In announcing his return to the gaming industry, Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts said he wanted his ambitious Star Citizen project to prove that there is "a significant group of people that has always loved space games, and if given a quality one again will be happy to play it." Roberts seems to have proven just that by bringing in a record haul of over $6 million for the game directly from players.

Star Citizen's Kickstarter campaign concluded yesterday after bringing in just over $2.1 million in support. Add in just over $4.2 million raised directly through a concurrent campaign on the Roberts Space Industries site, and the game has attracted over $6.3 million in funding from nearly 90,000 fans.

Star Citizen's fundraising easily beats that for Project Eternity, which set the previous game crowdfunding record with over $4.1 million in support. Double Fine's Adventure Game Kickstarter finished with over $3.2 million earlier this year. While Star Citizen is still short of the $8.6 million in crowdfunding raised by the Android-based Ouya game console, it has set a new high-water mark for direct fan-funding of gaming software.

In an interview earlier this month, Roberts told us that private investors have already invested at least $1 million in Star Citizen's preliminary development and were set to invest significantly more now that the crowdfunding effort has shown there's a devoted audience for the game. The final budget for the game will be at least $10 million, Roberts said, and a larger budget will help support the creation of even more content. That's still low compared to the hundreds of millions spent on the biggest games from major publishers, but it's quite significant for a game with totally independent funding.

Players will continue to be able to lend prerelease support to Star Citizen at prices that are slightly higher than those who pledged so far, but still lower than those who wait for the final release. Backers can still secure a limited number of slots for the alpha and beta versions for the game, which are expected to be available late next year.