Planetary Annihilation beta access costs $90, alpha costs $60

W

Wickerbasket

Member
Our pricing for this stage of early access was determined by our Kickstarter. The stages of our early access for ALL users, which was determined during our Kickstarter, is:

June through August: $90 for early alpha access, during the time where we're still locking down features and making tweaks to the flow of the game.

September through November: $60 for beta access. The game will be much more complete at this time, but with a lot of balance work still to do and more optimizations to get it working on as many systems as possible.

Retail: December 2013

This is the pricing determined over a year ago. Our Kickstarter set these levels, and while we understand people may not like it, it's the decision we had to make.

But that is the schedule if you want to wait until the price drops to a level you're more comfortable with.

Thanks,
Garat / Marc Scattergood
Producer, Uber Entertainment
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http://store.steampowered.com/app/233250/

It's £68 where I am.

What are they thinking?

Edit: Sorry, $60 for beta access; $90 for alpha access.
 
Wickerbasket said:
What are they thinking?
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They probably thought that they didn't want to piss off the people that paid that same amount of money on KS only to find out that they'd have to pay a fraction of the cost on Steam for an alpha key.

edit: That $15 that I paid for that early bird special is looking better by the moment
 
doctorcdcs said:
They probably thought that they didn't want to piss off the people that paid that same amount of money on KS only to find out that they'd have to pay a fraction of the cost on Steam for an alpha key.

edit: That $15 that I paid for that early bird special is looking better by the moment
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This is exactly what they are doing. Buying into it is basically making a late kickstarter pledge.
 
Durante said:
Probably, that they want to honor the dedication of their earliest supporters.

I see nothing wrong with this.
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Me neither, but they are going to get some PR trouble for this, I think. Looking at the PA Steam forums is an experience at the moment.
 
Randdalf said:
Didn't notice, sorry :(
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No worries, I posted too quickly without double checking the title; it's my own fault.

Honestly though, I saw the game on Steam and thought it looked cool; then noticed it was £70.

I would have thought alpha access would have been cheaper since you're supporting an unfinished product, like Minecraft was.
 
It says right in the OP what they were thinking... Sounds good to me, if you don't want to pay that much, wait till the price drops.
 
Alpha access is a reward for putting a good bit of money down to help finance the game. The game itself is very alpha still, and shouldn't be confused with polished and functionally complete alphas like Minecraft was.
 
Yeah saw steam announce this on Twitter and thought "Ohhh Plantery Annihilation, I fancy a bit of that shame I missed out on the kickstarter". I naturally fired up Steam and saw it for the princely sum of £68 ($107) for early access to a bloody Alpha I thought "you are having a fucking laugh aint ya ?" Then I naturally walked away, I hope other PC gamers will do the same and NOT encourage this pretty obvious price gouging just for "early access".
 
It's Uber Entertainment. What do you expect? They have 2 failed games (one of which they flat out lied to the community regarding support and gave all the assets to a random guy on the forums).

I'm eagerly awaiting the crash and burn of PA because that studio needs to shut down.
 
I backed 90 dollars during kickstarter. I see no problem with this. Been playing the early alpha and it is pretty cool so far. Long road ahead but it feels like Total Annihilation on a much larger scale.
 
I've never seen a game for £70 ($110) in my life; I thought it was an error initially. The explanation is totally valid though. Kickstarter users were charged this for this tier of access, so they can't then go on to charge Steam early access users any less. I didn't get in on the Kickstarter because I found it to be too expensive and it was on target to hit its goal, but in defence of the cost, the Kickstarter was to actually fund the entire development of the game. Good luck to them though, I will buy this at release if it's any good and they don't screw over the backers.
 
That's fine and all (honoring kickstarters), just don't expect more than two or three people to buy it at its current price.
 
xelios said:
That's fine and all (honoring kickstarters), just don't expect more than two or three people to buy it at its current price.
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I imagine the last people that need to be reminded are them themselves after just going through the kickstarter
 
I think the only real problem here is offering it at all as it just makes them look bad to people not familiar with Kickstarter.
 
I frankly don't have much confidence in them after Super MNC (both the game itself and how they've supported it since). They're probably banking a lot on this.
 
Internet being Internet is pretty frustrating at times. Planetary Annihilation Metacritic user score is already ruined, some 6-7 months before the game is even released. It's (mostly) a meaningless score but goes to show how utterly stupid people are. OP is pretty funny too considering the question is already answered.. in the first post.

Obviously the price structure is opposite of your usual structure but it's not really that uncommon and if you spend 10 seconds reading about it, you clearly see the reasoning behind it. You don't have to like it but you can't deny the logic.

These days even big budget publisher games do this. BF4 deluxe edition gives you a beta access while standard edition doesn't and the main reason behind this is getting more money out of the customer.
 
Phinor said:
Internet being Internet is pretty frustrating at times. Planetary Annihilation Metacritic user score is already ruined, some 6-7 months before the game is even released. It's (mostly) a meaningless score but goes to show how utterly stupid people are. OP is pretty funny too considering the question is already answered.. in the first post.

Obviously the price structure is opposite of your usual structure but it's not really that uncommon and if you spend 10 seconds reading about it, you clearly see the reasoning behind it. You don't have to like it but you can't deny the logic.

These days even big budget publisher games do this. BF4 deluxe edition gives you a beta access while standard edition doesn't and the main reason behind this is getting more money out of the customer.
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I know their reasoning behind it, I just don't think they should have bothered putting it on Steam if that's the price they were going to choose for alpha access on Steam.

It just gives the impression that they're trying to sell an alpha game for £70.
 
Oh good, I was a little concerned that the Steam release was going to be released for dirt cheap after people paid a bunch for early access. I agree that it should probably be hidden from the general population until release though.
 
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