Tech

‘Star Citizen’ Is Offering VIP Players a $27,000 Bundle of Spaceships

Star Citizen is an unreleased video game that has promised fans the moon. Developer Roberts Space Industries (RSI) has advertised the game as the ultimate space adventure, the kind of simulation you can play for years to come. That sales pitch has gotten fans so excited that more than 2 million of them have pledged more than $186 million to help make the game a reality.

The game is entirely crowd-funded and the money that players put into it often translates into in-game objects. RSI is funding the game in part by pre-selling ships and equipment to players. A cheap ground transport can run as low as $20 while the expensive space-faring vessels cost upwards of $500. Thanks to a new offer from RSI, the truly dedicated can drop $27,000 to pre-purchase almost every ship and piece of equipment in the game.

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As first reported by Forbes, RSI is only offering the $27,000 Legatus Pack to its concierge members. Concierge players are those who’ve already dropped at least $1,000 on the game. Such backers have access to the Legaus Pack, but also receive a personal concierge at RSI who’ll pick up the phone anytime they call.

Included in the Legatus Pack is 117 ships, 163 other items, and lifetime insurance on each of the ships. That’s almost every ship that will exist in the game, save for a few that were reserved as prizes for special events or rewards for early backers.

RSI has repeatedly said that all its ships will be available in-game by grinding out the local space-bucks whenever the game releases. A generous read of the Legatus Pack is that it’s a way for the affluent gamer to just go ahead and buy all the ships without doing any grinding.

Then there’s the lifetime insurance—which technically isn’t available at all anymore. RSI offers varying levels of insurance on these digital ships. If a player is cruising the stars in the future, when the game comes out, and gets blown away by space pirates (assuming the game has space pirates) then their ship is gone forever unless they had previously purchased insurance. Every ship in the Legatus Pack comes with lifetime insurance, meaning that RSI will pay to replace the ships hull if its destroyed. Lifetime insurance was a gift to early backers, meaning that purchasing the $27,000 pack is one of the only remaining ways to get the service.

But RSI still offers normal insurance on its various ships. So how much would it cost a player, either in terms of cash or time spend grinding, to acquire everything that’s in the Legatus pack? It’s hard to say. Some of the ships in the pack aren’t available for individual sale and the cost of insurance on each of them varies depending on the ship and the specifics of its cargo. Calculating the costs of the each of the individual 117 ships is hard because the cost is tied to who is buying them. Players who bought into the games at different times pay different amounts for different ships.

Add to that various ships were only available for a limited time and in different variations. A good example of this is the Hornet F7 C, a basic fighter ship. So there’s the Hornet F7C, the F7C Hornet Wildfire, F7C-M Super Hornet, F7C-R Hornet Tracker, and the F7C-S Hornet. Not all of these ships are available for individual purchase, but all are included in the Legatus Pack.

Again, this is all for a game that isn’t out yet. There is an Alpha Build that allows players to wander around a hub, explore a hanger with their ships, and fly some of those ships in limited arena engagements. There is no official release date.

Roberts Space Industries did not return our request for comment.