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Steam Early Access


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Good news - the chaps over at Steam seem happy to have us launch on Steam Early Access in four of five weeks' time. Steam has always been the end goal for us and I know a lot of people have been waiting for us to go on Steam before they play the game, so I think this is definitely a good thing.

We will be distributing a Steam key to everyone that owns a copy of the game, with this distribution coming via Desura. I assume you'll be sent an email containing a code, but I'll check and let you know closer to the date.

Steam should be an improvement in the following ways:

1) It's just generally more robust and should support better download speeds.

2) We don't need to have our files approved by Steam; we just press a button and they go live. Will increase the turnaround speed for updates, especially very minor ones.

3) We can have multiple branches of the code. We'll probably move to having a "stable" branch and an "experimental" branch, the benefits of which should be obvious to all.

Desura will continue to be updated with new files as development continues, although I would imagine Steam will become our primary focus. I'm also looking into using the Humble Store for our direct sales on our website, which will also include a Steam key on purchase but gives us a higher revenue share and perhaps will make it more likely we'll end up in a Humble Bundle in due course.

One thing to note here - we will be discontinuing the current Premium / Standard pre-order split. All sales will be made at the $19.99 price point, which will rise to $24.99 on release. Nobody who buy the game after the changeover will get a forum badge, because I don't want to go through the forum integration process again....so if you have one, treasure it.

(Incidentally, if people don't think they've got value from their extra $10 then I'm open to discussion on what we can do to improve things. A number of the previously Premium-only items such as the novella are included in the Launcher for general consumption, and I plan to do the same for development diary. This is so people know where to find them without trawling our forums, and also as it seems a waste to limit the readership of them...but that does somewhat erode the value of the Premium Pre-Order, although we never really promised much along with it.)

Anyway, what we need to be able to launch on Steam is stable build of the game - one that doesn't have 150,000 files in it. You guys can help with the former, as V18 will become this Steam stable build. It's a bit like prior to the Kickstarter when we spent a lot of time polishing up that build before we released the demo, and we'll probably release a second demo when we launch on Steam too.

So it's going to be a busy month, but being on Steam should make it worthwhile. Hopefully!

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I for one actually feel a bit flustered about the Premium thing. Can't say I regret it, but I do think that Premium donors deserve something more then a forum medal.

I understand but I don't agree with the sentiment. Back when I pre-ordered it was clear the game wasn't coming out any time soon, so I gave my thirtybux so that when it did come out, the game would be the best it could be.

Edited by Assoonasitis
Edited for being a big jerk.
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I got my premium pre-order during the kickstarter, and will be getting a load of kickstarter premium pre-order pledge bumpf come the release of the game. Would offering some of the digital stuff offered during the kickstarter (like the artbook) be the right thing to do?

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Perhaps a copy of the soundtrack made by Aleksey ? That could be nice for a start

EDIT: Exclusive wallpaper art would also be nice, or perhaps some premade mods by the developers that we can get as premium content.

At the risk of being a duche - bonus maps for premium pledgers :)

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I paid something like 35$ for this back when the forum as well as the UI were black and the game had just gone beyond the "wishful thinking" stage. There were approximately 0 rewards promised (or even mentioned) at that time so I accepted long ago that Premium was ever gonna be in name and spirit only and am certainly not going to make an issue of it now.

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If you have some digital assets to share that won't cost you much time, feel free to distribute to premium + KS people. I think the majority of the people are okay either way, but it'd be fun to have some more little bits that don't have a home yet.

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