View source for Comm-Link:Letter from the Chairman - $18 Million!

Greetings Citizens,

Thanks to your incredible support, we have reached $18 million less than a week after hitting $17 million!

These numbers are amazing, and the credit goes entirely to the community that has come together to make [[Star Citizen]] happen. The best news in all of this is that the [[Hangar Module]] has inspired thousands of new fans to join the effort. The bigger our community, the better the game experience will be and greater chance we will have of making Star Citizen a game that continues for many years.

When we first proposed [[Squadron 42]] and Star Citizen, the goal was to bring back space sims and prove that PC games never died. We thought that was an important goal worthy of our effort and your support. We never dreamed that you would take that even farther and become our partners in changing how games are developed. As always, thank you.

For hitting $18 million, you unlock the “exclusive star system for backers.” There’s been some confusion about what exactly this means. To clarify, what it means is that backers that got us to the $18 million goal will have the ability to start their journey in a system that is unavailable to others as a starting point. The only home base hangars there will belong to those that supported us early in the process! It would be immersion-breaking if backers couldn’t eventually share the jump coordinates of the system with other users… but no one else will have the option of starting a character there.

Reaching this point also means that it’s time to reveal our penultimate planned [[Stretch Goals|stretch goal]], the $20 million level. While goals will continue after $21 million, they will take a new form representative of what additional [[Crowdfunding campaign|funding]] can add to the game!

'''$20 million'''

* First person combat on select lawless planets. Don’t just battle on space stations and platforms… take the fight to the ground!

I would also like to take a moment to follow up on the Voyager Direct poll from Saturday. As you know, we put the solution in the hands of the community. It was a surprise that the largest group (43%) were happy with the way the store had been set up.

That said, as I mentioned on Saturday, I personally felt that perhaps some of the store items were overpriced relative to other ones and with 29% of backers that answered the poll (statistically the poll had enough respondents to be representative of the full Star Citizen population) thought that prices for certain items were too high I feel that’s a large enough block of our community to not ignore. Starting immediately, the prices for the decorative items like the posters and buggy will be reduced. If you paid the original price for these items, you will receive the difference in the form of additional [[UEC]] credited to your account in the near future (it will take a little time to develop the correct script, but we will have your accounts credited soon.)

We are making the following price changes as a result of your feedback:

* Cot – '''2,000 UEC''' (''was 5,000 UEC'')

* RSI Zeus Model – '''5,000 UEC''' (''was 10,000 UEC'')

* Lamp – '''2,000 UEC''' (''was 5,000 UEC'')

* [[PTV|Greycat PTV]] – '''15,000 UEC''' (''was 20,000 UEC'')

* Posters – '''1,000 UEC each''' (''was 5,000 UEC each'')

(Note that we have not included the workbench; that’s because it will be a useful gameplay element in the future. It will be needed for pilots seeking to overclock their own ship components!)

We created the decorative items as an easy way for you to support the game and as a result their prices do not impact the overall economy. I believe that is one of the largest points of confusion about the store: in the Star Citizen world it seems unlikely that a poster would cost the same amount as a laser cannon. The prices for ship upgrades will not change, as they represent the final price we imagine they will be in the game: a laser cannon you buy today will be one you have access to in Star Citizen when it launches. Much of our system, including the daily purchase limit and the overall balance limit is intended to prevent users from stockpiling money before the game goes live and have an undue impact on the economy.