Cloud Imperium Games says if it hits $50m in crowdfunding for PC space game Star Citizen, it will create alien languages.

Sales of the Gladius ship and dogtags pushed the amount raised for the game over the $48m mark, CIG boss Chris Roberts said on the Roberts Space Industries website.

$48m means CIG will create the Retaliator commercial - an in-universe ad for an in-game space ship.

Now, we have a stretch goal for $50m, which Star Citizen will surely hit sooner rather than later.

You never know when it might come in handy.

"The ongoing funding keeps the project running on the scale it is today," Roberts said, "but we're also eager to find ways to improve what we've already planned. We've come up with one for the $50 million goal that we think will truly improve the immersion, and help make Star Citizen a living, breathing world."

Hence, the alien language. From the official description: "Do you speak Banu? We will work with real-world linguists to create distinctive and realistic alien languages for Star Citizen's three biggest alien races, the Vanduul, the Xi'An and the Banu. No universal translators, no garbled animal noises: Star Citizen's aliens will be speaking their own authentic languages!"

"I'm excited about this one," Roberts added, "and looking forward to meeting the first fan who learns to speak one of our languages."

For Star Citizen, the money keeps rolling in, seemingly relentlessly, even after the crowdfunding drive officially ended. In November 2012 its Kickstarter raised a whopping $2.1m having asked for $500,000. But i didn't stop there.

At the Star Citizen store all sorts of virtual items are for sale, including $80 ships you can't even use in the game yet.

The latest module to release is Arena Commander, a dogfighting and flight simulation alpha. The pass for access to this goes for $5, but you need to have a game pass already to use it. The cheapest of these is $30. One, the Constellation game package, costs $275. The Wing Commander game package costs an incredible $10,000. This includes all five pledge ships, a custom Constellation skin, 20,000 UEC (United Earth Credits) Starting Money and exclusive access to the 1 Million Mile High Club, a private facility that you run in the game.

Right now most of the development team is working on Arena Commander patch 12.5, which focuses on squishing the bugs responsible for latency and rubber-banding. Meanwhile the money keeps rolling in.