If you’re seeing these words, then the Kickstarter for Stars Reach is finally live. [Update: And funded in its first hour, too – updates at the end of this article!]
Longtime readers will know we’ve been covering this game since 2019, though we didn’t know for sure what it would be called – or that it was basically Star Wars Galaxies 2 – until last summer, when Playable Worlds boss Raph Koster finally unveiled it as a sprawling virtual world sandbox with dynamic terraformable planets, a player-driven economy, a ridiculous skill tree… basically everything sandbox MMO fans have been hungry for.
“Welcome to Stars Reach,” Raph Koster says on today’s Kickstarter video. “It is a living galaxy sandbox MMORPG, a science-fantasy setting in which players venture out onto alien worlds, discover strange and mysterious creatures, and even settle these planets and build their own space stations. It is a galaxy for you, the player, to move into” where the “elder game is running a planet.” The slides boldly declare that Stars Reach is “an MMO that will redefine the genre” with “gameplay you’ve never seen in an MMO before.”
The devs are planning a huge Streaming blitz all day on the game’s Twitch channel, with lead devs streaming at 11 a.m. EST, 4 p.m. EST, and 9 p.m. EST, clearing targeting different corners of the game (and the world). Raph Koster himself will headline that last stream, if you were waiting for him.
The game, which has already been trekking through pre-alpha since last summer, is expected to make it to early access by the end of the year with a proper launch in 2026. The campaign itself ends March 26th.
Last weekend, the developers previewed all of the Kickstarter tiers, so there are no surprises here; there are $1 and $5 support pledges for people who want to show support but not go all in, $30 basic pledges for those who want test access from now to launch, and much more expensive bundle pledges for families and groups who want to split packages and buy planets and perpetual property passes (lifetime subs). That said, Playable Worlds has been adamant that nothing in the Kickstarter constitutes pay-to-win because of the way planets work in the game (your planet can die, for a start).
“We’re not gonna break the economy for the sake of the Kickstarter,” Koster has said. Likewise, the team has explained repeatedly that the game has been “funded by investors fore the last five years” and that the Kickstarter is meant to prove marketability more than getting it funded. Earlier this month, for example, Koster told Reddit that Playable Worlds needs only “a few million in total” to finish the game, but it expects some of that to come through investors, with the Kickstarter merely “meant to demonstrate market interest.” This is why Koster asked fans who are leery of losing large sums on Kickstarter to pledge for a dollar to show the demand and improve the game’s visibility on the platform.
Want to catch up? Here’s all our coverage from last summer onward – and yes, this MMO took our “most anticipated” award for the year.
About half an hour in, the game has already raised $160K of its ask and the devs have confirmed that stretch goals are coming.
Update 11:58a EST
Stars Reach just successfully funded. Now come the stretch goals. The first one (announced at 12:18p EST) is apparently coming at $350K and is a new playable species.
The devs are planning a huge Streaming blitz all day on the game’s Twitch channel, with lead devs streaming at 11 a.m. EST, 4 p.m. EST, and 9 p.m. EST, clearing targeting different corners of the game (and the world). Raph Koster himself will headline that last stream, if you were waiting for him.
