Star Citizen will not require a subscription not be free-to-play, it will will be available for a one-time purchase. And while players will be able to play in the Star Citizen universe for free, there will also be virtual items available for purchase with in-game credits so players can customize their ships and other items.

While the Kickstarter campaign ended late 2012, Chris Roberts' Cloud Imperium has kept on racking in donations through its official website and in the months since the end of the Kickstarter has added an additional $34 million, for a total of more than $36 million in funding.

We just hit $36 million in crowd funding! What’s even more impressive is that we reached this goal while Cloud Imperium was closed for the holidays, without any kind of special “holiday” promotion – pretty staggering and it’s entirely down to the word of mouth and enthusiasm from all of you!

I’m happy to report that the Star Citizen Development team will be back on the job as of Monday, revitalized and with an ever-greater determination to do everything to make this the Best Damn Space Sim Ever. Your continued financial support allows us to chase this goal with confidence.

Starting on Monday, I’ll be sitting down with the Dogfighting Module team to go over all your feedback from our live demo at the end of the year and schedule the remaining functionality, content and polish we want to achieve before we push it out to all of your hard drives!

After this I’ll be making my first visits to our new offices in Manchester and then Austin, where we are holding a summit with all the teams from around the world working on Star Citizen to schedule and coordinate this year’s work in detail.

Last but not least, launching The Next Great Starship, exposing some great talent to the community and allowing you to see the process of building ships up close for Star Citizen!

I can’t wait to get back to work!

At $36 million, you’ve unlocked the first of the backer-voted systems, Tamsa:

• Tamsa System – Located near the fringe of Banu space, Tamsa System features a massive central star that has collapsed into a black hole. Only two planets remain in the system, a chthonian world and a gas giant located far from the black hole’s event horizon.

For the $38 million goal, your votes have selected the “fully aquatic planet” option. Here’s the description of the system we’re creating based on your input:

• Cano System is home to a G-Type Main Sequence Star that’s almost identical to Earth’s. Of the four planets in the system, only one is inhabited: Carteyna. Located on the edge of habitable zone, Carteyna is a classic waterworld. Fortunately, its planetary axis constantly keeps the northern hemisphere away from the sun, which allowed for the water to freeze into the landmasses used as the initial landing zones in 2587. Multiple attempts have been made to try to convert the thick atmosphere into something breathable, but the process never seemed to stick. In fact, over the years, every time there’s a new technological development in geo-engineering, they test it out here on Carteyna only to yield the same result. Almost fifty years ago, scientists discovered microscopic organisms in the very early phases of life in the depths of the oceans. This caused a massive uproar throughout the UEE at the prospect that they had been attempting to terraform a developing world. Carteyna was immediately placed under the Fair Chance Act. Unfortunately, Humans had been living here for almost over three hundred years and the families that had been here for generations felt that they had earned rights as residents. After years of debate in the political and scientific community, the population was allowed to stay, but only under certain conditions: future terraforming attempts have been outlawed and the Human population has been consolidated to a single arcology to minimize their impact on their environment and the development of whatever species is growing in the deep.

Be sure and vote for the penultimate backer-decided system in the poll located below. Remember, these options just represent a small portion of what the additional budget allows us to do with Star Citizen!

Thank you for your continued support.

In honor of this accomplishment, I’d like to share the result of an aspect of Star Citizen that I think makes us special compared to the normal game development process – involving the community during development to get user feedback early to shape a better game. Here’s the result of a lot Freelancer pilot’s requests now they’ve had some time to get a feel for their ship in the Hangar: a revised design for an updated Freelancer cockpit featuring the greater visibility! And get ready: you’ll be seeing more of the Freelancer in the New Year.

— Chris Roberts