Read my post if you are coming here about Steam Prices.

This.game was funded through Kickstarter. People who supported with $20 were promised the game on release, people who supported $40 got promised full release with beta testing access, and people who supported $90 were promised the full game with alpha and beta testing access.

If they WERE to make available access to the testing stages at any lower a price, the customer they would be ripping off is the customer that made this possible in the first place, the kickstarter backer.

That being said, they had no intention of allowing anyone to get into alpha once kickstarter was done. They went ahead and allowed a "late backer" program, so if you found out about this game way later like now, you can still back it just like if you found out about it from the beginning. Other than this, they had no intention of there even being a way into alpha, for anyone anymore.

They aren't selling alpha. This is a late program, for people who were too late in finding out about funding this game on kickstarter and supporting it's development.

If you would not have supported $100 then, and have no intent to now, then the fruits of the kickstarter campaign is a finished game in December. The finished game is aimed torwards everyone. Please come back with feedback then if something doesn't strike your tastes.

Devs, I honestly, HONESTLY, think you should pull alpha purchase from steam, still allow steam keys but not through purchase from steam, change the steam page to reflect a $40 game released in December, with a small mention to see the developers site for more info. That way, people who SERIOUSLY wanted to fund this game but found out too late, can do a little hard work to find out about alpha on this site. Steam isn't the right audience for direct alpha sale page. Keep the game on steam, keep the key generator for steam use, just don't let people purchase from steam. Make them purchase it on the main site, make them generate the key for steam, then they can play on steam without upsetting the "hivemind" of steam.

For those of you who are off to go make an angry post about the price, and join the other steam hiveminded folk and their 10+ topics already made about it, then go enjoy that and paying for your 120 prestige edition black ops 2 and its terrible connection issues and its season passes and all that bullcrap.

People understand that they are treating the steam price point like late-Kickstarter, which is why people are so mad about it. The game was funded 2 times over and then some on kickstarter already though, and Steam is not the place to do a donation drive. I agree that it should be pulled and just have the steam keys up.

Seriously, SMNC was excellent during alpha and beta via this method. Steam doesn't need the ability to hand out keys or release full information. If people are finding it there, they are not worthy of knowing about alpha until they thoroughly search google and read and find the developer's main site.

SMNC wasn't exactly a success.

Also, the game is good, don't knock it because it is harder to play than laggy blackops2 and thus doesn't get the same playerbase.

Oh I love SMNC, but on release it had a lot of problems that might not have been there if they did alpha/beta by invite instead of just only letting fanboys in who are willing to pay 60% more than retail.

Do you even know what actually happened with the SMNC release, sounds like you don't.

Mike

The way I see it, the $90 tag is a way to weed out those that just want early access to PA from those that genuine fans who really do want to help PA become good

Personally, I think the higher price alphas help to weed out the people who actually want to try and help improve the game.

If you release your alpha for free to everyone, more than likely most of the people are just going to play it without saying much about any bugs they encounter, or worse.

If you pay extra for an alpha, you are probably more likely to want to give your input on the game that you paid extra for.

As a Steam user who found out about this game then did more digging I couldn't agree more with the OP. I believe the correct choice is to remove access via steam entirely, and provide Steam codes via an email system. The amount of negative publicity this is likely to generate is probably not healthy towards the success of this game.

Basically I want this game, I want this game to succeed. I don't see the likely handful of "late backers" you will get through steam will dwindle much by removing that access point.

I patiently await the game's December release in anticipation.

As an alpha access backer you're definitely write. I love the alpha but every little bug I think I find I do post on their tracker to make sure it's fixed...