Over the past six months, the creators of Star Citizen have raised an additional $50 million through a crowdfunding campaign. As a result, by the morning of November 29, the total funds collected for the game's development reached $751.3 million. However, reports suggest that all is not well at Cloud Imperium Games.
According to a former employee of the studio, Cloud Imperium Games laid off many people this week. He claims that those laid off were not given severance pay, and they were "forced to work to exhaustion and not even thanked for it." This last phrase likely refers to the crunch in October when Cloud Imperium Games temporarily required employees to work seven days a week to prepare for the CitizenCon festival.
Insider Tom Henderson partially confirmed the information. According to his sources, Cloud Imperium Games did indeed conduct layoffs recently, but they were relatively small. About a dozen people were laid off, mainly from the testing department, representing 1% of the studio's workforce.
Cloud Imperium Games itself has not publicly announced the layoffs.