The Company behind Star Citizen is called Robert Space Industries (RSI) and they have Another Company called Cloud Imperium Games (CIG), they started as a Kickstarter Procjet, with limited Resources, but today have 4 offices, in Manchester UK, L.A. USA, Austin Texas, München Germany and over 500 employees.

It is also a Project that at the time (for me) looked way to hard for a Company that size (at the time) to pull this off back in 2012, they asked for in total 65 million dollars, as cowd funding, today they did raise over 200 million dollars, and the game is still not released. It really say something about the market for a game like this, and the interest, hope and Dreams from alot of backers (backer is those that pay Money towards a future Project like this)

So what is it they are Selling ?
RSI does sell ingame ships to fund the development, and in order to get access to the alpha game (and later the full game) you will need a starter package, currently its 45 dollars. And then they sell access to their singleplayer game Squadron 42. (or a combo package with a starterpackage and SQ42) And thats all you really need

There is both ships and packages on their website that cost alot, but all you need is a starter package (or I would recommed a combo package for 65 dollars), all ships will be buyable with ingame funds (all flyable ships is there now in the alpha version, to buy with ingame funds).

The Alpha version is playable, but its far from what it will be once released, my guess is that Squadron 42 will most likely release in 2020, and Star Citizen will release in 2021-2022 

There is not any microtransactions ingame (as there is in alot of other games), once bought you can play freely all you want, and no subscription needed in order to play the game. It is possible to subscribe, that will give you some diffrent ships from month to month that you will have as loaners, plus REC Arena Commander credits, extra access to see some screenshots from the latest released concept ship etc. But it is not needed to be a subscriber in order to play the game.

​