Cliff Harris of Positech Games has announced his space strategy title Gratuitous Space Battles has recently crossed over the half million mark for battles played online. Some 501,934 (at time of writing) online “challenges” to be  more precise…imagine the sheer amount of space pollution–gratuitous indeed!

Cliffski also reports there are currently over 40,000 uploaded player challenges and over 100,000 campaign battles already. Not bad for a one-man developed indie launched just over a year ago.

In other GSB news, a new update (v1.55) is available now automatically via Impulse and through the in-game updater. No change log to be found, but Impulse reports “fixes, performance improvements and more.”

The developer is also working on what he’s referring to as “G4″, hoping to put some good mojo on the title as he has, in his own words, made three good games thus far and is determined to make his next effort the fourth. We’ll be keeping an eye out for a concept reveal, hopefully sooner rather than later.

[Cliffski's Blog]