The PA on steam have already gotten 68 pages of Flame war.. beacuse they listed the alpha for 82 euro. I honestly dont understand why they are going so nuts. As a few though the list mentions. its to be fair to the alpha and beta backers from Kickstarter. Who agree they should go and take it easy with a lollipop?
Lollipops? CANDIES! Go here if you want candies. (Link should be safe, its a time waster game about candies and stuff. Entirely text based.) As for the steam kerfluffle, well its steam. They got used to getting games extremly cheap so... them having to pay a bit more probably makes them heads explode. And head explosion makes one immune to differing arguments so... don't think you'll have any luck with arguing with them so best bet is just to ignore it and fight the few who managed to breach the walls of Forum Uber in the other threads! :mrgreen:
It's not a matter of cheapness, it's bad business practice. $90 for early access (you're a bug tester) and no other benefits. $90. That's more than twice what the game will cost at retail. It's insulting to even put it up. Kickstarter is a fundraiser, not a store; quit acting like backing it made you a customer instead of a donor just because they gave you goodies for helping them out.
I can't stand this anymore, THEY'RE DRIVING ME CRAZY! Every single on of them is whining ******* children!
And whining about whining has always been the solution =P Either way this whole thing is swiftly gaining a life of its own which is scarcely connected to the actual reasons behind the angst. I won't be surprised if the major videogame media outlets start checking in to post some nice copy.
Oh, but whining about whining about whining... wait stop, stooop before we get into an infinite recursion! Eh, whining about whining is good for one's nerves at least. But that there is a scary thought. Given the "quality" of modern games "journalism", having them covering this could only be an unmitigated disaster. Only saving grace is they probably don't even know what PA is and think its a new brand of diswasher: "Cleans your dishes to its atoms!"* *Some radioactivity has to be expected.
I think a possible better way to handle this would be to have a pre-order available that just lets you buy the game for it's retail price, and then give keys to the people who backed it as alpha. That way, people can buy it for the normal price, and those that have alpha access can play the game on Steam
That's weird of them, would it have been possible to do it with Steam hosting the game but there not being a store page at all? Blade Symphony and Insurgency were like that for a while before that came to early access. Both, you used Steam to play the game, but you had to buy the game from their site and enter the product key.
Steam Green-light and Early Access have been getting quite a lot of flak recently for their somewhat schizophrenic admission policies. Hopefully this incident will encourage them to think things through a little more, and smooth out some of the absurdities in the system.
Neutrino, Thank you for addressing my one concern regarding the game. I will do my best to spread positive word of mouth regarding the game and combat the negativity surrounding the steam release. Also, please keep in mind, not all Steam users are as unhinged as those on the forums. Some of us are actually very excited for the game and are level-headed about the whole thing.
The only reason for the uproar is that the price is 89.99. If it was 59.99 people would have instantly, silently decided "Looks normal. Too high. Wait for sale." Or maybe the $60 price would have been agreeable and they'd buy it. It's temporary sticker shock for kids who can't read the fine print that the price for the beta and final are actually quite normal. In other words, irrelevant bickering, here today and gone tomorrow. Personally, I think it's a great idea to price exactly those people out of the Alpha. Clearly they just want the game - fair enough! They don't want a highly busted alpha and they don't want to play test. They aren't going to be helpful. A willingness to pay $90 is putting your money where your mouth is - it's for people who want to be part of the process and want to make sure it gets made at all. I suspect that most of that crowd has already Kickstarted or preordered.
Just imagine the uproar if it was priced at 40$, a ton of people would buy it, install alpha, discover its not a finished game... oh my (in george takai voice).
Actually in that case I think people would have flocked to defend it as an obvious alpha. Such as it has been with Folk Tale which released recently with a very limited playability, numerous crippling bugs, and no ability to save. People view Early Access differently depending on the situation. On one hand they more-or-less view it as an official release, regardless of what the front page says, and on the other they are willing to accept near unplayability in its games. Its weird, but there is some logic to it.
