VIDEO: Star Citizen Alpha 3.18 finally released

The wait for the complete release of Star Citizen Alpha 3.18 is finally over, according to a recent announcement from Cloud Imperium Games.

The developer has finally delivered the much-awaited update people have been looking for on Star Citizen forums.

The update is advertised as the largest to be made to the expanding space game since 3.0 was published in December 2017. 

Several brand-new features are introduced, including the first incarnation of the salvaging system, a revamp of the cargo system, more rivers, sand caves, and much more, reported TechRaptor.

On the technical front, Persistent Entity Streaming will enable items to survive in the world regardless of whether players have placed, abandoned, or just misplaced them. It will be interesting to see what impact modern internet game technology has on the gameplay environment of Star Citizen.

However, compared to many of its predecessors, this substantial change has taken longer to implement; the most recent major update, with version 3.17.2, was released in June 2022. While there have been lesser updates afterwards, 3.18 is the first really significant update in a while.

Star Citizen's expanding crowdfunding campaign is still moving forward, as the game has recently surpassed $552 million (as we write this) in contributions from backers.

The number of users who have registered has also recently surpassed 4.4 million and is now at 4,430,963, the outlet reported. However, not all of them are paying users because many create accounts to access the free fly events that give players the opportunity to try out the game without having to make any financial commitments. 

The most recent data, which the game's creative director Chris Roberts personally disclosed in October 2022, indicates that 1.7 million users are in fact paying clients. Naturally, the figure is a few months old, so it might now be higher.

With a staggering $113 million contributed in 2022 — a 31% increase over 2021 —Star Citizen recently finished its best year ever in terms of crowdfunding. Since 2018, the total has been steadily rising year over year.