A better way to run your crowdfunded game; from the
Dual Universe BoardHi guys,
Here are some news concerning the Crowdfunding portal evolution and the Alpha.
First, thank you so much for your support as we take this amazing journey together. There are more than 9,000 backers who have shown their support for our vision of Dual Universe with more than 675,000€ pledged. Thanks to you we have met all of our crowdfunding goals and all but one of our stretch goals, the Bounty system (725,000€).
We're amazed by the support you guys show us every day. You know how crucial the Kickstarter campaign was and how it allowed us to make it this far. For all of you that couldn't make it during the Kickstarter, and who made it very clear they wanted to help us achieve our vision, we opened our own Crowdfunding portal in November, 2016 to make sure everybody had a chance to get on board for the first Alpha and to actively support the development team.
Kickstarter upgrades can't go on indefinitely, though. Many of you have asked how long we’d allow new pledges and upgrades from your Kickstarter pledges. While we didn’t put an exact date on it at the time, we made it clear the opportunity to upgrade your pledges, or make new pledges, wouldn’t last forever.
The time has come to announce a date for the end of the Kickstarter upgrade opportunity and an evolution of our crowdfunding in general. You'll have until the 7th of September 2017 to perform an upgrade of your current pledge or to make a pledge if you haven't already. Your sharp eyes will probably notice that this date is special: this is indeed the day we launched the Kickstarter campaign last year!
Many of you mentioned that you needed time to perform upgrades (especially for those who wanted to upgrade to the highest pledge levels). We totally get that and we think giving you a full year after the campaign started is a fair amount of time to upgrade and make changes to your support for Dual Universe.
After September, 7, we will remove the upgrades from our crowdfunding portal. At the same time we will temporarily disable the Crowdfunding portal entirely to prepare it for a refresh. No new pledges or upgrades will be possible during that time.
After we complete the maintenance and revamping, the portal will reopen with a slightly different approach. Because the initial push to raise funding and make Dual Universe a reality will have ended, the current “Founder” packs will be retired. However, as we are aware that new members of the Community may still want to support the game, we will provide "Supporter" Packs in a new format. These packs will be available to let supporters either join early to give feedback that could help shape or improve the game mechanics, or just to support the vision Dual Universe carries and help us to remain as independent as possible.
However, some current rewards won't be available in these new “Supporter” packs. For example, we will remove the lifetime subscription reward. If you are planning on purchasing or upgrading to a Ruby pack or higher to earn this reward, the time is now. Once we suspend the upgrades on September, 7 —the lifetime reward will not appear in any future packs.
Another example: some “Supporter” packs will still provide Alpha access, but at a later stage than the Founder ones. We’ll share more details later in the year about the new “Supporter” packs to come but for now, here's what's planned: as we announced in the June DevDiary, at the very beginning, Alpha won't be the full game but a preview of some selected features. This "Alpha 1" will be updated over time with more features and fixes as the team progresses on its roadmap and with community feedback.
Access to this Alpha 1 is guaranteed for every Founder pack with Alpha access (Gold and above). So all early backers who trusted us on Kickstarter or the Crowdfunding portal before September, 7, 2017 will be onboard for the Alpha first steps.
When the future "Supporter" Packs will be available in Q4 2017, those packs that provide Alpha access will grant access to Dual Universe Alpha 2, that will come at a later stage of development (it will be an update of the existing Alpha 1 that will bring new features and fixes).
Why proceed this way? To thank our early backers for saying "dibs!" to help of course, but also to control on the amount of players online. We're building the cluster server progressively. Once we are confident that performance with many players under live conditions is acceptable then we’ll open the Alpha to the players who pledged with the new “Supporter” packs.
Since we mentioned it earlier we wanted to let you know that, due to recent hirings, we’re currently reorganizing our roadmap. We can't comment on the changes just yet, but we will at a later date.
A word about the Bounty System stretch goal: we know the community has been working hard over the past several months to reach it. This is why we’re giving you until September to help us hit the 725,000€ goal. If we don’t hit this goal on September, 7 the bounty system won't be included in the official release. Though it will probably be included at a later stage of development but it’s impossible to say when exactly.
With Alpha out next September and a bit of word of mouth, Dual Universe should attract more attention and we hope many new members will join the community!
Another important note: when we release the new version of the portal, we don't plan to add any new stretch goals. We’ve spoken several times in the past about our concerns of "feature creep". Having the Crowdfunding portal open can lead to a vicious cycle of promising new stuff to collect new funds. This leads directly to feature creep. We're currently focused on Alpha and we still have much work to do. New features can take away from that focus and we don't want that.
That’s all for now! And again, let us thank you warmly for your support. Whether you've been there since the beginning or just joined the community, you're all important to us. Our backers are real patrons and Dual Universe couldn't be made without you. See you soon in Dual Universe!
Cheers,
Nomad
