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Studio FOW have cancelled the Early Access launch of their erotic sci-fi RPG Subverse.
Having achieved its Kickstarter funding by raising over $2 million, the campaign reached every single stretch goal. Every tier of the backer rewards of $10 or more included “Early Access Digital Copy of Subverse.” However, a recent update on the campaign from senior producer “Mr. Kristoff” reveals this is no longer the case.
“We are so thrilled to announce that two full-time software engineers with AAA gaming experience have joined the Subverse team. They’re already making a huge impact on production, and we couldn’t be happier to have them here.
During the past few months, we’ve also been in contact with several world-renowned game producers that have been acting as mentors for us during this process.
Their advice, along with that of our new engineers, have caused us to audit the current release strategy and pipeline. This brought us to the conclusion that Early Access would not be beneficial for Subverse.
Please note: THIS DECISION WILL NOT EFFECT THE CLOSED BETA IN ANY WAY.”
Kristoff continues, explaining this has allowed production to “significantly” increase as their is less focus on creating Early Access updates. “We’re currently ahead of our internal production schedule and we see no issue with maintaining this pace.”
Continuing, Kristoff explains how the team came to the decision- motivated by the game’s genre and story being an ill-fit, a huge closed beta tester pool, and overall quality:
“This decision wasn’t taken lightly. Subverse is currently 13th global on the Steam Wishlist, We could’ve easily taken the cash grab route and put out the unpolished Early Access chapters, but Studio FOW has always been committed to creating products that we are proud of and we know the fans will thoroughly enjoy.
Why is Early Access not viable for Subverse?
1) Single-player, story-driven RPGs don’t tend to do early access. Early Access is typically utilized by FPS games, rogue-likes, and MMOs that have gameplay loops and dynamic online components that need to be thoroughly tested.
2) One of our advisers made the excellent point that we have almost 4,500 eligible closed beta testers. This is a huge pool that we can tap into to make gameplay tweaks, thus nullifying the whole point of Early Access for the general public.
3) Subverse is a story-driven game meant to be experienced as a whole, not in the stop/start fashion that is forced by Early Access. Having to wait potentially up to a month for the next chapter to be released will really hurt the momentum of the overall game.
4) Internally, we’ve seen the difference between a fully completed section of the game and an Early Access one, and it’s night and day in terms of quality. We feel it would be a disservice to you guys and the project to release it before the quality you deserve can be achieved throughout the game.”
Subverse is coming soon to windows PC.
