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 $41 million, for a total of more than $43 million in funding.

Greetings Citizens,

Another incredible accomplishment by Star Citizen’s backers $43 million!

I’d like to begin today’s letter by showing you where one of our previous stretch goals is going. At $42 million, we unlocked the Gladius light fighter for Squadron 42. The team at Foundry 42 has been working on the ship and I’m pleased to show you some of the early WIP today! The Gladius is intended to be an older fighter that doesn’t have the arms and armor of a Hornet… but that can maneuver and strike quickly.

At $43 million, every backer (to this point) gets a set of marine combat armor added to their accounts! A full description is below, but you’ll learn a lot more about what this is good for as we lock down more information about Star Citizen’s FPS module.

• Omni Role Combat Armor (ORC) mk9 Manufacturer: CDS (Clark Defense Systems) The ‘standard’ Marine armor for almost twenty years, ORC armor is prohibitively more expensive than standard-issue infantry body armor used by Army Ground Forces, but the Marines boast far fewer numbers and tend to make compelling arguments to get what they ask for. Clark Defense Systems’ ORC armor is created of composite mesh of fibers reinforced with ablative plates, offering a modest protection against both energy and kinetic weapons. While it doesn’t offer the same protection of the Marines’ proprietary Nail-armor or their SpecOps variants, ORCmk9 armor is a baseline solution for any number of situations the average Marine will encounter on any given day. Besides, in the words of Lt. Col Armin Trask, “you wanna know the best armor? Not getting shot.”

The votes are in and the winner of the $45 million reward is… the mystery object! It’s pretty cool seeing the community take a chance on something unknown instead of going for a free weapon or other upgrade. And you won’t be disappointed! The mystery object is more than just a piece of flare, it’s a puzzle players will someday compete to solve. Where the artifact lead you? A lost Hadesian outpost, a cache of technology, a hidden jump point? It’s up to you to find out!

• Hadesian Artifact – The mystery of what happened in Hades has been one of the great archeological puzzles ever since the system was discovered in the early 26th Century. The evidence suggests that the Hadesians nearly erased their entire civilization in devastating civil war that left a planet cracked in half, but so many questions remained. Who were these Hadesians? How did the war get started? Over the centuries, even the public became enamored by the mystery of this system. This curiosity was inflamed when scientists recently discovered a lone Hadesian artifact on the black market of all places. Trinket manufacturers quickly tried to capitalize on the resurgence of interest by building exact copies of the artifact for sale to the public, even replicating the unidentified symbols along the base…

I don’t want to sound repetitive after so many levels, but thank you again for your support. Every additional dollar goes to Star Citizen’s development and makes it a better game. Please remember to take the penultimate player reward stretch goal poll, listed below. It’s hard to believe we’ve come this far, but the winner will be the $46 million stretch goal!