own money to make a bold new entry in the genre possible. In fact, over 400,000 backers pledged roughly $99 dollars a piece, a staggering amount of money for a single copy of the game.

With this new goal being attained, two new systems will be coming to the game:

• Kabal System – The discovery of a new system is always an exciting time. Even the most jaded NavJumpers can’t help entertaining the possibilities for scientific understanding or new species or even a new home that could await them on the other side of a new jump point. The discovery of Kabal was certainly something new. By all outward appearances, the system seemed empty. It was only during when a UEE Surveying team began to assess Kabal III, did they find something disturbing; old uninhabited Tevarin cities. How could an entire Tevarin system escape detection all these years? Did the Tevarin that were assimilated into the UEE know about it? How was it kept a secret? The questions multiplied when a detachment of Marines, sent to secure the planet ended up discovering a cache of old Tevarin war machines. Among the rows and rows of weapons, they made an even more disturbing discovery; some of the technology was made in the last ten years…

• Oretani System – Oretani was just one of many systems that were being discovered during the rapid Expansion era of the 25th century. The surveyors noticed nothing in the system’s six worlds of immediate importance. Only one planet seemed to be a viable candidate for terraforming. The terraforming Corp that won the bid sent a mid-level team (and their families) into the system to start processing when the only jump point into the system collapsed. Scientists scrambled to figure out a solution, but it was the first time an incident like this had occurred. As years stretched into decades, people studied the area around the former jump point, hoping for a sign that it had reopened, but after time they gave up. After all this time, Oretani is only ever debated among select number of historians. Most believe that without support, the initial terraformers probably died out, but no one really knows what to expect on the other side if that jump point ever reopens.