TL;DR
We are pausing Early Access sales while we work on securing the long-term future of Outscape. The servers and galaxies will continue to run as normal in the meantime and the team is determined to move forwards.
Hi everyone,
A year ago we launched Outscape on Early Access. Since then our team has remained actively committed to improving the game to get it to the level of quality necessary for a full release. We’re not there yet – but we’ve made a hell of a lot of progress in the last year (and over the years preceding Early Access).
Admittedly it’s been tough at times. We’re a very small team trying to crack an immensely challenging genre and we haven’t been able to move as fast as we’ve wanted.
But we are extremely proud of what we’ve been able to achieve so far. In the last few months alone we’ve added the faster Awaken the Dark game mode, newbie protection, more automation (guard fleets, asteroid mining, auto-transfer), alliances, fleet docks, false flag operations, exploration history and numerous UI/gameplay/balance improvements! And maintained a very favourable Steam review score 🙂
Of course, we couldn’t have done any of this alone. Your help, feedback and support has been an instrumental part of the game’s development and we remain forever grateful to you all. And we hope to be able to continue to count on your support as we attempt to navigate the challenges ahead.
The next chapter
Despite reinvesting all of the proceeds of Early Access sales directly back into development, we find ourselves in a position where a full release of Outscape is still a long way off. And to get there, we’re going to need additional outside help and investment – something we’ve been able to avoid until now.
So we’ve recently begun talks with publishers and are trying to figure out a path forward that will lead to a successful full release of Outscape. There are concerns from prospective publishers around our pricing model and that we’re already selling on Early Access (it’s understood we remain committed to no ‘Pay to Win’ and that those that have already purchased on Early Access would not have to buy the game again). Which is why we’ve paused further Early Access sales. Income from sales is negligible at the moment anyway so pausing Early Access sales doesn’t affect our current financial position. We have enough external funding remaining to take us to next year.
The servers and galaxies will continue to run as normal for now and we’ll endeavour to keep it this way so long as enough players want us to. We’re still working on the game. A new patch is on the way and we’re about to carry out some improvements to our server environment to address the disconnection issues some of you have reported recently.
In the meantime we’ll continue to pursue the options and will keep you updated with any significant developments when we can.
Thank you for reading and for your continued support 🙂
– The Outscape Dev Team