Let’s get this one out of the way first: when Arvind shared his cunning scheme of launching on June 13th (“Nobody else is releasing that day!”), he was informed by People Who Know This Sort of Thing that there’s a reason nobody releases on June 13th, and that reason is June 10-12th. The level of buzz we could expect would be somewhere on the order of “whispering the name of our game gently into the ear of a dying man.” So we’re not doing that. We’re launching on the 26th and we’re gonna spend the interim hunting bugs, I guess.
But hey–our game’s on Steam! Feast your eyes on that store page, peoples, because this is probably the single coolest moment in the game’s whole arduous, patient, and iterative development process. Knowing that our game has gone from occupying all of our time to knowing that it is–in some cumulative, infinitesimal way–inconveniencing Gabe Newell? You can take that to the bank. Up until the page goes live for sales, at which point Gabe Newell will be taking actual money to the actual bank, all being well.
But don’t settle for watching the trailer over and over again, like I have for an embarrassing amount of time! Also head over to our Steam community hub. And head on over to our new, official, fancy-pants Steam group and join that mother. We’ve got avatars, we’ve got discussion forums, we’ve got an “ask me questions about the writing and design process” topic–it’s gonna be great! Also, according to the dowsing-grade sciences involved in figuring out which games get Steam’s attention and get featured (seriously, all of the advice people give us is in the hushed and credulous tone of a campfire story about that serial killer they “never did catch”), having more people participate in your hubs and official groups is a good thing. It’s also a good way to hang out with us over the Internet in a slightly more active and personal fashion than “the occasional Kickstarter comment”. Looking forward to chatting with all you fine people of exceptional taste.
Oh–before I forget, there’s one more thing I should probably make clear. We did get on Steam with the help of a publisher. Greenlight is a much more accessible system than it used to be, but it’s still a pretty huge risk with an investment of this size–more of a risk than we were willing to take. So we signed with a publisher, they got us on Steam, we’re going to give them a cut of our profits–and that is the extent of our relationship. They have no control over the product or how we sell it elsewhere. We retain full ownership of the IP. Honestly, we’re all pretty happy with how that part turned out.
Enough typing away in this online marketplace slash community hub. I’ll see you in the Steam discussion forum!
-Adam “Rutskarn” DeCamp, signing out.
Arvind’s Edit: KISS Ltd will also handle distributing our game on other stores (the other 50 or so digital stores out there) – it frees us to focus on development, bug fixing – you know, stuff we’re supposed to be doing – as opposed to running around negotiating contracts and emailing invoices. Other than that, what Ruts just said is absolutely correct.
Posted In: Unrest